Christianity In The Eye Of Traditional Chinese
Enoch Wan
Professor, Western Seminary
Published in Global Missiology, Contextualization, Oct. 2003, www.globalmissiology.net
Abstract
Christianity should not be transplanted to
First published in Chinese Around the World, July 1999 (A Ministry of Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism) and posted at http://www.missiology.org.
Send comments to: ewan@westernseminary.edu
I.
INTRODUCTION
In the last article entitled
"Sailing in the Western Wind" (refer to March issue of CATW), we
briefly examined the history of CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA and Western influence on
CHINESE CULTURE. This time, we shall take a look at CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA and
Western influence on CHINESE CHRISTIANITY. We have, in the first part of this
six-part series, given an account of the historical facts from seven dimensions
to show how extensively and how comprehensively Westernization is on
contemporary Chinese culture. In this article, we shall identify and summarize
five aspects of westernized Christianity among the Chinese prior to 1949.
First of all, several key terms are
to be clarified at the outset. "Westernization" denotes
and describes "the process/product of the influence/impact of Western
culture on the Chinese"; whereas "Christianity" means
"the belief of individual followers and the institutionalized
communities/organizations of the faithful who venerate Jesus Christ as their
Lord, the Bible as the Truth, the Church as the earthly agent of God, and the
Kingdom of God as the ultimate end of human destiny". The term "Christianity"
adopted here refers to inclusively the Nestorians, the Catholics and the
Protestants of the period from T'ang to Ch'ing
dynasties.
The term "traditional
Chinese" here is refer to "non-Christian
Chinese with strong Chinese cultural orientation and ethnic pride". This
article is written from the perspective of a "traditional Chinese"
(or "emic study" as employed by social
scientists referring to "an insider's perspective"). Evangelical
Chinese Christian readers might find this form of presentation too negative or
too offensive. If that should be the case, it is somewhat inevitable yet
regrettable. Hopefully, the serious evaluations and honest reflections
attempted in this article could provoke concerned Chinese Christians to
critically re-examine the history of Christianity in China and re-orient their
faith and the practice of faith in a scripturally sound and culturally relevant
manner in the Chinese context.
II. CHRISTIANITY IN
CHINA: THE SIGNS OF WESTERNIZATION
A. Importation and Impression:Transported By Gun-boat
And Expanded Under Unequal Treaties
The importation of Christianity by
Nestorian missionaries occurred during the T'ang
Dynasty. After about 200 years, it had declined in China proper, except among
the royal families of the Mongolians of the Yuen Dynasty. The Catholic version
of Christianity was brought into China by the Franciscan missionaries during
the Yuen Dynasty but was in conflict and competition with the Nestorian within
China, which led to the demise of both.
While the imperial government in
China declined in power and was devastated by corruption in the middle of the
nineteenth century, European countries, on the other hand, were experiencing
Industrial Revolution, and hence were more advanced in science, technology,
commerce and navigation. It was also the time when they intensified in colonial
expansion and missionary efforts. At the time of increased international
interaction, the self-imposed isolation of China from foreign countries became
ineffective and even impossible.
By then, foreign imports poured into
China's many seaports, with opium being the most profitable and lucrative
commodity in the 1830's. Beginning with the Anglo-Sino "Opium War" in
1839, China was repeatedly defeated by European powers, followed by those of
Japanese's and Russians'. The opening of the five seaports (imposed on China in
the Treaty of Nanking of August 1842 by the British) seduced other Western
powers (e.g. the U.S. & France in 1844, Belgium in 1845, Sweden and Norway
in 1847, etc.) to impose similar conditions onto China in their unequal treaties.
Along with the establishment of extraterritoriality and commercial privileges,
Western powers forcefully demanded the freedom for the propagation of the
Christian religion on the land of China and the liberty to proselytize the
Chinese. For decades, until WW II, Western encroachment on China's territory
coincided with Christian missionary expansion in China. The importation and
the increase of missionary resources coincided with gun-boat policy and
colonial expansion of the Western powers. The association of Western
military aggression and the missionaries' imposition with the Chinese
national/ethnic humiliation was for decades repeatedly reinforced until
WWII.
B. Form and Format: Garbed &
Groomed in Western Manner
In approximately early 600
A.D, early Nestorian missionaries focused their efforts on the royal family of
the T'ang Dynasty. In their vocabulary and
literature, there was an extensive borrowing of concepts from Buddhism and
Taoism. It was short-lived in the Sung Dynasty yet later survived with success
among the Mongolians in Yuen Dynasty.
Many Catholic missionaries who
entered China from Macau [e.g. P. Valignani（范禮安）in 1578, Michel Ruggieri（羅明堅）in 1579, Matteo
Ricci（利瑪竇）in 1581] impressed the imperial rulers with their Western learnings (in mathematics, geography, etc.) and earned the
royal favor accordingly. These missionaries of old school also humbly learned
the Chinese customs and traditions from their Chinese masters. They studied
Chinese classics, strove to show their admiration and appreciation of Chinese
cultural heritage and successfully adjusted themselves to Chinese custom. Their
genuine humility and cultural sensitivity earned them respect and trust of
Chinese rulers and scholars. Outstanding Chinese Christian leaders such as Hsu Kuang Ch'i（徐光啟）, Li Zi Zao（李之藻）, Yang Ting Yun（楊廷筠）etc. were both faithful converts of Christianity and
reputable Chinese scholars.
However, the cases listed
above were exceptions rather than the norm. Many foreign missionaries and Chinese
converts took advantage of the trend of Westernization and exploited the
circumstances of Western domination in China for the sake of Christian proselytization and missionary expansion without cultural
sensitivity and missiological contextualization.
The administrative form (e.g. management), organizational pattern (e.g.
denominationalism, mission style), leadership development (e.g. co-education),
architectural structure (e.g. Gothic design), worship style (e.g. extensive use
of classical music, organ, piano, Western religious artifacts, etc.),
curricular design (e.g. Catholic convent style or Protestant Bible school
format), etc., were all but Chinese. The type of Christianity promoted by
Western missionaries and practiced by Chinese converts, with all its trapping
and wrapping, was unpretentiously Western.
In the case of Westernization
in terms of publication of the Holy Bible, there are over a dozen versions of
Chinese translations of the Bible but the Union Version（和合本） of 1911has been the most popular and widely used one. The
success of this version is not without its historical elements. Riding on the
trend of the May Fourth era and as the result of 27 years of the labor of many
missionaries/translators with the help of Chinese assistants, it is decidedly
non-conformative to traditional Chinese form and
format: translated in the style of the vernacular Chinese（白話文）instead of the archaic literary Chinese（文言文）, using the style of Western grammar (i.e. with voice,
tense, case, gender... of Greek, Latin, German, English....), in the format of
Western punctuation system and binding, printed horizontally (not the
traditional way of vertical arrangement of words) and from left to right (not
the tradition way of right to left), etc.
C. Methodology: Served on
Western Plate
The strategy of early
missionaries (especially the Nestorian and Catholic) was to befriend the
royalty and impress them with Western science and technology (e.g. calendar and
geography, medicine and astronomy, etc.). Later the Protestant missionaries
joined in, offering to the Chinese government and general populace their
social, medical, educational, etc. services. They indeed made tremendous
contributions to the social improvement, socio-culutral
development, etc. of modern China. Yet at the same time, they, along with many
Chinese Christians, became a catalyst in the Westernization of China. Subsequently,
Chinese people perceived Christianity to be a Western religion, in
contra-distinction to the indigenous Confucianism, Taoism, "sinocized Buddhism", folk religion, etc.
The outlook of Christianity
represented by Western missionaries in China and practiced by new Chinese
converts had all the appearance of a Western religion: the methodology of
evangelism, the design of church building, the seating arrangement at worship
services, the hymn book and the musical instruments used, the format of worship
program, etc., all these objective phenomena confirmed the historical fact of
Christianity being imported by Western missionaries from European countries, in
addition to the subjective perception. Therefore it is not a simple matter
for a traditional Chinese to become a Christian and whoever does would be
considered a "cultural traitor", henceforth the saying, "one
more Christian conversion; one Chinese less in population".（多一個基督徒便少一個中國人）
D. Operation: Seasoned with Western
Flavor
One of the characteristics of the
history of Christianity in the West is the on-going debate, division, and damaging
internal conflicts between factions due to theological, ecclesiastical or
practical differences. From the centuries-long christological
controversies (thus the calling of ecumenical councils and formulation of
creeds), to the division of the Eastern and Western churches on the issues of
"filioque" and the use of icon, to the
fight between the Catholic and the Protestant on doctrine (e.g. "salvation
by faith alone, by grace alone...") and ecclesiology (e.g. the authority
of the pope or the priesthood of the believer) in the Medieval period,
high-church vs. low-church, Calvinist vs Arminian, liberal vs. fundamentalist, charismatic vs. the
non-charismatic, evangelical vs. non-evangelical, World Council of Churches vs.
World Evangelical Fellowship, etc. Divisions in western churches are obvious.
Western missionaries who brought
Christianity to China also took with them the practice of internal conflicts
among factions of Christian groups.
As early as 1631, Dominican missionaries, joined by the Franciscan, petitioned
Pope Urban VIII to investigate the Jesuit missionaries' lenient stance on
Chinese custom by permitting Chinese converts to continue the traditional
practice of ancestor-worship（祭祖）,
worship of Confucious and "t'ien"（祀孔及天）(i.e. burning incense, kneeling to and venerating of the
above). The diverse opinions, different doctrinal convictions, divergent
policies, later deteriorated from theological debates to power struggle, thus
turning China from a mission field into a battle ground. Added to these matters
were issues such as the proper interpretation of the Chinese characters and
concepts of "t'ien"（天）, "shen"（神）, "shang-di" （上帝）, "t'ien zhu"（天主） ( All these characters mean
Heavenly God ), the translation of the Bible (between the Protestant and the
Catholic), etc., eventually led to the confrontation between the papal
authority of Rome and the imperial throne in China in the well-known and
well-documented "rites controversy"（禮儀之爭）. Subsequently, for an extended period in the 18th and 19th
centuries, Catholicism was forbidden by the imperial government, suppressed by
local government and resisted by common folks. Often times
anti-Christian violence（反教）and
anti-foreign riots（仇洋）broke
out, e.g. the Nanking Missionary case（南京教案）in
1616, the Tientsin Missionary case（天津教案）in
1870, Tien-psin Massacre（庚子教難）in 1893, and the
Anti-Christian Student Federation（非基督教同盟）in
1922, etc.
E. Meaning: Transplanted in Western
Pot
There were nine articles on
"contextual/indigenous church"（本色教會）in the "Church Declaration"（教會的宣言）that was drafted at the "National Christian Council of
China" meeting（中國基督教全國大會）, held in May 1922 in Shanghai attended by 1,180
representatives including both Chinese and foreign missionaries. The main
thrust was negatively calling for the correction of the fact that Christianity
was too Westernized and positively calling for
culturally contextualized Christianity. In other words, both Chinese
delegates and Western missionary representatives agreed that Christianity
should not be transplanted to China in a Western pot; it should be transplanted
and rooted in Chinese soil. (This issue will be discussed in the next
article, i.e. the article in the coming Sep issue of CATW.)
III. CHRISTIANITY
IN THE EYE OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE
In the mind of traditional Chinese,
Christianity is what imported and imposed from the West. This perception is
strongly ingrained in the Chinese mind and the resentment is deeply harbored in
the heart of patriotic Chinese. First the introduction and later the increasing
missionary activities in China掇 were all a form of Western
aggression, like the practice of extraterritoriality of European countries in
Chinese land and the injury to Chinese sovereignty of the imperial governments.
IV. RESENTMENT AND
RESISTANCE BY TRADITIONAL CHINESE
Non-Christian traditional Chinese
usually resent anything Western, including Christianity, which is totally
Western in style. Some of the reasons are: the perception that Christianity is
Western in origin, the importation by Christianity as part and partial of
European aggression, a sense of national humiliation of the imperial government
of the Ch'ing Dynasty in the forceful hand of Western military domination,
resentment against Western encroachment on China掇
territory, ethnocentrism against foreigners and foreign religion, etc. Having
such an orientation and harboring a sense of resentment, traditional Chinese
people are very resistant against Christianity, especially
that of Western orientation and style, form and format.
V.
CONCLUSION
To a non-Christian with strong
traditional Chinese cultural orientation of pre-1949 China, Christianity
appeared to be like a young local-born Chinese in the U.S. who though
ethnically a full-blood Chinese but was garbed and groomed in the U.S. as an
American. He dresses and talks exactly like an Anglo-Saxon American. Expecting
a traditional Chinese (with ethnic pride, "cultural superiority
complex", anti-Western sentiment) to embrace a Western-style Christianity
is like requiring him to eat rice and noodles with fork and knife, seasoned
with butter and cheese, served on a Royal Albert plate with French cognac.
Presenting a form of Christianity without contextualizing it to Chinese culture
is as unappealing to a traditional Chinese as giving him a bamboo plant that
has been transported by a Yankee from China, transplanting it in a Revere pot
with New England soil, Scott fertilizer, and Charles River water, decorated
with Christmas lighting and fixture.
On realizing that the Western powers
have been creating a stumbling block to traditional Chinese, due to their
ignorance of the reality of a Western version of Christianity promoted by
Western missionaries in China and practiced by Chinese Christians, there is no
excuse for us to repeat their mistakes and bring cultural insensitivity to the
Chinese and to be a stumbling block to others (1 Co 8:9-12).
To put spiritual aversion aside, it
is high time for Chinese Christians to come to the realization on how extensive
and how comprehensive his version of Christianity being Western is and thus
offensive and repugnant to traditional Chinese culturally. It is as
unreasonable as the Jewish Christians of the Jerusalem church (Act15) who
imposed their Jewish cultural tradition on the new gentile converts, making
cultural assimilation a prerequisite to spiritual conversion and maturation. It
is the responsibility of Chinese Christian leaders and educators to
contextualize Christianity in the presentation and promotion of a biblically
based but culturally relevant form of Christianity.
The change in the ways and means
that Christianity is to be preached in a culturally sensitive and
contemporarily relevant manner to the Chinese in evangelism, discipleship,
church planting, etc. is imperative. The challenge to Chinese Christian researchers
and scholars is to employ evangelistic methodology, develop church polity,
explore worship style, cultivate musical and literary expression, formulate
contextual theology, etc. that are biblically valid and culturally relevant.
These issues of contextualization will be discussed and developed in the next
article (i.e. in the Nov. issue of CATW ).
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(The author is Alan Hayes Blecher, Professor of Mission and Anthropology and Director
of Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies Program at Reformed Theological Seminary,
Jackson, MS.)
(This
article appeared in Chinese Around the World, July, 1999.)
© 1999 Chinese Around
the World/Enoch Wan. Email the author.