“Aren’t you ashamed of what you have done?” a crying woman screamed at the security guards keeping the parishioners of Lower Dafei Catholic Church from protecting their church’s cross.
The woman was part of a dozen Chinese Catholics who tried to stop the government from cutting the cross off the top of their building.
“We have violated no law. We do not oppose the government,” said the parishioner, who gave his name only as Chen for fear of retaliation from authorities. “We have been good, law-abiding citizens.”
Tu Shouzhe told ABC News about the government ripping the cross from his church’s building.
“It was a surprise attack. We did not let them in, but they broke in by cutting off the lock. We demanded paperwork, but they showed us none. They cordoned us away from the church,” Tu said. “They had 60-70 people. We had just about a dozen or so. Everyone was crying. Our hearts ached. We felt powerless to resist, and only prayed and sang hymns.”
Chinese Christians are rising up against the government’s actions to the level that even some of the “official” churches are starting to rebel. The Christian Associations in the nation – which was designed to ensure the Communist Party’s control over churches – has said that the government’s actions are out of line. They warned the action could turn the faithful into “enemies of the party.”
“The crackdown has alienated the Christians in China, who are otherwise law-abiding citizens,” Yang Fenggang, an expert on China’s religions at Purdue University, told the Associated Press.
Christians in China have had enough of the government’s campaign to eradicate the cross from the country.
“Each time they take a cross down, we will put more up,” one church leader told the Guardian at a protest on Friday. “We are even considering making flags and clothes with cross patterns. We will make the cross flourish throughout China.”
The activists say that the Chinese government has ripped down 1,200 crosses in the last two years with an increase in the amount of crosses torn down in the last few weeks. The focus has been in the Zhejiang province where Christian churches have been flourishing.
Zhejiang has over 300,000 Catholics and one million Protestants between the “official” government churches and underground churches.
“Christianity has grown so fast that Christians outnumber Communist Party members. The whole purpose of this is to control the ‘overheated’ growth of Christianity. They are nervous not just about Christianity but of any organized civil group,” Bob Fu, president of Texas-based non-profit China Aid, told Christianity Today.
In addition to the stripping of crosses from church buildings, many churches have been completely destroyed by the government and local officials.
City leaders in King, North Carolina are removing a memorial to veterans because of threats from anti-Christianist Barry Lynn and the anti-Christian hate group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
In 2012, the anti-Christian group filed suit against the city because of a memorial that showed a soldier kneeling before a cross. The group said they were acting on behalf of Steven Hewitt, a local veteran.
“The United States Armed Forces are highly diverse,” Lynn told the Stokes News. “To have a veterans’ memorial that only honors soldiers of one religion is not only a violation of the First Amendment, but also an insult to the memory of non-Christians who served their country.”
“I proudly served alongside a diverse group of soldiers with a variety of different religious beliefs,” Hewitt added in a news release last November. “The City of King should be honoring everyone who served our country, not using their service as an excuse to promote a single religion.”
The city council voted 3-2 to agree to a settlement with the anti-Chrsitianists, stating they didn’t want to continue spending tax dollars to fight the attempts to remove Christians from society.
“The decision to settle this case has been very difficult for the King city council,” a statement from the city outlines. “It was not reached until it became clear that the costs of proceeding to trial would greatly exceed the city’s insurance policy limits.”