Bob Fu

Bob (Xiqiu) Fu is one of the leading voices in the world for persecuted faith communities in China. Fu was born and raised in mainland China and was a student leader during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations for freedom and democracy in 1989. 

Fu graduated from the School of International Relations at the People's (Renmin) University in Beijing and taught English to Communist Party officials at the Beijing Administrative College and Beijing Party School of the Chinese Communist Party from 1993–1996. Fu was also a house church leader in Beijing until he and his wife, Heidi, were imprisoned for two months for “illegal evangelism” in 1996. Bob and Heidi fled to the United States as religious refugees in 1997, and subsequently founded ChinaAid in 2002 to bring international attention to China’s gross human rights violations and to promote religious freedom and rule of law in China. 

As president of ChinaAid, Fu has testified before the Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (USCHR), the Foreign Press Association, and the European Commission and European Union Parliament. Fu also regularly briefs the State Department and Members of Congress, including Members of the International Religious Freedom Caucus on the status of religious freedom and rule of law in China. In 2008, Fu was invited to the White House to brief President George W. Bush on religious freedom and human rights in China, and in 2011, the Nobel Prize Committee recognized Fu’s efforts with an invitation to attend the award ceremony for Nobel Laureate Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. 

Bob Fu graduated with Ph.D. from St. John's College at the University of Durham in the U.K. in the field of religious freedom. He graduated from the Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree on Global Christian Leadership from Midwest University, where he has served as a distinguished professor on religion and public policy. Bob Fu is a member of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Fu serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Chinese Law and Religion Monitor, a journal on religious freedom and the rule of law in China, and as a guest editor for Chinese Law and Government, a journal by University of California, Los Angles. 

Presentations at Calvin University

When Caesar Demands to be God: Religious Freedom in China
Part of the: January Series
Friday, January 17, 2020 12:30:00 PM
Covenant Fine Arts Center Auditorium

Publication(s) for this event