the church has already begun to recognize the importance of. Two additional aspects to be developed are industry and commerce.
With regard to the question of the church’s work in constructing industry and commerce, many people would have doubts, because it seems more reasonable for the nation to develop industry, and more effective for commerce to be either private or a combination of national and private. After all, the church generally doesn’t like to engage in material works for profit. However, we should note this: The task of the church in constructing industry and commerce is not direct management of industry or business by the church, but rather something different in purpose and method.
According to political economists, heavy industry should be managed by the state, and this is a principle we accept. However, in the past, for a variety of reasons, the church has taken an opposing stance toward the state (though not an antagonistic one), and had an attitude of unconcern for the government. In the past, the deepest involvement of the church with the nation and government consisted of prayer. So as soon as it is acknowledged that many kinds of work should be managed by the state, the church no longer talks about them and lets the state handle them by itself, as if such matters were completely unrelated to the church. This is an erroneous attitude that we should correct, and here lies the significance of our industrial work in economic construction.
At present, as everyone knows, China needs extensive industrial facilities. In the past because our economy was backward, even though China had rich natural resources we had no way to develop them. Every year we suffered great losses as they were developed by our low-efficiency labor under the dominance of the foreign powers. To rectify this situation, the most effective strategy is to develop our industry. However, in a country as large as China, even if the government had deep financial resources and the most effective administrative power, it would be hard to be successful in immediately starting a big project to develop industry without the devoted cooperation of most of the people. The responsibility of Christianity consists of calling on citizens both in and outside the church to respect the government’s plans for industrial construction, and in every area—including human resources, capital, and administration—give the utmost cooperative support.
With regard to human resources the church can help more than in other areas. In the process of development industry, we need technicians who have good character, a spirit of sacrifice, and high degrees of professional training, and churches can serve as important bodies for training such people, especially with regard to spirit and character.
However, because in the past the church only paid attention to building character and the spirit, we seem to have neglected technical training to some extent. Here we only need to look at professional training bodies established by the church such as colleges and research institutes. Outside medical training, which is associated with charity work, achievements in areas of technical training seem relatively weak. This is a result of the incorrect attitude mentioned above, and something we should start trying to correct.
The situation described above is just a generalization. Amidst the special situation facing China, the government is occupied with prosecuting the war and maintaining social order, so the responsibility on the shoulders of the church for training specialized personnel is heavier. In this area the church must make greater efforts to move forward!
There is one more point we cannot overlook. In the midst of developing industry, China should avoid the dangerous road taken by capitalist Western nations. The taking of this road by China is something about which many people have doubts, and is something that we Christians should give special attention to. The dead end the industrial nations of the West have now reached is not an inherent result of developing industry, but rather represents an unnatural situation resulting from extreme individualism and liberalism. If we can use the Christian spirit and faith to drive the process of industrial development, keep watch at every step to prevent selfishness from seeping in, and take the realization of the kingdom of heaven as our goal, we can certainly avoid this unfortunate result.
Finally, the Chinese Industrial Cooperative movement which is currently being promoted is a plan that is worthy of study by the church. Here it is not necessary to provide a detailed introduction to this project. Our hope is merely that the church will pay a little more attention to industrial development. With regard to business, our hope is the creation of a new commerce system so as to eliminate the defects of the profit system. We should recognize the fundamental impact of commerce on society, and fill the majority of the people with the Christian spirit so that they realize the kingdom of heaven on earth in their commerce. Perhaps religious work, educational work, and social work are ways to realize this hope. In any case, at present we have no promising concrete plan, but through faith and hope, we feel that the establishment of this new commerce system is an area in which the church can contribute to China, and this is something which we should be able to achieve in the future.
Now we have already generally discussed all the kinds of work the Christian church can do for the construction of a new China. Here we should again state that these individual works areas are the individual parts of one large movement, driven by a single force toward one ultimate goal. This is one wholistic Christian movement to build the nation, one that draws on Christian faith as its strength and takes the realizing of the kingdom of heaven as its goal. This is because each of these parts are tied together to produce a complete overall impact. In order to reach our goal, we must have one central organization to serve as the overall plan designer and promoter of this movement. So the “overall mind” of Mr. Liang Shumin is a necessary part of this movement.
Concrete organization.
Above we have already seen that a unified nation-wide organization is greatly needed in the rural reconstruction movement, and lack of such an organization is a serious problem. Similarly, if we wish to promote our Christian movement to build a new China, we must also study how to create a well-structured and strong national organization, and also find ways to avoid or solve the difficulties and malpractices faced in past church unification movements. Here we need to understand a distinction. The unified national organization spoken of here is not the same as the united national church of which we often speak, in other words, the elimination of denominations. Instead, our purpose is, in the process of carrying out a responsibility shared by all churches in China, to establish one massive cooperative effort based on a shared mission, shared needs, and a shared faith. There have been many examples of this kind of thing in the past, but most relate to one particular area of work. These existing joint organizations could unite into the ideal large organization of which I speak, but they could not shoulder the heavy task of building a new China in its place.
In the past, the issue of church unification has given rise to a great deal of controversy. Because at present all the churches realize that the mission of the Christian church in China faces them with shared needs and a shared situation, the feeling is growing that the unification of the churches is an indispensable part of church progress. However, this is only a shared feeling. In practice, due to differences in mission agencies, economic support, faith, and organization, the church unification movement has encountered many difficulties. Now our Christian movement to build a new China is actually a vehicle for dissolving many of these differences. We are not advocating this movement of national construction in order to unify the church; however, for the sake of the nation constructing movement, we simply must have a considerable degree of oneness in spirit, work, and organization. In the process of advancing this movement, for the sake of shared work and a shared mission, the church is naturally uniting, so that the church in China is becoming one family in the Lord. This is a natural outcome, and a necessary aspect of the realization of the kingdom of heaven.
But what form would a unified organization for the building of a new China take? Given the present situation of the church, the National Christian Council of China would be an appropriate and solid organization to serve as a starting point, because it presently has the strength to call on all the churches of the nation, it has strong human resources, and is viewed as a leading organization by churches all over China. So we hope that the Christian
