Speaking to a small group of mostly Baptists journalists, former United States President Jimmy Carter shared a story about the church in China I had never heard before — or have heard since.
The setting was the 100th anniversary of the Baptist World Alliance celebrated in Birmingham, England, in 2005. Carter was there to address more than 25,000 participants from around the world. He agreed to an impromptu news conference prior to speaking.
The former president answered questions about religious persecution, religious freedom and human rights issues in various nations. Then he began a fascinating story none of us had ever heard.
The incident happened in early 1979 during the historic visit of Deng Xiaoping to the United States. It was the first official visit to this nation by any leader of the People’s Republic of China. The stakes were high. Former President Nixon had made initial openings to restore relations between the U.S. and Mainland China. But by 1979 Nixon and China’s former ruler, Mao Zedong, were both gone. Future relations between the two nations hung in the balance.
Carter did not specify if the conversation he related took place in Washington or Atlanta, Carter’s home state, which the Chinese leader also visited. What Carter did share is that while the two men had some private time, he shared his Christian testimony with Deng, presented the plan of salvation to him and invited him to accept Jesus as his personal savior.
Such a conversation is not that far-fetched. Just two years before being elected president, Carter was in Boston and other cities, on evangelistic missions trips where he shared the plan of salvation and invited people to accept Christ.
Carter said the Chinese leader declined to accept Jesus as his savior saying that was “something he could not do.” After a brief pause, Deng reportedly added, “But here is what I can do.” Deng declared he could reopen the Christian churches in the People’s Republic of China.
During the 13-year-long Cultural Revolution led by Mao in the 1960s, Christian churches across the mainland had been closed and shuttered. Pastors, religious leaders and other Christians had been sentenced to multiple years in “re-education camps.” Religious schools, churches and ministries had been closed or nationalized. Missionaries had been driven from the country, some killed. The Communist Party tried to stamp out Christianity as a “western” influence.
To the outside world, Mao and his followers succeeded. There was no ongoing Christian witness behind the Bamboo Curtain, as far as anyone knew. With every passing year hope dimmed as more and more known Chinese believers died.
Personal connection to Carter’s story
My jaw dropped as Carter told this story. Between 1980 and 1983, I coordinated a partnership between the Missouri Baptist Convention and the Baptist of the Republic of China (Taiwan) called Bold Mission Taiwan. During that time there was seldom a meeting when believers in Taiwan did not pray for believers in mainland China. More than once I participated in all-night prayer meetings pleading for God to reopen the mainland to the gospel.
I also was privileged to sit in Hong Kong cafés and listen to Southern Baptist missionaries who surreptitiously went in and out of the mainland trying to identify Christians and Christian resources. Missouri Baptists even helped Hong Kong Baptist Press publish a Mandarin language New Testament for distribution in mainland China.
But in the early 1980s, all the information pointed toward a bleak future for the gospel on the mainland.
Expansion of the gospel in China
By 1990, when I led a group of Baptist state paper editors to mainland China, all of that had changed. We visited a recently opened national seminary in Nan Jing, the old Chinese national capital and the recently opened Amity Press, which used the latest publishing equipment to print Bibles for the people.
Our group interviewed the pastoral staff of the first Christian church reopened in China. It was a former Methodist church in Shanghai but was then a Patriotic Three-Self Protestant church. Individual denominations were not allowed. All opened churches had to be self-governed, self-supported and self-propagated.
We worshipped in what used to be Grace Baptist Church in Shanghai and were amazed that in each of the three Sunday morning services more than a thousand people crammed into the restored building while others congregated outside the opened windows to hear the gospel preached.
In Beijing, we stumbled onto a recently reopened church and joined a group in a prayer meeting that lasted for hours.
By 1990, Southern Baptists had officially recognized religious workers teaching English in former Baptist universities. They were allowed to do evangelism if students or anyone asked about their faith. These workers took us to the hospital were famed missionary Bill Wallace of China worked before being martyred. We also visited the remains of the church where Lottie Moon worked.
Over and over, we heard miraculous accounts of how God had not only preserved the community of believers, but had expanded it beyond anything those outside the country could imagine.
‘Greatest miracle of 20th Century’
History affirms that Deng kept his word to Carter. On returning to China, he slowly and carefully reestablished the Patriotic Three-Self Movement to oversee the Protestant Church in the People’s Republic. He commuted sentences of hundreds, if not more, of Christian leaders, set up a schedule for returning property to churches (some, not all), systematically reopened churches for public worship, allowed formation of a national seminary and regional seminaries to train Christian pastors, and permitted the printing of Bibles and Christian literature within the country.
The story of Christianity in China is not without its bumps and setbacks. Christians still face great obstacles in that country. Yet, there are more openly avowed Christians in China today than there are Communist Party members. Many missiologists point to the growth of the church in China as the greatest miracle of the 20th Century.
Hearing of President Carter’s death Dec. 29 brought back memories of that brief press conference almost 20 years ago. Why the story he shared that day was never officially recorded I am not sure. But I am thankful for President Carter’s willingness to share his faith with Deng Xiaoping and for how the Holy Spirit prompted Deng to respond by reopening churches in China even if he could not personally believe in Jesus Christ.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Bob Terry is editor emeritus of The Alabama Baptist newspaper and spent 50 years in Baptist communication roles, including as editor of Missouri’s Word & Way and associate editor of Kentucky’s Western Recorder. A video recap of the 2005 Baptist Union World Congress in Birmingham, England, which celebrated BWA’s 100th anniversary was produced by Green Shed Video and is available on YouTube.
