In China, house churches or family churches (Chinese: 家庭教会; pinyin: jiātíng jiàohuì) are Protestant assemblies in the People's Republic of China that operate independently from the state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and China Christian Council (CCC). They represent a tradition of independent churches that would not come under the control of the Chinese Communist Party dating back to Wang Ming-Dao in the 1950s. However, they came into their current form of existence after the Cultural Revolution in the early-1980s.
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👉 House church (China) in the context of House church
A house church or home church is a label used to describe a group of Christians who regularly gather for worship in private homes. The group may be part of a larger Christian body, such as a parish, but some have been independent groups that see the house church as the primary form of Christian community.
Sometimes these groups meet because the membership is small, and a home is the most appropriate place to assemble until such time as the group has sufficient funds to rent a regular place to meet (as in the beginning phase of the British New Church Movement). Sometimes this meeting style is advantageous because the group is a member of a Christian congregation which is otherwise banned from meeting as is the case in China and Iran.
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House church (China) in the context of Protestantism in China
Protestant Christianity (Chinese: 基督敎新敎; pinyin: Jīdūjiào xīnjiào; lit. 'New teachings of Christianity', in comparison to earlier Roman Catholicism) entered China in the early 19th century, taking root in a significant way during the Qing dynasty. Some historians consider the Taiping Rebellion to have been influenced by Protestant teachings. Since the mid-20th century, there has been an increase in the number of Christian practitioners in China. According to a survey published in 2010 there are approximately 40 million Protestants in China. As of 2019, Fenggang Yang, a sociologist of religion at Purdue University, estimated that there are around 100 million Protestant Christians in China. Other estimates place the number of Protestant Christians at around 40–60 million
Much of this growth has occurred in informal networks referred to as house churches, the proliferation of which began in the 1950s when many Chinese Catholics and Protestants began to reject state-controlled structures purported to represent them. Members of such groups are now said to represent the "silent majority" of Chinese Christians and represent many diverse theological traditions.