and dissociation with foreign ecclesiastical organizations. We realize and respect the characteristics and particular contributions of various denominations that have evolved in the historical development since the Reformation. We have also learned the lesson of harmful dissensions and disruptive effects of denominationalism. We try to conserve the valuable heritage without being tied to the denominational structural network. So remaining true to the Apostolic faith and biblical tradition, we adopt a latitudinarian attitude and the principle of mutual respect concerning theological and liturgical variations. We take Ephesians 4 as our motto and believe that unity with variety, not uniformity, will more manifest the abundant grace of God. For instance, alternative co-existence of two ways of baptism by immersion or by sprinkling, and various forms of administering the Lord’s Supper, proves helpful in maintaining a harmonious unity and enhancing mutual understanding. This modern adiaphorism seems to be conductive to building a united church instead of arousing unnecessary controversies.
This brings us to a third characteristic. At present we are not yet a United Church of China in the ecclesiastical sense. The China Christian Council set up in 1980 is more like your N.C.C., and functions as an associating and coordinating organization of a transitionary nature, concentrating in the work of pastoral care and ecclesiastical affairs. It works together with the Three-Self Patriotic Committee like two hands serving the body whose head is Christ, and musters all Protestant believers and communities to build a well-run United Church of China. There are similar twin-organizations on various levels, national, provincial and local. We have not adopted any particular ecclesiastical polity. Ordinations are often decided upon and carried out on the local level, assisted by provincial councils. The China Christian Council, in collaboration with provincial councils, has printed one million and three hundred thousand Bibles, of the “Union Version.” In addition, there are versions in three minority nationality languages, Korean, Miao and Lisu. The printing of another edition of Chinese Bible using simplified characters arranged horizontally is in preparation. There were several hymnals published by provincial councils. Last year the C. C. C. edited and published a new hymnbook including four hundred hymns, one hundred of which written and composed by Chinese Christians.
The rapid church growth brings with it many problems. Pastoral care and Christian nurturing have lagged behind. This accounts for the poor quality and low level of religious life, especially in the rural areas. There is a gap of a whole generation between the aged ministers and the young. To meet the urgent need of providing leaders a program of pastoral and theological training is being carried out. On the bottom over a hundred short-term courses ranging from two weeks to four months are being conducted by local and provincial councils, mostly for lay leaders of the “assembly points” in rural areas. A “syllabus” published quarterly by the seminary in Nanjing is used widely for this purpose, with a total circulation of forty thousand. Then there are four centers of theological training offering two-year programs for senior middle school graduates. In addition, three or four more of this kind are being planned, to be located strategically to meet the needs of various regions. In Nanjing the Union Theological Seminary, with a four-year collegiate program and a graduate course, is open to the whole country, for training ministers, theological teachers, writers, church musicians and artists. There is an enrollment of one hundred and eighty students this year.
Before I conclude I may add that one characteristic of the theological climate in China today is that we have transcended the sharp fundamentalist-modernist contradiction through mutual respect and willingness to learn from each other. The picture drawn by Bishop Ting in “Theological Mass Movement” referred above portrays the general trends of Protestant thought endorsed or tolerated by most evangelicals and liberals, allowing some differences in emphases and exegetical treatment. In trying to sum up the theological situation in China, I think of Dr. YoshinobuKumazawa’s description of the Protestant theological construction in Japan as “biblical, missional, national and free in emphasis and orientation,”4 and I see another parallelism between the churches in our two counties. My description of the Chinese theological picture is: biblical, evangelical (in the classical sense of the word), national, but not nationalistic, keenly concerned with the church’s relation to the construction of a modern socialist China, and latitudinarian. Once I was asked by a British theological educator as to what is the theological theme that we think most important. My answer was the doctrine of Incarnation: the God who forever creates, reveals, redeems, sanctifies and leads us all into His final glory has become flesh and dwells among us in the world, “full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” (Jn. 1:14) Allow me to quote Kumazawa once more: “Indigenization does not mean establishing a colony of Christians in the secular or pagan world. It means identifying what God is doing in the secular world and finding out what we can do to participate in his work.”5
We are a very small and young church. We have come to share with you our experiences, understandings, aspirations and problems, and to learn from you. Now I must hold my tongue and use my ears and heart. Thank you.
4 Where Theology Seeks to Integrate Text and Context, in Asian Voices in Christian Theology, ed. By G. H. Anderson, 1976, p. 181.
5 Ibid., p. 205.
The Post-denominational Unity of the Chinese Protestant Church
(Nanjing, March 21, 1998)
While I was preparing for this conference, two topics on the list of presentations attracted my attention: “Recent Trends in the Study of New Religious Movements” by Armin W. Geertz of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and “The Post-Denominational Unity of the Chinese Christian Church—Dream or Reality?” by RostislavFellner of the Oriental Institute, Czechoslovakia.6 The first involves the emergence and spread of new sects and cults, which in the Chinese context pose some threat to church unity, and the second seems to call for an apology.
Religions are like trees. As they grow they bifurcate or trifurcate and branch out into a number of organized groups that bear some resemblance to, and preserve their identity with, the mother trunk, and yet keep on differentiating until in the end they tend to become mutually exclusive or antagonistic to each other. Attempts at reunion often seem difficult, if not completely fruitless. Is the experiment which aims at the post-denominational unity of the Protestant church in China today a dream that can never be realized? Is it, as the Chinese saying goes, navigating upstream against the current?
This perennial phenomenon of the differentiation of religions has been long observed and studied by historians and sociologists of religion. The classical Weber-Troeltsch church-sect dichotomy and their analyses have been generally accepted, and further developed and elaborated by H. Richard Niebuhr, Howard Becker, Liston Pope, Milton Yinger, to mention just a few representative figures amongst a host of scholars. The end result may be summarized into the following typological schema, which I have found very useful:
ecclesia—the church
denomination—class church
established sect
sect
cult
new religion.7
Applying this schema to the Christian churches in China in the second half of the twentieth century, we find that there were three churches (ecclesiae) in 1950:
1) the Catholic Church, about 3.5 million members strong;
2) the Russian Orthodox Church, with about 300,000 members; and
3) the Protestant Church, with approximately one million church members and enquirers.
In the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church there were no denominations, and their sub-divisions are beyond our present interest. But with the Protestant