Allan Yuan puts stools out

Reporter: Jane Hutcheon

v/o:  In a little under an hour from now, this man will draw nearly one hundred people to his small home.

00.00.00

They've already started to gather for an event that the Communist Party says is illegal. But that doesn't stop them coming.

Map Beijing

Singing

00.24

Allan Yuan preaching to congregation

v/o:  He is tirelessly 82, spent 22 years in prison with hard labour and runs an unregistered, illegal backstreet pulpit known as a house church. He is the leader, Allan Yuan.

Sermon; praying

Yuan's congregation

v/o:  All over China, ordinary men and women are at sea; turning away from the teachings of the Communist Party and towards something once seen as insidious.

Yuan

We have been following Jesus for more than 60 years, but one lives from Psalm 23 - the first words, the ‘Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want.'

01.08

v/o:  Tonight he singles out a visitor. A young man on a personal mission to convert Chinese Muslims to Chistianity.

Canadian Missionary

I must confess with David that I began my life as an enemy of God surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

01.30

Two women praying

v/o: He's intrigued with the growth of Chistianity in China.

Canadian Missionary

Well I've known about it for a long time, so yeah, I'm surprised I guess - but in a way I'm not surprised (laughs) - because of the conditions here. I think it's really ready for the gospel.

01.49

Reporter asks question

Reporter: What do you mean by that?

Canadian Missionary

Umm.. People's hearts are opened perhaps they are disillusioned with the emptiness in their lives. There might be an ideological vacuum.

Congregation

v/o: A vacuum that men like Allan Yuan and his wife and his followers can fill - mending the body as well as the soul.

Yuan and wife with their hands on little girl's head - reciting

Mrs Yuan: Our mercy Lord, today we pray for our little Lu Jie. Please cure her, oh please God look after her and save her. Oh God show your mercy. You are magical God .. Today we glorify you.

Follower: To be together with God. He is almighty. Oh God use your power to save us. All three of us are in front of you, believing in you.

Yuan: Amen. Say thank you.

Super:  LUI SHU XIANG

Bureau of Religious Affairs

The citizens of the People's Republic have religious freedom. Of course, party members are citizens - but they are Communist Party members. If you want a religious belief, you cannot be a Communist Party Member.

02.57

Lui takes down his guitar from the wall - Lei and Lui play guitar

v/o: The Gospel quietly chips away at the roots of Communism; a sacrosanct ideology that now means dismissively little to people like Mr Lei whom it's supposed to have saved.

03.21

Mr Lei

I think life is too unfair to me. I am a human being and I live in the same motherland, but really as a disabled person, I receive too little warmth.

V/o: Mr Lei hasn't had an easy life. His leg was amputated by a student doctor at the start of the Cultural Revolution, his wife died three years after their marriage.

He's a casualty of the Communist system, a system that provides him with a job as a night watchman, a pitiful pension .. but little else.

Mr Lei

After joining the church, I began to love life more. I became more determined to live. My leg from here was cut off. Up here there's only about 15 centimeteres .. it's all fake here.

Lei and Lui get on the disabled scooter to head for Allan Yuan's ... drive bike out of hutong

But now I live bravely. After going to church, I feel jolly and uplifted on my way back. Jolly and uplifted. Before I was often miserable.

04.28

v/o: Today these two men have little time to waste. They are hardly radicals in any sense, but they choose to seek solace in a church and a man the Government deems illegal.

Allan Yuan's church

There's a constant queue of visitors at Allan Yuan's house.

The two friends are lucky. Today, they wait just 20 minutes.

05.05

Yuan listening to Mr Lui (with Mrs Yuan and Mr Lei)

One old Party member told me, on the quiet, that in the future he would give up the Party to join the Church. I asked him ‘why do you want to do this?' He said, ‘The Communist Party was all right before. But now, they are constantly under verbal attack'. He said, ‘Now there are too many corrupt officials.'

05.19

v/o: It's a story Allan Yuan has heard before.

An economy in transition headed by a Party who's creed is no longer the spiritual tonic for a nation.

Yuan

They don't have any religion - don't believe in anything. What Christians want, they get from the bible, they're taught from the bible. But they (the Party) say no, they don't know anything. That's why the House Church is always more full than the open church.

05.53

Congregation in open church - pomp and cermony

Singing

v/o:  As much as the Party fears the unchecked spread of religion and regards it as lesser science than Communism, it doesn't dare to ignore it.

Woman praying

The Party's answer to the growing number of faithful is to control the faith.

Singing

Joseph (Liu Yan Chang) and James (Zhu Jin Long) walk up stairs

v/o:  Joseph and James are deacons; students of God at a Government funded Catholic seminary where they've spent the last six years of their lives.

Joseph and James in church

It's the last time they'll wear the vestments of priests-in-training, because tomorrow they're to be ordained as Fathers - new socialist Shepherds tending China's growing flock.

Soon-to-be Father Joseph

In our training at the seminary, our knowledge about socialism is taught by our Catholic Patriotic Association. We learned about the Party's religious policies and how to adapt religion to the socialist system, and how to adjust our religion in our country and to promote and develop religion in China continuously.

07.02

Boats on river Yangste

v/o:  It was here in the city of Wuhan thirty years ago that China's modern deity, Mao Zedong plunged into the murky waters of the Yangtse River. He did so to prove his metal before crushing his enemies including the devout in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

07.34

Boys in river

Unlike ordinary folk, Mao allowed the current to carry him 10 miles down-river, an image magnified by the propaganda; more God than man. But in the New China there are no more living deities.

Young men at seminary

Today, 17 young men, including Joseph and James, will take their oaths as priests in the official Catholic church.

Little girls dressed as angels

Music

Soon-to-be Father James

For each of us, we've dedicated ourselves to God. If we cannot do anything for God, we'll feel guilty. So now we are wondering, will we be good priests all our lives? It's easy to become a priest, but difficult to be a good priest. At this moment, I'm feeling happy but I also have worries.

Church altar

v/o:  James and his fellow deacons pray for the Pope.

Church

But the Church they belong to broke with Rome in the late fifties. The official Catholic Church still ordains and consecrates its own clergy, but they in turn, aren't recognised by the Vatican. The so-called Catholic Patriotic Church acknowledges the Pope as its spiritual leader, but the Communist Party as its political head.

Nuns

Voice over: Liu Shu Xiang, Bureau of Religious Affairs

The Vatican, among twenty-five European countries is the last and only one which has diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Liu Shu Xiang

If the Pope wants to visit China he has to cut off relations with Taiwan. Secondly, he must recognise China's Catholic Church which is independent, and runs the church itself. He can't interfere or control domestic religious affairs in China.

Entering Church

v/o:  But there are those who believe the Pope should play a central role in Chinese Catholicism. And patriotic leaders like Liu Bainian accept the gap between Beijing and the Vatican inhibits the growth of Catholicism in China.

Liu Bainian, Catholic Patriotic Leader

Now within the church, some very small number of priests, nuns and clergy, their mentality remains in the 1950s. They don't agree with socialist system. They do not support a socialist country under the Communist Party and the People's Government.

10.20

In a dark alley

v/o: The Chinese Government says 4 million Catholics are spread through the country, but other sources say the number could be as high as 20 million.

10.45

That's because of a hidden network of Catholics, the Underground Church.

It permeates side streets and villages all over the country, and the Government is intent on crushing it.

Woman taking communion

v/o:  Ever increasing numbers of believers worship an ideology other than socialism, a faith that isn't totally controlled - an unsettling prospect for a Party presiding over a nation in rapid transition.

11.09

Singing

Priest anointing hands

v/o:  The hands of the new fathers are anointed with holy oil from a foreign country no one dares to name; the origin, we are told, is not important.

People streaming out if church; Father James blesses man

Father James blesses the faithful, he's now a man society looks up to.

Father Joseph shows off his family. They've travelled for hours to be with him on this special day.

Priests having photo taken

v/o:  For Father Joseph and many of those who follow him, the Christian Faith, in its socialist incarnation, offers new hope.

Man talking into microphone at Allan Yuan's

ENDS.

In the House of Allan Yuan, another group of devotees takes a risk to share the Gospel in their own way. Whether these worshippers eventually manage to displace faith in a system that's evolved beyond recognition, is in the hands of a more divine power than the Party.