Strength From Their Faith; More civic activists are becoming Christian and finding support for their causes in the Bible.

Byline: Sarah Schafer and Jonathan Ansfield

Growing up in communist China, Li Heping had always been taught that religion was nonsense. But when friends invited the Beijing lawyer to an underground Protestant service six years ago, he felt an intellectual duty to learn more about their beliefs. "The government says we Chinese are atheist, but I thought I should give the Christian view a fair hearing," Li says. A year later, another friend asked him to come to a Bible study session. Listening to strangers read from the New Testament that night, Li studied the faces around him and reflected on his life.

A son of "hill peasants" from a village in central China, he had beaten severe odds just by making it to college, where he earned a degree in law. As a young attorney, he continued fighting the odds by defending clients in a justice system where the accused are presumed guilty and trials are often a formality. It was exhausting work, and the pay was paltry. Yet sitting among the Christians in a friend's apartment, his frustrations seemed petty. Over the next several months, Li began reading about the religion on his own. What impressed him most, he says, was Christianity's role in promoting freedom, democracy and respect for human rights around the world.

He believed in these principles too, and realized he'd discovered a deep system of values that resonated with his life and work. He began going to church regularly and started taking on riskier, politically sensitive cases. Recently, the 35-year-old lawyer defended another attorney who was detained for helping clients sue provincial authorities for an illegal land seizure. The historic case, one of the largest in Chinese history, puts the country's legal system itself on trial, according to Li. "I still don't have a complete understanding of Christianity," he says. "But my road is different now than it was before.

Growing numbers of progressive lawyers, journalists, environmentalists and other civic activists in China are converting to Christianity, finding support for their causes as well as personal strength in the teachings of Jesus. According to underground church leaders and community activists, these new converts are speaking out on Internet forums, sharing their vision for change with rural congregations and closely studying the work of former Christian civil-rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr.

Often members of the educated urban middle class, they have emerged as some of the most strident and gutsy of those who advocate liberal political reforms in China. These democracy and human-rights advocates embrace Christianity because they are activists, and not the other way around. And they say the religion fits in with their vision of how to change China. "It's the newest believers who tend to be among the most radical," says Jiao Guobiao, a scholar who lost his job at Beijing University after writing an essay on the Internet attacking party censors, and who recently became a Christian. "They complain that other Christians aren't taking action."

China is experiencing a religious--and, in particular, Christian--boom. Scholars and clergy estimate that there are at least 45 million Christians in the country now, most of whom practice in illegal churches rather than in the state-sanctioned Catholic and Protestant organizations. The numbers reflect a spiritual yearning often attributed to rapid social change, a popular disillusionment with communist ideology and the painful transition to capitalism.