Political Quotes

“Last weekend in Marietta, Ohio I had a chance to talk with the newly appointed Chinese ambassador, and I raised with him the issue of Christians and others of religious faith who are imprisoned in China. He denied that that was the case. Following that exchange, a young student attending Ohio University came to me and thanked me for raising the issue, saying that he had been a part of the Tiananmen Square student uprising, and he could attest to the fact that China imprisons people of faith. It is almost impossible for us to imagine a place where worship and fellowship is illegal, but The New York Times has reported and others have substantiated that for people who live in China and other oppressive countries, religious persecution is a constant reality. The Chinese Government likes to claim that it allows religious pursuits and only arrests Christians who are troublemakers. But what they do not say is that the so-called churches they point to, the State-sanctioned churches, are actually under the control of the Communist Party. China prohibits Christians from worshipping in any churches except those they deem patriotic ones, that submit to the Communist Party's religious domination, registration, regulation, control of clerical appointments, and censorship reached to the pulpit and to the altar, like forbidding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. China is by no means the only country that denies religious liberty.”