Understanding World Christianity

China

Kim-Kwong Chan, Kim-kwong Chan, Dyron B. Daughrity

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781506416601
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506416618
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Christianity is a global religion! It's an obvious fact, but one often missed or ignored in too many books and conversations. In a world where Christianity is growing everywhere but the West, the Understanding World Christianity series offers a fresh, readable orientation to Christianity around the world. Understanding World Christianity is organized geographically, by nation and region. Noted experts, in most cases native to the area of focus, present a balanced history of Christianity and a detailed discussion of the faith as it is lived today. Each volume addresses six key intersections of Christianity in a given context including the historical, denominational, sociopolitical, geographical, biographical, and theological settings. Accessible in tone and brief in length, the volume on China in the Understanding World Christianity series is an ideal introduction for students, mission leaders, and any others who wish to know how Christianity is influenced, and is influenced by, the Chinese context.

5

Biographical

There are many Chinese Christians who have helped to shape Christianity in China in different ways, such as writing, witnessing, and serving. To highlight any individual does injustice to others, as each individual is an essential part of this community of faith. However, there are some individuals that highlight the unique shape of contemporary Christianity in China. In the mosaic depiction of Chinese Christianity, these serve as major design lines shaping the contours and patterns of this complex picture. In recent years there have been biographies and testimonies published of various Chinese Christian figures, such as Bishop K. H. Ting, Wang Mingdao, Watchman Nee, T. C. Chao, Grace Ho and Mecca Zhao, Yang Xinhui, Archbishop Dominic Tang, and many more. This chapter focuses on several Protestants who are not well known outside of their community due to lack of documentation, especially in English, or who are deemed too ordinary to be recorded and published. It will also include a prominent Chinese Catholic whose life epitomizes the complex experience of Catholics living under Chinese communist rule.^[1] They come from different backgrounds, and each represents unique spiritual characteristics shaping the spiritual contour of the Chinese Christian community. This chapter focuses on their understanding of Christian faith and how they developed their unique spiritual characteristics in the sociopolitical environment in which they live, as well as the impact of their spirituality in their communities.

Brother Li, the First Believer of Mujia Village: Simple, Practical, and Grateful

Millions of Chinese turned to Christianity in rural areas for the simple reason that they believed that this Christian faith would give them a better life than their previous religion and traditions could. One such individual is Mr. Li, a peasant from the Lahu national minority group with merely two years of primary education, who lived in a small hamlet in Yunnan Province in the southwestern part of China. After describing the general socioreligious background of this region, this section will highlight the conversion experience of Mr. Li based on my extensive interviews with him in June 2000 and subsequent visits in 2005 and 2015.

Baipidezai (a hamlet) is located in the Mujia village under the administration of the Shanyuan Township of the Lancang Lahu Autonomous County under the Simao Prefecture of Yunnan Province.^[2] In June 2000, more than 70 percent of the population of Lancang County was Lahu. The Lahu people, a recognized national minority group, had one of the lowest literacy rates in the province; in the year 2000, more than 80 percent of the Lahu living in this county had less than three years of primary school education, whereas the provincial average was around 60 percent. Lancang was also one of the poorest counties in the province and survived mainly on government subsidies. The Baipidezai hamlet had fifty-four families with a total of 207 people—all Lahus. The hamlet is located on a mountain slope within a day’s walking distance from Myanmar and at least three days of travel from Pu’er City, the nearest urban center.

In the past, all the villagers believed in the Lahu traditional folk religion of animism and polytheism, composed of a pantheon of ghosts and deities in a hierarchical order that governs virtually every sphere of life in Lahu cosmology. Their religious activities are centered on livestock sacrifices under the guidance of local shamans called muba.^[3] Whenever someone is sick, the family invites the muba to hold a divination ritual. If the cause of the disease is attributed to a powerful ghost or deity, the family has to slaughter large livestock (a cow or pig); if a minor ghost is the cause, they only need to sacrifice small livestock, such as a chicken. If the sacrifice is a small one, the sacrificial animal is then eaten by the family members and the shaman. Where a large animal is sacrificed, there would be a feast for the whole village. The afflicted family has to continue offering sacrificial animals until the patient is healed.^[4] This practice has become one of the main financial burdens among the Lahus and a major contributing factor to their poverty. Since opium and heroin are readily available in this region (which is just next to the infamous Golden Triangle), these drugs have been a cure-all medicine along with sacrificial animals for generations, especially when the Lahus have been too poor to afford proper medical services. In fact, opium was a traditional gift among the Lahus on important occasions or to honor guests, a common practice banned only in recent years. Most of the adults have taken opium and heroin, and many are addicts. Drug addiction has been and still is a major socioeconomic problem in this region, especially among the non-Christian population.

Some of the villagers had relatives living in Xiadade village, about one day’s walk away. As they visited their relatives, they noticed that this village had some Lahus who believed in a new religion called Protestantism. These Protestant Lahus had healthier bodies, better income, more chickens and pigs (an economic indicator of prosperity), good hygiene, and did not practice livestock sacrifice—a custom termed “feudal superstition” by the communist government. Also, none of the Protestants took opium or heroin. Some Baipidezai villagers decided to invite the Protestants to share their new religion so that they themselves could enjoy this new elevated living standard. In 1998, the church at Xiadade sent a preacher to teach the gospel to the villagers at Baipidezai. Very soon, more than ten families converted. These believers met at the home of Mr. Li, whose family members were the very first group of believers. In 2000, there were twenty-three families totaling eighty-five people, or 40 percent of the village population, who belonged to this new Baipidezai church. In 2005, they were able to build their own church building that could house about 120 people. By 2015, most of the households of this village had been converted, and they have also shared their faith with the surrounding villages.

The following contains some abstracts from the interview with Mr. Li, the leader of this new Protestant community. This interview took place in June 2000 at his home, which was also used as the meeting place for the believers.^[5]

At first, I asked Mr. Li how he accepted this Christian faith, what his understanding of this new religion was, and what he had experienced after his conversion. These questions were meant to obtain the perception of Christianity vis-à-vis the former Lahu religion from the newly converted Lahu Christian as expressed by Mr. Li, the leader of this faith community. Mr. Li said that one day he had knelt in front of the cross (in fact a Christian poster with a cross on it), and the preacher from the nearby village held his hand to pray for him. After praying, this preacher asked if he wanted to join this religion, and he replied yes. The preacher then took him out to the river at the edge of the village and baptized him. With the help of the preacher, he then burned his altar table at home, which every Lahu family has in order to worship Lahu deities. After he renounced his old faith and joined this new religion, he had better health, a higher harvest yield, and more livestock in his possession, as no sacrificial animal was required by this new religion. He also emphasized that this new God, whom he referred to by using the Lahu name for the Supreme God (Ngo Sha),^[6] would protect him and provide him with good health and prosperity in life. When I asked who Jesus is and what the meaning of the cross is, the two most essential elements of Christian faith, he said that Jesus is God. He used a Lahu term for a deity just a rank lower than Ngo Sha in the Lahu cosmological hierarchy, and the cross was a teaching that he humbly admitted he has not yet learned as it was meant only for advanced Christians.

The interview suggested that Mr. Li has benefited from physical and material well-being after his religious conversion, an experience that echoes that of many Christian converts in rural China, be it Han or national minority people. Also the form of initiation rites is baptism by immersion in public, a rather dramatic performance richly endowed with religious symbols that is particularly appealing to the rural population. As for the metaphysics of faith, such as Christology, he could at least distinguish the seniority of the Father over the Son within the Godhead, as the metaphor of the Father-Son hierarchical relationship was within his intellectual comprehension. The teaching of the cross, Christian soteriology, is a bit too complicated for Mr. Li, a new convert with minimum education. Also for Mr. Li, this abstract doctrine bears little consequence for good health and good harvest. However, I have seen Christian posters with the cross at the center in most rural Christian households all over China.

I then asked about the communal witness of this new Christian community, that is, if there were any differences from non-Christian neighbors and also their common religious activities. Mr. Li said that in contrast to the non-Christian villagers, the Christians did not steal each other’s rice or grains. They did not commit adultery. They did not take poison (alcohol, opium, and tobacco). Most of the Christians were drug addicts before, but after they converted to Christianity, they stopped their drug addictions. So far, all of them have remained drug free, a phenomenon that amazed even the government cadres, who are all atheists. They also help each other by working in each other’s fields, so that everyone can prosper economically. Mr. Li did not elaborate if they would render help to the non-Christians. Also he emphasized that they would all meet on Sunday, not in the morning as most Christians do in other parts of China, but instead in the evening after they have finished their labor in the field. They would sing hymns and listen to the sermon from different local preachers who came from nearby Christian communities with messages that would encourage them to work hard and not to be lazy. After the sermon, the preachers would usually teach them some scientific agricultural methods. Each family has a Lahu Bible and a Lahu hymnal that they would take to the meeting.^[7] All Christians were economically better off after they converted to Christianity, and they regarded such economic prosperity as having come from the God of this new religion. As per Li’s words, this new Christian community seemed to gel together as a mutually supportive unit centered on Christian faith and shared values in the context of a vastly non-Christian environment. Furthermore, their abstinence from drugs and alcohol, along with intense laboring in the field, bears an obvious contribution of new wealth to these Christian households. Their newfound prosperity has enhanced the superiority of Christianity against the traditional Lahu religion and further attracts new converts from among their neighbors.

I also asked about Li’s personal Christian devotion, such as his prayer life. He said that there are twelve commandments that he has to obey, but he could not memorize them all.^[8] He just remembers the three “do nots”: do not take opium, do not drink alcohol, and do not smoke tobacco. As for daily devotion, he says a prayer before his meals three times a day. He recited this fluently for me:

Today’s food is not easy to come by. God (Ngo Sha) gives it to us. After we eat it, we will not be sick. God protects us so that we can have the next meal. He protects us so that everything is prosperous, and we have peace. All our family members, from young to old, need protection from God. After we finish this meal, we will have the next one. All our pigs will be healthy. We will have plenty o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Introducing the Fortress Press Series: Understanding World Christianity
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chronological
• Sociopolitical
• Denominational
• Geographical
• Biographical
• Theological