into China for about one and a half century, and on the eve of the revolution there were at least twenty denominations supported and dominated by twice or three times as many foreign missionary societies.8 Their ridiculous geographical distribution, and competition and contention among themselves, was seen as a scandal and won the disrepute of “imported foreign religions” as a tool of “cultural invasion” by Western Powers. Then there were a number of church groups that fall into the category of “established cults,” such as the True Jesus Church, Seventh Day Adventists, the Salvation Army, Assemblies of God, The Pentecostal Church, and the Little Flock (Christian Assembly). Some of them were of foreign origin and others of indigenous origin. The only known group that I would classify as a sect or cult was the Jesus Family in Shandung.
Religious traditions are differentiated by nation, class, educational level, patterns of secular conflict and other non-religious variables. As Richard Niebuhr observes, variations in the ethics, polity and theology among various denominations “have their roots in the relationship of the religious life to the cultural and political conditions prevailing in any group of Christians . . . The exigencies of church discipline, the demands of the national psychology, the effect of social tradition, the influence of cultural heritage, and the weight of economic interest play their role in the definition of religious truth.”9 All denominations have a raison d’etre for their emergence and transmission. The evolution of each denomination, in the final analysis, is the result of processes of contextualization. All denominations introduced into China during the nineteenth century missionary movement brought with them particular valuable legacies and contributed to the enrichment of the churches in China. But they failed to make the Church Chinese, partly, I would say, by their persistence in denominationalism. Each denomination has its roots in the soil of its origin, and when transplanted to the Chinese soil in toto it became stunted and failed to grow. Naturalization was needed. In the political and social changes of the early fifties the roots of the imported denominations were cut off and the “trees” began to wither, trunk and branches. The churches had become so weak by 1957 that they had to be reorganized and merged to hold “united services.” (It must be pointed out that during the period from 1949 to 1957 the implementation of the religious policy of the Party was, taken as a whole, as good as could be expected, or at least much better than in the succeeding years. The dwindling of the Christian Church in this period has been wrongly attributed by many Western observers to the supposed stringency of religious policy on the part of the Party and People’s Government. This is entirely groundless and based upon biased presuppositions.)
It is not my intention here to dwell long on the launching and development of the Three Self Movement. Suffice it to say that one of the purposes of the Three Self is to make the Church in China really Chinese, just as the Church in England was made English or the Church in Germany German. In the early nineteen-fifties when the Three Self Movement was launched, to safeguard solidarity and smooth cooperation, a principle of mutual respect was proposed and adopted. This meant that in matters of doctrinal differences, of liturgy and church policy (these three often being the causes of controversies leading to schism and splits), one should be patient and tolerant toward those who hold different views because of different denominational backgrounds, by “seeking common ground in major matters and preserving trivial differences.” This policy of mutual respect proved very effective in preparing the way for the churches to merge and hold “united services” in 1957.
When the “cultural revolution” was over, religious activities began to surface again. The China Christian Council was established in 1980. This marked the beginning of the post-denominational stage. The old roots of imported denominations having been cut off, the churches began to take root in the Chinese soil in a new social context. One observed an unexpected, rapid Church growth. In the course of the following twelve years (from 1980 to 1991), the total number of church members and enquirers increased to about 6.5 million, more than six times the pre-1950 total. Churches (local congregations with church buildings and leaders) are being reopened or built anew at the rate of three churches every two days. (Only two churches were reopened in the fall of 1979.) Now there are more than seven thousand churches and over twenty thousand assembly points (congregations without regular church buildings, also known as “home meetings”). There are no denominations. Church members under the age of forty have little or no knowledge of denominations, and mostolder Christians are quite satisfied and happy with the non-denominational pattern of services and church organization, and have no desire to return to the old path. With the exception of three groups of “established sects,” namely the Little Flock, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the True Jesus Church, an overwhelming majority of Protestant congregations are determined to consolidate around the China Christian Council and locally around the provincial and municipal Christian Councils. Strictly speaking, the Christian councils are not churches in the ecclesiological sense. So we may say that the Chinese Protestant Church is still a uniting church, not quite a United Church of Christ in China. We are advancing toward church unity in the sense that we have forgone denominationalism. It is a new model of conciliar unity. The China Christian Council is different from National Christian Councils in many other countries in that the latter presuppose the existence of denominations or other church constellations. The CCC is not quite a United Church of Christ, for it still lacks a well defined church polity. On the local level the many congregations are represented in the local (municipal or county) Christian councils which serve as coordinating and advisory committees but do not have administrative authority. It is not like the Presbyterian synod. The relations between the China Christian Council and provincial councils, and those between the provincial and the local councils are not very clearly defined either. Councils of “higher levels” do not “direct” or “order” but advise or summon councils of “lower levels” and local congregations, offer help and exercise “leadership” through consultation and persuasion, not coercion, and by organizing cooperative activities and enterprises such as running leadership training classes etc.
One can sense that this is a rather loosely organized unity. At the Fifth All-National Assembly held in January in Beijing, a document entitled “Provisional Regulations on Church Order and Ministry” was adopted. Basic rules concerning Church Membership, Ordinance, Church Council and Offices were laid down and recommended for trial practice. A new clause was also added to the Constitution of the China Christian Council to emphasize the obligation on the part of provincial local councils to implement pertinent resolutions and recommendations of the CCC. These are some of the attempts to strengthen the solidarity and unity of the church.
The idea and ideal of church unity have been the subject of arduous studies and heated discussions for almost a century. Various models of church union have been conceived and attempted. The experience of the Chinese church is unique in that it is based on a particular socio-political context. The roots of denominationalism had never gone deep enough in the soil of Chinese culture. So once we have come together and done away with denominational barriers, we are on cleared ground to experiment in building an edifice to enfold and give shelter to multitudes who hold the Christian faith, and to bear witness to “the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all” (Eph. 4: 3–6).
We realize this is no easy task. We have learned to move carefully and slowly onward, and to guard against hastiness, coercion, artificial uniformity, proselytism, and schismatic division. The cardinal virtue, the essence of Chinese culture, is the “peaceful unity of opposites.” We are endeavoring to achieve church unity through this virtue.
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I can only be brief in the second part of my paper. Is not the development of religion like the tree of evolution, always divergent ad infinitum, as shown in the post-Reformation development of the Protestant churches into numerous denominations, and the sudden flowering and proliferation of hosts of cults and new religions in the second half of this century? Humans are alike in being religious, but very much different from one another in their ways of seeking spiritual satisfaction. Will the incipient centrifugal tendency of the three “established sects” I mentioned above, namely the Little Flock, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the True Jesus Church, escalate