WHEN the 2,300 faithful go to Beijing's biggest Protestant church next Sunday they will enter through a new steel security door to find President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, in their congregation.
Chongwenmen Church, in the city centre, was where George Bush worshipped as chief of the US mission in 1974-75. He went back there as president in 1989. Evangelist Billy Graham and two archbishops of Canterbury also preached there.
'I told the White House people I do not want the security door,' said Wu Wei, senior pastor at the church, looking exhausted after all the preparatory visits he has received. 'But they insist on it. So I think it will be there.' The church visit is a statement of Mr Clinton's personal faith and of Beijing's desire to show the powerful US religious lobbies that its people enjoy the right to worship.
The issue is one of the most sensitive Mr Clinton will have to deal with during his visit. Many Americans regard the communist regime as deeply hostile to religion and point to priests in prison and suppression of Catholics loyal to the Pope.
Beijing said it has 100 million believers of different faiths, with 85,000 places of worship welcoming four million Catholics and 10 million Protestants - more than 10 times more Christians than in 1949.
Chongwenmen is the oldest and largest Protestant church. The Methodists built a small church on the site in 1876, part of a complex that included schools, hospitals, a seminary and homes for the ministers. It was later enlarged, before being burned down by the anti-religious Boxers in 1900.
