Buddhism and Shintoism have had deep and far-reaching influences over a thousand years. In China, Confucianism with its ethical, pragmatic and humanistic emphases, remained the main stream watering the national cultural soil, and together with Buddhism, which had been long indigenized, and Taoism, somehow fused with the other two, formed the triple roots of the national ethos. In both countries the traditional religious and cultural factors have been so strong and all-permeating that any imported religion that failed to assimilate or to accommodate with them, but claimed to be the sole and exclusive source of revelation, condemning dogmatically other affiliations to heathenism and damnation, would be sure to meet with suspicion and resistance. When it did make some success, as in pre-liberation China, it was at the cost of alienating its adherents from their compatriots. The terse acid saying that “one more Christian means one less Chinese” sums up the deplorable general situation.
A third point of similarity, as a consequence to the two pointed above, is that believers both in Japan and in China constitute a very small minority among the peoples. If I am not mistaken, they amount to only about one percent in Japan, although the influence and prestige of Christians are far greater than the numerical strength. In China, taking Catholics and Protestants together, the percentage is still lower, about 0.6–7. So we are both facing the task and challenge of how to bear witness to our faith and commitment amongst an overwhelming majority of fellow-countrymen of strong non-Christian cultural background and orientation.
Having made these comparisons, I presume it is easier for you Japanese Christians to understand the situation, endeavours, aspirations and problems of Chinese Christians than those from the so-called Christian countries in the West. We are near neighbours, and we have so much in common in our historical cultural heritage and experiences. We know that you have been grappling with similar problems. The well-known Japanese Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo (远藤周作) likens being a Christian to having a wife chosen by his parents. He wrote “Many times I tried to make her leave, but this foreign wife called Christianity shook her head and refused to go. So I had to make her Japanese.” This was what some conscientious Chinese Christians had tried to do before 1949 with little success. And this is what we have been laboring at since the liberation and the launching of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in 1950. Three-Self means that the Chinese church must be self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. It means the church must not, as it had been before, be dominated by missionaries, supported with foreign funds, and run in patterns according to various denominational traditions, copying the culturo-theological thought-forms of the many so-called “mother churches.” We must break the image of foreignness. In so doing, it is necessary to rediscover and realize our selfhood and achieve independence, so that we can have a full status in the mutual sharing and interdependence within the Church Universal. This is not anti-foreign. To adapt Endo’s simile and dictum, “We must make her Chinese.”
Yesterday, on September 23, Protestant churches in China were commemorating the 34th anniversary of the inauguration of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. During the past thirty-four years, thanks to the blessing and the grace of our heavenly Father and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we, holding fast to the biblical principle of Three-Self—for we believe that this principle is not an invention of our own, but has sound biblical and theological basis and has been ever at work throughout the historical development of world Christianity—we have made some headway for which we are grateful. The road has not been straight and easy. There have been zigzags and obstacles, and misunderstandings both among ourselves and from the outside. We have committed blunders and made corrections. During the chaotic decade called “cultural revolution,” which was in reality culturally destructive and politically counterrevolutionary in nature and effect, almost all traces of organized religions, not just Christianity, seemed to be cleanly wiped out. But God works creatively even in the demonic forces. The purging turned out to be a fiery chastening process and had its educational effects. We have learned how to recognize and avoid the evils of ultra-leftism. Order was finally restored and the Party and Government returned to the right interpretation and implementation of the policy of religious freedom. The faithful and steadfast emerged afresh with rejuvenescent vitality and new visions. The year 1979 marked the beginning of a second phase of the Three-Self Movement. Since then we have been working on the holy task of rebuilding the house of the Lord. The heart-warming promise and mandate of Haggai that “the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former” (2:9) has been beckoning and prompting us forward.
Now, what have we done and accomplished in the last thirty-four years? Bishop K. H. Ting, Chairman of the National Three-Self Patriotic Committee and President of the China Christian Council, in his opening address before the Third Chinese National Christian Conference in September, 1980, summed up the accomplishments of the preceding phase of thirty years of endeavor in the following three points. I shall dwell but briefly on these.
First, we have accomplished in making Chinese Christians patriotic Chinese. Before and shortly after the liberation, many Chinese Christians had become victims to the alienating indoctrination and anti-communist propaganda of their Western “mentors,” and took faithfulness to God and loyalty to the Church incomparably higher over against or even incompatible with the love of one’s country. The contradiction had become more acute when they thought that the country was to be ruled by atheist communists, whom they took to be Satan, the sworn enemy of Christ. After liberation, however, innumerable undeniable facts and personal experiences convinced many honest Christians that under the leadership of the Communist Party new China is far, far better than it had ever been before; that the party was really working for the welfare of the people, with a spirit of self-sacrifice that put many a sincere Christian to shame; that the Party was advocating in theory and practice a policy of religious freedom. But some die-hard anti-communist Christians were still unreconciled and advanced theological arguments like posing “life,” by which they meant a mystical, esoteric, undefinable “union with Christ,” against the moral and rational discernment between good and evil, or right and wrong; or insisting upon the doctrine of total depravity of all men and the futility and sinfulness of any human effort towards betterment of human society; or interpreting pre-millennialism with an overtone that New China, however good and welcome by the Chinese people, was doomed to be short-lived and would soon be totally destroyed at the second coming of Christ. All these set the serious Christians to think and rethink. There arose a nation-wide mass theological movement involving both rank-and-file believers and church leaders. I shall not go into the loci theologici and arguments. Bishop Ting is making an analysis of this theological movement in one of his addresses here in Japan. The overall effect, in short, was that the contradiction or dilemma between love of the Church and love of the mother-land was resolved in a unity on a sound biblical and theological basis. Now a favorite slogan prevailing among Chinese Christians is “爱国爱教, 荣神益人.” (Love the country and love the church; glorify God and benefit men).
Secondly, we have succeeded in changing the countenance of Christianity in China. With the withdrawal of missionaries and cutting off of foreign funds after 1950, the Chinese church was left to the Chinese Christians, to sink or swim, willy-nilly. So in a sense the necessity of Three-Self was forced upon us by the specific political situation. But it was through the persisting enlightening and endeavours of pioneering leaders like Dr. Y. T. Wu and others that it became a conscious and organized mass movement. The convening of the First Chinese Christian Conference in 1954, which gave rise to the National Three-Self Patriotic Committee, was an important milestone. Since then we have gradually changed the countenance of Christianity from yangjiao (foreign religion) into a church self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating with more and more Chinese characteristics.
Thirdly, these two accomplishments had led to another, namely, a gradual change of public opinion and impression of the people regarding Chinese Christians and the church. We have identified ourselves with the people and taken part in the struggle of constructing an independent new socialist China, sharing the weal and woe in the vicissitudes of national development. We are taken in by our fellow-countrymen. Many church members have done good deeds and made outstanding contributions in their jobs. More and more people have realized that Christians too are good Chinese citizens and that Christianity is a religion which Chinese
