In China, the Communist regime has removed hundreds of crosses from “China’s Jerusalem,” the coastal city of Wenzhou. A draft of rules on religious structures released by government agencies says the crosses should be wholly affixed to a building facade and be no more than one-tenth of the facade’s height. The symbol also must fit with the facade and the surroundings, the proposal adds. The draft does not provide the rationale for the proposal. Meanwhile, China Aid’s 2014 report said that persecution in China increased 150 percent over the course of last year, with nearly 3,000 detained and close to 1,300 sentenced. “In 2014, Christians and practitioners of other faiths in China experienced the harshest persecution seen in over a decade,” the report stated, noting the removal of crosses and eradication of house churches as a rising concern. China Aid also added its unease over China’s campaign to assimilate Christianity into Chinese culture. “They’ve changed Buddhism—they’ve reshaped it in a lot of different ways,” China Aid vice president Kody Kness said. “It’s similar to what they’re trying to do with Christianity.” It is domesticating a faith and taking away the critical dimensions of the cross. The Chinese church is facing persecution for maintaining its identity and displaying the cross as a sign of resistance and suffering.

A cross set up in 1895 on the roadside of Mumbai old urban neighbourhood – known as “plague cross” because it was erected by Christians during a time when the disease was ravaging the city – was razed by city workers on April 29, 2017. The officials cited a law that restricts the display of religious symbols on public property. However, the owner of the property reports that he had shown officials clear evidence that the cross was on his private property. The officials who demolished the cross “must be held responsible and accountable for the action, which was illegal,” Cardinal Gracias said. The action apparently was in accordance with the Supreme Court judgement, dated September 29, 2009, on illegal religious constructions in public places. Erecting religious structures by way of unauthorised constructions on public places and roads is an “insult to the God.” According to a report there are 729 unauthorised religious structures within Mumbai municipal corporation limits, but only 55 have been demolished.

It was the religious group ‘Spirit in Jesus,’ which had encroached government land in Kerala’s Pappathichola Mettu and constructed a cross on a hilltop there. The revenue officials demolished the cross. “Demolition of the holy cross is a painful sight for the Christian followers in the whole world,” Marxist MLA S.Rajendran said. Was the cross being used as a camouflage for illegal encroachment? When the Cross is used as a tool for domination and grabbing, it is falling to the temptation of Emperor Constantine who had a vision of the Cross in the sky prior to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge accompanied by a celestial voice which said: “You shall conquer by this sign.” The Cross shall not be converted to a weapon of conquest; it is betrayal of the crucified, for which Pope John Paul II asked the world forgiveness in 2000. The cross is the cross of critical revolt in culture revealed in the ‘cultural mourning.’ The loss of meaning is not an external event in history. God’s active presence in human history led to a stark opposition between God and human nature, and God and history.

The cross is a symbol of cultural critique of fundamentalism with its corrupted worship of nationality or caste or authority. We are in a “false self” of performative drunkenness. Modern man is losing his soul, but he does not realise it. When human beings have no name for the suffering Other, God’s epiphany takes place. The Cross became the meta-image of God the Father. Every Christian loves Christ as his ideal and feels himself united with all other men and women by identification. But the Church requires more of him. He has also to identify himself with Christ and love all others irrespective of caste, creed and colour as Christ loved to the point of death on the cross. The story of love which the Cross reveals can be presented as the Homeland. There is a new spatial re-articulation of ‘home’ in terms of this fusion with God, which is more semiotic than symbolic, repairs the wounds of narcissus. Therefore the cross is the heart of Christian symbolism.