My belief, based on the life of Joseph and the life of Daniel, is that Christians should be able to exist and even serve in governments that are anything but Christian, anything but faithful. Joseph being second in command to Pharaoh, Daniel being second in command to Babylonian or Persian powers and still holding the faith – that’s the model that we ought to seek for. [That’s a model of] justice, righteousness and peace for all people.

CW: It seems like there are two different faces of China – one that is encouraging religion and the registered church, and one that is actively trying to stamp out house churches in different places. What do you make of these conflicting impressions?

Bailey: It’s exactly that—it’s conflicting. It’s a more extreme level of where Bible studies are allowed in certain school but they’re outlawed at others. You could have Christmas decorations in one place but not at another. It’s a conflicted society, and it’s as regional and local as the leadership. Everything happens, unfortunately, and too much of it in terms of the negative.

CW: What would you say of the religious culture in Beijing based on your own experience there?

Bailey: I think it’s a testament that the Gospel is not chained. You can’t stop what Christ said he would do when he said, ‘I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.’ We’ve seen the great growth of evangelical faith in China, in the house church movement, for many, many years. And again there are pockets of that that are now developing in the registered churches. Some of them are quite evangelical, some of them are obviously not. In the house church, there’s evangelical movement and also cultish activity and strange behavior.

It’s not that the house church alone is righteous and the registered church is evil. There’s a mix of both that is really important to keep in mind. That’s why our prayers our to be for genuine believers, for them to have a winsome witness, a faithfulness in spite of persecution, and to sensitively and wisely be able to share the Gospel at all levels of the culture. That would be our prayer.

Dr. Mark Bailey is professor of Bible Exposition and president of Dallas Theological Seminary. Dallas Seminary will offer seven of its 20 online courses in Mandarin and enroll 60 students in the program this fall.