Editor’s note: Although we’ve had a podcast for several years now, this year we’ve decided to expand our format. In addition to telling long-form stories of the Chinese church, we’re also going to be posting regular, monthly episodes discussing topics related to the church in China.
In the first installment of this new monthly format, we tackled a huge issue: what does Christianity in China look like in 2026? Here’s a short excerpt from that conversation. Please check out our podcast and follow on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts.
House Churches and the Three-Self Church
Ryan: There is one fairly clear divide among Chinese churches: a divide between the Three-Self churches and house churches.
Now, the Three-Self Church is short for the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. “Three-Self” stands for self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. Those all may sound like great things, right? But the Three-Self Movement is actually a campaign established by the Chinese government in the 1950s to sever ties between the Chinese churches and the global church.
To this day, the Three-Self Church is still under the regulation and governance of the Chinese government. They register with the Chinese government, the pastors are trained and approved by the Communist Party, and their teachings are limited and even directed by what the government allows them to teach.
So house churches are basically the opposite of that. What makes a house church different from a Three-Self church is not that they only meet in small groups in private homes, even though they started off like that. The biggest distinction between house churches and the Three-Self Church is that they are not registered with the government, and they refuse to come under the governance of the state.
Many of them did start meeting in homes, especially in rural areas. But these days, house churches also meet in office buildings, hotel conference rooms, parks, online, and in many other creative ways, depending on the security situation in various parts of the country. Some are larger and more public; some have to be divided into smaller congregations and groups and maintain a lower profile. But they have all kept the title “house church” because it connects them to the traditions they come from. So that is one major distinction between house churches and the official churches in China.
Beth, can you tell us more about their theological differences?
Theological Differences
Beth: Yeah. Initially, the theological divide between the Three-Self government churches and the house churches tracked along the liberal-versus-fundamentalist divide in the West that was gaining momentum in the early 1900s.
Now, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, when it started in the 1950s, was founded and led by more liberal theologians who were influenced by more theologically liberal missionaries from the West. So liberal theology was one reason these folks were more open to collaborating with the Chinese government back in the 1950s.
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On the other hand, the house church fathers came from a more fundamentalist, pietistic tradition. They believed the Bible was the inerrant word of God, that Jesus physically lived, died, and was raised from the dead, and that one day Christ will return to judge the whole world.
Way back in the 1950s, these house church fathers believed that registering with the government and the Three-Self Movement would be a slippery slope toward liberal theology, and that in doing so they would be selling out to a communist government which, as we all know, is actually atheistic.
So even today, this theological divide between the house church and the Three-Self church still stands, and because of this, house churches still refuse to register with the government. In addition to these theological issues and differences, there are some other major reasons house churches still refuse to register with the government.
Why House Churches Won’t Register
Ryan: …If you are familiar with Chinese kung fu movies, you will probably think of people like Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. You may have heard of a place called the Shaolin Temple in northern China, which is commonly referred to as the place of origin for kung fu. The other Hollywood star from China, Jet Li, had his breakout role in the 1980s as a fighting monk at the Shaolin Temple.
The Shaolin Temple is a historic Buddhist temple dating all the way back to 495 AD. It has survived many Chinese dynasties and is still a very popular tourist attraction. When I visited in 2011, they put on a very elaborate kung fu performance for tourists. But in the last decade, a new thing started to take place regularly in the temple: the monks in the temple started raising the Chinese flag and singing the national anthem regularly.
Now, what does an ancient Buddhist temple have to do with the Chinese national flag and national anthem? Well, that is the heart of the matter. China’s religious regulations go beyond Christian churches. They want to control all religious faiths. In part, the state is atheistic, but at the center of the problem is something else. It is not so much what you believe, but who is your lord?
You can believe in all kinds of things, whether it is Buddhism, Taoism, folk religion, ancestor worship, Christianity, or even Islam, as long as you acknowledge that the Chinese government is your highest lord and has your highest allegiance, and that it has the authority to regulate what you believe, then the government gives you a certain amount of autonomy to practice religion. That is why you see ancient Buddhist temples like the Shaolin Temple holding flags in ceremonies, because that’s the signal to the state that we acknowledge you as our lord.
And that is precisely what the house church pastors refuse to acknowledge. They are happy to respect and obey the government, as taught in the New Testament. But they can only give their allegiance to one Lord. They can only acknowledge one king, and that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That is why they continue to face pressure and persecution from the Chinese government today.
Ryan moved from Guangzhou, China, to Ohio at the age of 12. He is the pastor for neighborhood ministries at New City Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and also serves as the translation manager for China Partnership. E.F. Gregory is a mom of three. She lives in the San Gabriel Valley on the border of East Los Angeles, where her husband pastors a small PCA church.
Pray for the modern-day Chinese house church to stand firm in following Christ.
