Chinese execute Christian sect leader
By Joseph Kahn
The Star Tribune
November 29, 2006
Original Source: http://www.startribune.com/html/404.html

BEIJING - The charismatic leader of a Chinese Christian sect has been executed for ordering the murder of members of a rival religious group, as the authorities seek to suppress big underground churches that they deem cults. 
Xu Shuangfu, the founder of the Three Grades of Servants Church, which once claimed more than a million followers in China, was put to death last week, said his lawyer, Li Heping. Li said he and Xu's family members learned of Xu's death on Wednesday. 
Xu was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in July. More than 20 other church members have so far received death sentences, according to court documents seen by international religious groups, and 11 have been executed. 
Three Grades of Servants and another group, Eastern Lightning, became archrivals in the early part of this decade as they competed for adherents. 
At one time, overseas Christian aid associations considered both sects to be legitimate religious groups. But many Christian experts have since argued that their teachings are heretical -- Eastern Lightning claims that Jesus has returned to Earth and is a 30-year-old Chinese woman. 
As many as 20 members of Eastern Lightning who had sought to lure away followers of Three Grades of Servants were found murdered beginning in 2002. 
The cases exposed internecine strife among underground churches as well as the determination of the Chinese authorities to crush religious groups that do not abide by the rules imposed on officially sanctioned religious groups. 
Underground religious movements have been an enormously delicate issue for the Chinese leadership since the Falun Gong spiritual group organized a movement that Communist Party officials viewed as a threat to their hold on power in the late 1990s.