Encounter with the church in China

Harold Jantz

Fourteen Canadians under the banner of the Canadian Council of Churches visited the church in China last year. The group included seven Catholics, two Anglicans, two United Church people, a Presbyterian couple, and myself, invited onto the delegation by Mennonite Central Committee Canada. Ironically, the church we encountered in China was thoroughly evangelical and theologically conservative, though only a minority of the Protestants in our group were.

We met in Vancouver Nov. 4 and flew to China. In the two-and-a-half weeks that followed, we visited Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, Xian and Beijing. We had a rare opportunity to hear from the people who lead the public church. We did not meet the representatives of what is often described as the underground church, though we were persuaded that we were encountering authentic, vibrant Christianity.

We heard accounts of amazing church growth, especially since the early 1980s. The province of Jiangsu, for instance, had 50,000 Protestants in 1949. Now they number a million--and these are only those known to the Jiangsu Christian Council. With a population of 1.2 billion people--still growing by 14 million a year despite a one-child policy that's been in place since the early '80s--China teems with life and energy, and the church with it.

Shanghai our door

Shanghai, a city of 18 million, is casting itself as Asia's next commercial and financial hub. By one estimate, there are 500 tall climbing cranes in use in Shanghai, a quarter of all such cranes in use in the world. Some of the building boom will provide better housing for the city's poor. Between 1985 and 1995, Shanghai increased per capita living space from 5.4 to 8 square metres, still very tight by Western standards. By the year 2000, 70% are supposed to have private kitchens and toilets.

Much of the building boom is intended for commercial purposes, because so many foreign and national investors believe China has huge significance both as a market and as a source of industrial products. Foreign investment in China totalled $420 billion US in 1994.

Enormous wealth and great poverty exist side by side in China. Around 7-9% of the population is considered to be at the poverty level, earning about $70 Canadian a year. In Shanghai, the average wage is $107 Canadian. Yet stores are filled with consumer goods.

Remarkable growth

Chang Ye-Foh, at 73, leads The Apostles Church in Suzhou, an hour's train ride out of Shanghai. Pastor James (as Chang told us to call him) recalled that the early years of communist rule were difficult for Christians. The Korean War enflamed Chinese feelings against the West, and missionaries were depicted as agents of imperialism. Christians like Pastor James were forced into mind-reform sessions. That was followed in 1966 by the Cultural Revolution, which lasted a decade. All churches were closed. Pastor James was sent into the countryside to herd water buffalo for eight years. In many places, church buildings were vandalized and then converted into schools, factories and warehouses.

At the time of his greatest despair, Pastor James cried to God, "O Lord, where are You? Why have You brought me to this abyss?" As he looked around, he saw tiny flowers and remembered the words of Jesus that God cares for "the lilies of the field, and how much more for you". At that moment, he realized afresh the depths of God's care.

The Apostles Church became the first church in Jiangsu province to reopen after the Cultural Revolution. Now it has a membership of 2000, and it is baptizing 300 new believers a year, most of whom are introduced to Christ by Christian neighbours. "If one is converted," says Pastor James, "he will do right in his neighborhood." For young people, the attraction of the church is the "good deeds of the Christians" and the reports that the church is a "fellowship of love".

People are expected to attend church services for six months to a year before they are allowed into a "probationists" class before baptism. The class has four sessions to discuss the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the church. After that, the candidates are examined individually to assess their faith.

All over China, churches are being paid for properties lost for years. Churches with the finances to buy land or put up new buildings are usually able to gain permission to do so. Catholics, who are growing much slower than Protestants, built 225 new churches in Shaanxi province in the past 12 years.

The China Christian Council (representing churches of the Three-Self movement) believes that Protestant Christianity has grown from 700,000 prior to 1949 to 10-12 million now. Others, who claim much higher numbers for the unofficial churches, say that Protestant Christianity may number 30-40 million. Official Catholic sources put their numbers at 6-8 million, with the underground Catholics at perhaps 10-12 million, up from 3 million in 1949. Much of the church is found in rural areas, where over 70% of China's people live. The Three-Self Movement has 7-8,000 church buildings throughout China and 25-30,000 meetingplaces. Catholics claim 4500 parishes in 115 dioceses in the public church.

Did communism represent a gain for Christianity?

What does one make of the growth of Christianity in China under communism? For many years, treaties between China and the colonial powers (they're called the "unequal treaties" in China) ensured that missionaries could work without hindrance. Yet the church grew poorly. Why then has it grown so strongly under an atheistic regime after years when its public life was totally shut down?

The question isn't easily answered. At the peak in 1926, Protestants had 8235 European and North American missionaries in China. A few years after "liberation" in 1949, most were gone, some voluntarily, some expelled.

One of the few missionaries to remain was a Mennonite, Loyal Bartel. Bartel's wife had died in 1946, and he had taken Chinese citizenship. He stayed on in China, working a little farm in Cao Xian, Shandong province. Little is known of the sort of ministry he could do. He died in 1971. When his brother Jonathan visited China in 1987, the church in Cao Xian had grown to over 1000 in attendance, and 40 churches in the surrounding countryside had over 20,000 members.

Both Catholics and Protestants brought Western education and health care to China. Some of today's leading universities and hospitals were founded by Christian missionaries. Yet Christianity didn't seem to take root. Why?

A number of missiologists have come to believe that missionaries had to leave China for the church to become genuinely Chinese. Many missionaries implied that the Chinese could not lead as well as they. Christianity seemed to carry a "foreign" wrapping. The Three-Self Movement, embraced by many Protestants under considerable pressure from the government--self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating--has helped enormously to give the church a Chinese identity.

Ralph Covell, who served in China 1946-51, has written "Why I don't pray for China to open". He thinks Christians with practical skills should go to China--teachers of languages and business people--but not evangelists and church planters. The Chinese can do these jobs much better. He fears that outside missions would corrupt the church in China and turn it from the lessons it learned during the past 50 years.

One of those lessons is the spirit of "mutual respect" that Protestants learned when they were made to join together in the Three-Self Movement. Now they have formed local and regional Christian councils and one national China Christian Council, which embraces all registered Protestants.

Cao Shen Jie of the national Christian Council office in Shanghai describes this as the "post-denominational period". Even though many churches still reflect their Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian or Baptist roots, the "mutual respect" they show to one another has minimized the intolerance that has often characterized Christians.

The Cultural Revolution also brought unintended blessings. Both Catholics and Protestants say it gave them a better appreciation for the life of common people. This was because pastors and priests, if they weren't put in prison, were often sent into the countryside to work on farms.

The Cultural Revolution also forced the church to continue its life in households and more intimate settings. There appears to be little doubt that the explosive growth of the church in China since the early '80s owes a great deal to the experience of gathering away from recognized church buildings during the Cultural Revolution. The church came out of the Cultural Revolution considerably bigger than it went in.

Some also say that the Cultural Revolution created a pent-up demand for something for the spirit that hasn't been satisfied to this day. Catholic bishop Li Du-An told us, "When you've been without food for a long time, you need more."

Christian leaders also attribute growth to the difference people see in Christians. Even the hygiene of Christian communities is higher, says Catholic Bishop Zong Huai De: "They are known as model villages." Christians try to help their neighbours by providing relief to flood and other disaster victims, medical help through clinics attached to churches, and even cold water to thirsty workmen.

Yet the biggest challenge to the church continues to be the tendency to see it as a "foreign" religion. This is a dilemma for the church. To some Chinese, faith in Christ is equated with modernity and the West, and China wants to modernize. To others, the greater challenge is to help Chinese see that Christianity can really be Chinese.

Scrambling to provide leaders

Bishop K.H. Ting, the elder statesman of Chinese Protestants, told us that "leadership training is something you'll hear about everywhere." He was right. Literally everywhere we went, we heard about the shortage of trained people for the work of the church. The reasons aren't hard to find. Rapid church growth has meant that while there are 35,000 meeting points throughout the country, Protestants probably don't have more than 1500 ordained ministers.

Compounding the problem is the Cultural Revolution, which closed all schools. As a result, the church struggles with an aging leadership that should be handing over the reins, and a young leadership too young to take charge.

Protestants have 13 seminaries and a number of Bible schools. Catholics have 31 seminaries, 12 of them major. Catholics also have about 100 seminarians studying abroad, while Protestants have only a handful of people in biblical studies outside the country. Virtually every place we came to had plans to build new schools or improve the level of teaching. In Beijing, both the Catholics and the Protestants have large new seminaries under construction.

Yet great challenges remain. The level of education of incoming students is often low. Faculty are working with limited training. Some libraries owned before the Cultural Revolution were burned. Protestants have relatively few contacts with evangelical seminaries and Bible colleges elsewhere in the world. Both Catholics and Protestants are trying to come up to speed in terms of developments in biblical and theological studies and social issues. New questions about the future, about church polity and about relationships to the wider culture are emerging.

Yet, the dedication of the students is strong. The dean of the Shanghai Christian Seminary says that of 306 students who graduated in the past decade, a third are ordained, and 95% are working in the church. Many students in seminaries and Bible institutes can come only if they are recommended by their churches. Some are aided financially. Since many come long distances, they must live in residence in what is often very poor housing. Yet they come, and much hope rests upon them. Judging from the ones we saw, the church in China has a great resource in its young students. But it will be many years before the need for enough trained leaders will come even close to being met.

Friends in high places

Down the street that runs through Tiananmen Square, a mile away, stands a huge, stone building, home of the Institute for World Religions, an unlikely academic institution in a country officially atheist. China claims only a few religions have rooted there--Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. Perhaps a hundred million people profess allegiance to one of these faiths, approximately 10% of the population, we were told.

Yet in these times of rapid change in Chinese life--with the drive toward modernization and integration with a world market economy--religion can become a means of stablizing people. That's one reason why the Chinese government is content to allow religions to grow--and views even Christianity, which is seen as the most "foreign" of these, as useful to Chinese society. That's also why the Institute for World Religions has created centres for the study of each of these religions.

We came away from the Centre for Christian Studies at the Institute for World Religions with the impression that though these scholars might not be believers in Christ--some could be--they were friends of Christianity. Christians say that what attracts people to their churches is the difference ordinary Chinese can see in them. That was reinforced by these academics. They said that Christianity contributes to the "spiritual civilization" of the country in the wake of the "great chaos" that market-driven economic development is creating.

Zhuo Xinping, Director of the Centre, says that the Chinese government favours the growth of religion--as long as it contributes to the values which make it easier for society to function. If it doesn't, or if it creates an authority above the government, the religion will be opposed.

The Centre's work provides information for government policy-makers. "They read our publications very earnestly," Zhuo insists. In 30 years, Institute of World Religions scholars have published 150 books and 600 articles.

Women "hold up half the sky"

Women represent up to 70% of the church in China. Women also constitute an important part of the leadership of the church, especially on the Protestant side. The 13 Protestant seminaries had 465 female students and 46 full-time female teachers in 1994, about half the total of students and teachers. There were 223 ordained female pastors in China in 1994, about a sixth of the total. Many thousands more are serving as unordained volunteer worship leaders and preachers.

Still, as elsewhere in the world, the Chinese struggle with resolving tensions between men and women in the church. For instance, Gao Ying is a pastor of one of the Beijing Protestant churches, yet in her church lay women cannot distribute the elements in the communion service.

Some Christian women question whether the new China is improving the life of women. Agriculture appears to be feminizing, as more women are left to do the farm work. A one-child policy may mean more female children are aborted than male. In industries struggling to compete, less provision may be made for young mothers. When educational choices are made, boys may be preferred ahead of girls.

Teaching English rewarding but tough

Since the early '80s, 160 mainly Mennonite teachers have taught in China, and 60 Chinese scholars have spent time on Mennonite college campuses in North America. The program that made this possible is the China Educational Exchange, a project of three Mennonite mission boards (including MB Missions/Services) and Mennonite Central Committee.

Four of the 22 CEE teachers currently in China are at the Northeast University of Technology and at the Teachers' College in the northeastern industrial city of Shenyang. I arrived in Shenyang on a Saturday evening and the next day attended the 9:00 a.m. service at the Dong Guang Christian Church with Darryl Johnson and Kent Rasmussen, CEE teachers from Oregon. 2500 people attended this service, which was the second of four services that day. The preacher was a vigorous speaker whose prayers were punctuated by many amens from the audience. His theme, "The Secrets of the Spiritual Life", seemed to have an attentive audience. The choir sang well.

After the service, we took a taxi to the campus of the Teachers' College where Dana Petkau of Kelowna, B.C. and Lois Unruh of Steinbach, Man. teach. After lunch, we had a leisurely visit.

All four teach English, but the expectations placed on them vary. Kent says that no one checks on anything he does. The Teachers' College is clearer about its expectations.

For the students, English is a doorway to the wider world, a stepping stone in their academic careers. It stretches their thinking as it introduces them to ideas and new ways of thinking "that they just don't get if they know only Chinese," says Lois.

Though the CEE teachers have come with a strong desire to share their Christian faith, they don't find it easy. Not only are the language barriers formidable, getting to know what students can understand within their cultural experience takes great sensitivity. Perhaps most difficult, says Lois, is the discipline of waiting for opportunities to express oneself deeply.

Yet all four teachers feel that students want to relate to them and learn more about their Christian beliefs. Dana, in fact, has had so many students coming to her room for discussions that the building supervisor put a limit on the numbers. These young people are growing up in a society that is rapidly changing. They recognize that "in the world there is so much corruption and cheating, so much fighting to get ahead" and "yet they want to stay pure," says Lois. By allowing students to come close to her, she suggests, she can share with them how they "can change their motives and inner goals" through faith in Jesus and the teachings of the Bible.

Life isn't easy for the four. Housing is spartan. Cooking and laundry facilities are poor. Because of language barriers, they can only function on the periphery of the church life.

Yet church leaders attest to the importance of their witness. As Dana puts it, "You don't know what influence you have. Your life is going to speak volumes. Who you are is a greater testimony than you think it is. You may plant the seed and never see the fruit."

Harold Jantz is the former editor of ChristianWeek and the Mennonite Brethren Herald.

Return to the M.B.Herald Vol. 36, No. 11 Home Page