BEIJING – Charismatic preacher Gong Shengliang led a popular Christian group that spiraled into violence under persecution by Chinese authorities and the temptations of power. Now Gong has suffered an apparent stroke in prison, and his family members are calling for his release.
In an emotional open letter that calls for prayers, family members of Gong Shengliang said prison authorities rebuffed a request that he be given medical parole that they raised after seeing his condition. Gong had to be helped by two people to walk to a seat in the prison visiting room in the central city of Wuhan, and “his face was flushed. He drooled and couldn’t talk and move his left side,” said the letter dated Dec. 11, the day after the visit.
“I asked him if his spirits were good. He could only say ‘good, good,”‘ his sister Gong Shuzhen said last week in Beijing, where she, the 60-year-old pastor’s two adult daughters and two other followers had come to petition the Supreme Court and national legislature. “I told him, ‘The God we believe in will save you.”‘
Prison authorities in Wuhan either declined comment or did not respond to telephone inquiries on Gong’s case.
His condition marks the latest twist for an energetic preacher whose rise and fall serves as a cautionary example of the rapid spread of Christianity over the past 30 years and the authoritarian government’s efforts to stifle it. An impassioned speaker and effective organizer, Gong built the following of his South China Church to an estimated 100,000 across the small corn and rice farms of central China before the government closed in.