[ Branded an “evil cult”
by the Communist Party and maligned by mainstream Christian groups for claiming
that God has returned to earth as a Chinese woman, the Church of Almighty God
latched on to the Mayan end-of-days legend soon after the Hollywood disaster film “2012” took
Chinese theaters by storm.]
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Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Preparing for an apocalypse, Liu Qiyuan created reinforced pods
that contain oxygen tanks.
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BEIJING — By the time
Saturday rolls around (or not) it will be self-evident whether the doomsday
predictions espoused by some Christian sects and New Age followers of the Mayan
end-of-world prophecy were off the mark.
The Chinese authorities
are not willing to wait until then.
Alarmed by spreading
fears in China that
Dec. 21 will bring global apocalypse, security officials across the country
have been rounding up members of a renegade Christian group whose members have
been aggressively promoting the notion that devastating earthquakes and
tsunamis will coincide with the end of the 5,125-year Mayan Long Count
calendar.
In recent days, the
police in nine provinces have arrested nearly 1,000 devotees of the clandestine
sect, the Church
of Almighty God, whose adherents recently have begun holding outdoor
prayer vigils and handing out pamphlets that warn nonbelievers that the only
way to avoid extinction is to join their ranks.
Branded an “evil cult”
by the Communist Party and maligned by mainstream Christian groups for claiming
that God has returned to earth as a Chinese woman, the Church of Almighty God
latched on to the Mayan end-of-days legend soon after the Hollywood disaster film “2012” took
Chinese theaters by storm.
The movie, which gives
China’s military a starring role as the savior of mankind, was a huge success
here three years ago. A 3-D version that opened last month across the country
has already earned $22 million, a substantial box office take in China.
It is impossible, of
course, to gauge how many Chinese have been swept up by doomsday mania, or the
less catastrophic version popular here that portends three continuous days of
darkness, accompanied by a collapse of the nation’s electrical grid. Stores
across the country have reported panic buying of candles, and a few
entrepreneurs have made out well peddling survival kits or portable “Noah’s
Arks.”
Liu Ye, a Beijing office
worker, said he had already filled up the cataclysm-proof bunker he built in
the mountains near Lhasa, in Tibet. The entry fee to his sanctuary was $8,000.
Yang Zhongfu, a
businessman in coastal Zhejiang Province who usually makes a living producing
scarves, says he has sold 26 steel-and-fiberglass floating spheres that each
can contain and sustain as many as nine people for months. He said one anxious
customer ordered 15 of the motorized vessels, which include oxygen tanks, solar
lighting and seat belts to reduce jostling as passengers ride out a
hypothetical deluge. The most expensive model, at $800,000, includes sacks of
soil for growing vegetables.
“I told buyers I think
they are overreacting to this so-called doomsday thing, but I respect their
decision,” Mr. Yang said.
The fear among security
officials that apocalypse fever might get out of hand is not entirely
unfounded. Last week, a mentally unstable man who slashed students at a primary
school in the central province of Henan told investigators that his rampage had
been prompted by end-of-world jitters.
Public security
officials across the country have been broadcasting warnings about purveyors of
apocalyptic doom, some of whom are demanding money in exchange for salvation.
“The end of the world is purely a rumor,” the Shanghai police said in a
microblog message. “Do not believe it. Do not fall for the scam.”
But the brunt of the
official crackdown has fallen on members of the Almighty God sect.
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Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Lu Zhenhai has built a boat, which he plans to use to ride
out flooding.
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In an online notice
posted Tuesday, provincial security officials described Almighty God as a
criminal gang responsible for sowing social panic, preaching heresies and
breaking up families. “It is a social cancer and a plague on humankind,” the
notice said.
The sect, also known as
Eastern Lightning and founded two decades ago in China’s frigid Heilongjiang
Province, has long faced persecution. Although much about the group remains
murky, some estimates suggest a membership of nearly one million.
Critics, including
clerics from established Christian congregations, accuse Almighty God
evangelists of strong-arm conversion tactics that include kidnapping and study
sessions lasting days that they describe as brainwashing. Among the group’s
central tenets is a belief that the messiah has arrived and that she is in
hiding somewhere in China.
To protect themselves
from near-constant persecution, congregants do not know one another’s names and
instead call one another by nicknames like “Doggy” and “Little White Rabbit,”
according to a report last week in China Business View. The church seems to
have especially alarmed Chinese leaders by prophesizing the coming demise of
the Great Red Dragon, its evocative code name for the ruling Communist Party.
Stephen R. Platt, a
historian at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, said Almighty God was
just the latest in a long line of heterodox faiths that have spooked China’s
rulers, often provoking a merciless crackdown. Over several centuries, members
of White Lotus, an underground Buddhist millennial sect, nearly overthrew more
than one imperial dynasty. In the mid-19th century, a rebel leader who claimed
to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ established a short-lived “Taiping
Heavenly Kingdom” in southern China and came close to toppling the Qing
dynasty.
Mr. Platt, who is the author
of a book on the Taiping Rebellion, said that such events, seared into the
collective memory of many Chinese, have inspired the suppression of unorthodox
faiths.
“Even religious
organizations that are not overtly interested in overthrowing the government
are seen as undermining the authorities because they direct their members’
attentions elsewhere,” he said.
Over the past two
decades, Falun Gong, the quasi-religious meditation practice, has incited the
party’s greatest wrath. In 1999, as many as 10,000 members held a surprise
vigil outside the leadership’s residential compound in Beijing to demand an end
to the defamation campaign that was being waged in the state news media. In
response, the government began a pitiless witch hunt; thousands of practitioners
were imprisoned and tortured.
Despite the crackdown,
the group persists, and its leaders have become fixated on ousting the
Communist Party.
“The government’s
tactics have been completely counterproductive,” said David Ownby, a professor
at the University of Montreal and an expert on the Falun Gong.
Although the Communist
Party officially tolerates Protestantism and Catholicism — as long as the
churches stay under the supervision of government-run associations — it remains
deeply suspicious of Christianity. Last year, the central government issued an
internal 16-page document instructing educators to root out evangelicals on
campus who it said were seeking to “Westernize and divide China,” according to
a copy of the document obtained by China Aid, a Texas-based Christian group.
So far, few people have
been willing to publicly defend Almighty God adherents, who the Chinese news
media say use sex, bribes and brute violence to win converts. Such assertions
could not be verified.
Throughout the week, as
the state media attacked congregants as swindlers and rumormongers, Teng Biao,
one of the few Chinese lawyers to defend Falun Gong members in court, seemed to
stand nearly alone in sticking up for the Almighty God sect.
“The government has no
power to determine what is a cult,” Mr. Teng wrote on Twitter. “The law can
punish only actions, not thoughts.”
Shi Da contributed research.
