Written by: ICC (International Christian Concern)
Article source: www.persecution.org
In a recent crackdown on online Christian content, the Chinese government banned the WeChat accounts belonging to many registered churches.
WeChat is a popular social media in China that many churches utilize. The accounts that The government blocked accounts belonging to churches registered and approved by the Chinese government.
According to China Christian Daily, the Beijing Haidian Church’s account, one of the official flagship churches in the country, was removed from the app on June 7. The same day, Shanghai Pure Heart Church suffered the same fate.
This recent attack on online Christian platforms began in late April, when, on April 29, several popular Christian WeChat accounts with the words “Bible” or gospel” in their titles were shut down.
Hangzhou Chongyi Church of Zhejiang Province sent a note to its followers Tuesday, which stated its WeChat messages would be temporarily frozen and that updates would now come from its official website.
Additionally, searching various Christian keywords such as “Christ” or “gospel” on WeChat does not result in any Christian-related content on the social media platform.
In addition to WeChat, many popular Christian websites have stopped updates for good, and the amount of Christian media on the Internet seems to be shrinking rapidly.
Wen Liang, a Christian social media content producer, wrote an article describing the negative impact of this disappearance of Christian content on the Internet and social media. He wrote to China Christian Daily, “[On] some mature Christian WeChat official accounts, every post will be read by hundreds of thousands of people, so the scale of gospel transmission is huge. When such media disappears, it may also affect the way the gospel is spread on the Internet.”
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Date published: 30/07/2021
Feature image: Artwork adapted from unsplash.com
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