Religious freedom and academic freedom suffered a blow this past summer when Purdue sociologist Fenggang Yang was disinvited from delivering the keynote address at the conference of the U.S.-China Catholic Association at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. The story is excellently documented in the National Catholic Register.
Dr. Yang is a top scholar of religion in China and has spoken out on behalf of religious freedom there, especially, but not exclusively, that of Christians, for many years. He was a member of the team of scholars of the Under Caesar’s Sword project on global Christian responses to persecution that I co-led from 2014 to 2018.
Yang exemplifies the courage of a scholar who speaks up on behalf of the people he studies. He published Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, in 2012, a sociological study of how religious people and communities respond and adapt to repression. As a scholar of religion and global politics for three decades, I find in the book a rare combination of analytic power and underlying moral commitment. Yang is also noted for his predictions and assessments of growth in Christianity in China, predictions of which the Chinese government has taken notice. The regime has completely censored Yang’s work. Yang has lifted his voice courageously for justice – the mode of the human rights movement, of dissidents, of the Apostles – and, one hopes, of Catholic universities, and all universities who proclaim a mission of justice and of academic freedom.
The Chinese government is among the world’s top violators of religious freedom and has increased its repression in the past decade. It has long maintained its maximal score of 10 out of 10 on the “Governmental Restrictions Index” of the Pew Research Center’s regular studies on religious restrictions (dating back to 2007). The regime continues to imprison and force labor upon hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims and to strip them of their religion. It forces its five officially recognized religions -- Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism – to “Sinicize,” meaning revise their doctrines and their architecture (e.g., destruction of crosses on churches and domes on mosques) according to the doctrines of Communism and the teachings of President Xi Jinping. The government forbids anyone under 18 years of age from having a religious affiliation and attending religious rituals or services in an effort to education its children into atheist education and to stamp out the next generation of religion in China. It exercises sharp restrictions on religious content on the internet. It also bans the 100 million members of the Communist Party (plus 78 million youth members) from being affiliated with a religion. It imprisons people who practice religion outside of its five recognized associations such as members of Falun Gong and unregistered Protestant “house churches.”
The U.S.-China Catholic Association has sought to “build fraternal ties” since its inception in 1989 — a good and honorable endeavor. The trouble with the situation at hand, though, is that the USCCA acted publicly in inviting Yang, a renowned critic of the Chinese government’s religious repression, to speak at its conference, and then disinvited him under pressure from the very government who is carrying out the repression. Yang’s proposed address was not even a political one, as he explained to the National Catholic Register. It appears that agents of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs sought to have it cancelled on the basis of Yang’s reputation for speaking out for the human right of religious freedom. Remarkably, the Chinese government suppressed an American scholar on American soil.
The Chinese government is well-known for its surveilling and censoring reach in the West, including in universities. In muffling Professor Yang, the regime succeeded in padding the walls that prevent us all from hearing the voices of the religiously persecuted. And through the USCCA’s compliance with the muffling, the force and credibility of Catholic witness to human rights and human dignity — in universities, in advocacy organizations, and in the U.S. Church itself — has been diminished.
U.S. Catholic universities could restore the credibility of the U.S. church’s witness to religious freedom in China by inviting Fenggang Yang to offer a public address — and by standing firm should the Government of China object.
References:
· https://2021-2025.state.gov/reports/2023-report-on-international-religious-freedom/china/
Here is a piece I published, “Why Religious Freedom is a Human Right,” available on request.