BUCHAREST – Through on-line sermons and a bustling digital neighborhood, a Chinese Christian group labeled as a “cult” and persecuted inside China is discovering new members in Romania.
The Church of Almighty God (CAG), also referred to as Eastern Lightning, claims tens of millions of followers worldwide and has had a web based footprint in Romania since 2018. More just lately, a flurry of WhatsApp teams and Facebook pages — many with greater than 50,000 members — have sprung up within the final yr alone. These pages are all in Romanian, however lots of the directors are based mostly in different European international locations, equivalent to Spain, Greece, France, and Serbia, in addition to some in Romania.
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RFE/RL tracked dozens of on-line Romanian teams tied to the CAG, all with followings starting from tens to a whole lot of hundreds of members, and with sermons held twice a day. While these are stuffed with uplifting hymns and homilies, the church’s core perception is that Jesus has returned to earth as a Chinese lady to wreak the apocalypse.
“One of the reasons they are growing is because they are presenting a message that is attractive to people that already have a strong background in Christianity,” Holly Folk, a professor at Western Washington University who has researched the CAG up shut since 2016, informed RFE/RL. “Most of the people who join already have a familiarity and it’s not one you can easily jump into if you don’t.”
Posts from the Romanian chapter of the Church of Almighty God’s Facebook web page.
While a lot concerning the CAG stays fairly secretive, together with who’s funding it and directing its operations in China and overseas, its rising following in Romania marks the most recent chapter for the Chinese offshoot of Christianity because it spreads its message and grapples with strain from Chinese authorities in China and overseas.
Eastern Lightning Goes West
Folk says that the group is understood for its closely on-line presence, which developed partly due to safety issues confronted by its members inside China, the place it has been the goal of a crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party for many years that has since despatched many members fleeing persecution and claiming asylum overseas.
“There is a big concern about security. They’re targeted in China and there is fear about their immigration status in a lot of countries,” she mentioned. “That’s part of why things happen mostly online and you see fake names being used.”
The CAG didn’t reply to RFE/RL’s request for remark.
Founded in 1989 in northeastern China by Zhao Weishan, a former physics instructor, the church is fixated on doomsday situations and holds that Christ has returned to Earth as a Chinese lady named Yang Xiangbin, with whom Zhao claims direct contact.
After it was banned and categorized as a cult by Beijing in 1995, Zhao reportedly fled to the United States the place he acquired asylum in 2000. Yang can also be believed to be within the United States.
Among the CAG’s different tenets is that resisting the Communist Party, ‘the large crimson dragon,’ is a key take a look at of health for salvation.
A promotional picture from the Church of Almighty God.
The fervency of church adherents and anti-communist beliefs, mixed with the Chinese Communist Party’s deep suspicion of Christianity and non secular sects, has put the CAG in Beijing’s crosshairs.
In one 2014 incident that was caught on digicam and broadly circulated in China, Chinese police alleged that CAG members beat a lady to loss of life in a McDonald’s after she refused to hitch them. Chinese authorities used the following outcry to additional crack down on the church — launching a wave of arrests — though specialists say the episode was seemingly the work of a deranged particular person and the CAG isn’t recognized for violence.
This strain from the Communist Party has despatched CAG members overseas. Many have utilized for asylum within the United States and Canada, components of Asia like Japan and Taiwan, and in Western Europe. Spain, the place lots of the group directors for the CAG’s Romanian presence are based mostly, has been a number one European vacation spot, with greater than 500 asylum purposes.
Massimo Introvigne, a sociologist and lawyer based mostly in Italy who has researched the CAG for many years, wrote just lately that a few of these asylum claims have been denied just lately and that Chinese authorities have performed a job in attempting to get the CAG members returned to China.
“Chinese embassies and consulates continue to supply authorities in the countries where the refugees arrive and courts of law with hostile information about the CAG,” Introvigne wrote earlier this month.
The Romanian Chapter
All of the Romanian sermons attended by RFE/RL all through January had been on-line and whereas there have been assurances that bodily conferences could be coming quickly, no specifics had been shared in any of the teams.
One sermon of 30 those that RFE/RL joined in January was run by a lady utilizing a Romanian title who mentioned she was from Singapore however married to a Romanian man and residing in Spain. The dozens of sermons attended over the course of every week had been all carried out in Romanian and used the pacing and Christian imagery of an Orthodox church service, the predominant type of Christianity in Romania.
A screenshot of 1 Facebook group run by the Church of Almighty God that recurrently posts AI-generated photos.
Some sermons had been run by Romanians. One Romanian group admin — a lady in her 60s who spoke to RFE/RL about her voluntary work with the CAG on situation of anonymity — mentioned that she took over the Facebook group after it was created by Chinese members of the church and that her function is to introduce potential new members to the CAG’s beliefs. She herself transformed and shared her personal private story.
‘All my life I did not have time to go to church, I raised my kids whereas working and now I’ve discovered the reply to all my questions,’ she states, referring to the CAG.
The Romanian on-line neighborhood is rising.
The prolific Facebook and WhatsApp teams additionally hyperlink to YouTube pages that spotlight a rising media footprint, which incorporates songs and slickly produced quick movies showcasing the CAG’s beliefs. Some teams gained hundreds of recent followers in a single week, with greater than 10,000 new posts in a month.
RFE/RL was not in a position to confirm that each one these members and posts had been real, nonetheless, and lots of the photos and movies posted seem like generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the place they mixed the CAG’s teachings with Orthodox non secular themes associated to Romania.
Despite the heavy use of AI in producing posts throughout the teams, the CAG apparently has religious Romanian members.
One Romanian lady who delivered a web based sermon however declined to talk to RFE/RL mentioned to the group that, regardless of adhering to the CAG, she nonetheless attends companies at her native Romanian Orthodox church. She informed RFE/RL that there’s a rising cohort of Romanian members and claimed they meet in particular person recurrently.
“Members of the CAG believe in their message and want to draw in local members and elevate local leaders,” Folk mentioned. “You can’t grow a tradition from a bunch of websites alone.”
RFE/RL Romanian Service correspondent Simona Carlugea reported from Bucharest. RFE/RL China Global Affairs correspondent Reid Standish reported from Prague.
Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Republished with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Washington DC 20036