Does anyone remember which period we discussed last session? Yes, the period between 1978 and 1989, the ten years of the Fundamentalist Revival.
We also discussed why the year of 1989 was a turning point, and the changes and turns it brought to the Chinese church and Chinese society. Could someone help us review it? Anyone still remember?
Why was 1989 a turning point in Chinese house church history? Because of the June Fourth Incident. In the ten years of economic reform leading up to 1989, China experienced social progress and ideological open-mindedness. Many have said that in the 1980s, Chinese society experienced an enlightenment movement. Also, the Chinese church experienced ten years of great revival in its rural areas, a movement we that have called the Fundamentalist Revival.
Then, when the attempt at democracy failed, the gospel began to enter into the cities. The first wave of this movement involved those intellectuals exiled from China after 1989. These exiles experienced gospel revival while in North America. Therefore, after 1989, God prepared a group of intellectuals who had lost hope in their lives and in the future of China. These were the first group of intellectuals after 1949 to turn to Christ in their agony and despair.
While not all of the exiles turned to Christ, both the gospel movement within the exilic community and the faith of that community was phenomenal. As this movement became popular among the exiles, even those who would not believe in the Lord would still draw close and try to understand Christianity.
For example, I met some of those exiles, like Chen Kuide, Hu Ping, and others. Chen Kuide told me about Operation Yellowbird, where Pastor Chu Yiu-Ming cooperated with the Triads to smuggle students fleeing from Tiananmen to overseas location through Hong Kong. When I met these exiles, one of them told me that the Triad bosses from that time ended up believing in the Lord.
The intellectuals who fled were designated as refugees by the United Nations and many were initially sent to Europe and from there dispersed to many other countries. Chen Kuide and some others were sent to Paris. When they got off the airplane and dropped off their luggage, they went to visit the Notre Dame Cathedral because they had never been to Paris. Notre Dame is a Catholic cathedral. When they saw the cross and Jesus—the cross with the icon of Jesus on it—they knelt down with tears running down their faces without knowing why. But to this day, many of them still do not believe in the Lord. This story represents the whole of that exilic generation.
What was happening back in China during that time? We have said that the period from 1989 to 1991 was very depressing, and both the spirit and the thought within mainland China were extremely dark. Then, in 1991, Wang Mingdao, the spiritual giant of the Chinese house church, passed away, marking the end of an era. Afterwards, in 1992, Deng Xiaoping took his southern tour and the whole of society became alive again. This liveliness was material in nature. Beforehand, people did not know what they were supposed to do, but after Deng’s southern tour they knew they should strive to make money.
Therefore, the period from 1989 until 1992 was depressing. But, the several years between the beginning of the 1990s and 1998 also comprise a very complex period in which the church was rediscovered by society and began to move from rural areas into urban centers. Since 1992, China has experienced one of its greatest societal changes, urbanization, which remains ongoing today. With the development of a market economy and urbanization, hundreds of millions of people moved from rural areas into cities.
Therefore, from the 1980s to the early 1990s, during the revival of rural areas, Pastor Jonathan Chao estimates that there were between ten million and forty million Christians in China. Yet, in the following decade leading up to the 21st century, ten to twenty million Christians moved from the countryside into the cities and were spiritually lost there. When I say they were lost, I do not mean that every one of them stopped believing in the Lord, but a large number of them became lost in the cities. Therefore, immediately after the rural church revival, the waves of urbanization from the rural areas brought about societal change that challenged those rural churches.
Do you know what the rural areas were called at the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s? There is a term, “Unit 386199,” right? “38” women, “61” children, “99 senior citizens”. So, at that time, the countryside became known as Unit 386199. You didn’t see adult males, and then you stopped seeing young people, and then all that was left was a generation of children, right? Many of us grew up as left behind children.
Therefore, the twenty years since the 1990s have experienced great social change. Rural churches experienced revival, but they also experienced many struggles, to the point that some traditional areas experienced both revival and downturn at the same time. Also, when one entered the city, one was brought into contact with a rapidly changing society. Therefore, it was very difficult for the church and its teachings to help believers face such a quickly changing society. Thus, when the cult movements of the 1980s entered into the 1990s, the entire church opposed them. So there were certainly situations where we could say that rural churches succeeded in the cities.
Another change that came about after 1992 was that China opened further to the outside world. Therefore, during the 1990s, overseas missionaries and organizations came to China in a large scale. Some came in the 1980s, but these were minimal in number and rare. But in the 1990s they came in a larger scale. Furthermore, for overseas Chinese churches, missions to mainland China became a strategic concern.
So, in 1992 great changes took place in China. That year, Overseas Campus magazine published its first issue. Over the next twenty years, Overseas Campus would have a great impact on churches in mainland China. In 1997, Chinese Christian Life Quarterly published its first issue. Over the next twenty years, Chinese Christian Life Quarterly became a protector of the house church position and had a large impact on house churches in mainland China. These two publication organizations are the most important both to overseas Chinese churches and mainland Chinese house churches.
Then, in 1997, Hong Kong was handed over to China. This change enabled Hong Kong to play a critical role in the church movement in mainland China. Over the past few decades, preachers from Chengdu, not to mention from other large cities in China, have primarily met in Hong Kong. We cannot meet in Chengdu, cannot contact each other in Chengdu, and cannot call each other in Chengdu. “Hey Wang Yi, if I call you isn’t my call being monitored?” So we would meet in Hong Kong once every one to two years. After meeting, we wouldn’t hear any news from each other. I lived in Qingyang District, he lived in Jinjiang District, but we did not know each other’s home address. We would not meet again until we were in Hong Kong together a year or two later.
Therefore, after 1997, Hong Kong became an important base for the Chinese church’s gospel movement. All trainings were carried out in Hong Kong because they could not be done in mainland China. All conferences were in Hong Kong because there were none in mainland China. Therefore, Hong Kong played a critical role. When Hong Kong was handed over in 1997, China Inland Mission changed its name to Oversease Missionary Fellowship (OMF). For half a century, China Inland Mission had left China. In 1997, it returned to serve inside of mainland China. Therefore, during the whole of the 1990s, in terms of overseas missions, Overseas Campus and Chinese Christian Life Quarterly came on stage, China Inland Mission resumed its service inside of the mainland China, and many other organizations, including seminaries from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and North America, came to serve the Chinese church.
However, after its handover, the role Hong Kong played in the mainland gospel movement was somewhat different than the role played by Taiwan. For may year, we can say tongue-in-cheek that churches in Taiwan openly supported house churches but quietly maintained contact with the TSPM, while churches in Hong Kong openly cooperated with the TSPM but quietly kept in contact with house churches. So, we call this a geo-political and geo-gospel movement, right?
Having summarized what was happening overseas, we must turn our attention to mainland China. We said that in 1991 Wang Mingdao rested in the Lord. After this release, he had influenced the Chinese church spiritually, like a prophet, without establishing or pastoring churches. Therefore, the most important church in that time was Da Ma Zhan Church which had always been pastored by Samuel Lamb. The church was in Guangzhou, next to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, one of the most open-minded places in China. Due to its location in Guangzhou, Samuel Lamb’s experience of imprisonment, and its vicinity to Hong Kong and Taiwan, throughout the 1990s, Da Ma Zhan Church served as a light to Chinese urban churches.
Samuel Lamb established the church in 1978. By 1990, around nine hundred people gathered there each week. Previously, I mentioned that his Family owned a large house. These nine hundred people filled up every room on every floor. Once, he was arrested when the church had a weekly attendance of three hundred people. When he was released, the weekly attendance grew to nine hundred. After this, Lamb was arrested again. After he was released, at the end of the 1990s, the church’s weekly attendance had grown to 2,000. But Da Ma Zhan was a special case. Today there cannot be a congregation with a weekly attendance of 2,000 people. Therefore, I am not worried about my safety at all, knowing that our attendance will grow after my arrest. Since the wave of persecution in 2009, the authorities have been suppressing big churches as they did with Shouwang Church in Beijing and Wanbang Church in Shanghai. Ten years later, there are now some other churches whose weekly attendances are over 1,000, such as Zion Church in Beijing. Our weekly attendance is about six hundred. Therefore, today, a large church might have a weekly attendance of five hundred to 1,000 people and would be subject to government suppression. But in the 1990s Samuel Lamb’s Da Ma Zhan Church had 2,000 people attending, with four worship services each Sunday. So, it served as a rare case, like a lone island, as urban churches as a whole had yet to rise at that time. Da Ma Zhan was an urban church, but it was also an urban traditional house church. Therefore, it was a light in mainland China.
We have covered the fundamentalist revival in 1980s and its development in the 1990s. But what about the liberals? What was the liberals’ response in the 1990s? There were two waves of the liberal movement. One took place from within the TSPM. We mentioned that in the three years between 1978 and 1981, before Document No. 19 and the 1982 Constitution were released, there was basically no difference between the TSPM and house churches, because the government at the time was implementing its religious policy, and the whole atmosphere was open-minded. Yet after 1982, the TSPM was restored and religious policy was reviewed and reformulated. Thus, house churches separated from the TSPM again, although during the 1980s they never really separated from each other. What was the reason behind this lack of separation? Because the whole of the 1980s was characterized by a movement of social and ideological liberation. Therefore, even within the TSPM there was open-mindedness.
Before 1989, K. H. Ting was very open-minded. It did not mean that he was theologically liberal, but that he was really receptive. He had always wanted to be the leader for both the TSPM and the house churches and be accepted by the whole Chinese church. He also did much work in hopes that the government would improve its religious policy. As part of this work, he made some intense comments at the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. That age was different from ours, and one could make intense comments because at that time both Hu Yaobang (1915–1989) and Zhao Ziyang (1919–2005), General Secretaries of the CCP, emphasized the separation of party and government. Therefore, in 1988 K. H. Ting, representing Christianity, and Zhao Puchu, representing Buddhism, made explicit proposals at the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and requested for the separation of church and state. Therefore, during the whole 1980s, even the TSPM hoped for change. K. H. Ting said publicly: “I used to lean toward the left line, the line of hatred. Now the whole country and the party are reflecting on past errors. We should never return to the Cultural Revolution”. Deng Xiaoping said something similar: “We have the leftist problems and the rightist problems, but the main problems are leftist”. Therefore, the whole atmosphere at the time was against the leftists. Consequently, K. H. Ting followed this wave. When the Chinese Christian Council called the national conference, he even invited house church leaders to attend.
But right after 1989 he turned to the opposite side. In 1989, K. H. Ting did as most others did at the time. The students of the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary paraded in the streets, requesting freedom of religious belief, separation of church and state, and cancellation of SARA. So, in 1989 the TSPM also took to the streets and made these requests. By the way, what we are now requesting is the same as what the TSPM was requesting at that time. Therefore, from the perspective of the CCP, K. H. Ting also made errors in 1989. However, after 1989, there was a large change in his attitude. Of course, the most essential problem was with his spiritual life. As with other party members, he shifted away from all that he had said during the 1989 incident. He knew he had made errors and had to pass the CCP’s review, and so his attitude naturally took on a fundamental change.
1994 was a unique year that marked a very important shift. A number of important things happened in 1994. First, in 1994, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China passed the Regulations on the Administration of Sites for Religious Activities. This was the first attempt of the government to establish the legal administration of religion, meaning that before 1994, there had been no religious law. Prior to 1994 church and state was a political issue that had to be dealt with through political movement against Christianity, against underground churches, and against cults. But in 1994, at least in form, the government released two regulations, one Provisions on the Administration of Religious Activities of Aliens within the Territory of the People’s Republic of China and the other Measures for the Administration of Religious Activity Venues. Therefore, in 1994 because of economic reform, many people hoped that the CCP would adopt a more open religious policy. Every time a new regulation was released, someone would say, “See, the government is going to change the religious policy”. Therefore, the release of the Regulations on the Administration of Sites for Religious Activities in 1994 marked a change with far-reaching influence.
Another big change taking place in 1994 was the influence of liberalism on the Chinese intellectuals outside of the TSPM. During the whole of the 1980s the Chinese intellectuals did not think about or seek after religion, but rather thrust themselves into the whole of western enlightenment. One after another, the modern thoughts of the West became popular—today Sartre and tomorrow existentialism. By 1989, it was Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) who led this trend. Before the June Fourth Incident that year, Liu Xiaobo published a very important article, “Going Naked Toward God”, which said that the tragedy of the Chinese was that they did not have God. For the word “God” to appear in the language of Chinese intellectuals was both a strange and fresh phenomenon. Around the same time, Another author, Liu Xiaofeng (b. 1956), published his book, Delivering and Dallying. These two authors represented the Chinese intellectuals who, at the beginning of the 1990s, in their hopelessness and through their language and ideological resources, slowly began to have some interest and then make some contact with Christianity. Thus, Christianity became trendy in 1994.
In 1994 I was a junior in college. Previously, I mentioned that I was very upset because I could not find books to read. But in 1994, Peking University scholar Zhao Dunhua (b. 1949) published Christian Philosophy in 1,500 Years, which became the first book, not only for Chinese intellectuals, but also for China as a whole to be enlightened to Christianity, Christian philosophy (rather than theology), and Christian thought. Also in 1994, Liu Xiaofeng edited Towards the Truth on the Cross, a collection of Christian thoughts, and published this work with Joint Publishing Beijing. Later that year, Sichuan People’s Publishing House successively published two sets of translated works of Christianity. Thus, beginning in 1994, a so-called “fever for Christianity” arose in Chinese society.
Remember that at that time, this “fever for Christianity” had nothing to do with the Chinese church. Nor did it have anything to do the Chinese churches in the countryside. Rather, it was merely a phenomenon limited to intellectual circles. Because this “fever for Christianity” lasted until the end of the 20th century, in 1998 and 1999, there came a group of “cultural Christians” represented by Liu Xiaofeng, who found internally that Christianity was a spiritual home, their last spiritual home, a source to be sought after, because all of their previous hopes had been shattered. Some of them even went to the point of being baptized. Yet, the vast majority of Christian books introduced to China in the 1990s were products of liberal Christians and liberal theology. Very few of those books were not about liberal theology.
However, when these intellectuals began to understand the Christian belief, they looked around and felt that they could not go to either the Three-Self churches or the house churches. They finally found that they could only maintain a spiritual belief in Jesus. When they looked around they could not find a church to attend. Of course, China was not without genuine churches at the time. But for one thing, they did not know the churches well. The churches had to hide themselves and it was difficult for the intellectuals to find them. Second, the churches did not have a formal (open) relationship with the world outside. They basically remained in hiding while being suppressed by the government.
Therefore, in the 1990s the gospel came into Chinese society in two waves. On the one hand, rural churches were under the political suppression of the government. They were in fact an marginalized and unreachable group in society. No believer dared to identify himself as a Christian in public. All churches were underground. Then, when facing the waves of urbanization, their original faith swung with the storms of the time. On the whole, the church was not ready to enter into society through so many contact points.
On the other hand, many intellectuals began to study Christianity and translate Christian works, which brought about the so-called “fever for Christianity” culture. I often heard from the Chinese intellectuals say, and I myself said this ten years ago when I just started believing in the Lord, that “I have joined the party (church) ideologically”. These Chinese intellectuals tended to say: “Ideologically I am one hundred percent a Christian”, or “I support you one hundred percent. I have joined the party (church) ideologically; I just haven’t found the right congregation”, or “All the congregations I found do not fit me”.
Therefore, in the 1990s there were returnees who had believed in the Lord while overseas, some of those being ideological Christians, cultural Christians, even those who were baptized overseas, who could not find a church, or were not willing to revisit a church once they went because of their unwillingness to worship with the old ladies from rural areas who might know nothing about Christianity. Around ten years ago, I met a scholar who came back to China after he was baptized overseas. I asked him if he had been to church since coming back. He said he would never go to a Chinese church. Why was this? He said: “How could I go to a Chinese church? I always went to church when I was overseas. But after I came back, I could not go to a Chinese church”. “Could not go” points to the arrogance of the intellectuals and their highbrow contempt for the churches where the old ladies from the countryside gathered. Secondly, they could not go because of the political blockade and fear. “Could not go” first meant the intellectual contempt for the belief of other brothers and sisters caused by their metaphorical wisdom of the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:22–24), and second it meant the fear of troubles that might come after their visit. Thus, there were two layers to “could not go”.
So of the changes that took place in the 1990s, this was the shift that took place in 1994. Moving forward, why would I focus on the year of 1998? Why did I set 1998 as a turning point for the period between 1989 and 1998? What shifted in 1998 in Chinese society and in the Chinese church? A few very important things took place in 1998. The most important thing was that in 1998, the Chinese house church, after ten to twenty years of seesaw battles of persecution with the government, published the first Chinese House Church Confession of Faith. We previously mentioned the Big Five teams, or the five big teams of the traditional churches and rural churches, primarily assisted by Pastor Jonathan Chao. In November 1998, leaders of these teams gathered together for a Chinese house church class taught by pastor Chao. Then they drafted and signed the Chinese House Church Confession of Faith and along with it released one other document. These two documents served as the formal debut of the Chinese house church.
We know that throughout church history, a confession of faith has always held a twofold meaning, one meaning internal and the other external. Internally, a confession of faith clears up the standards of faith, which would then be used for discipleship and as a foundation for the church. Externally, it can be used for apologetic purposes. Therefore, in the very first paragraph of the Chinese House Church Confession of Faith, it is written that the document was formulated first to make it clearly known to the Chinese house churches what it was that they believed, and second to make known to the Chinese government and Chinese society what the Chinese house churches believed. Namely, that the Chinese house churches were not a cult, since by that point in time the Chinese government had been suppressing the church with the charge of “cult” for over a decade. This was the first time the church openly claimed that it was not a cult. But how could the church claim they were not a cult without a confession of faith? Therefore, the authors wrote this very detailed confession of faith. It was clear from the confession of faith that their faith was sound and basically Reformed because of the help of Pastor Chao, who founded China Ministries International. While the extent to which the authors actually accepted this confession of faith is another story, they nonetheless released two documents, the Chinese House Church Confession of Faith, and the Chinese House Church’s Attitude Towards Government, Religious Policy and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. One served as the confession of faith and the other served as a statement on church-state relationships that explained in detail why house churches would not join the TSPM and why they believed in the separation of church and state.
Therefore, this first apologetic document became an internal and an external landmark for the Chinese house church after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1978. Of the four people who signed it, two were from the two teams in Henan province. The representative from the Fangcheng team was Zhang Rongliang (b. 1950), one of the foremost church leaders in Henan province. The representative of the Tanghe team, which later became the Chinese Gospel Fellowship, was Shen Yiping (1947–2018). Shen Yiping, Wei Jindang whom we prayed for today, and Zhang Fuheng in Beijing were some of the most important leaders of the Tanghe team. The third person to sign the document was from the Fuyang team in Anhui province. In our church there are a lot of brothers and sisters from Fuyang. Zheng Xianqi (???) represented the Fuyang team, one of the three largest house church teams. The last was Wang Junlü who represented the other churches. These four people released the Chinese House Church Confession of Faith. Omitted the last sentence.
This document alone made the year 1998 a benchmark in Chinese house church history because it was the first time for the Chinese house church to proclaim to Caesar our faith. After being suppressed for twenty years, it was the first time for the house church to tell the government who they were as the church, that they believed as the churches of all ages did, why they would not join the TSPM, and why they could not accept SARA. They also proclaimed that they were patriotic and did not stand against the government, while also requesting the separation of church and state. Therefore, this was a very brave and special action that was representative of the position of traditional Chinese house churches.
While the house churches made their debut in 1998, that year also witnessed a significant turning point for the TSPM: the release of the Collected Writings of Bishop K. H. Ting and the TSPM’s ensuing movement of theological thought. We mentioned that K. H. Ting was open-minded in the 1980s and even made mistakes in 1989 in the mind of the CCP. But after 1989, he had to change in order to pass the party’s political review. In 1993 he visited the United States, specifically Fuller Theological Seminary. During his visit, Pastor Jonathan Chao and Pastor Zhao Junying initiated a boycott against him, and all of the Chinese seminary students (who at that time only came from Taiwan and Hong Kong) protested against him at the meeting venue.
Consequently, this incident was a big blow to K. H. Ting as he came to the reality that he would never represent the house churches. Therefore, from then on, his attitude marked by a giant swing. While the position of the house churches and the position of the TSPM were complicated throughout the 1990s, in 1998, both the Collected Writings of Bishop K. H. Ting and the Chinese House Church Confession of Faith were released, suggesting once again that these two camps held to two clearly diverse ways. So what was the issue with K. H. Ting in 1998? He began to believe that he had found a way, a better way, to deal with government relations and remove the suppression of the church. This way was liberal theology, or a liberal expression of theology that would better adapt better Socialism.
From the side of the government, 1998 also saw a critical change: a new slogan that Jiang Zemin (b. 1926) clearly proposed for the TSPM: “The Sinicization of Christianity”. This slogan was actually originally proposed by Li Weihan (1896–1984), the Minister of the United Work Front Department in 1982 and alluded to in the CCP’s religious policy as laid out in Document No. 19. and was meant to push Christianity and all other religions to adapt to Socialist values. But this sentence was not written into Document No. 19 because the party’s religious policy was still somewhat open-minded. Document No. 19 focused on limiting rather than actively reforming Christianity, because the Cultural Revolution had only recently passed and the policy of eradicating Christianity had failed. The ensuing, gentler policy of limiting Christianity has since evolved over the past ten to twenty years into a policy of reforming Christianity, as demonstrated by the term “the Sinicization of Christianity”. Therefore, while Li Weihan’s suggestion was not included in Document No. 19 in 1982, in 1998 Jiang Zemin clearly proposed it as the principle for religious works in the new period. Namely, in order to guide the religions’ adaptation to Socialism. Therefore, K. H. Ting’s actions were a small response to Jiang Zemin’s proposal, to guide Christianity’s adaptation to Socialism.
Something else important happened in 1998 that greatly impacted China’s Christian churches and Chinese society. That year witnessed great changes in the relationship between the government and religions, including the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong.
What, exactly, did K. H. Ting say? He opposed the fundamentalists. Let us review the history of Chinese Christianity between 1980 and 2000. Within the TSPM there was not only one voice. As we have explained, the whole of the 1980s witnessed the fundamentalist revival, and part of the revival took place within the TSPM. There were fundamentalist forces and conservatives within the TSPM, and K. H. Ting was determined to suppress them. The TSPM had two figures representing the fundamentalists.
In 1994 something important happened at Bejing’s TSPM affiliated Gangwashi Church called the “Gangwashi Church Incident”. Yang Yudong (1920–1999), the pastor of Gangwashi Church at the time, had pastored the church since its restoration after the Cultural Revolution and also led the church’s youth fellowship. He held to the fundamentalist faith. During the June Fourth Incident in 1989, the youth fellowship of the Gangwashi Church was the only church group that took to the streets under the leadership of pastor Yang Yudong, lifting up the cross and helping the students and citizens who were killed and wounded. Consequently, after 1989 he was recriminated, but he held on to his position in Gangwashi. Then in 1994, the RAB and the TSPM went to the church and removed him from his position. So he left Gangwashi Church and began to influence house churches outside of the TSPM. However, being a part of the TSPM, throughout his life he never completely cut off his relationship with the TSPM. In other words, like some of us who still remain party members, he still kept his organizational relationship with the TSPM although he no longer worked there and had been totally removed. Therefore, Yang Yudong had profound influences on the later house churches in Beijing, including Pastors Jin Tianming and Jin Mingri.
Therefore, in the 1990s there were three powers in the churches in Beijing that formed a very complex situation. The first of these powers was made up of the traditional house churches represented by Allen Yuan, Yang Anxi, and some others. Allen Yuan was a representative figure for the traditional house churches in Beijing. The second consisted of a group of missionaries from overseas, represented by Pastor Cha, a Korean missionary from U.S.. The third group consisted of the conservatives within the TSPM and the fundamentalists who had left the TSPM, represented by Pastor Yang Yudong. Therefore, these three powers have influenced the churches in Beijing from the 1990s into the 21st century. Allen Yuan represented the traditional house churches and their forerunners who had been imprisoned. Pastor Cha represented the churches established by missionaries from overseas. We mentioned last time that all the urban churches established in the early 1990s began as foreign teacher-initiated college student fellowships. In the same way Pastor Cha began as a foreign university teacher who established a campus fellowship. Later, Pastor Cha influenced pastor Jin Tianming and finally founded the Discipleship Seminary. And then finally there was Yang Yudong, thus making up the three powers in the Beijing churches.
The situation in Shanghai was different from that of Beijing since church development there was slower. There, traditional house churches were the only influencer because missionary influence was weak and, since Shanghai was the founding location for and the national headquarters of the TSPM, there were no conservatives within the TSPM like there were in Beijing. Therefore, in Shanghai, the TSPM was strong, the political mindset leaned leftward, and none from the ideological field, including the intellectuals, could be invigorated. Consequently, the house churches in Shanghai were also not active.
Let me give you an example for the sake of illustration. In the 1980s to the 1990s, Chinese house churches could be categorized as churches for gatherings. This means that most churches at the time did not have Sunday worship services or formal worship like we have now, but rather only informal gatherings. Therefore, one of the traditions of the house churches in the 1980s and the 1990s was holding conferences, similar to the way that we have met together over these last three days. Brothers and sisters always looked forward to the next conference. Their spiritual development for a whole year might hinge on a conference, which could last from two to three days to a week. For example, the churches in Wenzhou were filled with believers who left their hometowns to do business. During the Chinese New Year Holiday, they would all return to their homes and, different from what we do, they would attend conferences from the first to the fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year. The holiday was filled with gatherings. Church A might be hosting a prayer conference from the first to the third day, Church B might be hosting another conference from the third day to the sixth day, and Church C might be hosting a preaching conference for three days. The entirety of their New Year Holiday would be filled with church conferences. So this was the house church tradition. In particular, they would have meetings that would emphasize Communion.
Thus, as Christians, we today are losing some of our traditions. Whenever a house church would host one of these conferences, all of the co-workers would fast and pray for the conference. There was this sort of tradition, to fast and pray for the event several days before the conference. Also, their gathering for breaking bread was similar to our weekly or monthly Communion. The house church tradition was that there would be more gatherings in preparation for the Communion gathering. For example, if they were going to have Communion and break bread on the following Sunday, the Saturday night before, people would gather together for a prayer meeting in preparation for Sunday’s Communion, and the Friday night before that they would gather together for confession and prayer so that they could break bread on Sunday after the confession. Thus, there were a series of gatherings before the gathering for Communion. Fasting was done in preparation for Communion. Then, in a traditional house church, the Communion gathering would last for a long time, usually two to three hours, with many tearful prayers and mutual confessions that would prolong the gathering.
Churches in Shanghai were under little influence from overseas missionaries. That is not to say that there was no missionary influence, but this influence was not substantial. There were also no conservatives who had left the TSPM. Therefore, although the city itself had an international perspective, house churches in Shanghai were small in size, very closed, and the most conservative. Five or six years ago one brother from our church went to Shanghai and planned to worship at a church there. I knew the church and its leader, but they would not allow him to attend their worship. Instead, according to their rules, they put him in a small group for a month so that they could observe him before they quietly brought him to the place of Sunday worship. Meanwhile, all the communication was done through a slip of paper without using the phone.
Therefore, house churches in Shanghai did not establish Sunday worship until the year 2000. Before 2000, traditional house churches in Shanghai were churches of gatherings without Sunday worship. Without a place of worship, there could be no Sunday worship. Also, without clergy, there could be no Sunday worship. Nor was preaching common during the gatherings. Rather, the time was dominated by the sharing of testimonies. Those of us with a background in those traditional house churches know that those churches were full of testimonies, many of which were very inspiring.
So this was why in 1998, K. H. Ting wanting to adapt religion to Socialism, proposed a very important official theology called “justification by love alone”. In early 1998, he published an article in Guangming Daily criticizing the fundamentalist church’s overemphasis on the idea that believers should not be equally yoked with unbelievers, their emphasis on preaching messages regarding the last day, and their preaching of justification by faith alone. In his article, he said that a co-worker wrote to him and raised a question that he was struggling to understand, which K. H. Ting struggled with as well. This co-worker said, “Comrade Lei Feng was such an extraordinary person who helped so many people, yet he could not be saved because our church claimed that he had to go to hell if he did not believe in Jesus, while people like us could go to heaven. My conscience cannot accept such things”. Then, K. H. Ting commented that his conscience would not allow him to accept this either. He then said that the church could not preach to Chinese society a gospel that put Lei Feng in hell. It was unacceptable and had to be changed. So, he wrote that one is justified because of their inner-love, just like Lei Feng’s love. Since Lei Feng demonstrated great love and help for others, we should proclaim his justification by love. Therefore, K. H. Ting assimilated ideas from 20th century liberal theology, including process theology and other trends.
Last week we studied the “Ninety-Five Theses of the House Churches”. One of the co-workers asked me about the “Universal Doctrine of Christ” proposed by K. H. Ting. What did the “Universal Doctrine of Christ” mean? K. H. Ting emphasized that Christ is not only Christ before the ages began, not only the eternal living God, not only the incarnated Christ nailed to the cross who was raised on the third day. Rather, one had to understand that Christ permeates the universe and all of creation. And so this universal Christ can undoubtedly be found in Indian or Chinese culture. Since this Christ existed in the universe before the ages began, the tian that Laozi and Confucius recognized must have been this Christ. Also, the unknow deity taught in Hinduism was in fact Christ. Therefore, K. H. Ting taught that Greek philosophy, Hinduism, and Chinese Confucianism all believe in Jesus. They believe in such a way that they did not know that what they believe is Jesus. Rather, they thought that what they believe in is Buddha or “tian” or something else. Now, according to Ting, it is our job as Christians to teach them that what they believe is actually Jesus and that they are Christians hidden in various cultures. Since there is one Christ hidden in every culture, there must be Christians hidden in all cultures. And so how can one know whether or not someone is a hidden Christian who could recognize the hidden Christ? One is not to judge by whether someone believes in Jesus, but rather by whether that person loves others, by whether he is a good person, and by his moral standard. Consequently, K. H. Ting identified Lei Feng as a Christian.
The release of Collected Writings of Bishop K. H. Ting in 1998 led to his severance from the house churches as the house churches took his teaching to be heresy and thus did not acknowledge him. Furthermore, it also led to the breakup of the conservatives and the liberals from within the TSPM. This break, much like the Gangwashi Church Incident that made Pastor Yang Yudong a symbolic figure, happened at Nanjing Union Theological Seminary. In 1998, three students of the Seminary openly released an article explaining why they refused to sing secular songs, known as “red songs” in our context. Then, these three students were dismissed by K. H. Ting. The next year, three other students fearlessly wrote another article explaining why they opposed the holding of a celebration for the CCP’s birthday, the national flag raising ceremony, and the singing of “red songs” at the seminary. So, these three students were dismissed as well. Basically, these expelled students began to serve in the house churches, including Pastor Peter Cui, one of the important pastors in Beijing. After those two waves of student dismissals, there was an incident with a teacher in the seminary. Ji Tai, the academic dean of the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and former assistant to K. H. Ting, was also dismissed by the Seminary. Years ago Ji Tai wrote a long article online criticizing the TSPM as a representative from within. Therefore, while Yang Yudong was the earlier symbolic figure of the conservatives within the TSPM, Ji Tai was the symbolic figure of the conservatives within the movement at the end of the 1990s who would go on to depart from the movement.
Therefore, before 1998 there were still many faithful servants of the Lord within the TSPM who held to the conservative faith and felt that they might be able to help transform the organization. They genuinely hoped that by remaining inside the TSPM they could help prevent the organization from becoming what it is now. But those who have remained inside the TSPM since 1998 should repent because they have led the children of God into wrong teaching. They have been through the theological reconstruction of 1998 and still did not leave the TSPM, which is a great sin against God. Even if they did not leave after 1998, they should have left when the cross demolitions happened in 2014. Yet even after the release of the Regulation on Religious Affairs in 2018, some of them still will not leave the TSPM and claim to be faithful servants of the Lord from within the TSPM. Whom are they trying to deceive? God is not to be mocked.
Therefore, before 1998 it was possible to have faithful servants of the Lord inside of the TSPM. But after 1998, if they were faithful to the Lord, they had many opportunities to leave, or to be dismissed, or to be persecuted each year. But each time they were as wise as the serpents until they themselves finally became serpents.
All right. Our time today is up. Let’s Stop here.
There was one more important thing that took place in 1998. I promise I will finish the session once we have this covered. In 1998 the Canaan Hymns by Xiaomin was released, which was representative of house church development over the prior twenty years. The first edition was published in 1998, the turning point of an era. In our Xuncheng Hymns there are also twenty to thirty songs selected from the Canaan Hymns. Let’s sing two songs from it. We have sung Xiaomin’s songs before. First, At Five in the Morning in China.
“At five in the morning of China, Prayer is heard; May God bring revival and peace, unity and triumph.”
When I met Xiaomin in Shandong, it was bright at five o’clock in the morning. I said to her, “You did not consider the situation in Sichuan as we are about two hours behind you. At five o’clock it is completely dark in Sichuan”. She said, “Sorry, we didn’t consider how vast China is”.
Let’s sing one more, one that we sang before, We Wept, Laughed, Sang, and Kept Silent.
We wept, laughed, sang and kept silent; we walked, stopped, were spirited and discouraged; we walked through the deepest valleys; we climbed over the highest mountains. Year after year, we had losses; Pain after pain, we had gains. Great waves of time had flowed past our ears, bitter-sweet tears had fallen many times. Behold, a river of life has finally come down from Heaven, flowing to China, healing China, winning China. Behold, a river of life has finally come down from Heaven, flowing to China, healing China, winning China.”
Let’s pray together before our Lord:
Lord we thank you for your blessings to the Chinese church and the cloud of witnesses you have given to us. We pray, Lord, that you will continue to carry and lead the Chinese church today. We have resolved to you, Lord, that we are willing to offer ourselves as a sacrifice. May you lead us so that, while bitter-sweet tears have fallen many times, we know that the Lamb has conquered. We pray together before the Lord as we open our mouths to pray and offer ourselves as the sacrifice.
