{"id":40523,"date":"2014-06-25T14:26:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=40523 "},"modified":"2014-06-25T14:26:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:26:00","slug":"40523-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=40523","title":{"rendered":"Chinese church\u2019s fightback fails to stop cross removal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Chinese church is stripped of its cross as a Communist Party ‘anti-church’ demolition campaign continues in Zhejiang province<\/span>
\"\"
A crane winches a large red cross from one of three domes on the Guantou church in Wenzhou<\/p>

By Tom Phillips, Shanghai9:14AM BST 17 Jun 2014<\/p>

Nearly a week after Chinese Christians thwarted government attempts to remove the cross from their place of worship as part of an ongoing “anti-church” campaign, authorities returned to destroy the religious symbol.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

The cross is removed<\/p>

Last Wednesday, members of the Guantou church in Wenzhou, a city known as China’s Jerusalem, successfully forced demolition teams to abandon a predawn attempt to remove its cross.<\/p>

However, demolition workers returned in the early hours of Tuesday morning to complete their task, which activists and academics believe is part of a renewed Communist Party crackdown on faith that began in the eastern province of Zhejiang earlier this year.<\/p>

“The cross was secretly taken down between 3am and 6am,” said Zheng Legou, a local church leader.<\/p>

Officials had vowed to tear down the entire church – as they did with the nearby mega-church of Sanjiang in April – if congregants attempted to halt the removal for a second time, Mr Zheng claimed.<\/p>

“The worshippers were threatened that if they resisted, their church would be demolished just like Sanjiang,” he said.<\/p>

 <\/div>
 <\/div>Continue reading the <\/span>original article<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span>
 <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>Wenzhou&#8217;s Zhangli church, another huge construction that had been due to open to worshippers next year, had the red cross removed from its spire on Sunday, The Telegraph understands.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}