The Opposite of Communism Is Faith in God: Rep. Gallagher

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) delivers remarks to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the White Paper movement in China alongside a group of students and Chinese pro-democracy activists outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Nov. 29, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON—Communism’s ultimate enemy is not capitalism or democracy, but faith in God, says Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).

“Because communism itself is not a political economic system. It’s a perverted inverse religion. It’s an all-consuming ideology imposed not by free belief, but by force and indoctrination,” he said in a speech at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

“Its churches are the labor camps, the gulags, the reeducation center; its confession booths are torture chambers; its priests are the censors, the propagandists, the secret police.”

In terms of values, faith and communism stand on opposite ends. While communism seeks domination and abasement, he said, faith seeks love, the dignity of the individual, and the elevation of man’s soul.

The idea came to Mr. Gallagher after a recent meeting with a graduate student who became a quiet opponent of the Chinese regime because of his faith. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is bent on destroying faith because it stands in the way of the regime laying total control over the population, said the congressman, who’s chair of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the CCP.

“If they can stamp out our belief in anything greater, life becomes nothing more than the incentives of the Party that it can offer, the punishment it can deliver,” Mr. Gallagher recalled the student saying.

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“That is the goal of the Chinese Communist Party: reduce men and women to flesh and bones, simple tools to use to build party objectives.”

The situation for believers in China is bleak. Mr. Gallagher noted that the regime “famously imprisoned believers en masse” and tortured them; “sent millions of Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and other religious minorities to reeducation camps”; and bulldozed worship sites, from monasteries to churches.

Accompanying the rise of religious suppression is a state-sanctioned industry that profits off the proceeds from organs forcibly taken from unconsenting prisoners of conscience, primarily adherents of Falun Gong detained for their faith.

“For the CCP, humans are material objects to be used for whatever purposes the Party deems appropriate,” Mr. Gallagher said.

But in the communist regime’s war against faith, no method—including the all-out purging campaigns, the pervasive censorship apparatus, and the massive spending on security forces—can help it win, he said.

“Because you cannot—no matter how hard you try, no matter how much power you have at your disposal—you simply cannot kill the truth,” the congressman said.

Mr. Gallagher emphasized that strategic competition with China is “not a test of two different militaries” or two different socio-economic systems.

“It is, at its core, a struggle for souls,” he said. “Our entire foreign policy, our entire statecraft must be built on this recognition of soulcraft.”