Chinese Protestant Church Research Articles

Inescapable "absurdity": Rethinking Luther and Calvin’s view of “presence of the body of Christ” in the Lord’s Supper

Given the general lack of understanding among Chinese Protestant churches regarding the " Eucharistic theology" in the tradition of the Reformation, as well as the challenges posed by the global COVID-19 pandemic to administration of the sacrament, this article comparatively analyzes Martin Luther and John Calvin's understanding of the "presence of the body of Christ" in the Lord's Supper. This not only involves differences in their respective views on the sacrament but also the underlying theological debates regarding "Christology" and hermeneutics, particularly concerning the relationship between "faith" and "reason." The article emphasizes the necessity of re-focusing the "presence of the body of Christ," which not only clarifies orthodox Christological thoughts, but also concerns the realistic practice of "communion and unity in Christ." Through examining the theological expositions of Luther and Calvin, this article offers new insights into the understanding of the "presence of the body of Christ" in the Lord's Supper and provides a theological foundation for the contemporary church to administrate the sacrament during extraordinary times. This will help Chinese Protestant churches better understand the core significance of the Lord's Supper and promote the ecumenical movement of the universal Church.

Karl Barth, Mou Zongsan, and the Political Responsibility of the Chinese Protestant Church

How can dogmatic teachings inform the political witness of the Chinese Protestant church and its calling among the moral crises of the past four decades? This essay responds to this urgent need by examining the political legacies of Karl Barth and Mou Zongsan, two dogmatic thinkers of Protestant Christianity and New Confucianism. A contextual and constructive comparison of the two figures allows us to reconfigure the notion of political responsibility as a praxis theory of neighbor love with several critical elements: it grounds the political responsibility of the church in the imperative of safeguarding fellow humanity and the forming of responsible humanity, and this imperative must be self-critical and forward-looking in practice. It thus contributes to Christian ethics by articulating the legacy of Barth’s dogmatic theology for democratic ethics through interfaith dialogue and a praxis theory of neighbor love for the Chinese Protestant church under the neoliberal regime.

SUBORDINATION, SEPARATION, AND AUTONOMY: CHINESE PROTESTANT APPROACHES TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION AND STATE

ABSTRACTIn the history of the religion-state relationship in China, a model of subordination of religion to the state has been dominant for centuries. In recent years, some Chinese Protestant churches have advocated the model of separation of church and state. Through a historical and theological analysis, this study argues that in order to relieve the tensions between Chinese Protestantism and the contemporary Chinese government, a better conceptual alternative is to reconsider the issue in terms of autonomy rather than separation or subordination, and to argue for legally allowing the coexistence of both official and nonofficial churches and grant different degrees of autonomy to each.

A “Double Alienation”

Scholarship on Christianity in Malaysia has been dominated by denominational church history, as well as the study of urban, middle-class and English-speaking church congregations in the post-Independence period. In focusing on the vernacular Chinese Protestant church in Malaysia, and one of its most prominent para-church organisations, called The Bridge, this paper draws attention to the variegated histories of Christian conversion and dissemination in Malaysia, and the various modes and meanings of Christian identity as incorporated into different local communities and cultures. The history of the Chinese Protestant church suggested in the first part of the paper takes as its point of departure the distinction between mission and migrant churches, the latter being the origin of the vernacular Chinese churches in Malaysia. The second part of the paper traces the emergence of a Chinese para-church lay organisation called The Bridge, and the Chinese Christian intellectuals behind it, in their mission to engage the larger Chinese and national public through literary publications and other media outreach activities. In so doing, these Chinese Christian intellectuals also drew on the resources of an East Asian and overseas Chinese Christian network, while searching for their destiny as Chinese Christians in the national context of Malaysia. By pointing to the importance of regional, Chinese-language Christian networks, and the complexity of vernacular Christian subjectivity, the paper hopes to fill a gap in the existing literature on Christianity in Malaysia, as well as make a contribution to on-going debates on issues of localisation, globalisation and authenticity in global Christianity.

Engaging and Evading the Party-State: Unofficial Chinese Protestant Groups in China’s Reform Era

Despite official regulation and in some cases repression, Protestant Christianity is one of the fastest growing religions in Mainland China today. In 1949, at the time of the Communist revolution, there were only 623,000 Protestant Christians in the mission churches in China, and they made up less than one-tenth of one per cent of the entire population. (1) Today, there are at least 50 million Protestants in China, and some scholars estimate that there are as many as 100 million. (2) Roughly 20 per cent of China's Protestants worship in churches affiliated with the government's Three-Self Patriotic Movement (Zhongguo jidujiao sanzi aiguo yundong weiyuan hui or sanzi jiaohui; hereafter, TSPM). (3) The rest worship in churches that are not recognised as official Protestant groups related to the TSPM. (4) This article draws on unique and valuable new data, as well as other primary and secondary sources, to examine the challenges and open spaces for non-TSPM Protestant groups in China's post-Mao period. It finds that four important factors influence the ability of non-TSPM Protestant leaders and groups to thrive within China's post-Mao political environment: (i) the behaviour of Protestant groups in the face of official rules and restrictions; (ii) the geographic location of Protestant groups; (iii) the extent and type of their personal connections (guanxi) with Party-state authorities; and (iv) political and material pressures on the local authorities with whom Protestants interact. Overall, the data and findings presented herein offer new insights into the complexity of Protestant church-state relations in China today. DATA SOURCES Supplementing the rich data that can be found in the existing scholarly literature on Mainland Chinese Protestant groups, (5) this article taps an array of additional sources. First, it consults reports prepared by human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and the China Aid Association. Second, it examines primary documents produced by various levels of the Chinese Party-state, as well as primary documents and autobiographical accounts produced by members of Protestant churches. Third, it references non-academic studies by foreign journalists and observers who have extensive contacts with Mainland Chinese Protestant churches. (6) Fourth, it utilises information reported in nine roughly two-hour interviews conducted in 2009 and 2010 by the authors. The respondents included former Protestant church leaders and members currently residing in the United States who are still in contact with official and unofficial churches throughout China, and human rights lawyers who have defended the leaders of unofficial churches (see Appendix for a list of the questions posed to these interview subjects). Five of the nine respondents were in leadership positions in large unofficial Protestant churches or church networks when they were in China. At the time of the interviews, all of the respondents were active in Chinese Protestant churches in the US that minister to unofficial Protestant churches throughout China. Fifth, it draws on the personal experience of one of this article's co-authors, who was a member for 30 years (1978-2008) of an unofficial Protestant church that has been illegal in China since 1952. She was employed and later volunteered as a translator in the church's publishing companies in Taipei and the US from 1983 to 2001. Since 2002, she has helped nearly 100 Mainland Chinese members of her church and other unofficial churches to obtain asylum and settle in the US. She has also done freelance translation and interpretation work for the China Aid Association. Sixth, this article is based on the content of a random sample of 800 letters written by listeners in China to the Hong Kong-based Far East Broadcasting Company (hereafter FEBC) and its Voice of Friendship Seminary. The FEBC is a nondenominational, international Christian radio network that broadcasts the Good News in more than 130 languages from 128 transmitters located throughout the world. …

The First Asian Ecumenical Confession of Faith: The So‐Called Twelve Articles of Faith of Many Asian Protestant Churches

The Twelve Articles of Faith, written by Western Presbyterian and Reformed missionaries in India around 1900, have arguably been the most important ecumenical confession of faith of many Asian Protestant churches (Indian, Korean and Chinese Protestant churches and beyond). The articles by and large adopt the spirit and content of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and have some apparently Calvinistic elements. But they also have some new Arminian, universalistic and ecumenical elements that include the unique historical and theological implications of the epochal Western missions in Asia of the 19th and the early 20th centuries: both Christ's atonement for all people and a non‐predestinarian order of salvation. These elements, however, seem to entail a weak, individualistic ecclesiology along with a Biblicist or fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Nonetheless, having influenced millions of Asian Christians, the articles have been and continue to be an important ecumenical confession of faith, and in this way can contribute to uniting Asian‐and world‐Christian churches.

Favor Fishing and Punch-Bowl Christians: Ritual and Conversion in a Chinese Protestant Church

This paper presents results from a four and one-half year participant observation study of conversion at a Chinese Protestant church. It was found that a variety of helping behaviors held important consequences for conversion. Church members were found to provide favors and gifts in ways that are unusual in Chinese society (e.g., anonymously, to perfect strangers, with no expectation of return, and to persons of lower status). These patterns of giving confound the traditional Chinese manner of building social networks and instead bind individuals to a larger society of Chinese Christians. These findings suggest that under certain conditions, examination of microsociological interaction rituals may complement other explanations of church growth.