in fact

I was invited by the Chinese Anti-xiejiao Association, which is part of the CCP,

together with several other scholars to discuss the definition of xiejiao.

It was very clear that it's almost impossible to come to an agreement about xiejiao

for two reasons.

Number one, some 30 years ago, scholars in the West stopped using the word "cult."

The word "cult" is still used, of course,

by the media, journalists, political activists,

but we don't use the word "cult."

The word "cult" disappeared from academic studies 30 years ago.

Why?

Because the word "cult" implies a value judgment on groups,

and scholars do not give value judgments.

But there is a second reason. We believe it is wrong to translate xiejiao as "cult."

Cult in the modern sense is a word originating in the early 19th century in Europe,

xiejiao originated in the Ming era,

so it's anachronistic to translate xiejiao as "cult."

The definition of xiejiao in Chinese law

has nothing to do with any definition of cult used in Europe

in the past hundred years.

You already heard about the definition

given by the Chinese Supreme Court and the Chinese Procuratorate,

this word doesn't really exist in English by the way, in early 2017,

saying xiejiao are groups deifying their leaders or spreading superstitious fallacies.

Now, nobody who talked about cults in the West in the last hundred years,

and we no longer talk about cults.

Nobody will recognize this definition,

because spreading superstitious fallacies is an accusation

which can be used against any religion.

Who decides what doctrines are superstitious

and what doctrines are really religious?

So xiejiao has a specific history in China

to ban heterodox groups accused of being against governments

and that, as I said, is from the Ming era.

So I would recommend not to translate xiejiao as cults

and to leave it in Chinese "xiejiao."

When I visited China for this very difficult dialogue with Chinese authorities,

I understood there are three different definitions of xiejiao.

If we talk with Three-Self pastors,

and we did,

Three-Self pastors will define xiejiao as heretical groups,

groups that do not believe in the traditional Christian theology of Trinity,

traditional Christian ideas about Jesus Christ.

So for them, what is xiejiao?

It's a heretical group,

it's a group whose theology we do not like.

Now CCP scholars borrow an old definition of cults from the West

and they define cults as groups using something called brainwashing

to control their members.

This is very funny in a way

because the word "brainwashing"

was coined by the CIA as a tool for the propaganda against Mao Zedong and China.

In other words, what was brainwashing?

Brainwashing as defined by Edward Hunter,

a CIA agent who wrote the first book about brainwashing in China,

brainwashing was something very bad the evil Chinese Communists do.

So, to see the Chinese Communist now using the word brainwashing is

in a way very interesting.

This word did not exist in English language

and was invented in the 50s by the CIA for their propaganda against China.

The third definition is mostly the definition we from the West proposed,

say,

Okay, you want to keep the word xiejiao

because you have been using it for many centuries,

but the only way to use xiejiao in a non-discriminatory way

is to use it for what I call criminal religious movements.

Of course there are religious movements that are criminal,

but criminal means they have a criminal behavior.

Nobody in a democratic society should be prosecuted for ideas or beliefs,

but clearly, people, religious or not religious, doesn't matter,

can be prosecuted for their criminal behavior.

So what is a criminal religious movement?

And I insisted with the Chinese authorities,

"If you want to keep xiejiao,

please use a definition of xiejiao as criminal religious movement.

You should avoid ideas like brainwashing

because there is a consensus among scholars in the West

that brainwashing does not exist,

and you should avoid asking the friendly Christian pastors in the Three-Self

what church is heretic, what church is Christian and not heretic,

because secular state cannot use theological criteria to define criminal movement.

Another wrong notion is the one used in Russia.

Russia liquidated this year, they use this word "liquidating,"

banning, putting out of the law the Jehovah's witnesses

and they have a list of another 37 groups they plan to liquidate.

These groups according to Russian Ministry of Justice are extremists.

What is the main criterion to define these groups as extremists?

The Russian Supreme Court says

an extremist group

is a group saying we preach the true religion and the other religions are false.

But this definition applies to many religions,

Islam, Catholicism and many others.

So this is again a wrong notion of xiejiao.

We cannot say, if a group believes they have the truth,

we may like we may not like, but we cannot say it's criminal,

and it happens very frequently in religion.

So, my definition of xiejiao or criminal religious movement

is a group which, or a religious movement that

either advocates or consistently engages in common crimes

including terrorism, violence, rape, child abuse

and even major economic crimes.

Now I want to quickly examine five elements of

this definition of xiejiao or criminal religious movement.

Number one, xiejiao are religious movements.

Sometimes the Chinese use the word "pseudo-religion."

We do not agree,

because to define "pseudo-religion" you should believe two things,

and these two things are false.

Number one, you should believe you know the true definition of religion,

and if you ask scholars, there are a hundred different definitions of religion.

Number two, you should believe that all religions are nice, kind and bring flowers.

This is again not true.

Many religions commit crimes,

so it's perfectly possible that you are a religious movement

but you commit illegal activities,

so we call criminal religious movement.

Number two, to be criminal,

the religious movement should commit crimes as a group, or justify the crimes,

saying these crimes are good and people should do them.

For example,

there are Catholic priests who are pedophiles,

but that does not make the Catholic Church a criminal group.

Why?

Because the Catholic Church does not advocate pedophilia.

The church made many mistakes,

but normally,

when a Catholic priest is identified as a pedophile, he is kicked off of the church.

There are Islamic terrorists or terrorists who claim to be Islamic,

but that doesn't make Islam a criminal religious group

because most Muslims believe these terrorists do not represent Islam.

So there are criminals in religion,

but the religion is criminal

only when it advocates, justifies, hails the criminal activities.

Number three, crimes should be serious crimes,

homicide, rape, sexual abuse, even enormous financial crimes,

huge networks of international money laundering, for example.

There are cases.

If a religious group is only guilty of some minor administrative or tax violation,

it's not a criminal movement.

Most religions have some problems with taxes.

Number four, crimes should be common crimes,

crimes which will be crimes even if they were committed by non-religious people.

Homicide, always a crime;

crime of being a cult, that's not a crime;

crime of using brainwashing,

that's not a crime because scholars do not believe brainwashing exists.

So physical abuse, beating people, yes;

psychological abuse, we don't know what it is.

So they should be common crimes.

Number five, these crimes should be ascertained by a real court.

That's very important for China.

It should be a court where the defendants have the guarantees

requested by Universal Declaration of Human Rights due process.

You are accused, you should know what you are accused of.

You should have a lawyer, independent lawyer,

not lawyer appointed by the court and friend of the court.

So you should have a regular process

and your crimes should be ascertained through a regular process.

Now let's come to the case of The Church of Almighty God.

The Church of Almighty God according to Chinese authorities is xiejiao.

Now if we ask the pastors of the Three-Self and even of some house churches,

they will say,

"Yes, it's a xiejiao because their theology is a theology we do not like."

And of course, the theology of The Church of Almighty God is a new theology,

is a new version of Christianity.

But as we saw,

this does not make a movement criminal.

We can disagree with the theology of The Church of Almighty God,

but freedom of religion is freedom of following any theology.

Of course it's also freedom to criticize your theology.

But that's a free debate what theology is true,

and nobody should go to jail for following the wrong theology.

Now the CCP, different from the Three-Self churches, says something different.

CCP says The Church of Almighty God is xiejiao,

because they committed very serious crimes including homicide.

So the question is

whether these accusations are true or false, are proved or are not proved.

One accusation the CCP raises against The Church of Almighty God

is you want to overthrow the government.

It is certainly true that

The Church of Almighty God does not like the Chinese government, to say the least,

or does not like the Chinese Communist Party,

and compares the CCP to the red dragon of the Book of Revelation in the Bible,

which is a very bad character in the Bible.

However, if you read carefully the literature of The Church of Almighty God,

to me, it's very clear that

The Church of Almighty God does not advocate revolution or an armed uprising

against the CCP and the government,

but it's a theological idea

that because of prophecies in the Bible, the CCP regime will fall by itself.

"By itself," meaning

The Church of Almighty God does not advocate an armed revolution against,

which will also be very difficult of course, against CCP.

Another accusation heard very often is that 15 years ago, in 2002,

The Church of Almighty God kidnapped

34 pastors of another church, the China Gospel Fellowship,

in order to convert them to The Church of Almighty God.

This is a very obscure episode, and even the object of some novels.

Scholars should still study it.

However, what I can say today is these accusations are not proved.

There has been no police investigation, whose records are available;

there has been no trial, no trial;

nobody has been tried and convicted in China for this crime.

So at the very least, we can say it's not proved.

As you saw in the video,

there is one single incident which is spread by CCP all over the world

to justify The Church of Almighty God is really xiejiao, criminal religious movement,

and that's the McDonald's murder in 2014 in Zhaoyuan.

If you go to the Internet, there are 20,000 websites

accusing The Church of Almighty God

of having perpetrated or organized the McDonald's murder.

Now I agree that the McDonald's murder is a horrific crime,

crime so bad that even alone

it will be enough to call The Church of Almighty God a xiejiao or criminal movement,

if The Church of Almighty God was responsible for it.

So, the real question is:

Who did the McDonald's murder?

The crime was on May 28th, 2014,

six missionaries entered a McDonald in the city of Zhaoyuan

and started preaching and asking clients for their cell phone number.

A lady called Wu Shuoyan didn't give the phone number and was beaten to death.

There were surveillance cameras so we can see the poor lady beaten to death.

But the real problem is: Who were these people?

Happily, I wrote a study about McDonald's murder

and the documents I used, this is very important,

all the documents I used were published by CCP.

I didn't receive documents from The Church of Almighty God.

I worked on documents supplied by CCP,