The World - News from June 27, 1988

China’s unified Protestant church installed its first bishops in more than 30 years during a service in Shanghai. More than 1,500 people crowded into the Muen (Baptized With Mercy) Church for the consecration of Shen Yifan, 60, and Sun Yanli, 73, as bishops. Religion was curbed in China during the decade-long Cultural Revolution that began in 1966. However, those curbs were loosened in the late 1970s. Membership in China’s Protestant church has swelled to more than 4 million members, more than five times its size before the Communists came to power in 1949.