| Chinese Protestants and the West since 1949 | ||||
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It has now been exactly sixty years since Mao Zedong gave a speech to his victorious Communist comrades, telling them: “We have stood up!” What did it mean to have stood up? The Chinese people had stood up to imperialist aggression and humiliation in all its forms. The Westerners and their “running dogs” had been set to flight, never to return. The new China was to purge itself of the institutions and influences of the West that had dominated the land since the British victory in the First Opium War over a century earlier. Mao called for vigilance in protecting against a resurgence of imperialism. The euphoria of liberation, coupled with a rooting out of “imperialist” elements, foreign and domestic, meant that relations with the West, China’s erstwhile oppressor, would be troubled.  One of the legacies of the Western dominance of China for a century was the Protestant church, perhaps one million strong at the time of the founding of the People’s Republic. After 1949, the concern for protecting China from poisonous Western influence manifested itself not only in the isolation of China from most of the non-communist world, but in suppression of any domestic institutions which bore the stamp of imperialism upon them. The Protestant church, with its roots in the Western missionary movement, was widely seen as one such institution. Consequently, the controlling Communist Party insisted that Chinese Christians would need to shed their affiliation with Western church denominations and missionaries if they wanted to continue to worship legally. Thus was born the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), which was to be (and still is today) the only licit Protestant denomination in China. Those who refused to join the new organization were forced to the margins of the law by a government which guarantees religious freedom while reserving the right to define what constitutes legitimate “religion.” In many cases, these churches were forced to move their worship underground. The result has been a Protestant church divided between the officially endorsed TSPM church movement and the unofficial, house church movement. What has been the nature of the relationship between Christians inside and outside of China over the last 60 years? After Protestant missionaries left China en masse in 1951, Western Christians lost much of their contact with the Chinese. Those churches affiliated with the TSPM professed little interest in relationship with the imperialist West while relations with the emerging house church movement were dangerous and impractical to establish. The oppression of Christianity under Mao over the subsequent two-and-a-half decades, most virulently during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to ’76, combined with the loss of contact, prompted doubts in the West about whether there remained a Chinese church to speak of. With the death of Mao and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China entered a period of cautious opening to the West. Many Westerners and Chinese alike were surprised to discover that the church had not only survived but had grown over the previous three decades.  From the dark years of the Cultural Revolution, the Protestant church has more than recovered its vigor and has see an explosion in numbers, particularly in the house church movement. Few unbiased observers would suggest that China has fewer than 50 million Protestants, and some estimates easily double this figure. Christianity has also enjoyed something of an image make-over. Once condemned as a feudal superstition, destined for the rubbish heap of history, even Christianity’s cultured despisers admit that it is associated with much that is good about Western progress. The Economist newspaper recently noted the contrast with attitudes towards the faith in Europe: “In much of Christianity’s former heartland, religion is associated with tradition and ritual. In China, it is associated with modernity, business and science.”1 In looking once again to the West for direction, many Chinese see Christianity as one of the secrets of success. Some scholars see interest in Christianity as tied closely to the popularity of Western culture more broadly or to the phenomenon of globalization generally. As Yang Fenggang notes in a recent study: In line with the Chinese pursuit of modernization and global integration throughout the 20th century, many educated Chinese tend to prefer a meaning system that is universal instead of particularly Chinese. In the context of a globalizing market under political repression, many Chinese perceive Christianity as liberating, democratic, modern, cosmopolitan, or universal.2True, Christianity grew steadily and surprisingly in the days when contact with the West was limited. However, the explosive growth of the church has coincided with greater engagement with the West, suggesting a relationship between the two phenomena. It would be naïve to conclude that the appeal of Christianity has nothing at all to do with the appeal of Western culture in China today. However, much of the growth of the church has taken place outside of the centers where Western culture is most in evidence, indicating that something else is going on. Christianity seems to satisfy a need that is corporately felt in China. As one observer noted: “Across China, people are struggling to redefine notions of success and failure, right and wrong, good and evil. The quest for something to believe in has become so universal and profound that it is one of the unifying characteristics of life in China.”3  Thousands a day are concluding that Christianity provides this redefinition in their lives. The result is that Protestant Christianity has, in the course of thirty years, forged for itself a permanent place in Chinese society. China scholar, Daniel Bays, argues that the “size, resources, and virtually nation-wide presence of the Protestant movement, makes it one of the most important of non-governmental entities in China today.”4 The official Chinese Protestant church, through the instrumentality of the China Christian Council and the TSPM, has re-engaged with the global church through membership in the World Council of Churches and through educational and humanitarian exchange fostered by such organizations as the Amity Foundation. Chinese Christian leaders have traveled and studied outside of the country and prominent Western church leaders have visited and taught in China. The magnitude of these contacts has paralleled China’s increased engagement with the world generally. Contact between Western Christians and Chinese house church believers has also increased exponentially. Western evangelical churches and mission agencies are generally more enthusiastic about the work of the house church movement than the official church, which they view as compromised by its relationship with the government. Many of these churches and agencies work exclusively with the house church, though in a low-profile manner. Among TSPM churches, there is considerable sensitivity to the specter of neo-imperialism and thus, to the perceived interference from Western agencies in Chinese Christian affairs. Such actions on the part of Westerners as the smuggling of Bibles and other Christian literature, organization of Bible studies and the establishment of clandestine seminaries are seen to threaten the independence of the Chinese church and to jeopardize its relationship with the government. Concern about Western influence in Chinese Christianity is not only attributable to generic concern about neo-imperialism, however. According to the comprehensive Human Rights Watch paper on the subject of religion in China, published in 1997, Chinese authorities believe that the West is using Christianity to undermine Chinese politics as it did, so the theory goes, in the Eastern Bloc countries at the end of the Cold War. The idea that evangelical Christianity played a role in the demise of the Iron Curtain is widely accepted in China, both among those who see the precedent as hopeful and those who view it ominously. While contacts between Western and Chinese Christians of all stripes have increased, concern about reports of official persecution of the church persists and has grown. There exists a broad consensus among human rights groups, Western China watchers and Christian advocacy groups alike that the Chinese government does not fully live up to the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. Discussion of persecution in China is a divisive issue among those Westerners with contacts in China. The majority of evangelical groups who work with the house church movement highlight the persecution of Christians as a way of motivating Westerners to act. Whole organizations and websites are dedicated to exposing persecution of Christians in China and assisting its victims. Those few organizations who work with the CCC/TSPM, must, as a condition of their acceptance, mute any discussion of persecution. (Searching, for example, the websites of the Amity Foundation or China Partner, Inc. yields no indication that official persecution of Christians exists in China.) These organizations tend to highlight instead the dangers of heretical sects and quasi-Christian cults, justifying, in some instances, greater oversight by the Chinese government in religious affairs. Similarly, those Western Christian leaders (both politicians and clergy) that have made official visits to China have generally treaded lightly around the issue of persecution; too lightly in the view of many house church observers. Such high-profile visitors as the evangelist Luis Palau have attracted criticism in recent years for professing to find no persecution on their trips to China and for encouraging house church hold-outs to register with the government. The last decade has witnessed aggressive steps on the part of the Chinese government to open up the country to greater contact and engagement with the world. Membership in the WTO, the hosting of the Olympic Games, the loosening of restrictions on foreign enterprise in China, the forging of an economic empire in Africa and many other initiatives make this commitment clear. At the same time, the Chinese have reconciled themselves to the idea that Protestant Christianity is now a permanent fixture in Chinese society. Even some non-Christians are raising the question: “What can Christianity do for China?” Reflection on this question has given rise to the “Cultural Christian,” who may not participate in the life of the church but is otherwise sympathetic to the teachings of the faith and optimistic about their transformative power. Chinese Christians are participating as never before in the global Protestant movement. Many Chinese Christians no longer view the faith as Western, but as a world-wide movement—one that is gaining momentum. Nor do they reflexively look to the West for all of their insights. The old teacher-student relationship between Western and Chinese Christians is slowly breaking down. Though the faith is not unique to China, there may be a uniquely Chinese contribution to be made. Poised to dispatch legions of missionaries to the world, some to take on the re-evangelization of the West, the Christians are asking: “What can China do for Christianity?” Even in a country so steeped in the Confucian tradition, it is still possible for the student to become the teacher. Brent Whitefield is an assistant professor of history at Valparaiso University. 1 The Economist, Oct. 2, 2008. 2 F. Yang, “Lost in the Market, Saved at McDonald’s: Conversion to Christianity in Urban China,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 44:4, 2005, p. 439. 3 J. Pomfret, “Chinese Search for New Values,” Washington Post, Sept. 26, 1999. 4 D. Bays, “Chinese Protestant Christianity Today,” The China Quarterly, No. 174 (2003), p. 502. Only registered users can write comments!
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 September 2009 17:46 ) |
