1985 - Shen Baishun

June 3, 1985

Prison, Shanghai

Shen Baishun.

Shen Baishun was born in 1900—the year the Boxer Rebellion resulted in the deaths of more than 40,000 Christians in China. After many years of faithfully following Christ and studying to be a priest, Shen was ordained in the early 1930s. The early years of his ministry were difficult, as China found itself in a three-way war and the economy collapsed. The hardships of the day, however, resulted in many people having a hunger for the gospel, and Shen and his colleagues spent much of their time baptizing and helping establish new believers in the faith.

When the Communists came to power in 1949, they decided to systematically strike at the heart of the Church in order to gain control over it. To help them achieve their goals the government established a new state-sanctioned Catholic organization, which some priests and laymen joined. Many more, however, refused to be associated with the Catholic Patriotic Association, sensing the promises of religious liberty were a front for a more sinister objective. Shen Baishun was one such priest who rejected the official church. His stance resulted in his name being placed on a blacklist and he knew it was a matter of time before trouble would arrive at his door.

The government’s attempt to control Catholicism was a miserable failure to begin with. In early 1952 the ‘Independent Church,’ as it was then called, numbered just 12 members in Shanghai, “of whom only six had been Catholics in good standing: Shanghai’s faithful numbered 146,000.”[1] Seeing that their plans to seduce the Catholic Church was an abject failure, the government abandoned their ‘silk glove’ strategy and decided to obliterate the Catholic Church by brute force instead.

Shen was one of more than 1,000 Catholic leaders and laymen arrested in Shanghai on September 8, 1955. At the beginning of his incarceration Shen was held at the Shanghai Prison where he endured unrelenting torture and gruelling brainwashing sessions. Because he would not ‘reform,’ the government sent him to a prison labour camp for many years. Despite the pain and torment, he still steadfastly refused to join the official church, and so his incarceration was extended.

In the late 1970s the political climate in China had thawed somewhat, and many prisoners who had spent over 20 years in prison were released in a general amnesty. Shen was also released, after being thoroughly briefed and threatened that any continuation of his previous activities would see him rearrested. Shen Baishun was now almost 80-years-old and had been inside a prison labour camp for almost a quarter of a century. Immediately after gaining his freedom, however, Shen started to meet some of his former flock and engage in spiritual activities outside of the control of the Catholic Patriotic Association. In the view of the government this violated the conditions of Shen’s ‘parole’ and he was rearrested.

Hauled before an angry judge, the old priest was sentenced to an extra ten years in prison—a veritable death sentence for such an old man. Because of his age and frail health, Shen was not returned to the labour camp but instead was held in the Shanghai Prison. In the early 1980s he celebrated his 50th anniversary as a Catholic priest, most of which had been spent in prison. Shen Baishun died on June 3, 1985, after spending almost 30 years of his life behind bars for the sake of Christ and for his refusal to join the government church.

1. Palmer, God’s Underground in Asia, 172.