Wang Yin took a small box out of his messenger bag and placed it on the table in front of him. A hush fell over the assembled congregation as he lifted a palm-sized piece of flat, crisp bread out of the container. He broke the bread, crushing it into tiny pieces. When he had finished, he took a small plastic bottle of Dole’s grape juice out of his bag. A keyboardist played Alas and Did My Savior Bleed softly from the opposite corner of the room as Mr. Wang poured the grape juice into small glass cups, just enough for the sixty waiting members. His wife, Wang You, prayed for the bread and the “wine”, eyes squeezed shut and hands clasped rigidly at her chest. Two ushers walked up the aisle to the altar, a small table covered with white cloth. They helped hand out the sacrament. To make room for the congregation, the restaurant’s large, round tables were pushed against the walls. Service request machines lay on some of the tables, waiting for the evening’s rush of customers. But at the moment, the atmosphere inside reflected the quietness of the street outside. It was early Sunday morning, so most shops on this street in Puxi wouldn’t open for two more hours. It’s a small detail, but vital to the existence of this underground church.  From the second floor of the restaurant, worshippers can look out onto the bicycles and ambling pedestrians. But no one can peer in. For members of Chinese house churches, secrecy is a way of life.

            “I knew never to talk about it when I was growing up,” says Cathy Wang, Pastor Wang’s daughter, after the service. “I could always tell people about the Gospel. But I couldn’t tell them about the church.”

            The pastors of this secret society, Mr. and Mrs. Wang, don’t have any official theological training. Like Mr. Wang’s mother, their only qualification is a fearless and complete devotion to Christ. The couple currently leads the church, but these are all Grandmother Wang’s people.

“My grandma helped to create this church,” says Cathy. “She’s old, but she still works for the church. We tell her to stop because it’s not good for her health. She just can’t stop serving.”

But what she’s doing could send her to jail. Although the number of Christians in China is now considered to be about 50 million to 130 million, Christians still don’t have the ability to worship freely in China. The government considers unauthorized church meetings to be illegal assembly, similar to democratic protests or riots. If breaking bread during communion is a criminal act for house church members, it is an even more dangerous for Christian leaders. In November, the New York Times reported that five Protestant leaders of the 50,000-member Linfen Fushan Church in Linfen were sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years. The Times revealed that these sentences were among the harshest in recent years against pastors of unsupervised Christian churches.

But Wang Wenyi knows this. “It’s better now than it was before,” the 79-year-old grandmother says. “Much better. I’m never scared. Because by now I know that nothing can shake my faith.”

            Wang Wenyi spends much of her time in her son’s house, located in a new apartment complex in Putuo, Shanghai. Ironically, the government gave them their new home. The city wanted to build sky rises on the land where the Wang family’s old house used to be. After the family relocated, they used the new apartment to hold services for their growing congregation. They soon connected a video camera in the living room to a television screen in the bedroom. This way, worshippers could pack into every last inch of the apartment. In the doorway of their home, the Wang’s have pasted a blue, cut-out paper cross.

            Wang Wenyi was sitting on a low brown couch in an inner room. It was cold inside, so she wore a coat over her sweater. She is a small woman, with a wrinkled, papery skin and an open face. Her short grey hair, which was turning white at her temples, was parted neatly to one side. She kept her hands clasped in her lap as she talked, occasionally looking at me with deep brown eyes.

            Her voice was soft and low as she explained how her husband had died.

            It was 1958 and persecution towards Christians was just beginning to build momentum. As part of Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward,” all spiritual ceremonies and institutions were being replaced by political meetings. “The only reason they arrested him was because he refused to go to a registered church,” says Wang. “And he had studied theology at Hajiang University, so they didn’t like that he was educated.”

Her husband’s name was Moses Lee Wang. They had met at church and Wang Wenyi had immediately fallen for his warm-hearted nature and complete devotion to Christ. The couple married in 1952. Her second son was only one-year-old when Moses Wang was detained by members of the Communist Party. “On that day, when I went to the police and found out that my husband was being arrested, I knelt down in the station and prayed to God,” she says. “I told Him that we were not worthy enough suffer for You. It is our glory to suffer for You.” 

Moses Wang spent four years working in a forced labor camp. While he was in prison, he and his wife communicated through letters.

“His letters weren’t regular. He wasn’t a talkative person,” says Wang Wenyi, suddenly breaking into a quick laugh. “I waited and waited for each one.”

While she was waiting, her husband was slowly starving. At that time, Wang didn’t know that Mao’s policies had resulted in a widespread famine. Scholars have estimated that the number of deaths during Great Leap Forward is between 23 and 43 million. When Moses Wang was finally released, he was hovering close to death.

He returned to the couple’s home in Shanghai one day while his wife was doing housework. Wang Wenyi, who worked as a nurse in HuaShan, knew immediately that something was wrong.

As soon as she saw him, they rushed to HuaShan hospital.

“When he left home, he was 75 kg. By the time he came back, he was only 52 kg,” she says. “There was nothing I could do for him.”

Yet for four months, she would steal moments between her visiting patients to be with him. Moses Wang died on December 6, 1962. He was only 34-years-old. Before he died, he dedicated one of his sons to do God’s work. His younger son, Pastor Wang Yin, would go on to fulfill his father’s dying wishes by hosting an underground church in his home. Ultimately, Moses Wang’s death strengthened the family’s faith in Christ.

“I’ll never regret marrying him,” Wang Wenyi says. “He was a really good Christian who worked for God throughout his life.”

Wang Wenyi’s reaction toward the persecution is not uncommon. Devout Christians in China and around the world often take this attitude toward what they consider martyrdom. Suffering for your faith is a reality that Christians in China still have to face today. House churches, like the one that the Wangs are running, are congregations that refuse to accept the authority of China’s Religious Affairs Bureau. According to the New York Times, the government requires all Protestants to register in the non-denominational “Three-Self Patriotic Movement.” Catholics have to be members of the “Patriotic Association.” Both churches are under the leadership of the Religious Affairs Bureau.

Cathy Wang explained why many Chinese Christians decide to flout the government’s authority. “Before you give a sermon, the Religion Bureau has to check it over, every Sunday,” she says. “They can delete anything they want to. We just wouldn’t be free to do the greatest task that Jesus asked of us—to evangelize.”

For Grandmother Wang, evangelizing and praying comes naturally. It’s like breathing. She says it’s something she’s been doing her entire life. Even when she was pressured to give up her faith, she couldn’t stop.

After her husband’s death, Wang Wenyi stayed on in Huashan, working as a nurse. During the Cultural Revolution, Wang and several other Christian medical workers were placed under arrest at the hospital for six months. Because her husband’s death had tarnished her family’s reputation with the government, she was forced to abandon her duties as a nurse and told to mop the floor and clean toilets. She was given a linen storage closet to sleep in. She slept on a small pad on the floor of the closet. She wasn’t even able to look at a photo of her sons. The only personal item allowed was a change of clothes.

During this time, Wang and her Christian co-workers were subjected to five denunciation meetings. HuaShan’s staff of 800 people would gather in the basement of the hospital. She would stand on a stage, in the front of a large room. People would shout criticisms at her, nagging her about her husband and ridiculing her faith.

“Their purpose was to get me to say that the Church is not so good,” she says. “They wanted me to give up religion.”

Wang had to go up to the microphone and answer her accusers.

“My voice would not shake,” she says. “Because I wasn’t scared.”

The Wangs have been hosting their house church since 1978. At first, it was a small group, just for neighbors and family members. Now, it has 70 active members. One month ago, they started meeting on the second floor of one of their members’ restaurants. But with such a large congregation, secrecy is hard to achieve.

“The local government knows about us,” Cathy Wang says. “They called my parents in for a friendly cup of tea. Thank God that’s all they did.”

Cathy Wang says that some of the other house churches in Shanghai have been pressured lately by the city government. “Especially with the Expo coming up, they’re afraid that we’ll connect with foreigners and fight against the Communist Party,” she explained.

But this pressure doesn’t trouble Grandmother Wang. Despite the struggles that Christians in China face, Wang Wenyi says she would never question her faith in God.

“It’s much better than it was before,” she says. “We are not controlled by the government. We are controlled by our Lord Jesus Christ.”