Jesus’s parting words to his followers, known today as the Great Commission, made it crystal clear that from the start Christ’s followers were to spread his message geographically (“go”) and incorporate into his church (“baptize”) people from every culture (“nations”; Greek ethnē). The Acts of the Apostles intentionally includes episodes to show there were no limitations on membership. Samaritans, African eunuchs, even Roman centurions were all to be welcomed into the fold. In the centuries that followed, the church always came down on the side of inclusion, even with those who had denied their faith during the persecutions, but then repented and asked to be re-admitted.
Meanwhile the church did spread geographically, so that by AD 200 the Christian writer Tertullian could proclaim, “Is there anyone else in whom people from every nation have come to believe” (Against the Jews 7). Just as importantly, Scripture was soon translated into numerous languages—Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and others. Unlike Islam, worship was not restricted to the language of a single culture. This attitude would allow worship and administration forms to be altered to fit cultures and changing times. Yet it was also clear that the church’s teaching and doctrine, often called the “rule of faith” in early centuries, was not to change. This complex assignment of keeping the faith unchanged while putting it into new languages and cultures is the high goal for the “jars of clay” to whom the Great Commission was given. It has always been the goal of the Chinese church as well.
The missionaries of the Church of the East who planted Christianity in China in the seventh century faced an especially challenging situation. Their liturgical language was Syriac, a dialect closely akin to Hebrew and Aramaic. Their mother church was Middle Eastern. Their leaders, mostly non-Chinese, had a shaky grasp, at best, on Chinese language and culture. But with guidance from the Spirit and the permission of the Tang emperors (see the earlier posts in this series), they established the first Chinese church, calling it the Jingjiao, the Luminous Teaching.
Although the Church of the East was known in the West as the “Nestorian” church, there is no sign that it taught the Christological heresy for which Nestorius was excommunicated. It has also been accused of incorporating concepts from Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and traditional Chinese religion. While some religious terminology from these other faiths is found in Jingjiao documents, this is exactly what one would expect in a missionary situation—that known terminology would be used as the new teaching was explained. The continuous contact with the mother church would have prevented the Jingjiao from “going rogue” and morphing into some sort of “Daoist Christianity” as was claimed by Martin Palmer in his 2001 book The Jesus Sutras. We have few surviving documents and sparse archaeological findings on which to base our knowledge of the Jingjiao, and this should make us wary of judging their teaching and practices. We cannot know how “Chinese” the Jingjiao became.
Church of the East missionaries were again planting the gospel in China during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Christians at that time were called Yelikewen, a term of uncertain meaning. This time the church, which had started among the semi-nomadic Turkic and Mongol tribes, spread even more widely in China. Catholic monks serving as emissaries as well as missionaries left sketchy descriptions of the Yelikewen clergy and practices, usually disparaging because they were so different from their own. They even described church buildings in the form of Mongolian yurts. Yet we have good evidence that this indigenized church retained its Christian teaching. When two Yelikewen monks from Beijing traveled back to the Middle East about AD 1280, one was sent to Europe as an ambassador for the Church of the East while the other was elected to serve as patriarch of the entire church. The Chinese monk Mark became Yahballaha III and began a long and successful patriarchy (1281–1317).
Thus, long before the arrival of Western missionaries, Christianity had existed in China in forms that were to some extent indigenized. When in the early seventeenth century the Jesuit Matteo Ricci developed new strategies for enculturating the Catholic Church in China, he was unwittingly already part of a mission tradition. Protestants such as Hudson Taylor and his Chinese Inland Mission teams tried to clothe the Christian message in appropriate cultural expressions, just as they outwardly donned Chinese garb. Yet, as long as foreigners dictated mission policies, appointed leaders, and controlled funds, the goal of indigenization remained far from realization.
This started to change in the early twentieth century as independent Protestant congregations began forming in China’s major cities, led by Chinese pastors. Soon they were forming denominational groups such as the China Christian Independent Church (中國耶穌教自立會; Zhongguo Yesujiao Zilihui) and the Shandong Chinese Independent Church (山東中華基督教自立會, Shandong Zhonguo Jidujiao Zilihui). As these groups grew in the decades that followed, other groups arose, indigenously Chinese from their inception. Most prominent among these was Watchman Nee (倪柝聲, Ni Tuosheng) and his Little Flock (小群, Xiaoqun) movement. Other indigenous movements appeared, each with its own “Chinese characteristics,” the True Jesus Church (真耶穌教會) and the Jesus Family (耶穌家庭), to name but two. At the same time, civil war, the Japanese invasion, and WWII all reduced and eventually ended the Western mission presence in China.
As a result, by the time the CCP founded the People’s Republic of China in October of 1949, both internal and external developments had already conspired to ensure that most of the Protestant congregations in mainland China were functionally independent, and many were also indigenous in their church cultures. The enforced break of virtually all communications with the Western church during the following four decades completed the process of making the Chinese church self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-governing, as we find it today.
Yet many Chinese who are not Christian, still view the church as “foreign.” It continues to make use of creeds, hymns, liturgical and sacramental rites, and visual art, that, it is argued, are culturally based and mere copies of the artifacts and practices of the wider church. Even theological categories and vocabulary are not yet thoroughly Chinese. This was a frequent criticism of Bishop Ting (Ding Guangxun), the TSPM’s most important leader and spokesperson of the TSPM until his death in 2012. The CCP leadership has issued similar calls for more indigenization, though quite obviously, it sees this first and foremost as a closer alignment of Christian teaching and practice with the CCPs own political and social philosophy. Some Christian Chinese theologians, however, have chimed in, wishing to see a more distinctive Chinese theology being developed for the modern church.
Thus, while there is general agreement from all sides that a truly Chinese church is the goal, there is still little agreement on what that means in practice. Is it better if a church choir does not use Western style robes and sing only hymns whose words and melodies are composed by Chinese Christians? Is a distinctly Chinese creed needed to replace the Nicene Creed? The recent foregrounding of “face” and honor/shame ethics in Chinese theological contexts is certainly a welcome step in the opinion of most, but does the entire structure of theological study need to be recast using Chinese categories and logic?
Chinese Christians and their partners will continue to hold up the goal that the church in China become truly Chinese. And what that would look like will continue to be debated, as it has been throughout the history of Christianity in the Middle Kingdom. However, the very nature of the church as the “one body” of Christ, and as the “one, holy, universal and apostolic church” (as the Nicene Creed expresses it), also involves a commonality between Christians near and far. Thus, a truly “Christian” Chinese church will not only be thoroughly enculturated, but it will also retain the entire “rule of faith” shared by the rest of the universal church. Finally, Chinese Christians, knowing they are part of the universal church, will continue to seek to share the joys and trials of the indigenous churches of all other cultures. Such a church would be biblical, God-pleasing, and truly Chinese.
Image credit: Courtesy of Joann Pittman.
Glen Thompson
Glen L. Thompson received an MDiv from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and MA and PhD degrees in history from Columbia University. He served as a missionary in Zambia, New York City, and Hong Kong, and held professorships at Wisconsin Lutheran College (Milwaukee) and most recently at Asia Lutheran Seminary (Hong Kong) …View Full Bio
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