What to Preach? Christian Witness in China, with Reference to the Party's Policy of Mutual Accommodation

Abstract

Christians are called to be God’s witnesses wherever they live and work. This is not something optional, but is rather the identity of Christians. Put theologically, a withdrawal from witness signifies a withdrawal from grace rather than from duty. Nevertheless, witness has to be contextualised in order that the Christian witness is a reality instead of a ‘virtual reality’. Therefore, any truthful and relevant account of Christian witness has to be faithful both to its tradition (faith) and to its social context. But we have to admit that being faithful to one’s tradition and to one’s social context is always in tension, and thereby, Christian witness is always a process of discernment and struggle rather than simply a matter of application. This paper is a study about Christian (or more precisely, Protestant) witness in China during the 1990s and thereafter. The purpose of the paper is not to argue whether the history of Christian witness in China has to be interpreted as a history of imperialism and colonialism or a history written in flesh and blood, whether the ‘Three-Self Patriotic Movement’ is a Christian movement or a government agency, but rather to examine how Christians in China search for their identity and mission in terms of theological construction in responding to the policy of mutual accommodation of the Communist Party (hereafter, the Party). In other words, the question of ‘what to preach’ is the fundamental concern of this paper. Mutual accommodation is a religious policy first proposed by some government officials in the early 1980s, and finally endorsed on 11 November 1993 by President Jiang Zemin’s speech. In his speech, he said,