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The full name of the pro-democracy movement still holding out in downtown Hong Kong is: Occupy Central with Love and Peace. Its founder was Professor Benny Tai, an evangelical Christian. And a significant proportion of its younger activists are self-identifying Christians too. Indeed, when Benny Tai announced his plans to occupy central Hong Kong he did so in his church with his pastor sitting by his side. Even Hong Kong’s former Roman Catholic bishop has joined them on the streets. Historically, of course, there is no love lost between the resolutely atheistic Chinese Communist Party and the Christian Church. Yet despite this, or maybe perhaps because of it, China has a rapidly expanding Christian population, with some commentators suggesting that within fifteen years or so China may well have the largest Christian population of any country in the world. Quite evidently, Chairman Mao’s attempt to abolish religion was a total failure. To be fair, not all Chinese officials continue a Mao-like suspicion of Christianity. Some are more worried about what they see as the increasing self-centeredness of its burgeoning consumerist society, and are keen to harness the ethos of public spiritedness they recognize in religions like Christianity. Nonetheless, the connection between the Hong Kong Occupy protests and the Christian faith will have caused more than a flutter of anxiety. Which may be partly why the Chinese Communist party has decided to redouble its efforts to nationalize Christianity – that is, to synthesize Christianity with loyalty to the Chinese state in official “patriotic” churches. Back in August of this year, Wang Zuoan, the director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs put it thus: “The construction of Chinese Christian theology should adapt to China’s national condition and integrate with Chinese culture”. This will surely prove quite some task, not least because roughly half of China’s protestant Christians worship in illegal, underground churches. But before we get too high-minded about the freedom of religion from state control its worth reminding ourselves that the Church of England is a state sanctioned church. And whilst there are no longer illegal forms of Christianity, it was not always thus. Think of those English Catholics in the late sixteenth century who were forced into underground churches because of their perceived disloyalty to the state. Think of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 and all those non-conformists who were deprived of their livings because they refused to worship in a state-sanctioned way. Indeed, it wasn’t until as late as 1871 that Roman Catholics and non-conformists were permitted to become Fellows of Oxford or Cambridge Colleges. Of course, the state no longer tells the clergy what to think or to say or to believe. But as the struggles of the underground churches of China remind us, the very idea of state-sanctioned Christianity is rarely an unproblematic one.