ICC NOTE: The Communist Party of China is initiating a new piece to their religious puzzle in efforts to quell the rise of religion in the country. Identification credentials will be required for all religious leaders in order to legally practice their faith. If they do not submit to the certificates they will lose their right to be involved in any religious activity. While the party wishes to use this as a means of control, there is also the possibility of it backfiring on the government. Those who are required to carry the ID’s could find ways to work around the new law, but also use it as a way to grow their respective faith communities. Extreme persecution has a way of strengthening ones deep seeded religious beliefs, especially Christians. Our brothers and sisters in Christ are strong, but they need our prayers and our support. 

2/23/2016 China (UCA News) – The atheist Communist Party has recently made clear its latest strategy for controlling religious groups across China. Beijing has started to assign certificates detailing the secular name, religious name, national ID card number and a new, unique faith number to Buddhist monks across the country.

By the end of this year, authorities will require the same of Catholic and Taoist priests, state-run broadcaster CCTV and nationalist tabloid Global Times reported earlier this month. Protestantism and Islam — the other two of China’s five officially recognized religions — will surely face orders to follow suit in the near future.

Those religious personnel without certificates will be barred from engaging in religious activities, according to the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the government body that manages religious activity across China.

Beijing is clearly taking yet another major step to control religion as President Xi Jinping’s rule becomes ever more regimented and intolerant of perceived threats to the political status quo.

But the latest blueprint for China’s pacification and domination is likely to represent a miscalculation by the all-powerful Communist Party. Here’s why.

In the nearly three years since Xi became president in March 2013, burqas have been banned in Xinjiang. Security forces have shut down “illegal madrassas” arrested their operators while “saving” minors inside who are not allowed in mosques across this vast region of deserts and snow-capped mountains. Recently, Beijing has spoken of banning loosely defined “terrorist clothing” in Xinjiang.

More than 1,500 church crosses have been removed in prosperous Zhejiang province and now party officials are showing up to Mass to quell dissent against this campaign. And in Tibet monks and nuns complain authorities have banned images of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama while forcing monasteries and nunneries to instead display images of Xi and other party leaders.

Frustrations among China’s hundreds of millions of religious believers appear to be running higher than at any time since Chairman Mao’s death in 1976.

The Chinese Communist Party is restricting, harassing, torturing and in some cases even killing members of these religious groups in the name of preserving the party and maintaining stability.

But in always trying to control, the party risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which religious groups begin to find ways to undermine Beijing’s tight grip.

The nationalistic state-run tabloid Global Times last week made a rare admission of this problem in a surprisingly even-handed assessment of the new religious certification scheme.

“The certificate will become a tool for government officials to easily veto those religious practitioners they don’t favor,” said Liu Peng, director of the Pushi Institute for Social Sciences in Beijing, one of a number of criticisms aired in the article.

Priests within China’s state-backed Catholic Church have already told ucanews.com that instead of seeking to obtain the necessary certification, they may instead go underground. This is telling. What this new scheme aims to do is further divide and conquer, it makes all religious personnel jump through yet more hoops to find favor with authorities to practice faith in an increasingly state-controlled environment.

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