In Session 1, we talked about the first three Christian missions to China and their differences with the Protestant mission to China. As a reminder, the former were “northward and further northward,” and the latter was “westward and further westward.” And what was the difference between the 19th and 20th century missionaries to China? The 19th century was an age of a multitude of denominations, while the 20th century saw the major church distinction shift to that between the liberals and the fundamentalists. Taking 1900 as a pivotal year, the nature of 20th century missionaries to China would undergo a great change from those of the 19th century. Namely, an increasing number of 20th century missionaries were followers of liberal theology.
Now we will briefly look at how in the first fifty years of the 20th century before 1949, two branches of Christianity would arise in the Chinese church: the liberals and the fundamentalists, with two different church systems, and, in a sense, two distinctive forms of Christianity.
One form of Christianity was fundamentalism, which could also be called “China for Christ” Christianity. The other form is liberalism, which could also be called “Christ for China” Christianity. These two were the respective original sources of the house churches and the TSPM. “China for Christ” came from Griffith John, who claimed that rather than being in China for any other purpose, the purpose of his mission was to “conquer China for Christ.”[1] Yet, in the 20th century, missionaries would feel ashamed of this type of saying. So, 19th century missions were for Christ, but 20th century missions were for China. While 19th century missionaries would not compromise with Chinese culture in the least, missionaries of the 20th century were very passionate about Chinese culture.
I have been describing the more broad trend. While the year 1900 serves as a turning point, at the second General Conference of Protestant Missionaries of China in 1890, conflicts between these two forms of Christianity began to intensify when William Alexander Parsons Martin (1827–1916) and Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) argued over the topic of “ancestor worship,” leaving no space for reconciliation. Martin held ancestor worship to be different from idol worship and argued the church should respect and be more tolerant of Chinese culture. Hudson Taylor vehemently disagreed and charged this saying with heresy. Yet, at the end of the 19th century, there was still no distinction between “Hudson Taylor Christianity” and “William Alexander Parsons Martin Christianity.” The reason was that when Hudson Taylor invited all who agreed with him to stand, everyone at the conference did so and no one would identify with Martin.
This is why I said that the 19th century missionaries were the world’s most conservative fundamentalists at the time who generally were not influenced by the liberal theology of their motherlands. The ratio of fundamentalists to liberals was 99.9 to 0.01. Such superiority remained till the massacre of the 1900 Boxer Rebellion.Afterwards, it began to change.
One scholar of Chinese politics commented that 19th century missionaries only wanted to be teachers to the Chinese, while 20th century missionaries were finally willing to be students of Chinese culture. They finally became teachable. Since you are familiar with 19th century missionaries to China, could you mention a few names who made great contributions to and impacted the Chinese church? Robert Morrison, Hudson Taylor, Sam Pollard , William Alexander Parsons Martin (yes he was a missionary to Wuhan). I hope each of you might know one missionary to your hometown. Who else? Calvin Wilson Mateer, James O. Fraser, and William Edward Soothill (who was a missionary to Wenzhou). You have all heard famous stories about them.
However, as we get into the 20th century, we find that there were almost no missionaries who made great contributions to or had a major impact on the Chinese church. Can you name any foreign pastor who had a great impact on the Chinese church? None. The famous missionaries of this time were those influenced by Chinese society and culture. Who do you know? John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962) and Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973), the famous writer. Her father was a Southern Presbyterian missionary and she was a missionary as well. But she strongly opposed the fundamentalists and those endless sermons. There was a debate between her and John Gresham Machen, who founded Westminster Theological Seminary, that connected the 20th century fundamentalists with the liberals as well as the Chinese church with the American church. Pearl S. Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and was probably the most socially renowned missionary to China. When she returned to the United States, she published a criticism against the conservative goals and methods of mission. Machen harshly charged her with deviation from the fundamentals of the Christian faith and called on the Board of Foreign Missions to expel her. In the end, Machen was criticized for his “intolerance.” Pearl S. Buck appeared to be graceful in admitting that Machen was right in calling her a liberal and she voluntarily left the Presbyterian church.
The Dream of a Nationalist Church
For the Chinese church, 1900 resulted in the upsurge of nationalism that gradually entered into the church. The national crisis of backwardness and vulnerability led to a strong desire by the church to leave the western missionaries, an “adolescent” appeal.
The 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh marked the first time a Chinese pastor attended a global church conference. A young Cheng Jingyi (1881–1939) who would later become the main leader of pre-1949 the liberal Christianity, proclaimed at the conference that Chinese church had always been a “church in China,” but now Chinese Christians needed a “church of China.” Chinese people wanted their own church. This was actually the original version of what would become the TSPM, a “dream of a nationalist church.” However, this was not a big dream for the church, but rather a small dream for the church. From then on, indigenous liberal leaders began to come on to the scene and the church’s dream began to become another part of the Chinese dream.
This combination of nationalist pursuit and liberal theology was partially reasonable. As Paul was on his missionary journeys, his strategy was to go into the top city in a region, Ephesus or Philippi for example, and preach the gospel there. The gospel would then bring people to Christ and build up churches. Afterwards, he would then stay among the believers for one to three years and strengthen them. The last step of this process of building up the church was to elect elders, as he directed Titus, “to appoint elders in every town.”[2] And after appointing elders? Then he could say that he had preached the gospel all over that region and could move on to another region. The church of that region was then committed to God and His gospel of grace, thus finishing the mission process. Paul never maintained direct control of the local churches, especially in long term.
But the protestant missionaries had been in China for over a century. The third General Conference of Protestant Missionaries to China in 1907 fell on the 100-year anniversary of Robert Morrison’s mission to China. Missionaries had then only just begun to discuss this issue. That is to say, after a century in China, missionaries still had not build up a local church that could be committed to God and His gospel of grace. The mission boards and missionaries controlled almost all the authority over the governance and teaching of the Chinese church.
This resulted in widespread discontent among the Chinese ministers and conflicts with missionaries. While the children had grown up, the parents still kept tight control of everything, which we probably all have experienced. But this was not only a problem for the missionaries. The 1900 massacre was an unprecedented disaster for the Chinese church. In northern China, most Chinese pastors and evangelists were martyred. Decades of building up indigenous leaders came to nothing. While mission boards could continuously provide new missionaries, it took decades to build up indigenous leaders.
Therefore, in 20th century Chinese church history, there were two times when the sheep lacked shepherds. As the house churches put it, there were “more sheep than shepherds needed”. The first time occurred in the twenty years after 1900, while the second happened in the twenty years from the end of the 1950s to the end of the 1970s.
After the Cultural Revolution began, there were no pastors left. Some of them betrayed the Lord, some were locked up in prison, while others were in labor camps. The government viewed pastors as useless and lazy people who would not work but instead relied on believers to support them, so it sent all the pastors left to labor camps for reform through labor. There were essentially no ministers left in China.
Consequently, the Chinese house church movement was essentially a layperson’s gospel movement. It was a church movement started by laypeople. During the most difficult period, there was no pastor ordained before 1949 who was still leading a church. None of them, not one except those who had betrayed the Lord. Therefore, in the wilderness, God, through the Holy Spirit, called a group of travelling shepherds from the laity. When these laypeople were called, some had yet to finish reading the Bible in its entirety even once since the Bibles available were all hand copied and hard to obtain. But the Spirit moved them and pushed them to step up and travel around to preach. This is the history of churches in Henan and Anhui provinces in the second half of the 20th century. Therefore, the house church movement was a revival movement of travelling lay preachers, a continuation of the revival movement between 1927 and 1937 that I will cover later.
The “Century Babies” of 1900
It took until the beginning of the 1920s to restore to the church the same number of Chinese pastors as there were before the 1899 massacre. Should this be 1900? It took twenty years for a new generation to grow. But God did something amazing: He prepared for the Chinese church a group of “century babies” who were born around 1900. These people came on the scene of the church after the 1920s and through them God gifted the Chinese church the great revival that took place between 1927 and 1937, which laid the foundation of China’s indigenous fundamentalist tradition. They were also the generation of spiritual heroes who have influenced the Chinese church through today.
These century babies include Wang Mingdao (1900–1991), the most important spiritual leader of the Chinese house churches; Andrew Gih (Ji Zhiwen 1901–1985), the great leader of the revivalist preaching movement in the 1930s; John Sung (Song Shangjie, 1901–1944 editorial correction), one of the greatest preachers of the 20th century; Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng, 1903–1972), who founded The Local Churches, the largest denomination of Chinese fundamentalist churches[3]; Leland Wang (Wang Zai, 1898–1975), who was also from Fujian province like Watchman Nee and John Sung, and who is called the “Chinese Moody”; and Zhao Junying (1906–1966), the most important leader of the college campus gospel movement in the 1940s. Whom else can you name? Ding Limei (1871–1936) and Jia Yuming (1880–1964) were older than Wang Mingdao and his seniors. Samuel Lamb (Lin Xiangao 1924–2013) and Allen Yuan (Yuan Xiangchen 1914–2005) were younger than Wang Mingdao and his juniors. These century babies of the church were all born around 1900. Pastor Stephen Tong once said, “this proves God is the Lord of history. You can kill one generation, and I will bring up another even greater one.”
When they arrived on the Chinese church scene in the 1920s, the spiritual leadership and authority of the church, as well as the fundamentalist gospel preached by the 19th century missionaries were all handed over from the missionaries to these indigenous ministers. A fundamentalist Christianity and a fundamentalist church came into being in China. This development happened a little later with the fundamentalists than the with formation of liberal Christianity since the liberals were not short of renowned intellectuals. This had to be God’s special plan.
Among them, Wang Mingdao’s birth was most unusual. Since his father was a Presbyterian, he and his whole family were looking for refuge during the Boxer Rebellion but had nowhere to go. Circumstances were very difficult and his father was weak and encountered crisis in faith, so he hung himself. His mother was pregnant with him and took refuge in the foreign legation quarter in Beijing. He was born in the U.S. Embassy. According to Chinese tradition, he was a posthumous son. He is a posthumous son who God gave to the Chinese church, and one given by the 19th century missionaries to the 20th century Chinese church.
These century babies each grew up in their unique ways, which we will not cover in detail. Wang Mingdao was born in 1900, which is easy to remember. In 1925, at the age of 25, he joined an important alliance of fundamentalist leaders called the Bible Society. He was the youngest, yet he acted as the secretary. The Bible’s Society’s leaders included Jia Yuming, Dora Yu (Yu Cidu 1873–1931), Li Yuanru (1894–1969), and Wang Zhi (?). In 1927, at the age of 27, Wang Mingdao published the Spiritual Food Quarterly. The “Chinese Great Revival” took place that year. He was arrested in 1955 at the age of 55 when the house church movement started.
The Fundamentalist Camp
I will briefly list the various blocks of the fundamentalist camp. First, let’s look at the missionaries and the denominations they built. By the 1920s, most missionaries and the denominations they led had become liberal.
The Revolution of 1911 led to another upsurge of nationalism. China sought independence, the abolition of unequal treaties, and freedom from foreign intervention. At that time, the church became the scapegoat for the imperialist invasion of China. Opposition to foreign forces or imperialism also meant opposition to Christianity.
The period between 1911 and 1922 is known as the golden years of the Republic of China. At this time, cultural anti-church sentiment was brewing. In 1922, China witnessed a new wave of anti-church movement that was the largest since the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, called the Anti-Christian Movement. Its idea was the rejection and criminalization of Christianity. I tried to bring in the chengyu here. Soon it developed into an anti-religion movement that rejected all forms of religion.
What is interesting is that while 19th century Christianity was different from 20th century Christianity, the reason for opposing to Christianity in the 19th century was also different from the reason for its opposition in the 20th century, so much so that the two reasons are completely flipped. In the 19th century, China stood against Christianity because Christianity was a foreign, western thing that did not pair well with our tradition. Yet, in the 20th century, the reason for opposition to Christianity changed. The New Culture Movement of 1919 made Democracy and Science—both from the West—idols for the new world. Therefore, the reason for opposition to Christianity was not because Christianity was Western but because it was not Western enough, not modern enough, not civilized enough. In the West, Christianity had been ditched for democracy and science. In summary, whereas before Christianity was taken as too Westernized, in the 20th century it was taken as too unmodern. This is why the New Cultural Movement opposed Christianity. This is also one reason why liberal theology enveloped Western Christianity. Because if you didn’t enter completely into the times, you were made to look like an ignorant product of the Middle Ages.
Similar to the Boxer Rebellion, at that time there again were a combination of conflicts at both the cultural and the national level. First, the Anti-Christianity Movement started with students and professors of Peking University. Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), and Hu Shi (1891–1962), cultural masters of the Republic of China, were all against Christianity. Only a few people, Qian Xuantong (1887–1939) and Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967), stood up to promote religious freedom. The church at the time had few who could stand up and in self-defense. There were professors within the liberal camp, but they felt awkward and their words did not carry weight. The fundamentalist church had just only existed for twenty years and had no cultural representatives. Zhou Zuoren and his friends stood up and claimed it was wrong to bully Christianity and published a Declaration of Religious Freedom. While they were famous, in the midst of the storm of anti-Christianity they were nothing. This kind of anti-Christian activity at the cultural level was represented by Peking University.
At the same time, the left wings of both the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were active political forces in promoting the anti-Christianity movement. The Communist Youth League was most active both on-stage and behind the scenes. Yun Daiying (1895–1931) was the early leader in charge of the publicity department. One of his famous quotes was, “One more Christian, one less Chinese.” He believed that the spread of Christianity would threaten the survival of the nation. the representative of the left-wing Nationalists was Wang Jingwei (1883–1944), who was the major force behind driving the church out of the schools.
From 1922 to 1927, the Anti-Christianity Movement’s most important achievement was “taking back the right of education” by eliminating Christian schools. While the schools still existed, they were all taken over by the Ministry of Education who no longer acknowledged the church’s right to run the schools. The church could offer financial help and provide staff, but it could not manage schools. Christianity could not be a required course, nor could staff and students be required to attend worship services. Christianity was purged from education, especially in the primary and middle schools (first to ninth grade). In high schools and colleges, religious education could only exist in elective and extracurricular courses.
One issue worth reflection regarding Christian education is that one of the major forces against the church in the Anti-Christianity Movement and the “taking back right of education” movement was the student community at Christian schools. It was Christian school students who led the protest demonstrations against missionaries and the petition to take Christian schools and turn them back into Chinese schools. The outbreak of the May Thirtieth Movement resulted in another wave of nationalism. Students from the best-known church schools, colleges, and middle schools all took to the streets in demonstrations and signed a collective petition for the government to take back Christian schools and drive away the missionaries.
This is where the formation of the liberal theology, “the other Christianity,” led to in China. When missionaries deviated from the gospel focus of the salvation of souls and turned education from “for Christ” to “for China,” from “for the church” to “for society,” most students educated in the Christian schools would become followers of the world. Additionally, the trend of the world was toward left-wing ideology. Including Great Britain and the United States, the whole world entered into a “pink age.” The Soviet Union was like the great red dragon and there was blood all over that country. The whole of Europe and the U.S. were pink, and their left-wing followers were the predecessors of the White Left (liberal elites) of our time. Since the world was trending left, students at the Christian schools were also left-wing, and consequently, they gradually became the strongholds of left-wing ideology in China. Wang Guangmei (1921–2006), Jiang Zemin (b. 1926), and Jiang Zhujun (Sister Jiang in the novel Red Rock 1920–1949) all graduated from Christian schools. Deng Xiaoping’s mother also graduated from a Christian school. Even the Red Army general Fang Zhimin (1899–1935) graduated from a Christian school, and yet troops under his command kidnapped and killed missionaries.
Missionaries under the influence of liberal theology were so into changing the Chinese reality through preaching Christianity that their goal of mercy and cultural ministry began to gain an advantage over a focus on the gospel. Also, their understanding of the gospel and the Bible was influenced by liberal theology. In the second half of the 19th century, higher criticism and form criticism had begun to deny the authority of the Bible. Within twenty years, this shift would cause the Chinese church to reap what the liberal missionaries sowed.
1927: The Great Revival
But 1927 was an unexpected turning point. The Holy Spirit was poured out onto China and did something seemingly random, and yet amazing, which suddenly ended this round of the anti-church movement. That year, God converted the person who united the nation with military strength. It began with Feng Yuxiang (1882–1948), who captured Peking and united the north with a high probability of uniting the whole nation. He was converted and was passionate for the Lord. He even started a movement to eliminate Buddhism in the north. He invited the famous fundamentalist pastor Marcus Cheng (Chen Chonggui 1884–1963) to be a chaplain in his army. Cheng once baptized five thousand soldiers in one preaching event. Feng Yuxiang was on the cover of Time magazine, which proclaimed him to be the “Christian general” with the world’s largest private army. However, few expected that it would not be him who would finally unite the nation, but rather his opponent Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi 1887–1975). Even more unexpected was that Chiang Kai-shek married Song Meiling (1898–2003), the daughter of pastor Charlie Soong (Song Yaoru 1863–1918), and was converted and baptized. Sun Yatsen (Sun Zhongshan 1866–1925) was another son-in-law of pastor Soong. Therefore, I encourage mothers of girls to serve faithfully at home because this type of faithful service could potentially change the fate of the country.
In this way, the revival that would last for ten years began in 1927. That year, Wang Mingdao started the Spiritual Food Quarterly, Andrew Gih founded the Bethel Evangelistic Band, Watchman Nee started the Local Church at Wende Lane on Hardoon Road in Shanghai, and there was the first “Peiling” conference for revival and Bible study in Guangzhou (The next year Hong Kong also hosted a conference for revival and Bible study, which would become the long-lasting Hong Kong Bible Conference). The word “peiling” was coined by pastor Zhao Liutang (1898–?) and became the Chinese church’s specific term for a great revival. The most conservative fundamentalist organization, the Fundamentalist Alliance, was also founded in 1927. With the ceasefire and outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the great revival of fundamentalist Christianity was soon to begin. Furthermore, it was in this year that liberal Christianity entered its peak with the founding of the “Church of Christ in China.”
The reason this was an amazing turning point was because of the Nanking Incident of 1927 when the National Revolutionary Army under the command of Chiang Kai-shek captured Nanking in their northern expedition. Soldiers burned churches and killed six missionaries, including Dr. John Elias Williams (1871–1927), vice president of Nanking University. This incident made headlines both at home and abroad. People had held high expectations for Chiang Kai-shek and his army and hoped he would unite the nation. As a result, during that time, many denominations started to pull out of China.
Yet, afterwards God did something amazing. He did not strike Chiang Kai-shek with fire from heaven, but rather introduced a girlfriend to him. Song Meilin’s mother told him that he had to be converted. He replied that he would have to read the Bible carefully a couple of times. So, he carried his Bible on his expedition. Later, he married Song Meilin in Shanghai and was baptized. He was first married and then baptized. Never follow his example. After his conversion and baptism, the whole anti-Christianity wave within the Nationalist party faded until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War[4]. God gave China ten years of peace and gave the church ten years of great revival.
God is merciful and righteous. In the language of the Old Testament, God forgave Chiang Kai-shek and said to him: “Kai-shek, Kai-shek, why do you persecute my church? If you repent, I will exalt you, I will marry my daughter to you and give this land to you. I will call your wickedness to account, but you will rule this nation till 1949. Then you will get up early daily to read the Scriptures and pray so that you can keep one island until you are eighty. I will set a boundary for you in Jinmen Island, I will raise up winds and waves and strike down your enemy and stop them there.”
Notice that this great revival was not started by missionaries, but rather by indigenous revival preachers. These preachers of course did not appear from out of nowhere. Later we will look at the second block of the fundamentalists: those from among the missionaries. But next, we will look at the indigenous movement.
The Three-Self Concept and The Independence Movement
Now let us discuss another matter. After 1911, the “Three-self” concept and the indigenous movement, or the independence movement of the Chinese church, appeared.
“Three-Self” means self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting. There are good concepts, aren’t they? This is because they stem from Presbyterian church planting principles and the Presbyterian church planting spirit. They were also first proposed by the American Presbyterian missionary John Livingstone Nevius (1829–1893).
When we plant churches, we also look at these three goals. The first is financial self-support. When can the church plant be financially independent and not in need of financial support from the mother church? Two years? Three years? Nine years? This is the goal for self-support. However, the purpose of self-support is not to pay back the mother church, but to encourage the church plant itself to become a mother church and give money to help plant other churches. In other words, when will you marry, leave your father and mother, hold fast to your wife, and be fruitful and multiply?[5]
We currently use the seed funding method to help plant churches. Take Canaan Church as an example. The mother church supports them with 7000 RMB each month, 3500 for support of the ministers and another 3500 for church ministries. In half of year, we will require the Canaan Church to return ten percent each month, which is 700 RMB. In the second year they will return fifteen percent each month, the third year, thirty percent, the fourth year, forty percent, and the fifth year, sixty percent, until they return all the support from the mother church to the seed fund. Notice that the money will be returned to the seed fund so that the fund can continue to roll and support the next church plant. In this way, each church plant also participates in the Great Commission. So, the first goal for a church plant is self-support.
The second goal for a church plant is self-governance. The benchmark for self-governance is for a plant to establish its own session of elders, “appointing elders in every town.”[6] For example, Early Rain Green Pastures Church in Deyang city has reached its goal of self-support and does not need any financial support from the mother church. When we started the Covenant of Grace Church last year, they contributed tens of thousands of RMB. When we rebuilt the Covenant School, they also contributed tens of thousands of RMB. Financially they have become a preaching station that is willing and able to give to others. But, just as one cannot eat with only one chopstick, they are still not a congregation because they have only one elder,. Therefore, they still treat the mother church’s session of elders as their own session until they elect (editor’s adaptation to the translation) a second elder and establish their own session of elders. Then Early Rain Green Pastures Church will be self-governed.
The third goal for a church plant is self-propagation. For example, we have seven preaching stations. Normally, preaching interns preach at these stations; but when communion and baptism take place, the mother church will send pastors and elders there to administer. An outward sign of the Great Commission is to baptize people of all nations. Yet self-propagation cannot be done without the establishment of calling and confirmation for office. One great burden of our church is that we have so many preaching stations but so few elders. Therefore, please pray urgently that ministers would soon be ordained to be pastors and elders so that these preaching stations could soon achieve their Three-Self goals.
The funny thing here is that Chinese house churches are the most “Three-Self-like” churches, while the “Three-Self Patriotic Church” is a completely shady church. First, many ministers in the TSPM get salaries from government subsidy and cannot achieve self-support. Second, there is no self-governance because there is another authority comprised of nonbelievers called the Department of United Front Work or Bureau of Religious Affairs that stands above their session. Third, they are not self-propagating because their preaching has to be approved by the government, they are forbidden to preach in another region, and they cannot baptize anyone under the age of eighteen. Therefore, they are a church thoroughly opposed to Three-Self principles.
Therefore, this “Three-Self” is not the same as the Three-Self principle. Around 1911, the Chinese church’s largest pursuit was to become independent from western missionaries, mission boards, and mother churches—to leave its father and mother and hold fast to its wife. This was an appropriate ecclesiological goal. Just as this is the goal for raising a child, it is also the purpose for a church mission. The goal is not to always keep one church as the “son church,” but rather to let it become an independent congregation.
However, along with the major changes in 1900, missionaries were slow to act. Consequently, when nationalism arose, the Chinese church could wait no longer and stood up against the missionaries in an effort to become independent. This process caused mutual damage and grieved many missionaries. Contrarily, some Chinese churches felt the missionaries were too dominating, never giving us authority, never thinking we were qualified for pastoral offices, for ordination, that we couldn’t be elders or deacons, and always treating their Chinese co-workers as immature. There was much infighting and hatred within the church. This infighting and hatred was never dealt with. Consequently, when the political movement came after 1949, Pandora’s Box was opened, and these movements turned into horrible accusations against ministers and missionaries. Therefore, if internal church issues the church are not dealt with, when government persecution comes, brothers will accuse each other in every way possible.
But there were also some churches who detached themselves from mission boards not because of such feuds, but rather because of liberal theology’s gradual control of the missionary community. As Paul says in Philippians, “Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will.”[7] The latter left the western mission boards out of faithfulness. They would become the Chinese fundamentalist churches. The former left the western mission boards out of selfish ambition, not sincerely. After leaving, they would become China’s liberal churches.
The Great Revival in Shandong Province
There were two key areas of the Great Revival: Shandong province in the north and Fujian province in the south. Almost all major revivalist preachers and fundamentalist forces were from these areas. The Norwegian female missionary Marie Monsen (her Chinese name was Meng Muzhen, a very beautiful name 1878–1962) wrote a book titled The Great Revival of China. Some, obviously overstating the role of missionaries in this revival, have called her the Mother of the Chinese House Church. The core of the Great Revival consisted of a group of indigenous revivalist preachers who, as a whole, had separated from Western mission boards and missionaries. The Great Revival was a complete transfer of spiritual authority to the Chinese church “that had been committed to God and His gospel of grace.” It was also God’s preparation for the eruption of the War of Resistance Against Aggression and the volatility of 1949.[8]
Fujian province was another source of the Great Revival. As the 1900 massacre took place primarily in the north, it had limited influence on the south where not as many believers were martyred. The White Lotus movement entered the scene only briefly and had little influence.[9] Furthermore, Fujian province was the best stronghold for the church as it entered into China. It was not attacked in the 1900 rebellion and did not suffer from the loss of indigenous elites. Consequently, half of China’s revivalist preachers were from Fujian and most of them could trace their heritage back to three generations of Christian tradition. 19th century Christianity took roots in Fujian and nurtured preachers like Watchman Nee, John Sung, Wang Zai, and Stephen Tong (b. 1940). Pastor Tong lost his father at early age and migrated to Southeast Asia with his mother.
Let’s go back to Shandong province. Another missionary, Charles Lee Culpepper Sr. (1895–1986), wrote the book The Great Revival in Shandong. After 1860, Shandong gradually became the stronghold for the Presbyterian church. The Presbyterian church started in southern Fujian, went up north along the coast, and settled in Shandong, which was considered the “New England of China”. The elites such as Calvin Wilson Mateer (1836–1908) stayed in Shandong and founded Tengchow College, the very first Christian school, which later became the very first college in China, Cheeloo University, also considered the Princeton University of China. Wine was also brought into Shandong for the first time by Presbyterians. Since Presbyterians had the tradition of using wine for communion, in China only Presbyterian churches in Shandong used it for communion. Yet in the 1920s, when liberal theology came eastward into Shandong, the seminary affiliated with Cheeloo University also became liberalized.
In 1900, God did another amazing thing. Since Shandong was hard hit by the massacre of believers, that year Tengchow College graduated only two students, one of them being Jia Yuming, the spiritual giant of future fundamentalist Christianity in China.
In addition, there was also a Presbyterian missionary, Jonathan Goforth (1859–1936), who escaped the 1900 massacre. He predominately served in northeast China and Shandong, and wherever he went a fire of revival followed. Jonathan Goforth planted the seeds for the Shandong Revival that started in 1927. Through him God brought the first wave of revival since 1900.
If we take Wang Mingdao to be the posthumous child God gifted to the Chinese fundamentalist church in 1900, Jia Yuming would be the graduate God gifted to the Chinese fundamentalist church in 1900, and Jonathan Goforth would be the survivor of the Boxer Rebellion God gifted to the Chinese fundamentalist church in 1900. One posthumous child, one graduate, and one survivor. In the spiritual layout of 1900, nothing else and no one else surpasses them in importance.
Fundamentalist Missionaries
Now we will talk about the second block of the Chinese fundamentalist Christian camp, the fundamentalist missionaries. They were the minority among 20th century missionaries and were usually regarded as unwelcomed “troublemakers.” Yet, for the 20th century Chinese church, especially for Chinese house churches, no other missionaries contributed more. Besides Jonathan Goforth, there are two other important representatives. One is Hugh Watt White (1870–1940) of the American Southern Presbyterian Mission who was called the pioneer of Chinese fundamentalists since he founded the Bible Alliance that united the fundamentalist missionaries. Where did missionaries go to spend the summer? The two most well-known places were Mount Lu and Kulangsu. In 20th century Chinese history, any meeting held in Mount Lu would have significant consequences. That summer (of 1900?), these fundamentalist missionaries went to Guling town in Mount Lu and held a meeting that impacted the Chinese church for the next one hundred years. They founded a Bible Alliance, published a fundamentalist manifesto, and sharply criticized the liberal missionaries in China and the American mother churches who sent liberal missionaries to China. Like the followers of the Reformed tradition in China today, most churches in China and mission boards at the time did not like them. Hugh White was the most important and least liked among the fundamentalists.
The second was Watson McMillan Hayes (1857–1944), who was also from the Northern Presbyterian Church and who was called the foundation of the Chinese fundamentalists. Notice that almost half of the fundamentalist missionaries were from the Northern Presbyterian Church. Among the western denominations in China in the 20th century, the Northern Presbyterian Church was the denomination that had the greatest impact on the Chinese fundamentalist churches and the future house churches. This is not to say that there were no fundamentalists from other denominations, but other denominations were controlled by liberals and their fundamentalists were few and far between. While the Northern Presbyterian Church also had many presbyteries who were liberalized, there were two presbyteries that were conservative strongholds among the Western denominations in China: the Shandong Presbytery and the North Jiangsu Presbytery. The two bordered each other. Praise the Lord that a hundred years later we now have the Xuzhou Presbytery and the Shandong Presbytery. We hope they will become future strongholds for conservatives in China again.
Watson McMillan Hayes and North China Theological Seminary
The Shandong Presbytery and The North Jiangsu Presbytery came together for a project that greatly impacted the Chinese fundamentalist church. the Shandong Presbytery served as one of the important mission boards for the board of trustees at Cheeloo University. Since its theological college was influenced by liberal theology, Dean Watson McMillan Hayes left the college with a few professors and eighteen students and founded the North China Theological Seminary in Tengxian, Shandong Province. The Shandong and North Jiangsu Presbyteries agreed to help build this seminary. This incident resembled the founding of the Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 when J. Gresham Machen and a few other professors left the liberalized Princeton Theological Seminary to found Westminster Theological Seminary. This seminary became the foundation for American conservative churches. A similar thing happened in China ten years earlier. People wrote a poem in memory of these missionaries:
“Hugh White was the pioneer,
and Watson Hayes was the foundation.
When Jesus was recognized as the Christ,
the house church was formed”.
In the 1920s, Watson Hayes wrote an article criticizing liberal theology’s corrupting effect on the church, especially its poisoning of education. He said, “Today’s Christian schools in China will be shown to be the pathway to Communism.” This turned out to be a true prophecy. He spoke these words only a few years after the founding of the CCP. How could he see this? Because God granted him the wisdom to see it.
Through North China Theological Seminary, the fundamentalist missionaries united with the indigenous fundamentalist ministers. After Watson Hayes, Jia Yuming became the second principal of North China Theological Seminary. Yang Shaotang (1900–1969) graduated from the seminary. Pastor Zhang Guquan (1923–1956), founder of the Northwest Spiritual Movement, also graduated from this school. While Wang Mingdao was neither a student nor a professor of the school, he was frequently invited to speak there.
The third block of the fundamentalist camp was the China Inland Mission, the largest interdenominational mission board and the only fundamentalist board until the first half of the 20th century. Praise the Lord, not only because they were the largest in scale and longest-lasting in history but also because they had the greatest impact on the Chinese church. In other words, in terms of gospel ministry, from the fundamentalist standpoint, it was fair to call Hudson Taylor “the father of Chinese house church”. His great-grandson (editorial fact correction), pastor James Hudson Taylor II, also went with the Bethel Evangelistic Band to preach the gospel in the frontier of China.
In summary, fundamentalist Christianity was formed before 1949 by three main forces: the Northern Presbyterian Mission (two presbyteries and one theological seminary), the China Inland Mission, and the great revival in Shandong. The former two were missionary-formed and the latter was from the camp of indigenous preachers.
The Liberal Camp
Soon after the independent church movement began, most Chinese churches left the Western denominations to form their own independent churches. This separation meant that these churches lacked in organizational relationships. Their motivations for independence were complex. Alongside of the rise of nationalism and a strong self-esteem, other important factors included the fight for interest and power in the independent church’s “Great Leap Forward.”[10] For example, pastor Yu Guozhen (1852–1932) was an important leader of the independent church movement. He had belonged to the Presbyterian church; yet because of disputes over church property, he left the denomination and founded independent Presbyterian church and later the China Christian Independent Church.
Like the conservative camp, the liberal camp also had three major blocks. The first block was the Christian Council of China. Founded in 1922, most independent churches joined the council, and in only a few years it represented thirty to fifty percent of Chinese Christians, thus becoming the largest church of that time. The China Inland Mission hesitated and struggled with the decision of whether or not join as it tried to maintain the union of the church. Meanwhile, everyone was forming “China’s church.” One of Hudson Taylor’s best-known statements was, “If I had a thousand lives, China should have them.”[11] The China Inland Mission was afraid that had it not joined the Christian Council, others would think it was building its own faction. So, it bit the bullet and joined the Christian Council. However, by 1925 the China Inland Mission could no longer remain and withdrew from the Christian Council because it saw through things and realized that the Christian Council was a liberal organization. Until it’s eviction from China in 1949, the China Inland Mission kept one principle: be independent and do not join any unification effort in China (although it did become an unofficial member of one fundamentalist alliance).
The second organization was the Church of Christ in China founded in 1928 on the foundation of the Christian Council. This church was the largest in China at that time. These two organizations can be seen as the pre-1949 forerunners of the Two Councils.[12] Their major leader was Cheng Jingyi, who could be taken as the pre-1949 forerunner of TSPM leader Y. T. Wu (Wu Yaozong 1893–1979). Of course, at that time, things were not yet as bad as they would get.[13] The “Three-Self” principled church before 1949 still maintained independence from state oversight. The TSPM after 1949 was worse off and finally cried out, “We have no king but Caesar.”[14]
Some blocks of churches joined the Church of Christ in China. One block consisted of churches that stayed within the western mission boards and denominations, including most Baptist churches, most Presbyterian churches, and all Episcopal churches. The Presbyterian churches, Congregational churches, and most mission boards joined the Church of Christ in China as a whole. The Episcopal church and some Baptist churches did not do so. Generally, all of these western denominations in China were liberal. While not everyone within the denominations was liberal, the liberals took control of these churches.
A second block was made up of the independent churches that had left the Western denominations and mission boards. These were characterized by both liberal theology and nationalism, the two characteristics of the future TSPM. These two blocks counted for seventy percent of the liberal camp.
Revival and Resistance
The Church of Christ in China was founded in 1928. In an attempt to resist the aggressive liberal unification movement, in 1929, fundamentalist missionaries and indigenous preachers came together and founded the China Christian Union, claiming that it would build churches on “a foundation of a true, evangelical creed.” In that era, the words “fundamentalist” and “evangelical” could be used interchangeably. We will revisit the differences in these two terms when we focus on the church after 1979.
The three blocks of the fundamentalist camp, the North Presbyterian Mission, the China Inland Mission, and the indigenous revival preachers Jia Yuming, Ding Limei, the Bethel Evangelistic Band, and Yang Shaotang, all joined the China Christian Union. Some relatively conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Mennonites were also involved. The “pioneer of the fundamentalists” missionary Hugh White was the president, Yang Shaotang was the vice president, and Jia Yuming and Ding Limei were the executive committee members. A few years later, Jia Yuming became the president for consecutive terms until the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out.
The Great Revival from 1927 to 1937 was the work of the Spirit since it was the Spirit who called these few men to serve. But in terms of spiritual authority and the passing on of life, these men are the roots of Chinese church. With this Great Revival, the teaching authority of the Chinese church passed from the missionaries to these indigenous revivalist preachers. Because of the influence of liberal theology in their motherlands, after Jonathan Goforth, there would be no other missionary to China as mad for the Lord as John Sung.
John Sung’s Madness for the Lord
The “madman” John Sung was the Lord’s servant prepared by the Holy Spirit for China. He was from Putian, Fujian province where his father was a pastor. When he was still a teenager, he would stand in the pulpit and preach in his father’s absence, and people called him “little pastor.” Later, he wanted to go to college in the US and then become a minister. Brothers and sisters gave for him to go to the US. He said he would finish college and go on to a theological seminary. Diligent and thrifty, to save money he acquired enough credits to finish college in three years. He made the local news, which commended him for finishing college in three years. He then wrote back and said he wanted to get master’s degree. So, people at home supported him again for a master’s program in hopes that afterwards, he would come back to be pastor. But, he wrote home yet again and said he wanted to get doctoral degree, which his home church agreed to support. He then felt guilty about this because he had no desire whatsoever to become a minister. He enjoyed his life in the US, was favored in the mainstream world, and was active at school, constantly inviting famous scholars like John Dewey to speak at the student union. He seemed to have a bright future.
But at one point, God led him to an interesting sermon by a sixteen-year-old girl who was standing on a stool dressed in white. Although he was about to finish his PhD, he was awakened and reminded of his initial motivation for coming to the US—to be a minister. He then decided to study at Union Theological Seminary in New York. However, this seminary was a liberal stronghold at the time. After a few months, he discovered that the president of the seminary did not even believe in the Lord, nor did most of his classmates believe in the authority of the Bible. He was a third-generation Christian from Fujian. The seminary was so different from the faith he had received from his childhood. So, he called his professors and classmates to repent, stating that they needed regeneration. The president ended up sending him to a mental hospital. He spent over half a year locked up and had to write to several people for help. Finally, one of his former professors helped him out of the mental hospital. During that period, he read the Bible through multiple times in multiple methods and experienced a special leading of the Spirit. When he was on his way back to China, he threw his PhD degree into the ocean. Once he returned to China, he became a revivalist preacher and visited many places in China and Southeast Asia.
In the second half of the 20th century, among the Reformed church and the Reformed theological movement there were two very important families of pastors; one was comprised of a father-son duo, Charles Chao (Zhao Zhonghui 1916–2010) and Jonathan Chao (Zhao Tianen 1938–2004). The other was comprised of Stephen Tong and his brothers. There are also family trees within the church. Both Stephen Tong and Charles Chao directly benefited from the revivalist preaching movement of the Great Revival in Shandong. People from the Reformed tradition should not harshly criticize those who do not belong to the Reformed tradition. If you belong to the Chinese house church, none of your spiritual seniors belong to the Reformed tradition. As pastor Tim Keller said, “The fastest way to become a Pharisee is to hate the Pharisees.”[15] It is a dangerous thing that many think the fastest way to become a Reformed follower is to hate those who do not follow the Reformed tradition. However, pastor Charles Chao repented and was converted at Wang Mingdao’s evangelistic gathering. Also, Stephen Tong was brought to church at his early childhood to listen to the sermons of John Sung. Meanwhile, the whole gospel movement in Southeast Asia grew because of the seeds sown by John Sung and his overseas evangelistic ministry. You grew out of them, and even if you claim to have a slightly deeper understanding of the gospel than they had, how can you still look down on God’s work? We have to understand that the house church movement as a whole is comprised of the spiritual descendants of that generation of faithful servants represented by Wang Mingdao and John Sung.
Sung spoke one of his most famous quotes when he was very sick: “I am inferior to Wang Mingdao in dealing with relationship, to Watchman Nee in exegesis, to Andrew Gih in networking. I have only one merit, that I am willing to risk my life. God knows that I have offered all I have.”[16]
In these past few years, someone called me “workaholic.” Actually, whenever I get weary of serving, I think about this quote by John Sung, which has become a great encouragement to me.
Viewed through today’s standards, some of Wang Mingdao’s teachings lean towards moralism. However, he was keen to emphasize that regeneration should come first, a view that came from his early years with the Presbyterian church. And yet, he was not a Presbyterian pastor, a fact that should humble Presbyterians. Under the influence of the Baptists, on a cold winter night, he and some classmates dug a hole into a frozen river, jumped into it and baptized themselves. From then on, he left the Presbyterian church and founded an independent Baptist congregation. This was the way that God used him. How can we be dissatisfied with it? All we can do is be grateful for God’s mighty grace.
John Sung also specifically emphasized repentance. His calling for repentance cut to the heart. He would say, “You dead people”. Not only did he say this, but one time he took a coffin onto the stage and said, “you dead people.” Later, he felt it cumbersome to move the coffin and had someone make a miniature coffin, which he took on stage every time he preached. Sometimes he would suddenly call out to the audience, saying, “those who have committed adultery, stand up now.” Dozens of people would stand, crying and repenting. This radical [17] who ran hard for the Lord returned to heaven at the age of forty-three. Praise the Lord for calling such a group of indigenous, fundamentalist preachers from 1927 to 1937.
The Chinese Church’s Three Mighty Men
The indigenous fundamentalists could also be categorized into two groups. This categorization also relates to the later-arriving TSPM. One group consisted of the fundamentalists of the independent churches, such as Watchman Nee, John Sung and Wang Mingdao. They would become the arteries of faith and life for the house churches. The other group consists of the fundamentalists that stayed within denominations and maintained the fundamentalist faith before 1949, but sadly joined the TSPM after 1949.
The Great Revival is represented spiritually by three very important people. In the book Three of China’s Mighty Men, written by China Inland Mission’s Leslie Theodore Lyall, these men were Wang Mingdao, Yang Shaotang (whose role is overstated), and Jia Yuming. Decades later, in terms of revivalist preaching, people would typically say Wang Mingdao, John Sung, and Watchman Nee were the big three. From the church as a whole, people would consider either Wang Mingdao, John Sung, and Jia Yuming or Wang Mingdao, Watchman Nee, and Jia Yuming to be the big three of the Great Revival. There is also a saying within the Chinese church: “Wang Mingdao’s preaching focuses on morals, Watchman Nee on the way, Jia Yuming on reasoning.”
Before 1949, Jia Yuming was the best theologian. He was a Reformed theologian and also the fruit of the Presbyterian church in China. He graduated in 1900 and was an elder fundamentalist and a major guide to Wang Mingdao and Watchman Nee. Unfortunately, after 1949 he lost his passion for the Lord and, in the end, finally joined the TSPM. At the age of seventy he sat on the stage of the national TSPM conference as the vice chairman and ruined his name. Therefore, I often pray that if future times get difficult, the Lord in his mercy would not grant me long life.
Yang Shaotang was another famous fundamentalist at the time and a century baby born in 1900. He graduated from North China Theological Seminary and had great influence over high-ranking Nationalist officials. In October 1948, he preached from the Old Testament books of the Prophets in Nanjing’s Triumph Church. As Chiang Kai-Shek was sitting in the pew listening to his sermon, Pastor Yang Shaotang called on the Nanjing government to repent and directly criticized their sins! He was such a brave man. In those days, very few pastors would dare to preach like this. With the head of the government sitting in the pew, he accused the government of its sin and called them to repent so that they could avoid God’s judgment. After the worship service, Chiang Kai-Shek came and shook his hand, saying, “Pastor Yang, your preaching is so good. We do need to repent for many of our sins.” Unfortunately, it was too late for Chiang Kai-Shek. God would judge him for the sins he committed during the Nanjing Incident of 1927 when he allowed his troops to kill missionaries and persecute the church. He would retreat to Taiwan and hand-copy the Bible there. After 1949, this pastor who, like Nathan and John the Baptist, dared to find faults with kings, would still end up capitulating to state power and joining the TSPM. He never preached that way in front of the CCP.
The third fundamentalist leader who joined the TSPM was Marcus Cheng, chaplain of Feng Yuxiang’s army. After 1949, not only did he join the TSPM, he was the first among the leaders of TSPM to accuse the missionaries. He wrote an article criticizing Robert Morrison as the jackal of imperialism and listing dozens of charges against him. This article started a national movement of denouncing Western missionaries.
Why would these fundamentalist leaders of denominations associate with the CCP-supported liberals and betray the Lord and their faith?
We are grateful that these fundamentalists who had remained in the denominations are not the foundation of the house church movement. Theologically, house churches were indeed influenced by the Shandong Presbytery, the North Jiangsu Presbytery, and North China Theological Seminary (counting Ding Limei, Jia Yuming and Yang Shaotang as part of this tradition), but in terms of models of church and life, those revivalist preachers from the independent churches, in other words the century babies God gifted to the Chinese church around 1900 (Wang Mingdao, Wang Zai, John Sung, Watchman Nee, Zhao Junying, etc.), were the seeds of the 20th century Chinese church and the foundation of the house church movement.
The Liberal Camp
Let us return to the other side. Besides the Christian Council founded in 1922 and the Church of Christ in China founded in 1928, there was another more important organization that thoroughly influenced and shaped the late TSPM, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) (including the Young Women’s Christian Association YWCA). This organization was the liberal stronghold of China.
On Chunxi Road of Chengdu city, the site of the YMCA still remains. The YMCA and YWCA were completely liberal-controlled and became an organization for the social gospel through-and-through. I visited Taiwan a few years ago and came aCross the president of the YWCA. Ironically, this president was a Buddhist. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, the YMCA and YWCA have become cultural and welfare organizations that no longer relate to Christianity. They focus on teaching English and sports in the summer and taking care of elderly people with no family within the community. Their principle is freedom of religion. While they do talk about Christianity, the beneficiaries of their service do not have to believe. Therefore, when the YMCA and YWCA started a service program for the elderly, most of the volunteers were not Christians. Actually, they were more likely to be Buddhists. As time passed, it became natural for a Buddhist to become the president.
More importantly, the CCP made great efforts in the YMCA before 1949. Because the YMCA leaned toward left-wing ideology, the CCP recruited many underground party members and befriended many progressive-minded young people at Christian schools and the YMCA. It is fair to say that the YMCA was fundamentally controlled by the underground CCP, who prepared the organization to take over the churches in the TSPM after 1949. Consequently, almost all the leaders of the TSPM came from YMCA. Not only did the CCP conceal people within YMCA, early on they even sent people to overseas theological seminaries.
One of the most famous underground party members was Li Chuwen (1918–2018). He was almost a hundred years old when he died on March 22nd, 2018. The Psalm says, “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him.”[18] Prior to 1949, after returning from theological study in the US, Li Chuwen became pastor of the Shanghai Community Church. It is said that he was a gifted preacher and many brothers and sisters loved his preaching. When the TSPM began, he became Secretary-general of the National Committee, the main leader of the movement. When the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, the Red Guards started to denounce him, parading him in the streets and beating him until he could take it no more. He reported to the party and directly asked for help from Premier Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), which exposed his identity. He had been sent into the church by Zhou Enlai in 1930s. Thus, the party removed his position in the church and appointed him director of the Shanghai Municipal Foreign Affairs Office. At the beginning of Reform and Opening[19] in 1978, he became deputy director of Xinhua News Agency’s Hong Kong Branch, essentially the second in command as the central government’s representative in Hong Kong, a post he held until his retirement. Until his death, he strictly observed party discipline and revealed nothing about his work within the church.
There was another underground party member, Zhao Fusan (1926–2015). He was sent by the CCP to study theology in the US and became the vice chairman of the National Committee of the TSPM. He was leading a Chinese Christian delegation on a visit to Europe In June 1989 when the Tiananmen Square Protests took place. He openly claimed that it was wrong for the government to open fire. Afterwards he announced his defection from the CCP and no longer returned to China.
Inside the CCP, there was a term called the “grey line,” which permeated the YMCA. The novel The Apostates by Shi Wei depicted an underground party member who infiltrated the YMCA and played a key role in the case against Watchman Nee and his Local Church.
One difficult problem we must face is that few have defected from the TSPM, while many have defected from the Chinese Catholic Church (CCC). Therefore, there is a paucity of materials about the evils of the TSPM and the CCP’s control over it. Pastor Jonathan Chao offers a fairly complete compendium of available materials in his A History of Christianity in Socialist China: 1949-1997 (different from Wang Yi). After Chao’s work, professor Ying Fuk-tsang (Xing Fuzeng) of the Divinity School of Chung Chi College in Hong Kong researched deep into the TSPM and the CCP’s religious policy and control over religion.
For example, Professor Ying pointed out that The Central Committee’s Instructions Concerning Issues of The Catholic Church and The Protestant Church, sent by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) on July 23rd of 1950, was the first CCP document after it took power to target Christianity. He demonstrated the party’s determination to launch the TSPM. The document had eight sections covering the party’s basic positions and detailed measures concerning work toward the Catholic church and the Protestant church. Professor Ying said he accessed this document over twenty years ago, but Section Seven was left empty, with the note, “content removed by editor.” He sensed that this section concerned the underground party members within the church. A few years ago, at a second-hand bookstall, Professor Ying finally found an original Collection of United Front Policy Documents compiled by the United Front Work Department of CCCPC in 1958, which contained the Instructions of Section Seven. As he had expected, that section was about underground party members among the believers. The document demanded those “faithful, trustworthy party members” with double identities who had been hiding inside the church to continue working inside the church without disclosing their identities or switching jobs.
God is just and His judgment comes sooner or later. A second piece of history also occurred in recent years when TSPM leader Y. T. Wu’s son, Wu Zongsu, suddenly stood up to disclose things about the TSPM. He is eighty-six years old and lives in the US. He claimed to be old enough to say something truthful. He wrote a long article in memory of his father titled “Unrequited Love.” He said his father always believed that Christianity had no fundamental conflict with Communism. He said his father’s life was a tragedy trapped in left-wing ideology. However, his father was sincere and participated in the socialist movement in the name of Christianity. It’s called “Unrequited Love,” because Y. T. Wu was used and betrayed by the CCP all of his life. His son claimed that the party never returned his father’s forty diaries that were borrowed by the United Front Work Department the day he died. In past years, his son has sued the department for the diaries, and finally the State Administration for Religious Affairs told him that these diaries were state property. He asked for a copy, but the administration replied that the diaries were a national secret. Now he has thrown caution to the wind and has gone to the Chinese General Consulate in Los Angeles as a one-man protest to request the diaries. One Christian lawyer helped him, standing beside him with a lantern as if to say, “total darkness.” Wu’s child grew up in the TSPM Compound. He knew them all and could identify those who were party members. He disclosed that the YMCA monopolized the leadership of the TSPM. From the 1950s until now, secretaries at all levels of the TSPM committees must be party members, because it is these who hold real control over the movement. Furthermore, at every level there must be party branches within committees. Wu Zongsu has stood out as a witness and has written many articles in recent years to criticize the TSPM and disclose their actions. This has to be God’s amazing and amusing plan.
The Fundamentalists vs. The Liberals
We can now separate two threads. One thread being the fundamentalists with the Northern Presbyterian Church, China Inland Mission, and the indigenous revivalist preachers as its three blocks. The other thread being the liberals with the Christian Council, the Church of Christ in China, and the YMCA as its three blocks. The former formed the foundation of the house churches after 1949, while the latter formed foundation of the TSPM after 1949. The former included work by fundamentalist missionaries, while the latter included work by the CCP. Therefore, although these two threads, these two ways, did not come onto scene until after 1949, they had been prepared before 1949.
A few more words about Y. T. Wu. He used to live in Chengdu. In 1942 Wang Mingdao came to Chengdu to preach. He saw the Tianfeng magazine that Y. T. Wu founded in Chengdu in 1942, which became the official magazine of the TSPM. Wang Mingdao read some articles from the magazine and firmly believed that Y. T. Wu was a “nonbeliever” and a liberal, even though they had not met each other at the time.
Y. T. Wu sincerely accepted liberal theology. There were two types of people in YMCA. One was the underground party members directly arranged by the CCP like Li Chuwen, Zhao Fusan, and Liu Liangmo (1909–1988). The other consisted of those who were not party members but were left-wing Christians who leaned toward the CCP such as Y. T. Wu. The CCP befriended them and invited them to join the United Front. Zhou Enlai was the top leader for intelligence and United Front work in the party’s early stages. One of his famous quotes was, “You contribute more to the party if you stay outside the party.”
Therefore, in the 1940s, Zhou Enlai specifically arranged three meetings with Y. T. Wu. They met for the first time in Wuhan, where they discussed the CCP’s religious policy. The second and third meetings were in Chongqing in 1943 and 1944 respectively. At the third meeting, Y. T. Wu was so naïve that he sincerely told Zhou Enlai, “I believe Christianity and Communism are largely identical, ninety-nine percent the same and one percent different, that being that we believe in God and you do not.” What did that mean? It meant both Christianity and Communism aim at establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. This kingdom is called Communism by the CCP and the Kingdom of Heaven by Christians. This understanding of the Kingdom was commonly recognized by proponents of the social gospel in full. No wonder Wang Mingdao said Y. T. Wu was a nonbeliever. Ironically, once Wu said this, Zhou Enlai replied, “I do not agree with your thoughts, because every distinct worldview is essentially different from another.” He then changed his tone and said, “but we do respect Christianity and religious freedom,” hoping that through the years, Wu would come into the same boat as the CCP.
At the end of 1948, Y. T. Wu was visiting overseas. The CCP sent people to secretly escort him and some other influential people of the United Front back to China to the area occupied by Communist forces. He then participated in the national Political Consultative Conference as a representative of the religious circle. There were only five representatives from the religious circle, and three were from the YMCA: Y. T. Wu, Liu Liangmo, and the President of YWCA. Liu Liangmo was also an underground party member who served as TSPM secretary since 1954.
In one sense, the pre-1949 formation of the liberals and their successful infiltration by the CCP shamed the entirety of the Protestant church. The Three-Self movement could not prosper within the Catholic church because the Catholic church was united, and the CCP could not plant agents into it. Its team was not well-prepared. If you tried to send in “red bishops,” there was no door. However, sending in “red pastors” was easy. Therefore, before the CCP took power, during its Political Consultative Conference, there were five people from the religious circles. Not one representative for each of the five recognized religions, but rather, three the YMCA: two underground party members and one left-wing leader of the United Front. Without reflection followed by repentance and confession, we cannot understand the difference between the Chinese house church and the TSPM.
The Catholic Church vs. The Protestant Church
Contrarily, until 1957, there was no bishop who was willing to join the TSPM. In the end, the government had to find a group of Catholic believers to organize into the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, something that initially sounded like a fan club. The Catholic church was governed by bishops. Without the participation of even one bishop, the association could be no more than an interest group. Even after persecuting the Catholic church for more than a decade, the government still could not even establish a group of bishops.
Finally, the government found a priest in Sichuan, Wang Liangzuo , who was willing to join the TSPM. But he advanced with the times, ended up returning to the laity, and got married. Finally, the government managed to establish a Catholic Patriotic Bishop Conference. Yet within the Catholic church, the entirety of the bishopric loyal to the Vatican has never changed, disappeared, or been discontinued. Here are two things that never happened in the Protestant church: first, even the bishops appointed by the CCP acknowledged the underground bishopric. There was a bishop in Sichuan named Duan Yinmin (1908–2001). Whenever a bishop was consecrated by the government and the TSPM, the bishop would secretly come to him for a private consecration. Otherwise, the “fake bishop” would not dare carry out his duties. Second, within the government-controlled bishopric, people have continued to defect in recent decades. The recent example was Bishop Ma[20] of Shanghai who was consecrated by the government. Catholic consecration is the same as our Protestant ordination. On the day of consecration, while officials from the Religious Affairs Bureau and United Front Work Department were still there, Bishop Ma announced publicly, “I declare that I withdraw from the TSPM and will in no way accept a system that is not faithful to the Vatican.” Soon, he was taken by the armed police and put under house arrest, and no one knows where he is now.
We know for sure that the Catholic soteriology has its errors, but they are so strong in the face of challenges! They specialized in being strong and courageous, and we specialized in being as nimble as serpents. As we have been nimble and changed positions in previous decades, we have fallen so close to becoming the serpent. Why would the Chinese church lack character and faithfulness after 1949? During the persecution, a small number of fundamentalist churches became house churches, but in terms of quantity, they counted for only ten or twenty percent of all the believers nationwide in the 1950s and 1960s. However, since the 1980s, from this ten to twenty percent has come another revival that has lasted for forty years and produced tens of millions of Christians.
Only grace could simultaneously account for both the church’s large-scale failure and its explosive growth. In the past fifty years, within the whole system of the TSPM, pastor Joseph Gu was the only provincial level Three-Self committee chair who, in the storm of demolishing Crosses, openly announced his opposition against the demolition of Crosses. He was removed from his position and was arrested. He was imprisoned for the Lord for about two years and was recently released because he was not found guilty of any crimes. However, he had had many counterparts within the Catholic church. On the one hand, we see the faithfulness of the fundamentalists. On the other hand, we should continually reflect on the flaws of the fundamentalists. We ask for God’s mercy and help.
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank you and praise you, as we meditate on your grace. You always sustain faithful descendants for yourself. As you did in the history of the Israelites, you did again in the 20th century history of China. People did not know about the massacre of Christians in 1900, but you knew; people did not know the May Fourth Movement, but you knew; people did not know the revolutionary waves and power shift by the Communist party in 1949, but you knew. Lord, you know everything, and therefore you always prepare from within the church the seed of the old gospel for the church. We praise you for your protection over the Chinese church, the fundamentalist church, and the evangelical church over the past hundred years. You are making the Chinese church today into the largest conservative church of the world. Lord, we praise you, for this is such an unimaginable thing. Lord, you separated us from the western liberal trends, you put us under the pressure of the Communist party, and in the end, you gave China a conservative church with tens of millions of believers, a church that prevalently believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. Lord, this is the church you raised from stones. And this process has witnessed not to the bravery and firmness of the Chinese church, but to our weakness. Lord, the betrayals of the Chinese church are more than the churches of other countries. But Lord, you have had mercy on us, your will does not fail among us. Lord, who will not thank you and praise you? May you make us always to be thankful and to rely on you. Thank you for listening to our prayer. We pray in the precious and holy name of Jesus Christ. Amen!
[1] Quoted in Jessie G. Lutz, ed., Christian Missions in China: Evangelists of What? (Boston: Heath & Co. 1965), 11.
[2] Titus 1:5 (ESV)
[3] The Local Church was the name given to churches in Nee’s movement. These churches are still called The Local Church overseas, but within China they were more popularly known as The Little Flock (xiao qun).
[4] Also known as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, began in 1937 and ended with the end of WWII in 1945.
[5] Gen. 2:24.
[6] Titus 1:5.
[7] Phil. 1:15.
[8] The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937–1945) began in China before the official outbreak of World War II and did not end until Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945. 1949 saw the Communist rise to power in China and the founding of the People’s Republic of China under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
[9] The Society of White Lotus was a Buddhist sect in China.
[10] I’m not sure if he really wants to use this analogy. In the West, the GLF is known more for the mass starvation of people than as a historic movement in Communism.
[11] The full statement, written in a letter to his sister dated February 14, 1860, is “If I had a thousand pounds China should have it—if I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour?”
[12] The Two Councils 两会 are comprised of the TSPM churches and the China Christian Council (CCC).
[13] Here Wang Yi quotes Confucius: “One change in the Qi Kingdom and it becomes the Lu Kingdom, but one change in the Lu Kingdom and it arrives at the Tao.” The idea being that things are worse in the Qi Kingdom than the Lu Kingdom (Confucius’s home). In other words, “Things are worse there than they are here.” See Confucius Analects, Chapter 6.
[14] John 19:15
[15] Tweeted by @timkellerynyc on January 18, 2018.
[16] Find
[17] Still no good English way to translate 厉害
[18] Psalm 10:4 (ESV).
[19] Reform and Opening (改革开放) was the movement led by Deng Xiaoping to open China to the outside world and develop the nation’s economy.
[20] Ma Daqin (b. 1968).
