Christianity in Xinjiang

Christianity is a minority religion in Xinjiang, an autonomous region of China, formerly known as Chinese Turkestan. The dominant ethnic group, the Uyghur, are predominantly Muslim and very few are known to be Christian.[1] Christianity in Xinjiang is the religion of 1% of the population according to the Chinese General Social Survey of 2009.[2] According to Asia Harvest, estimates from 2020 suggest that of the entire population (24,992,119) about 3.77% is Christian (942,897).[3]

Christian percentage in Xinjiang by city and county as of 2020.
Christian Church in Hami

Pre-history

The Church of the East, commonly known as Nestorians, reached Central Asia, Mongolia and China by the seventh century CE. The Turpan texts dating to the ninth and tenth centuries include translations of Christian sacred texts into several languages, including Christian Old Turkic. The tribe of the Keraites was known to be predominantly Christian from the 11th century and to the time of Genghis Khan. Likewise the Naiman and Ongud tribes were evangelised from the 11th century. The Uighur people were later Islamised.

History
Christians outside the church at Kashgar in the early 1930s

In 1904, George W. Hunter with the China Inland Mission opened the first mission station for CIM in Xinjiang.[4] But already in 1892, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden started missions in the area around Kashgar, and later built mission stations, churches, hospitals and schools in Yarkant and Yengisar.[5] In the 1930s there were several hundreds of Christians among this people, but because of persecution the churches were destroyed and the believers were scattered. The missionaries were forced to leave because of ethnic and factional battles during the Kumul Rebellion in the late 1930s.[6][7]

Christian missionaries, such as British missionary Hunter, Johannes Avetaranian,[8] and Swedish missionaries[5] Magnus Bäcklund, Nils Fredrik Höijer, Father Hendricks, Josef Mässrur, Anna Mässrur, Albert Andersson, Gustaf Ahlbert, Stina Mårtensson, John Törnquist, Gösta Raquette, Oskar Hermannson, and Uyghur convert Nur Luke studied the Uyghur language and wrote works on it. A Turkish convert to Christianity, Johannes Avetaranian went to China to spread Christianity to the Uyghurs. Yaqup Istipan,.[9]

There were several hundred Uyghur Muslims converted to Christianity by the Swedes. Imprisonment and execution were inflicted on Uyghur Christian converts and after refusing to give up his Christian religion, and the Uyghur convert Habil was executed in 1933. Ultimately in 1938, Sheng Shicai's pro-Soviet regime banished the Swedish missionaries after the East Turkestan Republic tortured and jailed Christian converts, who were made out of Kirghiz and Uyghurs.[10][11] The openly Islamic East Turkestan Republic forcibly ejected the Swedish missionaries and espoused hostility to Christianity while espousing a Muslim Turkic ideology.[12] The East Turkestan Republic subjected former Muslim Christian converts like Joseph Johannes Khan to jail, torture and abuse after he refused to give up Christianity in favor of Islam. After the British intervened to free Khan he was forced to leave his land and in November 1933 he came to Peshawar.[13]

Recent converts

Alimjan Yimit (Alimujiang Yimiti) is one of several Uyghurs who have more recently converted to Christianity, who was arrested in 2009 and is serving a 15-year prison sentence for being a pastor. Wu'erkaixi (Örkesh Dölet) may also be a Christian, but this has not publicly confirmed this. According to ChinaAid, six more Christians were arrested in 2019 for preaching.[14]

Work with women

The Swedish missionaries observed the conditions of Uyghur Muslim women in Xinjiang during their stay there.[15] The lack of Han Chinese women led to Uyghur Muslim women marrying Han Chinese men, These women were hated by their families and people.[16] Unmarried Muslim Uyghur women who married non-Muslims like Chinese, Hindus, Armenians, Jews, and Russians if they could not find a Muslim husband while they were calling to Allah to grant them marriage by the shrines of saints.[17] The Muslims also attacked the Swedish Christian mission and Hindus resident in the city.[18] Lobbying by the Swedish Christian missionaries led to child marriage for under 15-year-old girls to be banned by the Chinese Governor in Ürümqi. Uyghur women converts to Christianity did not wear the veil.[19] Uyghur Muslims rioted against Indian Hindu traders when the Hindus attempted to practice their religious affairs in public and also rose up against the Swedish Christian mission in 1907.[20][21]

Violence against missionaries

Mullahs directed violence against the missionaries from Sweden since 1894 and it was only due to action taken by Chinese officials that a Uyghur Muslim apostate who became a Christian named Omar was saved from execution at the hands of mullahs.[22] In 1899, the headquarters of the Swedish missionaries was violently obliterated by a mass of rioters. This anti-Christian riot was incited by the landlord of the property who argued with his Swedish renters.[23][24] The Swedish missionaries welfare was one of the concerns by the British during the Xinhai Revolution.[23] The residences of the Swedish missionaries were attacked by mobs and violent outbreaks resulted in a garden becoming their home since nobody would rent to them.[25]

An anti-Christian mob broke out among the Muslims in Kashgar against the Swedish missionaries in 1923. Violence and tensions brewed by Muslims who were stirred by Muslim apostates becoming Christian due to the Swedes in Ramadan of 1923. Orders to stop rioting were given to the Muslim Qazis and merchants by the Chinese Tao Tai after British diplomats contacted him.[26]

The Bughras applied Shari'a while ejecting the Khotan-based Swedish missionaries.[27] They demanded the withdrawal of the Swedish missionaries while enacting Shariah on March 16, 1933.[28] In the name of Islam, the Uyghur leader Amir Abdullah Bughra of the First East Turkestan Republic violently physically assaulted the Yarkand-based Swedish missionaries and would have executed them, except they were only banished due to the British Aqsaqal's intercession in their favor.[27] There were beheadings and executions of Muslims who had converted to Christianity at the hands of the Amir's followers.[29]

Other governments

Werner Otto von Hentig during the Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition was assisted by a tip off from a Swedish missionary.[30] Along with British diplomats, the Kashgar-based missionaries from Sweden were prominent among European expatriates in the area.[31] Eleanor Holgate Lattimore met the Swedish missionaries and British diplomats in Kashgar.[32]

The Swedish Mission Society ran a printing operation. Life of East Turkestan was the state run media of the rebel First East Turkestan Republic in the Kumul Rebellion. The Bughra lead government used the Swedish Mission Press to print and distribute the media.[33]

See also

References
  1. Mandryk, Jason (2010). Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide to Every Nation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. p. 249. ISBN 978-0-8308-9599-1.
  2. Wang, Xiuhua (2015). Explaining Christianity in China: Why a Foreign Religion has Taken Root in Unfertile Ground (PDF) (PhD thesis). p. 15. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 September 2015.
  3. "Christians in China Stats: Xinjiang". asiaharvest.org. 2020. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
  4. China Inland Mission (1911). China and the Gospel: An Illustrated Report of the China Inland Mission. The Mission. p. 15.
  5. Dillon, Michael (2014). Xinjiang and the Expansion of Chinese Communist Power: Kashgar in the Early Twentieth Century. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. p. 290. ISBN 978-1-317-64720-1.
  6. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien [Mission and Revolution in Central Asia: The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938] (PDF). STUDIA MISSIONALIA UPSA LIENSIA XXXV. Birgitta Åhman (translator). Stockholm: Gummessons. p. 6. Retrieved 11 July 2016.
  7. James A. Millward (2007). Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. Columbia University Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-231-13924-3.
  8. John Avetaranian; Richard Schafer; John Bechard (January 2003). A Muslim Who Became a Christian. Authors On Line Ltd. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-7552-0069-6.
  9. Yaqup Istipan fled to Sweden to escape persecution, sometimes using the Europeanised name "Jacob Stephen". He published an autobiography in 1947, Flykting för Kristi skull (book details with photo of Yaqup)
  10. Claydon, David (2005). A New Vision, a New Heart, a Renewed Call. William Carey Library. p. 385. ISBN 978-0-87808-363-3.
  11. Uhalley, Stephen; Wu, Xiaoxin (2015). China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future. London: Routledge. p. 274. ISBN 978-1-317-47501-9.
  12. Bellér-Hann, Ildikó (2008). Community Matters in Xinjiang, 1880-1949: Towards a Historical Anthropology of the Uyghur. Leiden: Brill. p. 59. ISBN 978-90-04-16675-2.
  13. Edward Laird Mills (1938). Christian Advocate -: Pacific Edition ... p. 986.
  14. "ChinaAid: Six Uyghur Christians arrested". 3 September 2019.
  15. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien [Mission and Revolution in Central Asia The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938] (PDF). STUDIA MISSIONALIA UPSALIENSIA XXXV. Translated by Åhman, Birgitta. Stockholm: Gummessons. p. 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  16. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien [Mission and Revolution in Central Asia The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938] (PDF). STUDIA MISSIONALIA UPSALIENSIA XXXV. Translated by Åhman, Birgitta. Stockholm: Gummessons. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  17. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien [Mission and Revolution in Central Asia The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938] (PDF). STUDIA MISSIONALIA UPSALIENSIA XXXV. Translated by Åhman, Birgitta. Stockholm: Gummessons. p. 17. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  18. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien [Mission and Revolution in Central Asia The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938] (PDF). STUDIA MISSIONALIA UPSALIENSIA XXXV. Translated by Åhman, Birgitta. Stockholm: Gummessons. p. 18. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  19. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien Svenska Missionsförbundets mission i Ostturkestan 1892-1938 [Mission and Change in Eastern Turkestan] (PDF). Translated by Åhman, Birgitta. Stockholm: Gummessons Heart of Asia Ministries. p. 19. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-11-05. Retrieved 2018-04-03. Alternate URL
  20. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien [Mission and Revolution in Central Asia The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938] (PDF). STUDIA MISSIONALIA UPSALIENSIA XXXV. Translated by Åhman, Birgitta. Stockholm: Gummessons. p. 8. 18. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  21. Hultvall, John (1981). Mission och revolution i Centralasien [Mission and Revolution in Central Asia The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938] (PDF). STUDIA MISSIONALIA UPSALIENSIA XXXV. Translated by Åhman, Birgitta. Stockholm: Gummessons. p. 10. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  22. Eric Tamm (25 November 2013). The Horse that Leaps Through Clouds: A Tale of Espionage, the Silk Road, and the Rise of Modern China. Counterpoint. p. 139. ISBN 978-1-58243-876-4.
  23. Nightingale, Pamela; Skrine, C.P. (2013). Macartney at Kashgar: New Light on British, Chinese and Russian Activities in Sinkiang, 1890-1918. London: Routledge. pp. 108, 174. ISBN 978-1-136-57609-6.
  24. Henry Hugh Peter Deasy (1901). In Tibet and Chinese Turkestan: Being the Record of Three Years' Exploration. Fisher Unwin. pp. 302–303.
  25. The Moslem World. Hartford Seminary Foundation. 1966. p. 78.
  26. John Stewart (1989). Envoy of the Raj: The Career of Sir Clarmont Skrine, Indian Political Service. Porpoise. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-870304-03-0.
  27. Forbes, Andrew D. W. (1986). Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang 1911-1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 84, 87. ISBN 978-0-521-25514-1.
  28. Christian Tyler (2004). Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang. Rutgers University Press. pp. 115–. ISBN 978-0-8135-3533-3.
  29. Missionary Review of the World ; 1878-1939. Princeton Press. 1939. p. 130.
  30. Stewart, Jules (2014). The Kaiser's Mission to Kabul: A Secret Expedition to Afghanistan in World War I. New York: I. B. Tauris. p. 149. ISBN 978-1-78076-875-5.
  31. A Regional Handbook on Northwest China. Human Relations Area Files. 1956.
  32. Eleanor Holgate Lattimore (1934). Turkestan reunion. The John Day company. p. 261.
  33. Klimeš, Ondřej (2015). Struggle by the Pen: The Uyghur Discourse of Nation and National Interest, c.1900-1949. Leiden: Brill. pp. 81, 124–125. ISBN 978-90-04-28809-6.
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