She pastors 7,000+ men and women SDAs

[John317]

Quote:

John317: ...I'm saying that the mere fact that they are doing wonderful work there shouldn't be construed to mean God wants women to be the pastors or elders of our churches throughout the world. That's a decison the church can rightfully make only on the basis of Bible study and theology. The Bible remains the standard for doctrine and practice for us as a church...

Quote:

Tom Wetmore: Your whole approach is that we must prove it to be right and acceptable strictly and only from a Biblical/theological perspective, a universal truth. If it is right, it should be right everywhere. If it is wrong, it should be wrong everywhere.

It's obvious that we as a church don't believe truth is proven by custom or tradition, but the Bible is our only rule of doctrine and practice. Just because the church does something doesn't prove it's right or that it's what the whole church should do. I'm surprised that it would be necessary to say it. Therefore, it's necessary to show that a doctrine or practice is supported by Scripture before the church adopts it.

Your argument rests on a false premise that if the church does something at one time under certain circumstances and if it was right to do it under those conditions, it must be right to do the same thing under all conditions and in all circumstances, but that is neither logical nor practical, to say nothing of unbiblical.

Three examples show your argument to be invalid:

1) Under extreme circumstances, God chose a man named Sampson, who was a fornicator, after which he did many foolish things which resulted in his finally committing suicide. Yet he will be saved. God "winked" at what Sampson did. Sampson fulfilled his work as a judge, and therefore he did right in God's eyes. Yet we know that under different circumstances, what Sampson did would have been considered evil and such a person would be lost. Yet the Bible says the world was unworthy of this man.

2) Noah got drunk and yet the Bible nowhere condemns his actions. Under different circumstances, can I depend on being able to get drunk without any condemnation from God? Obviously not.

3) Under certain circumstances, Abraham had two wives, and God never condemned him for it. If I use your reasoning, what was right for Abraham should be right for me under any circumstances. So much, then, for your proposition, "If it is right, it should be right everywhere. If it is wrong, it should be wrong everywhere."

Quote:

Tom Wetmore: But you appear to be affirming the work of these ordained women that are in church leadership (headship if you will...) and doing all things pastoral in China while finding no support for it Biblically, at least according to all you have posted here. How can you endorse their wonderful work if you believe they are acting contrary to the will of God for women? Are you suggesting that circumstances in China may make it OK there, but that it may not be a OK in other parts of the world?

Yes, that's precisely what I'm saying. Study the examples of God choosing women prophets in the OT. Did those exceptions to the rule mean the rule was null and void? I think not.

Also see the examples 1, 2 and 3, of this principle given above.

[karl]

Quote:

Tom Wetmore: But you appear to be affirming the work of these ordained women that are in church leadership (headship if you will...) and doing all things pastoral in China while finding no support for it Biblically, at least according to all you have posted here. How can you endorse their wonderful work if you believe they are acting contrary to the will of God for women? Are you suggesting that circumstances in China may make it OK there, but that it may not be a OK in other parts of the world?

Yes, that's precisely what I'm saying. Study the examples of God choosing women prophets in the OT. Did those exceptions to the rule mean the rule was null and void? I think not.

Now we need to remember that, by going to the source, we have dispelled the idea gotten from the ANN article that more than half the ordained ministers in China are women. According to the man at China Union Mission, only 7-8 of these women are ordained. The rest of these women are not ordained.

I think the ANN article was, at best, misleading in regards to the ordination status of these women.

Wonder why?

[pindoc]

Wow. Deep sigh. First, God's obviously working in China. That's the most important point. No, it's not typical and it does show how much easier God's work is in an atheistic context than in theocracies, i.e., almost every Muslim country.

This reminds me of when God used children to preach and prophesy in Europe when the adults weren't allowed to and were being jailed.

It also does reiterate the point that women are too good at getting things done for the church in the west to keep refusing to ordain women. Do we want to keep pretending that we have time to debate this? We don't. Time is too short to keep screwing around.

[Tom Wetmore]

And that seems rather like situational ethics to me.

How unusual do the circumstances have to get to justify going against the theological truth about the proper role, function and status of women that you seem to be so sure of? If we can allow an exception for China, at what point does Western cultural norms and expectations and even legal standards for equal rights for women allow us to make another exception to the rule? Who gets to determine how far we bend the rule and make such an exception? On whose authority can that be done?

[Tom Wetmore]

karl,

The article is not misleading. I think you are misunderstanding what it actually said. The ANN article did not say that more than half of the ordained pastors were women. In fact neither it nor the AT article even used the words "ordained" "ordain" or "ordination". It said that out of the total number of pastors, without regard to ordination, more than half are women. This was based on what the Adventists in China said. There are unordained pastors, men and women, as well. The e-mail you received did say that at least half of the women preachers in mainland China are women. And Both that e-mail and the comment from China Union Mission posted on the AT website indicated only a small number of ordained women in mainland China.

This may come as a shock to those making hair-splitting distinctions and exceptions here on the role and function of women, but the terms "preacher", "minister", "pastor" are used interchangeably in the Adventist Church to refer to both ordained and unordained clergy.

[John317]

Quote:

pindoc:Wow. Deep sigh. First, God's obviously working in China. That's the most important point. No, it's not typical and it does show how much easier God's work is in an atheistic context than in theocracies, i.e., almost every Muslim country.

Yes, it is now, certainly, but it hasn't always been that way. The atheistic states believe they give you all your rights, and therefore, they can take your rights away any time they want to.

The communist party controls the churches just like they did in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Of course it doesn't show on TV, but that's just for looks.

The communist party controls who becomes the leader of the churches and who becomes the pastor. If you refuse to cooperate with the party, you won't become the pastor. Doubtless the party finds it easier to work with women than with men.

Do you think the communist party in China would allow the church to be run according to what the Bible teaches? No. They don't care what the Bible teaches. The communist party wants women as the pastors, and therefore in China you have women as the pastors. It's enforced by the party and the government. It wasn't a decision of the church in China, and certainly not the decision of the General Conference.

According to the news reports coming from within China, the churches aren't allowed to identity themselves by their true name, such as Baptist or Methodist. The government can also shut down a church, or abolish it, any time the government feels like it.

The communists have their own political and social agenda. They will allow a certain amount of freedom so long as it is to the benefit of the party and the state. This is an example of the grip that the Chinese government and communist party have on the churches in China. That's why I believe we shouldn't take the position that what's done in China should be done in all SDA unions or conferences throughout the world.

Should we be grateful for the religous freedom the Chinese are enjoying today under communist rule? Yes, we should be thankful. But we should also realize that what's happening in Chinese churches under the control of unbelievers isn't a model for the rest of the world. The model for our churches is found in the Bible.

[Tom Wetmore]

I think you are way out on a limb of speculation that everything that has been reported about the women as pastors in China are just the communist party assigned pastors and the degree to which the government controls our Adventist churches in China. What direct evidence do you have of this?

There is much we simply do not know. That was the observation of the ministerial secretary for the China Union Mission in his e-mail to karl.

Again it seems more of an effort to minimize the reality of women in ministry.

So do you think that the figure of 400,000 members is just communist party propaganda?

Do you think the thousands in attendance at our churches are planted there by the communist party?

Do you think the ministry of the pastors of our Adventist churches in China are compromised in their teaching of the gospel? Are they just party functionaries?

[John317]

I think you are way out on a limb of speculation that everything that has been reported about the women as pastors in China are just the communist party assigned pastors and the degree to which the government controls our Adventist churches in China. What direct evidence do you have of this?

China is a communist state, of course. They have only one party, and that's the communist party, and their attitude toward religion is shown in the fact that no one who believes in any religion may be a member of the communist party. They are all atheists. There's a very good reason for this fact: because Marxism is based on dialetical materialism.

Leon Trotsky, a close associate of V. Lenin and one of the foremost Marxist theorists, said, "I am a dialectical materialist, and therefore I'm an atheist." One can't very well believe in dialetical materialism and believe in God or the Supernatural. In fact, it's impossible. Therefore the communist party in China views Christianity, and indeed, all religous faith, as false and potentially harmful teachings which need to be supervised by the state.

I know you probably realize all this, but somehow the significance gets lost sometimes, apparently. Do you think communists like religion? Do you think they really honor religious freedom? Notice that in the news recently China is listed as one of the nations with serious problems over religious liberty. Doubtless this has significance for the SDA church in China.

Check out the following paragraphs about the Chinese control of the Catholic Church. It is typical of the the relationship between the communist party and the various churches in China:

(Zhngguó Tinzhjiào Àiguó Huì), abbreviated CPA, CPCA, or CCPA, is an association of people, established in 1957 by the People's Republic of China's Religious Affairs Bureau to exercise state supervision over mainland China's Catholics. In his encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis of 29 July 1958, Pope Pius XII deplored the attitude and activities of the Association and declared the bishops who participated in consecrating new bishops selected by the Association to be excommunicated. Pope Benedict XVI referred to the agents of the Association as "persons who are not ordained, and sometimes not even baptized", who "control and take decisions concerning important ecclesial questions, including the appointment of Bishops".

CPCA and the Beijing Government

Officially, religious organizations in mainland China today must be government-recognized and approved, though many unofficial unregistered organizations do in fact exist. The Government of China wants no organization in mainland China owing allegiance to "foreign influence", in this case, the Pope in Rome. Critics of the CPCA argue that it was created precisely to establish state control over Catholicism in mainland China.

The government rejects exercise of any authority by organs of the Catholic Church outside China after 1949, the year communists gained power over all of mainland China.....

Since the Canon of the Mass is now said aloud, observers have been able to check that the Pope is prayed for by name (a traditional test of unity and loyalty) even by those priests who, at least externally, accept directions from the CPCA, leading to the conclusion that "there is only one Catholic Church in China, whether state-recognized or so-called underground, they have the same faith, and the same doctrine."

The policy of the PRC government, as was that of communist governments in other countries, has been to reserve to the state the regulation of all social activities. Thus the CPCA prevents the Catholic bishops in China from speaking out publicly even against laws that gravely contravene Catholic moral teaching, such as those enforcing abortion and artificial contraception.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Patriotic_Catholic_Association

Quote:

Tom Wetmore: There is much we simply do not know. That was the observation of the ministerial secretary for the China Union Mission in his e-mail to karl.

Again it seems more of an effort to minimize the reality of women in ministry.

Glad you used the word "seems." Who is minimizing it? I think it's great that women are able to do the work they're doing, even if they have to cooperate with the government. It is better than not having any church at all.

What you may not realize is that there's the official church and then there's the "underground church," which consists of small groups of people who are true believers and who meet separately when they know everyone there is a genuine SDA. That's the way the Catholics worship also. That's also the way it was in the USSR and places in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Quote:

Tom Wetmore: So do you think that the figure of 400,000 members is just communist party propaganda?

Do you think the thousands in attendance at our churches are planted there by the communist party?

"No," to both questions. But there is no question that some of the people in the church are there for the purpose of gathering information and keeping tabs on what's going on and what's being taught and said. If anyone doesn't know that, they either have a very poor memory or don't understand the communist party and the Chinese government. They must also not be paying attention to the news that comes out of China.

Quote:

Tom Wetmore: Do you think the ministry of the pastors of our Adventist churches in China are compromised in their teaching of the gospel?

You can be sure they're not completely free to preach the Three Angels Messages as they would if they were in a free society. And they aren't free in their relations with SDAs around the world or with the GC. There's no doubt the communist party knows what is said and must approve of what the church does and teaches. Or it wouldn't be taught.

Do you think the Chinese communists are treating the Catholic Church in a completely different manner from the way they treat other religions in China? There is some difference, but their treatment of the Catholic church is proof of the attitude of the communist party toward religion in general and toward the Christian churches in particular. Remember that last year was the first time in many decades when an SDA GC president has been able to visit the SDA believers in China. That speaks volumes, or at least should.

Quote:

TomWemore: Are they just party functionaries?

No, Tom, they aren't. But they are restricted and they do what they are told. They are given a certain amount of freedom but they realize that freedom can be revoked. If you communism, you will find that the communist party isn't interested in following the church's practices or desires for church organization. The party determines that, and their agenda is for there to be as little difference between men and women as possible. If the SDA church in China said that only men could be pastors, I could guarantee you that they would not be allowed to be organized in that way. The communists find that it is generally easier to get women to follow the party line than it is to gain the full submission of the men.

[karl]

There is plenty of real faith in the official churches, although the government continues to persecute independent Protestants and the underground Catholic church. Some of the faithful (nurses, for instance, in Chinese hospitals) follow secret lives of devotion. Secular historians and social scientists increasingly acknowledge the real contributions made to China by Christianity and its missions, and not even the recent appointment of hard-line atheist Ye Xiaowen to handle religious affairs has kept Christianity from gaining ground.

Chinese authorities refuse openly to accord a greater measure of religious freedom for the same reason that they still refuse other personal freedoms: doing so will drive the final nails into the coffin of Marxism. Recognizing this fact, Beijing has turned in recent years to nationalism as the new basis for legitimate rule and common action. But nationalism says nothing about morality or about the crimes and horrors of past and present, which so preoccupy Chinese in their private lives. Religion may not be able to resolve the enigmas of evil, but at least it ponders them and seeks to fill the immense moral and cultural void created by the intellectual bankruptcy of Marxism.

Full article here: http://www.fpri.org/fpriwire/0703.199902.waldron.religiousrevivalscommunistchina.html

---------------------------

Richard Spencer reports from Beijing that there may now be more practising Christians in China than there are members of the Communist Party.

The precise figures cannot be known, in a country in which Christians are still persecuted. But the evidence suggests that there may be as many as 80 million or even 100 million members of underground Christian churches in China, unapproved by the state.

Christianity and communism are fundamentally incompatible - one a spiritual creed, the other materialist. Christianity lays down that a man's responsibility to his neighbour is personal, a matter for his individual conscience, while communism decrees that all duties are collective, to be enforced by the state. At first glance, communism may look like the fairer system, and Christianity the more selfish.

Full article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/3618690/Christian-v-communist.html

[John317]

Very good and informative article about the situation of the Christian church and other religions in China. Also gives some interesting insight into the communist system in China. Thanks.

[JanePang]

i am a female adventist from China. it is wrong to call women pastors here in China. we do not have female pastor here . it is a difference between Sunday Church and Adventist Church here. some of them are elders.and i am a person who is ready to do the ministry work in China. it is not important to be positioned as pastor or not.the point is we gonna to do what the Lord is calling us to do. God bless China and all adventist Church all over the world.

[Gregory Matthews]

John 317 said:

Quote:

The communist party controls who becomes the leader of the churches and who becomes the pastor. If you refuse to cooperate with the party, you won't become the pastor. Doubtless the party finds it easier to work with women than with men.

Do you think the communist party in China would allow the church to be run according to what the Bible teaches? No. They don't care what the Bible teaches. The communist party wants women as the pastors, and therefore in China you have women as the pastors. It's enforced by the party and the government. It wasn't a decision of the church in China, and certain

ly not the decision of the General Conference.

First the above comes across to me as a denial of the power of God--The Communist Party is in charge of the selection of Adventit pastors, God is second in command.

Secondly: An establishment of a fact that the governmnent may control one aspect of a denominational life and practice does not establish that the government may controll other aspects of denominational life and practive.

I once lived in a country under a dictatorship. The governmnt decreed that it would controll the materials published by private publishing houses. I immediately contacted denominational authorities to ask how that would affect the publication of SDA materials--the answer, no expected problem. Yet, it was in that country that the government exercised major control over the denominational college, to include selection of students and the courses and taught and degrees granted.

[Gregory Matthews]

John 317 said:

Quote:

What you may not realize is that there's the official church and then there's the "underground church," which consists of small groups of people who are true believers and who meet separately when they know everyone there is a genuine SDA. That's the way the Catholics worship also. That's also the way it was in the USSR and places in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

John: What you do not seem to recognize is that the General Conference recognizes both groups as officialy SDA. IOW, both groups are recognized as genuine SDA.

NOTE: China is the only place in the world where the GC recognizes two groups as SDA

[Gregory Matthews]

The following is a true case of which I am personally aquainted:

In a nation outside of the United States of America, a Marxist government mandated that a Marxist teacher (non SDA) would become part of the teaching staff of a SDA school of 400+ students.

NOTE: I have in my library the Marxist textbooks that the government of that country required the public schools to use.

John, based upon the above information which is true, how would you want to speculate on the effect of that governmental action on the mission and minsitry of that SDA School?

Would you likee to speculate.

[Gregory Matthews]

Well John, I do not want to set you up. I know the answer and will give it to you:

1) The church leadership of that country went to their knees and asked God to render ineffective any attempt to instill Marxist ideology into that school and to sustain the SDA mission and ministry.

2) The Marxist teacher made no attempt to instill Marxist ideology into the school and the Marxist textbooks were not used an any classes.

3) In the dark of the night, whent things seemed bleak, deliverance dropped down out of the skies and that school operates in freedom today.

NOTE: I was there and a personally involved in the delivery.

The denominational leadership believed that God had personally intervened to deliver them.

John: God is powerful. God can deliver. God does act to preserve the true faith. God can deliver the Chruch in China. I can not say that the Comminist Part is in controll.

[Gregory Matthews]

Jane Pang said:

Quote:

i am a female adventist from China. it is wrong to call women pastors here in China. we do not have female pastor here . it is a difference between Sunday Church and Adventist Church here. some of them are elders.and i am a person who is ready to do the ministry work in China. it is not important to be positioned as pastor or not.the point is we gonna to do what the Lord is calling us to do. God bless China and all adventist Church all over the world.

Jane, welcome here. So glad that you have come. Be aware, our discussions are robust. You may be challenged. Do not take any of it personally. It would be of interest to us to know more about you.

You tell us that China does not have female pastors in the Seventh-day Adventist church. The President of the General Confernce of Seventh-day Adventists tells us that the officially recognized Seventh-day Adventist Church in China does have officially recognized female pastors. Could you explain why you tell us that you do not have such when he says you do?

[John317]

Quote:

John 317 said:

The communist party controls who becomes the leader of the churches and who becomes the pastor. If you refuse to cooperate with the party, you won't become the pastor. Doubtless the party finds it easier to work with women than with men.

Do you think the communist party in China would allow the church to be run according to what the Bible teaches? No. They don't care what the Bible teaches. The communist party wants women as the pastors, and therefore in China you have women as the pastors. It's enforced by the party and the government. It wasn't a decision of the church in China, and certainly not the decision of the General Conference.

Quote:

Gregory Matthews: First the above comes across to me as a denial of the power of God--The Communist Party is in charge of the selection of Adventit pastors, God is second in command.

Surely you realize that the communist Chinese have appointed the leaders of churches in China. They're not averse to interfering in church affairs and activities. This is a well-known fact.

But you misunderstand me if you think I'm saying that all of our SDA pastors are directly appointed by the communist party. What I'm saying is that the Chinese government agencies do have an influence on what goes on in the churches, and you can be sure that the communist party keeps tabs on what is happening. If they have no objection to someone's being appointed and with what the church is doing, the communists will do nothing; but if they believe it's in their best interest to interfere, they will not hesitate to do it. It's in that sense that the party controls who becomes the leader or the pastors. The party has the power to veto someone's appointment if they object to it.

No one is saying that God is without power, but it does make a difference if a country is free or not. God worked in the USSR and in Nazi Germany, too, and God can work in any conditions, but it's much better and churches tend to grow better when the people are free to preach and worship and organize the church as they wish to. I think we're putting our head in the sand when we don't recognize the reality of the situation in China where the people are not free to do those things without government interference.

It's not for nothing that China is on the list of nations having serious problems with religious liberty.

[John317]

Quote:

JanePang: i am a female adventist from China. it is wrong to call women pastors here in China. we do not have female pastor here

Welcome to the Forum, Jane. We're really glad you're here. We hope you keep coming back and participating.

May I ask what part of China you live in?

[John317]

Quote:

Gregory Matthews: God is powerful. God can deliver. God does act to preserve the true faith. God can deliver the Chruch in China. I can not say that the Comminist Part is in controll.

Yes, God is powerful and of course God does deliver, yet communist governments do affect the liberty of Christians and do influence the churches. I remember reading books about the experiences of Christians and SDAs in the USSR and in China during the 1960-1980s. So I know how God can work even under the worst conditions.

I'm not saying there isn't a certain degree of freedom. We can be glad there is. I'm sure that God is behind that liberty, but it may not last long. We need to work while we can because we know that the time will come when it will be much harder to do that work there and in many other places in the world.

We can safely say that the Chinese communist party can control the church to any degree they decide to. I'm not saying that our pastors and church leaders are directly appointed by the party or by government officials, but I do know that the leaders are responsible to the government agencies which have the authority to watch and supervise religious activities in China. Our churches only have as much freedom there as the communist party wants to give them. They've closed SDA church before, and there's no reason to think they won't do it again when it suits their purposes.

[John317]

Quote:

Gregory Matthews:

John, based upon the above information which is true, how would you want to speculate on the effect of that governmental action on the mission and minsitry of that SDA School?

Would you likee to speculate.

I would like to but I can't because I don't know what nation you're describing, and it would depend on the country and what period of time you're talking about.

What country was it and when did it happen?

[Gregory Matthews]

John 317 said:

Quote:

Surely you realize that the communist Chinese have appointed the leaders of churches in China. They're not averse to interfering in church affairs and activities. This is a well-known fact.

The above statement illustrates some of the issues that I have with your posts:

1) Let us say that it is true that the Ckommunist Party appoints pastors of churches in China. If so, you have NOT demonstrated that they have done so for any of the SDA pastors.

2) There is considerable difference between appointing pastors and approving pastors. [NOTE: See the condition of the situation in England where the government is clearly involved with the State Chruch.] You have not documented what (which) is happening in China with the SDA Church.

3) You have not documented, in this discussion, your claim that the Communist Part has appointed the church leaders in China, let alone that they have done so down to the local pastors. e.g. If they have done so on higher levels, it does not mean that they have appointed local pastors.

4) You fail to distinguish between the actions of the Communist Party and the actions of governmental leaders. I suppose that you might say that the Democratic Party determined the breed of dog that the President selected for his children. O.K. You might say that the Democratic Party was responsible for every action that he President has taken--e.g. his selections of Supreme Court Justice.

5) John, you have made a sweeping generalilzation" (Which may or may not be accurate), failed to document that it is true, and applied it to a specific situation and totally without specific documentation.

7) Yes, Everybody knows . . . ..

[John317]

Quote:

John 317 said:

What you may not realize is that there's the official church and then there's the "underground church," which consists of small groups of people who are true believers and who meet separately when they know everyone there is a genuine SDA. That's the way the Catholics worship also. That's also the way it was in the USSR and places in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Quote:

Gregory Matthews: What you do not seem to recognize is that the General Conference recognizes both groups as officialy SDA. IOW, both groups are recognized as genuine SDA.

NOTE: China is the only place in the world where the GC recognizes two groups as SDA

I didn't mean to give the impression that I thought the official church is not a recognized SDA church. Of course it would be. For one thing, the GC wants to keep in the good graces of the Chinese government, and it would be a slap in the face to deny that the official church is SDA. The communist party at the present time is interested in convincing the world that they have religions freedom, even though they really don't.

But yes, of course the official church in China is SDA, and I wouldn't dispute that at all. The point I'm making is that SDAs in China recognize that the official church is not free of government control and interference, which is the reason for the "underground" churches.

[John317]

Quote:

John 317:

Surely you realize that the communist Chinese have appointed the leaders of churches in China. They're not averse to interfering in church affairs and activities. This is a well-known fact.

Quote:

Gregory Matthews: The above statement illustrates some of the issues that I have with your posts:

1) Let us say that it is true that the Ckommunist Party appoints pastors of churches in China. If so, you have NOT demonstrated that they have done so for any of the SDA pastors.

I think you're misunderstanding me, Gregory. Maybe that is my fault. You're evidnetly thinking I mean that the communists appoint all leaders of all churches, but I'm not saying that. We do know that some of the leaders of the Catholic church have been appointed by the Chinese government. That's a well known fact. I assume you know this, but if you don't it can be easily documentated by Googling. It's been written about in various news periodicals such as Time and Newsweek.

Here's what I said in a previous post on this thread:

We can safely say that the Chinese communist party can control the church to any degree they decide to. I'm not saying that our pastors and church leaders are directly appointed by the party or by government officials, but I do know that the leaders are responsible to the government agencies which have the authority to watch and supervise religious activities in China. Our churches only have as much freedom there as the communist party wants to give them. They've closed SDA church before, and there's no reason to think they won't do it again when it suits their purposes.

[John317]

Quote:

Gregory Matthews:

3) You have not documented, in this discussion, your claim that the Communist Part has appointed the church leaders in China, let alone that they have done so down to the local pastors. e.g. If they have done so on higher levels, it does not mean that they have appointed local pastors.

Again you either did not read enough or you misunderstood what you read, because I never said that the communist Party has appointed our SDA church leaders or pastors. I've denied this several times. What I am saying is that the Communist Party and the government agencies have appointed church leaders-- but I did not specify SDA leaders. I had in mind some of the leaders of the Catholic church in China. The fact that the government would appoint or influence the appointment of church leaders-- any church leaders-- shows what they think of religious liberty. I don't know why anyone would think that the communists would not interfer in the affairs of the SDA church if they felt like it. In fact, we know they have interfered in church affairs.

Here are some of my previous statements:

But you misunderstand me if you think I'm saying that all of our SDA pastors are directly appointed by the communist party. What I'm saying is that the Chinese government agencies do have an influence on what goes on in the churches, and you can be sure that the communist party keeps tabs on what is happening. If they have no objection to someone's being appointed and with what the church is doing, the communists will do nothing; but if they believe it's in their best interest to interfere, they will not hesitate to do it. It's in that sense that the party controls who becomes the leader or the pastors. The party has the power to veto someone's appointment if they object to it.

The communist party controls who becomes the leader of the churches and who becomes the pastor. If you refuse to cooperate with the party, you won't become the pastor. Doubtless the party finds it easier to work with women than with men.

There's this evidence:

(Zhngguó Tinzhjiào Àiguó Huì), abbreviated CPA, CPCA, or CCPA, is an association of people, established in 1957 by the People's Republic of China's Religious Affairs Bureau to exercise state supervision over mainland China's Catholics. In his encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis of 29 July 1958, Pope Pius XII deplored the attitude and activities of the Association and declared the bishops who participated in consecrating new bishops selected by the Association to be excommunicated. Pope Benedict XVI referred to the agents of the Association as "persons who are not ordained, and sometimes not even baptized", who "control and take decisions concerning important ecclesial questions, including the appointment of Bishops".

CPCA and the Beijing Government

Officially, religious organizations in mainland China today must be government-recognized and approved, though many unofficial unregistered organizations do in fact exist. The Government of China wants no organization in mainland China owing allegiance to "foreign influence", in this case, the Pope in Rome. Critics of the CPCA argue that it was created precisely to establish state control over Catholicism in mainland China.

Since the Canon of the Mass is now said aloud, observers have been able to check that the Pope is prayed for by name (a traditional test of unity and loyalty) even by those priests who, at least externally, accept directions from the CPCA, leading to the conclusion that "there is only one Catholic Church in China, whether state-recognized or so-called underground, they have the same faith, and the same doctrine."

The policy of the PRC government, as was that of communist governments in other countries, has been to reserve to the state the regulation of all social activities. Thus the CPCA prevents the Catholic bishops in China from speaking out publicly even against laws that gravely contravene Catholic moral teaching, such as those enforcing abortion and artificial contraception.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Patriotic_Catholic_Association

[John317]

Quote:

Gregory Matthews: You fail to distinguish between the actions of the Communist Party and the actions of governmental leaders. I suppose that you might say that the Democratic Party determined the breed of dog that the President selected for his children. O.K. You might say that the Democratic Party was responsible for every action that he President has taken--e.g. his selections of Supreme Court Justice.

Question:

What party do the leaders of the Chinese government belong to?

Please notice the following wikipedia article:

All power within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the Communist Party of China, the state, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA). This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities. Most, but not all, positions of significant power in the state structure and in the army are occupied by members of the Communist Party of China which is controlled by the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, a group of 4 to 9 people, usually all older men, who make all decisions of national significance. As the role of the Army is to enforce these decisions in times of crisis, support of the PLA is important.

The primary organs of state power are the National People's Congress (NPC), the President, and the State Council. Members of the State Council include the Premier, a variable number of vice premiers (now four), five state councilors (protocol equal of vice premiers but with narrower portfolios), and 29 ministers and heads of State Council commissions. During the 1980s there was an attempt made to separate party and state functions, with the party deciding general policy and the state carrying it out. The attempt was abandoned in the 1990s with the result that the political leadership within the state are also the leaders of the party, thereby creating a single centralized focus of power.

And so