Is China Weaponizing Christianity to Divide America? – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

Christianity may be fading in America, but in 2024, it helped put Donald Trump back in the White House. Evangelicals, Catholics, and other Christian voters backed him in even greater numbers than before.

This fact, I suggest, is not lost on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

To Beijing, President Trump represents something of a paradox. A real thorn in its side, his return to power poses a threat to China’s strategic ambitions. However, it also presents a rather attractive opportunity.

Trump’s return has reignited a particularly deadly affliction, one with no known cure: Trump Derangement Syndrome. The left is in a complete frenzy. The CCP sees an opening to deepen the divide. If America descends into chaos again, China wins.

Christianity is the perfect cultural landmine. It unites Trump’s base but alienates much of the secular left. Beijing understands this fault line well. The CCP knows how to exploit ideological rifts, how to turn identity into conflict, and how to weaponize belief systems against the very people who hold them. And Xi Jinping and his colleagues don’t need to lift a finger. Why would they? They already have TikTok.

After all, TikTok is more than just an app. A direct pipeline into America’s cultural bloodstream, it’s a platform where narratives are shaped, outrage is manufactured, and divisions are amplified in real time. And right now, one of the biggest fault lines in America is Christianity.

A recent Mashable article asked a rather intriguing question: “Why are TikTok comments suddenly full of religious messages?” The piece notes that “Jesus, God, even Satan are getting name-dropped in the comments section” at a remarkable rate. Over and over. Unrelenting.

The Mashable writer Tim Marcin writes “It’s unclear how this started, but I’m not alone. Folks on the Christianity subreddit are wondering where this all came from, too. It’s so pervasive that some people wonder if it’s bot activity, which feels likely.”

Call me a conspiracy theorist (I’ve been called worse), but this doesn’t seem to be an organic, faith-based revival spilling over into social media. Instead, it seems intentional.

Used by roughly half the U.S. population, TikTok is controlled by China’s ByteDance. In short, the platform operates under the direct influence of the CCP. It has been repeatedly accused of suppressing dissent against the CCP while algorithmically amplifying content that fuels social unrest in America and beyond.

During the George Floyd protests in 2020, the world’s most popular social media app became a digital battleground. Accounts promoting violence and destruction went viral, while messages urging de-escalation were buried. Chinese state-backed bots flooded the app with both pro-BLM and pro-police content, ensuring that the most extreme voices dominated the conversation. The plan was simple: divide and conquer — turn Americans against each other. And it worked. Chaos engulfed the streets. Businesses burned, city blocks were in ruins, and armed citizens stood watch, uncertain of whom to trust.

TikTok has played a similar role in foreign conflicts. Since the October 7 Hamas attacks, the app has been flooded with pro-Palestinian content, while pro-Israel voices have been shadowbanned or suppressed. To be clear, TikTok’s role in this isn’t about championing Palestinian rights or humanitarian concerns. China couldn’t care less about Gaza. The real objective is to stoke tensions in the U.S., drive a wedge between American Jews and Muslims, and fuel campus protests that make America look weak and chaotic.

By amplifying pro-Palestinian sentiment, TikTok ensures that protests in U.S. cities and universities receive maximum exposure, guaranteeing that the most inflammatory rhetoric goes viral. Students calling for the destruction of Israel, counter-protesters clashing with activists, political leaders being forced to take sides — every headline, every viral clip, every moment of division is a win for Beijing. China wants to destabilize its greatest geopolitical rival without firing a shot.

It’s working.

This brings us back to TikTok’s hyper-religious pivot.

China and Christianity

Although faith can be a powerful unifying force, it can also be a tool for division — especially in a country where tens of millions hate the other side. If TikTok can manipulate how Christianity manifests online, it can shape public perception, provoke backlash, and ultimately deepen the fractures within American society.

China has long understood the power of religion.

At home, the CCP ruthlessly suppresses it. Christian churches are raided, pastors are imprisoned, and independent religious movements are crushed. The only Christianity tolerated is a neutered, state-approved version where sermons emphasize loyalty to the Communist Party over faith in God.

In some instances, the government has gone so far as to rewrite the Bible, altering scripture to align with Communist ideology. In 2020, a Chinese textbook intended for teaching “professional ethics and law” in vocational schools altered the biblical account from the Gospel of John, where Jesus forgives a woman caught in adultery. In this modified version, after dispersing the crowd that wanted to stone the woman, Jesus himself stones her to death. In its purest form, with its emphasis on individual conscience and a higher authority than the state, true Christianity is a direct threat to Communist rule. The CCP demands absolute loyalty, and a faith that teaches moral truth beyond the Party’s control is considered dangerous. In China, Xi Jinping is God.

While Christianity is repressed at home, the CCP has weaponized religion for its own purposes abroad. In Taiwan, Chinese intelligence agencies have reportedly collaborated with various entities, including religious sects, to gather intelligence and influence public opinion. These operations often involve using shell companies and criminal organizations to channel funds and support to groups that promote pro-unification messages.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, during the 2019–2020 protests, Christian leaders who played prominent roles in the pro-democracy movement became targets of aggressive disinformation campaigns. Chinese state media and coordinated online efforts worked tirelessly to discredit these figures by labeling them as extremists and foreign agents.

Progressives and Christianity

This brings us back to the U.S., where the modern left has increasingly come to view Christianity as a regressive force, associating it with bigotry, oppression, and “Christian nationalism.” This fact is not lost on the despots in Beijing. By flooding TikTok with religious messages, China could be baiting the predictable backlash. Progressives react with hostility, attacking Christianity as a dangerous ideology.

Conservatives, in turn, double down, seeing this hostility as proof that their faith is under siege. The more heated the exchange, the more entrenched each side becomes. There is also the possibility that TikTok is being used to shape Christianity itself, subtly pushing the most extreme or distorted interpretations to the forefront. If the platform’s algorithm promotes religious content emphasizing political violence, radical theocracy, or fatalism, it could discredit the movement from within.

Even the FBI has warned that China is using TikTok’s algorithm to divide Americans. And yes, I know — why trust the FBI? It has failed the country by targeting Trump and his base more times than we can count. But in this case, they draw a logical conclusion. China would relish nothing more than to witness America implode, to see people from both sides of the political spectrum take to the streets and tear each other apart. This is why TikTok, a critical CCP weapon, is so dangerous and why Americans must remain vigilant.

READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn:

Is Rick Perry High?

Is Fluoridated Water a Threat to Public Health?