REV. Jonathan Chao AND THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLITY
-----In memory of Rev. Jonathan Zhao presented on the fifth anniversary of his death
Author: Man De
Outline:
I. Introduction: Two worthy noting issues
II. Some thoughts inspired by Rev. Zhao’s attitude toward traditional culture
III. Some thoughts inspired by Rev. Zhao’s thinking and services toward the Christianization of political culture
IV. Opportunity at hand: from the Christianization of corporate culture to the Christianization of political culture
I. INTRODUCTION: TWO WORTHY NOTING ISSUES
“The Christianization of culture” is the ground breaking visionary idea Rev. Zhao perceived for Chinese church and Chinese culture, it was and will continue to be the mission, calling and burden of Chinese Church, and it will become God’s servants’ banner, guideline and goal, when they spreading the gospel and working on cultural activities in China. Rev. Zhao had talked about the topic “the Christianization of culture” in his multitude literatures, some concentrated more on this topic are:
Articles——
1982 《Looking at Polity through the Theological Lenses》
《Looking at Dictatorial Countries through the Theological Lenses》
1986 《Examine the Relationship Between the Gospel and Culture From Chinese History 》
1987 《The Gospel and the renewal of Chinese Culture》
1991 《The Development of the Three-Self Anomaly》
Lectures——
1999 《The Christianization of Chinese Culture》
2000 《Christianity and the reconstruction of Chinese Spiritual Civilization》
2001 《On Cultural Gospel Theology》
2001 《Twentieth First Century and the Post Communism Thinking》
In these articles and lectures, Rev. Zhao explained what does “the Christianization of culture” meant, prophetically pointed out the future of Chinese culture, and provided a broad view and vision to the Chinese church, also encourage greatly a multitude of God’s servants to labor diligently for the Christianization of culture with burning hearts.
What does “the Christianization of Chinese culture” really mean? Rev. Zhao had published many literatures on this, yet to speak briefly, “So called the Christianization of Chinese culture means to influence Chinese culture with Christianity, make Chinese culture whole, stand as the leader of world culture, and become the mainstream ideology.” “The purpose of the Christianization of culture is to reform Chinese culture with Christian faith, and making Christian faith contributes to and takes lead in the fields of culture, scholarship, education, politics, and society.”
The Christianization of culture involves a broad range of issues, but I picked only two issues that Rev. Zhao had paid more attention on them than others, and I’ll talk about them from my own point of view, taking today’s situation and hot spot into consideration, and combining my own field experiences with “the Christianization of culture” during the past few years. The first issue is during the process of culture Christianization, how should we treat traditional Chinese culture. The second issue is in view of the political Christianization Rev. Zhao asserted, and his hard labored contribution in this area, what are the newest inspirations the contemporary China, Chinese church and those devoted to the Christianization of culture like us can receive ?
Why should we be concerned with these two issues? Firstly, over the past few years, in mainland China with the aggressive initiation of the authority and the active response from the people, even the participation of some Christian scholars, waves of the revival of traditional culture movement has swept the country, and it’s still going on, and facing this raging tide Christians could not stop it, but stood back and watch, even many Christian scholars had compromised their principles and gave in, instead of transforming heterogeneous culture, Christianity even fell in the danger of being transformed by heterogeneous culture, suddenly the trend seemed turned to “assimilate Christianity to Confucianism” or “assimilate Christianity to Taoism”, and the mission of “Christianization of culture” is in great danger. Therefore, we can draw lots of inspiration from Rev. Zaho’s unwavering attitude toward this issue and his uncompromising position regards to Chinese traditional ideology and culture.
Secondly, China government’s dictatorship is on the rise, the whole nation is immersed in the tyrannical culture, even penetrated into the spine of her citizens, and the majority overseas Chinese churches are so concerned with theological orientation or safety that they seldom touch this issue, and it’s hard for the few Christians and para-church organizations that are concerned with justice to elicit broad support, they are few and lonely and desperately in need of helping hands. The Christianization of culture necessarily involves the Christianization of polity, in a highly politicized country like China, political culture will never fail to impose its influence upon other facets of its culture. According to my experiences in the task of the Christianity of domestic corporate culture, I deeply felt that both corporate culture and business ethics were seriously influenced by political culture. The policies and behavior pattern of an unjust regime seriously affected corporate operation and business ethics, entrepreneurs were forced to bribe, cheat, dance with dictatorship and bureaucracy, employees raised in a social culture that is dishonest, power hunger and money thirst will certainly develop lots of nasty habits, and it’s even harder to renew the corporate culture. Yet, it’s still possible to carry out the mission of Christianizing corporate and family culture regardless above mentioned situations, but before the political culture could be overhauled, the results of such renewals will be very limited. There may be scattered individual cases of Christianization, but it’s impossible to happen at a larger scale. Therefore, the key to the Christianization of Chinese culture remains to be political culture, it oversees, manipulates and affects other social cultures. Rev. Zhao had recognized this situation in advance, hence he boldly proposed “ the Christianization of polity”, and actively caring overseas advocates of democracy and liberty, this is the most glorious page in Rev. Zhao’s life, and this was a great inspiration and encouragement to the successors of the Christianization of culture.
Today, we shall talk about these two issues.
II. Some thoughts inspired by Rev. Zhao’s attitude toward traditional culture
Traditional culture has made a powerful comeback, it’s never seen before prior to the reform and open policy, which is also not seen by Rev. Zhao, just as I had pointed out in an article I wrote in 2007 《The Assimilating of Christianity to Confucianism, Our Negligence》,
“In recent years, on the one hand, Christian scholars, domestic and overseas alike, has pushed hard for the mergence and cooperation of Christianity and Chinese traditional culture, and diligently tried to unify the concepts of “Heaven”, “Tao”, and “great lord” in Chinese mind with the corresponding concepts in Christianity; on the other hand, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism has stampeded outrageously the whole China. According to the report of one of the Hong Kong based Christian media, in an overseas Confucianism vs. Christianity seminar, the Confucian scholar was very eloquent and persuasive, in contrast the Christian scholar seemed feeble and weak. In China, the advocates of traditional culture, such as Yu-dan, Yi-chun-tien has long been the popular talk show hosts on the mainstream media, they sell books, organize seminars and debates, and even became commercial stars……etc.. The saints of ancient China worshiped the Lord Jehovah; Lao-tzu was a prophet( like Isaiah, he declared the birth of Jesus Christ), and the saint in the book 《Lao Tzu》was Jesus; Confucius was an seeker; basically from ancient “supreme god(上帝)” in Chinese was similar to the Christian God; ancient China had received many special revelations from God; even some scholars found that the ancient Chinese emperor Zhun-shu(顓頊)was actually Jesus……etc., and there are many literatures and TV programs devoted to the Christianization of Chinese culture. In order to reduce the hostility from the advocates traditional culture and harmonize the relationship among Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity, many Christian scholars and preacher emphasize their commons, and try to tell the people Christianity is not a foreign religion but a domestic faith from ancient, when they preach the gospel in mainland China, though their intention was good, but they overemphasized the “common”, thus they backed up and compromised, thus the believers were unable to recognize the essence and uniqueness of Christian faith, and finally lost their discernment and lowered their guard when facing Confucianism and Buddhism…….When we seek harmony, we give up our stand, when we seek compromise, we give up our principle, when we seek unification we turned our ground to our opponents, the consequence of our negligence in guarding the faith was that Confucianism roamed at will all over China, this is the result that for a long time we seek to be “harmony” , and avoid to be “different” with local belief system and domestic culture. The present trend is not Chinese culture will be Christianized, but that Christianity will be assimilated into Confucianism and Taoism.
The situation is so devastating that all the domestic and overseas Christian leaders should pay close attention and reflect upon it, because compromise in theology and culture will lead to the compromise of all other areas. Contrary to many Christian scholars who focusing only on dialogue and harmony, Rev. Chao had always kept an uncompromising critical attitude towards traditional culture. He thought that the core of Chinese traditional culture was Confucianism, therefore it’s not theocentric but human-centric, it didn’t worship God, but uphold human culture. Driven by this kind of culture Chinese people accepted Communism along with its atheism ideology, for it upholds humanity too. When responding to traditional culture, we should not harmonize, identify or be united with , but reform, renew or transform it. “Christianize culture” in itself is a very sturdy concept, it means Christianity should take the lead to transform heterogeneous cultures, and, in the end, make Christian value the core of heterogeneous cultures; “Christianize culture” is never meant to dialogue, interact or unify, but to change, renew and even overcome.
As early as 1970 Rev. Zhao did a incisive analysis of Chinese traditional culture, with Confucianism to be its core, in an article titled “Chinese Humanism and the Essence of Christianity” ,
Regards the origin of Confucianism: “ the sources of Confucianism contains non-religious factors. Just like Western humanism, the origin of Chinese humanism was ration’s rebellion against religion. The difference between the two was that China’ Confucianism rebelled against ‘ancient folk religion’, the general worship of heavens and spirits, but Western humanism rebelled against revelatory religion.”
Regards to the content of Confucianism: “ the ethical system of Confucianism was built upon 1, the feudal system, and the family and society concepts of the Chou dynasty.” “The fundamental idea of this system was family; society and state were the extensions of family……therefore, this family based ethical system gradually became a set of hierarchical and corresponding ethical ideas……[while ]Christian ethical system was built upon the supra-society and supra-humanity God and His revelations. The authority of ethics is God Himself, the standard of ethics is beyond humanity and absolute, a person’s status may change, but the standard will never change.”
Regards to Confucianism is not theocentric but human-centric: “ Humanity is the center and starting point of the spirit of Confucian humanistic ethic, it means to develop, by its own ability, rationality and moral capacity to understand self and human relationships.”
Regards to Confucianism’s incapable of dealing with “sin”: “ Since the premise of the ethic system of Confucianism was the good nature of humanity, there came a unsolvable difficulty: sin. Confucianism had used all their might and strength to build a human-centric ethic system to understand inner-self and others. But the debate over the nature of humanity has lasted over 2000 years , and it proved that Mencius’ presumption, human nature was good, was deficient.”
Regards to the essence of Confucianism and its contrast to Christianity: “ This human-centric ethic system was made out of man and relied on man’s ability to realize its ideal, it’s innate, therefore it rejects any revelatory concept from outside; this self-existent and self-sustained position also rejects any concept of god. Because the ethic and moral code of Confucianism emphasized that man should fully develop his good nature and power to manage himself, therefore it rejects the assertion that man is sinful or incompetent. We can see from this, that the essence and characteristic of Chinese humanism had already contained the element of anti-Christianity since early. Since it’s fundamental premise was the oriental humanism, it’s nature for it to oppose the Bible……and for generations of the advocates of the oriental humanism, the limitation, inward sinfulness, and outward wickedness of humanity were truly the unsolvable knot. To look upon humanity as the final explanation and the final solution is actually putting man in God’s position, and replacing God with humanity.”
Hence, we can know that Rev. Zhao’s analysis of Chinese traditional culture, with Confucianism it’s core value, was not only incisive, but also uncompromising. Though some leafs and twigs in Chinese traditional culture coincide with Christianity, yet the root and branch collide with our faith, one upholds humanity, but the other God, one centered around man, but the other God, and so called “supreme god”, “Tao”, “shen(gods)”, “tien(heaven)” and “li(way)” in traditional Chinese culture are actually “unknown god”, man-made god(s), they are the products of human ration, even imagination, not the Christian God, the sovereign God who created the world and man. Chinese traditional culture and Christianity are two completely different belief systems, as Christians we must, on the one hand, be alert to the traditional culture, and, on the other hand, intentionally adopt Christian culture to transform the humanistic propensity of the traditional culture.
More than this, Rev. Zhao in his article 《To Christianize Chinese Culture》 clearly pointed out the seven areas of Chinese culture that are in desperate need to be Christianized, they are: the concept of supreme being, original sin, salvation, forgiveness, fellowship of love, hope in the life to come, and a proper adjusted epistemology.
1. The concept of supreme being: Ancient Chinese believed there was a supreme god, “the Great Lord”(shang di), but the traditional culture used “tien”, “tao”, and “li” to dilute the concept of God, then developed into rational moral humanism, thus squeezed the ultimate transcendent out of the picture. Yet, Christianity can mend the deficiency of traditional culture with it’s supreme transcendence;
2.The concept of original sin: “Just like water runs downward, human nature thirst for good virtue,” believing human nature propend to goodness is one of the characteristics of traditional thinking, but Christianity has a better understanding of the sin-tainted human nature; therefore it could develop a set of universal law and social system for everyone to follow, so as to keep the sinfulness of humanity in check;
3. Salvation: Traditional humanism believes that man, by his own effort, can reach perfect morality and enter into the level of “sainthood”, but the fact proved it wrong. The uniqueness of the salvation of Christianity is that, the way to transform the lives of those saved is through the sacrifice of Christ, and it’s “redeem by other” instead of “self-redeem”.
4. Forgiveness: The traditional culture lacks the concept of “unconditional forgiveness”, without the unconditional love of Christ. Chinese people was heavy lade with hatred, suspicion and vengeance, who are in desperate need of God’s forgiveness and love.
5. The fellowship of love: Chinese set a great value on family, but outside family there is no trust or love. What the traditional society lacks is the Christian fellowship in Christ.
6. Hope in the life to come: “Since we can’t even understand life, how can we know what lies after death,” traditional culture lacks hope in the life to come, Christianity can provide man with hope after life and satisfy our ultimate concern;
7. A proper adjusted epistemology: The traditional culture takes too readily ration as the ultimate standard, and science as the way to knowledge. Christians must point out that scientific methods have their limitations, and suitable for the knowledge of the created, but not God, God is spirit and the Creator of all.
We can see that culture renewal is more than culture dialogue but culture reformation; to Christianize culture is not comparing cultures but to mend actively the flaws of Chinese culture with God’s principles. Rev. Zhao, based on his devotion to the Lord, held fast Christian values and stood firm on Christian principles when responding heterogeneous cultures and performing culture transmission, renewal and reformation, he was also very devoted in Christianizing heterogeneous cultures. The inspiration he left us, those follow his steps, was his uncompromising spirit, the determination and sense of mission in carrying aggressively the reformation. Only by doing so that Chinese culture would be led to move toward the direction that pleases God, otherwise we might start from compromising of our theological stand and end in full scale compromise, even to the point of merging with the old forces.
Indeed, as I wrote in an old article 《The Assimilating of Christianity to Confucianism, Our Negligence》, “ Not that Christianity be assimilated by Confucianism, but traditional cultures, such as Confucianism and Taoism, should be Christianized. In the process Christianizing traditional cultures we should discern what should be discerned, split with what should be split, and even expose what should be exposed. For just as Matthew 28:18 pronounced, “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.’” We must have the ambition and confidence of being victorious. To preach Christianity in contemporary China is not so difficult as it was in Ming or Ching dynasty, and evangelism for the Lord is not the privilege of the ’80. Right now is time to deepen Christian faith, also time to influence the mainstreams of this age with our faith. What is needed in this age is not the lessen of hostility, but to manifest and promote actively our faith while hold on to our principles. Just as John Calvin said, “if you want heavenly glory, then you must fight in this life.” So says in Genesis 1:28, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue[alternate tr.: conquer] it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
III. SOME THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY REV. ZHAO’S THINKING AND SERVICES TOWARD THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLITICAL CULTURE
Rev. Zhao was also one of the few Chinese Christian leaders and theologians whole-heartedly devoted to the Christianization of Chinese polity, he touched this subject in most of his articles about “the Christianization of culture”, especially in his articles concerning the development of China’s church, religious policy, and church-state relationship, he expressed serious concern and high expectation of the development, renewal, and reformation of China’s politics. Not only in theory, but also in actual action, he was also the first pastor reaching out for the advocates of democracy and liberty exiled overseas, and the seeds he sowed had yielded many fruits. At present, even if the Christianization of China’s polity could not be realized in mainland China’s dictatorial system, it has already quietly making progress through overseas democratic movements.
Let’s examine first Rev. Zhao’s proposal to the Christianization of polity,
The sixth step of Christianizing culture in the article 《To Christianize Chinese Culture》 , a summary of his idea of Christianize culture, he wrote, “6. Christian politician. Once Chinese Christians involve in the political process, the Christianization of culture would be elevated to the next level; for example, serving in the central or local government, and campaigning for public office, all these could systematize Christian values through legislative process, and bring in more just and righteousness to the society. It will still need a very long time to Christianize China’s political system.”
As to the house church’s attitude, devoted to faith but indifferent to politics, he criticized that “ but to know nothing of politics or the social trends, don’t read the newspaper nor listen to the news, even with a determined will to suffer, they seemed to be passively waiting to be smacked, though ‘martyrdom’ is positive, yet such an attitude is not wholesome. Recently, the house church gradually realized that it’s not beneficial for them to hold such a narrow point of view, therefore they are willing to reveal to the public about the mistreatment, arrests, and oppression they have experienced, in order to make the whole world realize how the Chinese Communist have persecuted the messengers of the gospel.”
In 《21st Century and the Post Communism Mind》, a harsh political critics, Rev. Zhao brought out the notion that “Christian’s responsibilities in building the nation”, among them were “ to reform the law” and “to reform China’s political system”, he wrote, “ the most sensitive and risky issue is the reformation of China’s political system, only few dare to touch politics……right now is the time for China’s Christian to put it efforts in learning and designing, based on Biblical teaching, a political system that meets the basic values and satisfies the basic needs of the public……I assert that Christians should not give up their political rights of reforming, the public welfare being its guideline, China’s political system. We can deal with this issue in the ream of ‘universal grace’.”
In 《The Importance of Outreaching Mainland China’s Intellectuals》Rev. Zhao had prophetically pointed out the importance and urgency of preaching the gospel to the overseas advocates of democracy and mainland China’s intellectuals who had been deeply impacted by “June Fourth”.
As early as 1987, he pointed out in his article《Gospel and the Renewal of Chinese Culture》that with Christianity as their foundation overseas advocates of democracy may embrace the worst ideology, just like the intellectuals during the May 4th Movement of 1919. Rev. Zhao firstly analyzed that the intellectuals at that time embraced Marxism for three reasons: “1. The potential to organize political movement; 2. The essence of rationalism; 3. A integrated answer.” Then, he wrote, “Hence after the Culture Revolution, including those young men went to the States to promote ‘Spring of China Movement’ , they had four insistences: democracy, liberty, equality, and rule by the law……Yet, this generation has recognized only the appearance of Western equality and rule by the law, they don’t realize that Western world had already experienced a very long democratic movement, culture reformation and over two-thousand-year’s Christian movement, before they tasted the fruit of human rights, equality, and rule by the law, there is a ‘legislator’ behind their rule by the law……” Therefore, to Christianize the advocates of democracy is the best way to promote democracy and to build the country.
In 《Look at Politics through Theological Lenses》 Rev. Zhao directly pointed out the proposition of “Christianize Polity”: ‘Christians not only have the right to talk about politics, but have the responsibility to Christianize polity. They carry the responsibility to participate politics, protecting the citizens’ living and welfare according to God’s standard of equality and just.” “Therefore, Christians have the responsibility to impart Christian truth into political arena, deepening the Christianization of polity, and extend Christ’s rule to the realm of politics. This is the responsibility of prophets, and every Christian who has citizenship and all the churches should fulfill this responsibility.” “When an atheistic socialistic government declared a law to ban all religions or announced a policy of resisting the development of God’s kingdom, Christians should make protest to the government, helping the government give up any action that might hinder the Lord who gave them the authority to rule. If a Christian wants to be a true disciple of Christ, he/she must be willing to suffer the consequences of taking up the cross.”
In 《Look at Dictatorial Nations Through Theological Lenses》cried out once more, “Christians should support, even take lead, human rights movement, and be united with universal human rights movement, to fight for the rights all man should enjoy.” Hence, Christians must fight against the evil spirit, which opposed Christ, hide behind the atheistic government that oppressed the church. And when fight against this antichrist evil spirit, Christians must depend on the power of the Holy Spirit.”
In that article, Rev. Zhao first listed various attitudes and methods China’s Christian should take to deal with the dictatorial government, then he listed five most urgent theological constructions in a dictatorial nation: Chinese needs to construct a theology of polity, a theology of human dignity and liberty, a theology of suffering, a theology of evangelism under dictatorship, and a theology of spiritual warfare. To us who minister diligently for the Christianization of polity after his steps, these propositions still provide us with direction and encouragement.
What differs Rev. Zhao from other authors was that he was a man of actions, not just a man of words. He not only diligently defended house churches’ freedom of religion(due to the limitation of this article, I will not elaborate on this issue), but also actively take care of overseas dissidents of China Communist regime and advocates of democracy, in order to facilitate the Christianization of political culture.
In the area of political culture, he was like Timothy Lee, a missionary from England in Ching dynasty, but Timothy Lee reached out only to those political elites within Ching government, the people he made contact, such as Kang Yu-wei, Liang Chi-chau, Lee Hung-chan, and Chang Chi-don……etc., were not devoted dissident to the Ching government. Timothy Lee was indifferent to Dr. Sun Yet-san, who was determined opponent of then system, even spoke words against him. The whole Christian community didn’t have enough concern, if any, for the revolutionists. And this resulted in that though Christian revolutionists, led by Dr. Sun Yet-san, identified themselves as Christian but their lives actually lacked the truth of Christ, in the end they joined hands with Communism, thus terminated the progress of democracy in China. We may say that it was great lose to China’s democratic progress that there weren’t any shepherd to care for and pastor those Christian revolutionists .
Contrary to Timothy Lee, Rev. Zhao welcomed warmly these devoted dissidents of Chinese Communism, and with great passion he cared for these overseas exiled advocates of democracy, even revolutionists, and firmly believed that they will overcome and influence profoundly the future of China, it showed his insight and courage was extraordinary. According the words of sister Qien Wu吳倩, who participated China’s democracy movement since 1980, early as around 1999 Rev. Zhao was intended to organize an special evangelistic rally for the advocates of democracy. After careful planning, at the end of August 2000, Rev. Zhao held a “Christian Faith and the Future of China Seminar” at Pasadena, LA. There were about twenty advocates of democracy attended the seminar, among them were Yian Jia-qi嚴家其, Wang Bin-zhang王炳章, Xin Hao-nian辛灝年, Wang Xi-zhe王希哲, Kuo Kai-zhi,郭開智, Xie Xuan-jun謝選駿, Xiong Yan熊焱, Zhang Bo-li張伯笠, Yi Dan-Xuan易丹軒, and Wu Qien. During the seminar, Yien Chia-chi delivered a great speech titled 《God and the Great China》, Wang Bin-chang also gave great comments, and pointed out “we shall kneel before God and repent.” Repentance should start with the advocates of democracy. Just like sister Qien Wu’s report on that occasion, “ As Christians, the real reason we who had participated the democratic movement attended that meeting was to offer the sacrifice of repentance before God. The history of Israel reminded us that when the Israelites had sinned and the whole nation fell into darkness, those sober among them would put on linen and sat in ashes, and knelt before God on behalf of the people. Then, God would bring them back from their predicament of suffering.”
At that meeting, the issues they discussed included the relationship between Christianity and democracy, if Christian faith could facilitate China’s progress in the future, and the faith of the advocates of democracy……etc., during the sessions many advocates of democracy came to faith in Christ, and they also prayed for the advocates of democracy as well as the future of China’s democracy. This meeting was a larger evangelistic rally targeted at the advocates of democracy, and intended to bring the democratic movement into the campaign of Christianizing political culture and closer to God’s will.
Though advocates of democratic movement, with Mr. Yian Jia-Xi being their representative, has made a clear cut with Chinese Communism in political stand and sense of values, but their world view and philosophy of life, even many methodology were still deeply under the influence of the rationalism, materialism, atheism, scientism, and humanism of Chinese Communism, and it’s hard to rectify immediately. Due to Chinese Communism’s thorough brainwash movement, nicknamed “start from cradle”, though most advocates of democracy, including even the generation of 1989, have their own views of society and politics, but in the level of life, some don’t have any faith, some believed in materialism or Confucianism, and many of them were influenced by the Western philosophies of the ‘80s, such as existentialism, but few have their own religious faith. To them, religion was a very strange land.
On the other hand, most advocates of democracy knew only how the rationalists fought against dictatorial governments, such as Renaissance, Enlightenment, and French Revolution, but never know how the Christian fought against dictatorial governments and struggled for democracy and liberty, based on their Christian value, such as Reformation, the Puritan, North Europe, England and America. As to the origin of democracy, they traced only back to ancient Greek Athens democracy, and considered it to be the source of Enlightenment and French Revolution, but didn’t realize that the real foundation of human rights and democratic politics were Bible’s teaching on human rights, the separation of church and state from Catholicism, and the realization of protecting human right and democratic politics during the Reformation. Therefore, though it’s harder to Christianize the advocates of democracy, but considering the effects of eliminating fallacies and reducing unnecessary misunderstandings, it would be a great help to sow the seed of truth in China; otherwise, we might very well make the same mistake Dr. Sun Yet-san had made, ourselves would turn out to be the next dictator, and the democratic movement would continue to be loosely organized, thus the future will never come.
After the special meeting at LA, Rev. Zhao continued to care for those advocates of democracy. Sister Kuo Kai-zhi wrote in 《Set China’s Democratic Movement in God’s Track》, “28th August 2000, Wang Xi-zhe and his wife, Su Jiang, were baptized together by Rev. Zhao. This man of iron will, who had been put to jail by Chinese Communist regime for more than ten years and never gave in, cried aloud! Everyone there was touched to tears. Yian Jia-qi spoke, with tear in his eyes, “Wang Xi-zhe, you set a great example for me!”
And Yian Jia-qi mentioned, in another article 《In Memory of Rev. Zhao——A Dialogue Across the Millennium》, at the last day of year 2000 he had a long conversation with Rev. Zhao from night till dawn, Rev. Zhao told him about the gospel, the Bible, and Christian truth, Yian named that conversation “a dialogue across the millennium”. Just as he wrote in the article, “All we heard was the ‘good news’ from God. In that day, my home in New York was actually a ‘house church’…… I remembered that Rev. Zhao said, since we believed in God, we must love God with our heart, soul, and mind, to spread , through our action, love and the spirit of love in the world.”
Besides attending Wang Xi-zhe, Wang Bin-zhang, and Yian Jia-qi, Rev. Zhao also gave other fighters of democracy his devoted attention and hospitality, among them were Fu Xi-qiu, Wang Ce, Yuan Zhi-ming, Zhang Bo-li, Hong Yu-jian, Xiong Yu –jian ,Wu Qian, and Li Da-wei……etc.. Up to this day, these people remain to be very influential to the church as well as overseas democratic movement, the trees Rev. Zhao planted had already borne many fruits. Some of the fruits are China Aid Association already become the banner of protecting the rights of China’s house church, and it has world wide influence; this year is the twentieth anniversary of June 4th Movement, the Christian declaration and sing up activity, organized by Fu Xi-qiu, Hong Yu-Jian, and Zhang Qian-jin, and the June 4th twentieth anniversary prayer meeting summoned at Washington; the night of June 3rd this year, the closing pray gave by Zhang Bo-li at the foot of Victims of Chinese Communism Memorial, at the closing ceremony of the twentieth anniversary of June 4th Movement, had ground breaking meaning, though some advocates of democracy expressed different opinions, yet it’s the first time a non-Christian democratic movement invited a Christian pastor to deliver the closing pray; this year will also be marked as the year God Bless China website began to extend its influence, this website sets its vision as to preach the gospel to the advocates of democracy and to facilitate, with Christian values, the progress of China’s democracy and liberty, and it sets Rev. Zhao’s unfinished desire, the Christianization of political culture, as its goal and runs towards it.
All of these, just as sister Wu Qian wrote in her article 《The Yoke of Suffering》, “We are fortunate that we were not being swallowed as a whole. From faith in Communism to faith in Jesus Christ—— this journey of betrayal and conversion just like a journey from hell to heaven. We are fortunate that we paid the price, so that we might find the escape from totally terror and deception. And by this escape the history of China shall be reversed.”
IV. OPPORTUNITY AT HAND: FROM THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF CORPORATE CULTURE TO THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLITICAL CULTURE
《Esther》 4:14 says, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” Esther was a queen, a very dignified position, God wanted her to be used by God and offer herself up to God, so He gave her the position “for such a time as this”. We those intellectuals who received Rev. Zhao’s vision of “Christianize Chinese culture” must fully use all the resources at our hand, domestic or overseas, to facilitate the present Christianization of Chinese culture.
I think domestically we should be focused on the Christianization of the business and industrial sectors, and give surplus resources to the Christianization of the academic, educational, and charity and relief sectors. The Christianization of culture doesn’t mean to proclaim the gospel in the field of literature or arts, but to use Christian values to influence the cultural structure of society, such as politics, economy, education and health. I had been called by God to serve in the small area of corporate Christianization, to spread the idea of “calling(天職觀)” and “sheep culture(羊文化）”, to organize Christian fellowship group in business and industry, and to held two “sheep culture” seminars, attendants included both Christian businessman and ministers. Right now, the Christianization of domestic business culture is on the rise. Businessman is the pillar of a society, has great influence to the society, if these man and woman could grow strong and steady, then they will be a great force in facilitating the Christianization of Chinese culture. I have read files about Three-self church spread the ideas of market economy and Christian view of vocation and wealth in the church, it showed that there is still lots work to do regarding Christianizing the business world.
We need to be detailed and professional when Christianizing the culture, and can not get stuck at the academic level. According to my personal experiences, it’s a great issue just to Christianize the workplace, business world, and the market place, it takes the efforts of a lot of manpower. The Christianization of culture is not merely an academic topic, but a issue of daily living, it’s closely connected with Christian’s family life, church management, corporate culture, and market ethics. Hence, we must avoid making the Christianization of culture into an academic topic. We found that many issues discussed by overseas theologians during the ‘90s were not popularized in China’s churches. China’s church need a group people to popularize theological doctrines among all the churches. The idea of calling I preached during the last few years, is nothing more than the popularization of the sense of mission of the Reformation theology and Weber’s Protestant business ethics, my lectures were held mostly in the setting of a church or corporate. The popularization of academic topic can produce the fruit of Christianization. Other academic issues desperately needed to be popularized include: Christianity and Chinese culture, Christian view of religion, Christian view of polity, and the relationship between church and state……etc..
Above are the areas, domestic and overseas, we need to work harder in Christianizing the culture. We need to put the political culture at the center of Christianization, because we ready have all the overseas resources at hand , if we don’t make good use to these resources, then we would make God disappointed. Therefore, it’s necessary to be a bit more aggressive when we are overseas, but moderate when we are back in China; if we are not aggressive oversea, then we will disappoint God, and it’s not wise if we don’t keep a low profile back in China; the key is those went overseas and those back in China should not blame each other, neither those overseas should easily accuse churches in China are too weak or being compromised, nor those back in China should often blame those overseas audacious or reckless. Those overseas and those back in China have different roles to play, both sides should understand, support, and not interfere each other, thus can we work hand in hand for the Christianization of Chinese culture.
Personally I would like to make seven suggestions to facilitate the Christianization of political culture from overseas:
1. Medias devoted to the Christianization of political culture need to reinforce their structure and connections among themselves : China Aid, God Bless China, and China Ministries International should reinforce their strength and promotion.
2. Organize rallies, meetings, and seminars of cultural mission in overseas Chinese churches.
3. Work shoulder to shoulder with overseas advocates of democracy, organize evangelistic activities targeted overseas advocates of democracy.
4. Participating all kinds of overseas democratic movement and appeal for religious freedom in the name of Christian organization.
5. Taiwan Presbyterian church had much experiences in Christianizing political culture, we can enhance our connection and interaction with them.
6. Start a perpetual global “evangelizing the communists” movement.
7. Continue to support China’s house to defend their rights and their ministries of Christianizing China’s economy, education, health care, and even political culture.
In the end, after we had discussed Rev. Zhao’s proposition and dedication to the two issues——traditional culture and the Christianization of political culture——encountered during the process of the Christianization of Chinese culture, let us pay one more tribute to Rev. Zhao who dedicated his life to the Christianization of Chinese culture and give him our deepest respect and memory, we those who followed his steps shall take up the ministry of Christianizing Chinese culture, and follow Rev. Zhao’s whole hearted dedication and “ offer your bodies as living sacrifices”, and this shall be our highest respect. All this is a living example of John 12:24, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
2009/8/25 USA
Author: Man De
Outline:
I. Introduction: Two worthy noting issues
II. Some thoughts inspired by Rev. Zhao’s attitude toward traditional culture
III. Some thoughts inspired by Rev. Zhao’s thinking and services toward the Christianization of political culture
IV. Opportunity at hand: from the Christianization of corporate culture to the Christianization of political culture
I. INTRODUCTION: TWO WORTHY NOTING ISSUES
“The Christianization of culture” is the ground breaking visionary idea Rev. Zhao perceived for Chinese church and Chinese culture, it was and will continue to be the mission, calling and burden of Chinese Church, and it will become God’s servants’ banner, guideline and goal, when they spreading the gospel and working on cultural activities in China. Rev. Zhao had talked about the topic “the Christianization of culture” in his multitude literatures, some concentrated more on this topic are:
Articles——
1982 《Looking at Polity through the Theological Lenses》
《Looking at Dictatorial Countries through the Theological Lenses》
1986 《Examine the Relationship Between the Gospel and Culture From Chinese History 》
1987 《The Gospel and the renewal of Chinese Culture》
1991 《The Development of the Three-Self Anomaly》
Lectures——
1999 《The Christianization of Chinese Culture》
2000 《Christianity and the reconstruction of Chinese Spiritual Civilization》
2001 《On Cultural Gospel Theology》
2001 《Twentieth First Century and the Post Communism Thinking》
In these articles and lectures, Rev. Zhao explained what does “the Christianization of culture” meant, prophetically pointed out the future of Chinese culture, and provided a broad view and vision to the Chinese church, also encourage greatly a multitude of God’s servants to labor diligently for the Christianization of culture with burning hearts.
What does “the Christianization of Chinese culture” really mean? Rev. Zhao had published many literatures on this, yet to speak briefly, “So called the Christianization of Chinese culture means to influence Chinese culture with Christianity, make Chinese culture whole, stand as the leader of world culture, and become the mainstream ideology.” “The purpose of the Christianization of culture is to reform Chinese culture with Christian faith, and making Christian faith contributes to and takes lead in the fields of culture, scholarship, education, politics, and society.”
The Christianization of culture involves a broad range of issues, but I picked only two issues that Rev. Zhao had paid more attention on them than others, and I’ll talk about them from my own point of view, taking today’s situation and hot spot into consideration, and combining my own field experiences with “the Christianization of culture” during the past few years. The first issue is during the process of culture Christianization, how should we treat traditional Chinese culture. The second issue is in view of the political Christianization Rev. Zhao asserted, and his hard labored contribution in this area, what are the newest inspirations the contemporary China, Chinese church and those devoted to the Christianization of culture like us can receive ?
Why should we be concerned with these two issues? Firstly, over the past few years, in mainland China with the aggressive initiation of the authority and the active response from the people, even the participation of some Christian scholars, waves of the revival of traditional culture movement has swept the country, and it’s still going on, and facing this raging tide Christians could not stop it, but stood back and watch, even many Christian scholars had compromised their principles and gave in, instead of transforming heterogeneous culture, Christianity even fell in the danger of being transformed by heterogeneous culture, suddenly the trend seemed turned to “assimilate Christianity to Confucianism” or “assimilate Christianity to Taoism”, and the mission of “Christianization of culture” is in great danger. Therefore, we can draw lots of inspiration from Rev. Zaho’s unwavering attitude toward this issue and his uncompromising position regards to Chinese traditional ideology and culture.
Secondly, China government’s dictatorship is on the rise, the whole nation is immersed in the tyrannical culture, even penetrated into the spine of her citizens, and the majority overseas Chinese churches are so concerned with theological orientation or safety that they seldom touch this issue, and it’s hard for the few Christians and para-church organizations that are concerned with justice to elicit broad support, they are few and lonely and desperately in need of helping hands. The Christianization of culture necessarily involves the Christianization of polity, in a highly politicized country like China, political culture will never fail to impose its influence upon other facets of its culture. According to my experiences in the task of the Christianity of domestic corporate culture, I deeply felt that both corporate culture and business ethics were seriously influenced by political culture. The policies and behavior pattern of an unjust regime seriously affected corporate operation and business ethics, entrepreneurs were forced to bribe, cheat, dance with dictatorship and bureaucracy, employees raised in a social culture that is dishonest, power hunger and money thirst will certainly develop lots of nasty habits, and it’s even harder to renew the corporate culture. Yet, it’s still possible to carry out the mission of Christianizing corporate and family culture regardless above mentioned situations, but before the political culture could be overhauled, the results of such renewals will be very limited. There may be scattered individual cases of Christianization, but it’s impossible to happen at a larger scale. Therefore, the key to the Christianization of Chinese culture remains to be political culture, it oversees, manipulates and affects other social cultures. Rev. Zhao had recognized this situation in advance, hence he boldly proposed “ the Christianization of polity”, and actively caring overseas advocates of democracy and liberty, this is the most glorious page in Rev. Zhao’s life, and this was a great inspiration and encouragement to the successors of the Christianization of culture.
Today, we shall talk about these two issues.
II. Some thoughts inspired by Rev. Zhao’s attitude toward traditional culture
Traditional culture has made a powerful comeback, it’s never seen before prior to the reform and open policy, which is also not seen by Rev. Zhao, just as I had pointed out in an article I wrote in 2007 《The Assimilating of Christianity to Confucianism, Our Negligence》,
“In recent years, on the one hand, Christian scholars, domestic and overseas alike, has pushed hard for the mergence and cooperation of Christianity and Chinese traditional culture, and diligently tried to unify the concepts of “Heaven”, “Tao”, and “great lord” in Chinese mind with the corresponding concepts in Christianity; on the other hand, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism has stampeded outrageously the whole China. According to the report of one of the Hong Kong based Christian media, in an overseas Confucianism vs. Christianity seminar, the Confucian scholar was very eloquent and persuasive, in contrast the Christian scholar seemed feeble and weak. In China, the advocates of traditional culture, such as Yu-dan, Yi-chun-tien has long been the popular talk show hosts on the mainstream media, they sell books, organize seminars and debates, and even became commercial stars……etc.. The saints of ancient China worshiped the Lord Jehovah; Lao-tzu was a prophet( like Isaiah, he declared the birth of Jesus Christ), and the saint in the book 《Lao Tzu》was Jesus; Confucius was an seeker; basically from ancient “supreme god(上帝)” in Chinese was similar to the Christian God; ancient China had received many special revelations from God; even some scholars found that the ancient Chinese emperor Zhun-shu(顓頊)was actually Jesus……etc., and there are many literatures and TV programs devoted to the Christianization of Chinese culture. In order to reduce the hostility from the advocates traditional culture and harmonize the relationship among Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity, many Christian scholars and preacher emphasize their commons, and try to tell the people Christianity is not a foreign religion but a domestic faith from ancient, when they preach the gospel in mainland China, though their intention was good, but they overemphasized the “common”, thus they backed up and compromised, thus the believers were unable to recognize the essence and uniqueness of Christian faith, and finally lost their discernment and lowered their guard when facing Confucianism and Buddhism…….When we seek harmony, we give up our stand, when we seek compromise, we give up our principle, when we seek unification we turned our ground to our opponents, the consequence of our negligence in guarding the faith was that Confucianism roamed at will all over China, this is the result that for a long time we seek to be “harmony” , and avoid to be “different” with local belief system and domestic culture. The present trend is not Chinese culture will be Christianized, but that Christianity will be assimilated into Confucianism and Taoism.
The situation is so devastating that all the domestic and overseas Christian leaders should pay close attention and reflect upon it, because compromise in theology and culture will lead to the compromise of all other areas. Contrary to many Christian scholars who focusing only on dialogue and harmony, Rev. Chao had always kept an uncompromising critical attitude towards traditional culture. He thought that the core of Chinese traditional culture was Confucianism, therefore it’s not theocentric but human-centric, it didn’t worship God, but uphold human culture. Driven by this kind of culture Chinese people accepted Communism along with its atheism ideology, for it upholds humanity too. When responding to traditional culture, we should not harmonize, identify or be united with , but reform, renew or transform it. “Christianize culture” in itself is a very sturdy concept, it means Christianity should take the lead to transform heterogeneous cultures, and, in the end, make Christian value the core of heterogeneous cultures; “Christianize culture” is never meant to dialogue, interact or unify, but to change, renew and even overcome.
As early as 1970 Rev. Zhao did a incisive analysis of Chinese traditional culture, with Confucianism to be its core, in an article titled “Chinese Humanism and the Essence of Christianity” ,
Regards the origin of Confucianism: “ the sources of Confucianism contains non-religious factors. Just like Western humanism, the origin of Chinese humanism was ration’s rebellion against religion. The difference between the two was that China’ Confucianism rebelled against ‘ancient folk religion’, the general worship of heavens and spirits, but Western humanism rebelled against revelatory religion.”
Regards to the content of Confucianism: “ the ethical system of Confucianism was built upon 1, the feudal system, and the family and society concepts of the Chou dynasty.” “The fundamental idea of this system was family; society and state were the extensions of family……therefore, this family based ethical system gradually became a set of hierarchical and corresponding ethical ideas……[while ]Christian ethical system was built upon the supra-society and supra-humanity God and His revelations. The authority of ethics is God Himself, the standard of ethics is beyond humanity and absolute, a person’s status may change, but the standard will never change.”
Regards to Confucianism is not theocentric but human-centric: “ Humanity is the center and starting point of the spirit of Confucian humanistic ethic, it means to develop, by its own ability, rationality and moral capacity to understand self and human relationships.”
Regards to Confucianism’s incapable of dealing with “sin”: “ Since the premise of the ethic system of Confucianism was the good nature of humanity, there came a unsolvable difficulty: sin. Confucianism had used all their might and strength to build a human-centric ethic system to understand inner-self and others. But the debate over the nature of humanity has lasted over 2000 years , and it proved that Mencius’ presumption, human nature was good, was deficient.”
Regards to the essence of Confucianism and its contrast to Christianity: “ This human-centric ethic system was made out of man and relied on man’s ability to realize its ideal, it’s innate, therefore it rejects any revelatory concept from outside; this self-existent and self-sustained position also rejects any concept of god. Because the ethic and moral code of Confucianism emphasized that man should fully develop his good nature and power to manage himself, therefore it rejects the assertion that man is sinful or incompetent. We can see from this, that the essence and characteristic of Chinese humanism had already contained the element of anti-Christianity since early. Since it’s fundamental premise was the oriental humanism, it’s nature for it to oppose the Bible……and for generations of the advocates of the oriental humanism, the limitation, inward sinfulness, and outward wickedness of humanity were truly the unsolvable knot. To look upon humanity as the final explanation and the final solution is actually putting man in God’s position, and replacing God with humanity.”
Hence, we can know that Rev. Zhao’s analysis of Chinese traditional culture, with Confucianism it’s core value, was not only incisive, but also uncompromising. Though some leafs and twigs in Chinese traditional culture coincide with Christianity, yet the root and branch collide with our faith, one upholds humanity, but the other God, one centered around man, but the other God, and so called “supreme god”, “Tao”, “shen(gods)”, “tien(heaven)” and “li(way)” in traditional Chinese culture are actually “unknown god”, man-made god(s), they are the products of human ration, even imagination, not the Christian God, the sovereign God who created the world and man. Chinese traditional culture and Christianity are two completely different belief systems, as Christians we must, on the one hand, be alert to the traditional culture, and, on the other hand, intentionally adopt Christian culture to transform the humanistic propensity of the traditional culture.
More than this, Rev. Zhao in his article 《To Christianize Chinese Culture》 clearly pointed out the seven areas of Chinese culture that are in desperate need to be Christianized, they are: the concept of supreme being, original sin, salvation, forgiveness, fellowship of love, hope in the life to come, and a proper adjusted epistemology.
1. The concept of supreme being: Ancient Chinese believed there was a supreme god, “the Great Lord”(shang di), but the traditional culture used “tien”, “tao”, and “li” to dilute the concept of God, then developed into rational moral humanism, thus squeezed the ultimate transcendent out of the picture. Yet, Christianity can mend the deficiency of traditional culture with it’s supreme transcendence;
2.The concept of original sin: “Just like water runs downward, human nature thirst for good virtue,” believing human nature propend to goodness is one of the characteristics of traditional thinking, but Christianity has a better understanding of the sin-tainted human nature; therefore it could develop a set of universal law and social system for everyone to follow, so as to keep the sinfulness of humanity in check;
3. Salvation: Traditional humanism believes that man, by his own effort, can reach perfect morality and enter into the level of “sainthood”, but the fact proved it wrong. The uniqueness of the salvation of Christianity is that, the way to transform the lives of those saved is through the sacrifice of Christ, and it’s “redeem by other” instead of “self-redeem”.
4. Forgiveness: The traditional culture lacks the concept of “unconditional forgiveness”, without the unconditional love of Christ. Chinese people was heavy lade with hatred, suspicion and vengeance, who are in desperate need of God’s forgiveness and love.
5. The fellowship of love: Chinese set a great value on family, but outside family there is no trust or love. What the traditional society lacks is the Christian fellowship in Christ.
6. Hope in the life to come: “Since we can’t even understand life, how can we know what lies after death,” traditional culture lacks hope in the life to come, Christianity can provide man with hope after life and satisfy our ultimate concern;
7. A proper adjusted epistemology: The traditional culture takes too readily ration as the ultimate standard, and science as the way to knowledge. Christians must point out that scientific methods have their limitations, and suitable for the knowledge of the created, but not God, God is spirit and the Creator of all.
We can see that culture renewal is more than culture dialogue but culture reformation; to Christianize culture is not comparing cultures but to mend actively the flaws of Chinese culture with God’s principles. Rev. Zhao, based on his devotion to the Lord, held fast Christian values and stood firm on Christian principles when responding heterogeneous cultures and performing culture transmission, renewal and reformation, he was also very devoted in Christianizing heterogeneous cultures. The inspiration he left us, those follow his steps, was his uncompromising spirit, the determination and sense of mission in carrying aggressively the reformation. Only by doing so that Chinese culture would be led to move toward the direction that pleases God, otherwise we might start from compromising of our theological stand and end in full scale compromise, even to the point of merging with the old forces.
Indeed, as I wrote in an old article 《The Assimilating of Christianity to Confucianism, Our Negligence》, “ Not that Christianity be assimilated by Confucianism, but traditional cultures, such as Confucianism and Taoism, should be Christianized. In the process Christianizing traditional cultures we should discern what should be discerned, split with what should be split, and even expose what should be exposed. For just as Matthew 28:18 pronounced, “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.’” We must have the ambition and confidence of being victorious. To preach Christianity in contemporary China is not so difficult as it was in Ming or Ching dynasty, and evangelism for the Lord is not the privilege of the ’80. Right now is time to deepen Christian faith, also time to influence the mainstreams of this age with our faith. What is needed in this age is not the lessen of hostility, but to manifest and promote actively our faith while hold on to our principles. Just as John Calvin said, “if you want heavenly glory, then you must fight in this life.” So says in Genesis 1:28, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue[alternate tr.: conquer] it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
III. SOME THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY REV. ZHAO’S THINKING AND SERVICES TOWARD THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLITICAL CULTURE
Rev. Zhao was also one of the few Chinese Christian leaders and theologians whole-heartedly devoted to the Christianization of Chinese polity, he touched this subject in most of his articles about “the Christianization of culture”, especially in his articles concerning the development of China’s church, religious policy, and church-state relationship, he expressed serious concern and high expectation of the development, renewal, and reformation of China’s politics. Not only in theory, but also in actual action, he was also the first pastor reaching out for the advocates of democracy and liberty exiled overseas, and the seeds he sowed had yielded many fruits. At present, even if the Christianization of China’s polity could not be realized in mainland China’s dictatorial system, it has already quietly making progress through overseas democratic movements.
Let’s examine first Rev. Zhao’s proposal to the Christianization of polity,
The sixth step of Christianizing culture in the article 《To Christianize Chinese Culture》 , a summary of his idea of Christianize culture, he wrote, “6. Christian politician. Once Chinese Christians involve in the political process, the Christianization of culture would be elevated to the next level; for example, serving in the central or local government, and campaigning for public office, all these could systematize Christian values through legislative process, and bring in more just and righteousness to the society. It will still need a very long time to Christianize China’s political system.”
As to the house church’s attitude, devoted to faith but indifferent to politics, he criticized that “ but to know nothing of politics or the social trends, don’t read the newspaper nor listen to the news, even with a determined will to suffer, they seemed to be passively waiting to be smacked, though ‘martyrdom’ is positive, yet such an attitude is not wholesome. Recently, the house church gradually realized that it’s not beneficial for them to hold such a narrow point of view, therefore they are willing to reveal to the public about the mistreatment, arrests, and oppression they have experienced, in order to make the whole world realize how the Chinese Communist have persecuted the messengers of the gospel.”
In 《21st Century and the Post Communism Mind》, a harsh political critics, Rev. Zhao brought out the notion that “Christian’s responsibilities in building the nation”, among them were “ to reform the law” and “to reform China’s political system”, he wrote, “ the most sensitive and risky issue is the reformation of China’s political system, only few dare to touch politics……right now is the time for China’s Christian to put it efforts in learning and designing, based on Biblical teaching, a political system that meets the basic values and satisfies the basic needs of the public……I assert that Christians should not give up their political rights of reforming, the public welfare being its guideline, China’s political system. We can deal with this issue in the ream of ‘universal grace’.”
In 《The Importance of Outreaching Mainland China’s Intellectuals》Rev. Zhao had prophetically pointed out the importance and urgency of preaching the gospel to the overseas advocates of democracy and mainland China’s intellectuals who had been deeply impacted by “June Fourth”.
As early as 1987, he pointed out in his article《Gospel and the Renewal of Chinese Culture》that with Christianity as their foundation overseas advocates of democracy may embrace the worst ideology, just like the intellectuals during the May 4th Movement of 1919. Rev. Zhao firstly analyzed that the intellectuals at that time embraced Marxism for three reasons: “1. The potential to organize political movement; 2. The essence of rationalism; 3. A integrated answer.” Then, he wrote, “Hence after the Culture Revolution, including those young men went to the States to promote ‘Spring of China Movement’ , they had four insistences: democracy, liberty, equality, and rule by the law……Yet, this generation has recognized only the appearance of Western equality and rule by the law, they don’t realize that Western world had already experienced a very long democratic movement, culture reformation and over two-thousand-year’s Christian movement, before they tasted the fruit of human rights, equality, and rule by the law, there is a ‘legislator’ behind their rule by the law……” Therefore, to Christianize the advocates of democracy is the best way to promote democracy and to build the country.
In 《Look at Politics through Theological Lenses》 Rev. Zhao directly pointed out the proposition of “Christianize Polity”: ‘Christians not only have the right to talk about politics, but have the responsibility to Christianize polity. They carry the responsibility to participate politics, protecting the citizens’ living and welfare according to God’s standard of equality and just.” “Therefore, Christians have the responsibility to impart Christian truth into political arena, deepening the Christianization of polity, and extend Christ’s rule to the realm of politics. This is the responsibility of prophets, and every Christian who has citizenship and all the churches should fulfill this responsibility.” “When an atheistic socialistic government declared a law to ban all religions or announced a policy of resisting the development of God’s kingdom, Christians should make protest to the government, helping the government give up any action that might hinder the Lord who gave them the authority to rule. If a Christian wants to be a true disciple of Christ, he/she must be willing to suffer the consequences of taking up the cross.”
In 《Look at Dictatorial Nations Through Theological Lenses》cried out once more, “Christians should support, even take lead, human rights movement, and be united with universal human rights movement, to fight for the rights all man should enjoy.” Hence, Christians must fight against the evil spirit, which opposed Christ, hide behind the atheistic government that oppressed the church. And when fight against this antichrist evil spirit, Christians must depend on the power of the Holy Spirit.”
In that article, Rev. Zhao first listed various attitudes and methods China’s Christian should take to deal with the dictatorial government, then he listed five most urgent theological constructions in a dictatorial nation: Chinese needs to construct a theology of polity, a theology of human dignity and liberty, a theology of suffering, a theology of evangelism under dictatorship, and a theology of spiritual warfare. To us who minister diligently for the Christianization of polity after his steps, these propositions still provide us with direction and encouragement.
What differs Rev. Zhao from other authors was that he was a man of actions, not just a man of words. He not only diligently defended house churches’ freedom of religion(due to the limitation of this article, I will not elaborate on this issue), but also actively take care of overseas dissidents of China Communist regime and advocates of democracy, in order to facilitate the Christianization of political culture.
In the area of political culture, he was like Timothy Lee, a missionary from England in Ching dynasty, but Timothy Lee reached out only to those political elites within Ching government, the people he made contact, such as Kang Yu-wei, Liang Chi-chau, Lee Hung-chan, and Chang Chi-don……etc., were not devoted dissident to the Ching government. Timothy Lee was indifferent to Dr. Sun Yet-san, who was determined opponent of then system, even spoke words against him. The whole Christian community didn’t have enough concern, if any, for the revolutionists. And this resulted in that though Christian revolutionists, led by Dr. Sun Yet-san, identified themselves as Christian but their lives actually lacked the truth of Christ, in the end they joined hands with Communism, thus terminated the progress of democracy in China. We may say that it was great lose to China’s democratic progress that there weren’t any shepherd to care for and pastor those Christian revolutionists .
Contrary to Timothy Lee, Rev. Zhao welcomed warmly these devoted dissidents of Chinese Communism, and with great passion he cared for these overseas exiled advocates of democracy, even revolutionists, and firmly believed that they will overcome and influence profoundly the future of China, it showed his insight and courage was extraordinary. According the words of sister Qien Wu吳倩, who participated China’s democracy movement since 1980, early as around 1999 Rev. Zhao was intended to organize an special evangelistic rally for the advocates of democracy. After careful planning, at the end of August 2000, Rev. Zhao held a “Christian Faith and the Future of China Seminar” at Pasadena, LA. There were about twenty advocates of democracy attended the seminar, among them were Yian Jia-qi嚴家其, Wang Bin-zhang王炳章, Xin Hao-nian辛灝年, Wang Xi-zhe王希哲, Kuo Kai-zhi,郭開智, Xie Xuan-jun謝選駿, Xiong Yan熊焱, Zhang Bo-li張伯笠, Yi Dan-Xuan易丹軒, and Wu Qien. During the seminar, Yien Chia-chi delivered a great speech titled 《God and the Great China》, Wang Bin-chang also gave great comments, and pointed out “we shall kneel before God and repent.” Repentance should start with the advocates of democracy. Just like sister Qien Wu’s report on that occasion, “ As Christians, the real reason we who had participated the democratic movement attended that meeting was to offer the sacrifice of repentance before God. The history of Israel reminded us that when the Israelites had sinned and the whole nation fell into darkness, those sober among them would put on linen and sat in ashes, and knelt before God on behalf of the people. Then, God would bring them back from their predicament of suffering.”
At that meeting, the issues they discussed included the relationship between Christianity and democracy, if Christian faith could facilitate China’s progress in the future, and the faith of the advocates of democracy……etc., during the sessions many advocates of democracy came to faith in Christ, and they also prayed for the advocates of democracy as well as the future of China’s democracy. This meeting was a larger evangelistic rally targeted at the advocates of democracy, and intended to bring the democratic movement into the campaign of Christianizing political culture and closer to God’s will.
Though advocates of democratic movement, with Mr. Yian Jia-Xi being their representative, has made a clear cut with Chinese Communism in political stand and sense of values, but their world view and philosophy of life, even many methodology were still deeply under the influence of the rationalism, materialism, atheism, scientism, and humanism of Chinese Communism, and it’s hard to rectify immediately. Due to Chinese Communism’s thorough brainwash movement, nicknamed “start from cradle”, though most advocates of democracy, including even the generation of 1989, have their own views of society and politics, but in the level of life, some don’t have any faith, some believed in materialism or Confucianism, and many of them were influenced by the Western philosophies of the ‘80s, such as existentialism, but few have their own religious faith. To them, religion was a very strange land.
On the other hand, most advocates of democracy knew only how the rationalists fought against dictatorial governments, such as Renaissance, Enlightenment, and French Revolution, but never know how the Christian fought against dictatorial governments and struggled for democracy and liberty, based on their Christian value, such as Reformation, the Puritan, North Europe, England and America. As to the origin of democracy, they traced only back to ancient Greek Athens democracy, and considered it to be the source of Enlightenment and French Revolution, but didn’t realize that the real foundation of human rights and democratic politics were Bible’s teaching on human rights, the separation of church and state from Catholicism, and the realization of protecting human right and democratic politics during the Reformation. Therefore, though it’s harder to Christianize the advocates of democracy, but considering the effects of eliminating fallacies and reducing unnecessary misunderstandings, it would be a great help to sow the seed of truth in China; otherwise, we might very well make the same mistake Dr. Sun Yet-san had made, ourselves would turn out to be the next dictator, and the democratic movement would continue to be loosely organized, thus the future will never come.
After the special meeting at LA, Rev. Zhao continued to care for those advocates of democracy. Sister Kuo Kai-zhi wrote in 《Set China’s Democratic Movement in God’s Track》, “28th August 2000, Wang Xi-zhe and his wife, Su Jiang, were baptized together by Rev. Zhao. This man of iron will, who had been put to jail by Chinese Communist regime for more than ten years and never gave in, cried aloud! Everyone there was touched to tears. Yian Jia-qi spoke, with tear in his eyes, “Wang Xi-zhe, you set a great example for me!”
And Yian Jia-qi mentioned, in another article 《In Memory of Rev. Zhao——A Dialogue Across the Millennium》, at the last day of year 2000 he had a long conversation with Rev. Zhao from night till dawn, Rev. Zhao told him about the gospel, the Bible, and Christian truth, Yian named that conversation “a dialogue across the millennium”. Just as he wrote in the article, “All we heard was the ‘good news’ from God. In that day, my home in New York was actually a ‘house church’…… I remembered that Rev. Zhao said, since we believed in God, we must love God with our heart, soul, and mind, to spread , through our action, love and the spirit of love in the world.”
Besides attending Wang Xi-zhe, Wang Bin-zhang, and Yian Jia-qi, Rev. Zhao also gave other fighters of democracy his devoted attention and hospitality, among them were Fu Xi-qiu, Wang Ce, Yuan Zhi-ming, Zhang Bo-li, Hong Yu-jian, Xiong Yu –jian ,Wu Qian, and Li Da-wei……etc.. Up to this day, these people remain to be very influential to the church as well as overseas democratic movement, the trees Rev. Zhao planted had already borne many fruits. Some of the fruits are China Aid Association already become the banner of protecting the rights of China’s house church, and it has world wide influence; this year is the twentieth anniversary of June 4th Movement, the Christian declaration and sing up activity, organized by Fu Xi-qiu, Hong Yu-Jian, and Zhang Qian-jin, and the June 4th twentieth anniversary prayer meeting summoned at Washington; the night of June 3rd this year, the closing pray gave by Zhang Bo-li at the foot of Victims of Chinese Communism Memorial, at the closing ceremony of the twentieth anniversary of June 4th Movement, had ground breaking meaning, though some advocates of democracy expressed different opinions, yet it’s the first time a non-Christian democratic movement invited a Christian pastor to deliver the closing pray; this year will also be marked as the year God Bless China website began to extend its influence, this website sets its vision as to preach the gospel to the advocates of democracy and to facilitate, with Christian values, the progress of China’s democracy and liberty, and it sets Rev. Zhao’s unfinished desire, the Christianization of political culture, as its goal and runs towards it.
All of these, just as sister Wu Qian wrote in her article 《The Yoke of Suffering》, “We are fortunate that we were not being swallowed as a whole. From faith in Communism to faith in Jesus Christ—— this journey of betrayal and conversion just like a journey from hell to heaven. We are fortunate that we paid the price, so that we might find the escape from totally terror and deception. And by this escape the history of China shall be reversed.”
IV. OPPORTUNITY AT HAND: FROM THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF CORPORATE CULTURE TO THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF POLITICAL CULTURE
《Esther》 4:14 says, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” Esther was a queen, a very dignified position, God wanted her to be used by God and offer herself up to God, so He gave her the position “for such a time as this”. We those intellectuals who received Rev. Zhao’s vision of “Christianize Chinese culture” must fully use all the resources at our hand, domestic or overseas, to facilitate the present Christianization of Chinese culture.
I think domestically we should be focused on the Christianization of the business and industrial sectors, and give surplus resources to the Christianization of the academic, educational, and charity and relief sectors. The Christianization of culture doesn’t mean to proclaim the gospel in the field of literature or arts, but to use Christian values to influence the cultural structure of society, such as politics, economy, education and health. I had been called by God to serve in the small area of corporate Christianization, to spread the idea of “calling(天職觀)” and “sheep culture(羊文化）”, to organize Christian fellowship group in business and industry, and to held two “sheep culture” seminars, attendants included both Christian businessman and ministers. Right now, the Christianization of domestic business culture is on the rise. Businessman is the pillar of a society, has great influence to the society, if these man and woman could grow strong and steady, then they will be a great force in facilitating the Christianization of Chinese culture. I have read files about Three-self church spread the ideas of market economy and Christian view of vocation and wealth in the church, it showed that there is still lots work to do regarding Christianizing the business world.
We need to be detailed and professional when Christianizing the culture, and can not get stuck at the academic level. According to my personal experiences, it’s a great issue just to Christianize the workplace, business world, and the market place, it takes the efforts of a lot of manpower. The Christianization of culture is not merely an academic topic, but a issue of daily living, it’s closely connected with Christian’s family life, church management, corporate culture, and market ethics. Hence, we must avoid making the Christianization of culture into an academic topic. We found that many issues discussed by overseas theologians during the ‘90s were not popularized in China’s churches. China’s church need a group people to popularize theological doctrines among all the churches. The idea of calling I preached during the last few years, is nothing more than the popularization of the sense of mission of the Reformation theology and Weber’s Protestant business ethics, my lectures were held mostly in the setting of a church or corporate. The popularization of academic topic can produce the fruit of Christianization. Other academic issues desperately needed to be popularized include: Christianity and Chinese culture, Christian view of religion, Christian view of polity, and the relationship between church and state……etc..
Above are the areas, domestic and overseas, we need to work harder in Christianizing the culture. We need to put the political culture at the center of Christianization, because we ready have all the overseas resources at hand , if we don’t make good use to these resources, then we would make God disappointed. Therefore, it’s necessary to be a bit more aggressive when we are overseas, but moderate when we are back in China; if we are not aggressive oversea, then we will disappoint God, and it’s not wise if we don’t keep a low profile back in China; the key is those went overseas and those back in China should not blame each other, neither those overseas should easily accuse churches in China are too weak or being compromised, nor those back in China should often blame those overseas audacious or reckless. Those overseas and those back in China have different roles to play, both sides should understand, support, and not interfere each other, thus can we work hand in hand for the Christianization of Chinese culture.
Personally I would like to make seven suggestions to facilitate the Christianization of political culture from overseas:
1. Medias devoted to the Christianization of political culture need to reinforce their structure and connections among themselves : China Aid, God Bless China, and China Ministries International should reinforce their strength and promotion.
2. Organize rallies, meetings, and seminars of cultural mission in overseas Chinese churches.
3. Work shoulder to shoulder with overseas advocates of democracy, organize evangelistic activities targeted overseas advocates of democracy.
4. Participating all kinds of overseas democratic movement and appeal for religious freedom in the name of Christian organization.
5. Taiwan Presbyterian church had much experiences in Christianizing political culture, we can enhance our connection and interaction with them.
6. Start a perpetual global “evangelizing the communists” movement.
7. Continue to support China’s house to defend their rights and their ministries of Christianizing China’s economy, education, health care, and even political culture.
In the end, after we had discussed Rev. Zhao’s proposition and dedication to the two issues——traditional culture and the Christianization of political culture——encountered during the process of the Christianization of Chinese culture, let us pay one more tribute to Rev. Zhao who dedicated his life to the Christianization of Chinese culture and give him our deepest respect and memory, we those who followed his steps shall take up the ministry of Christianizing Chinese culture, and follow Rev. Zhao’s whole hearted dedication and “ offer your bodies as living sacrifices”, and this shall be our highest respect. All this is a living example of John 12:24, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
2009/8/25 USA
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Saving Pastor Gong
Please Help Saving jailed Pastor Gong of Huanan Chruch
http://ministrysolar.wix.com/pastor-gong-huanan
~~~
Since Dec 2, 2012, my father Pastor Shengliang Gong had High Blood Pressure and Cerebral Infraction, but he never got the proper medical checkup and adequate treatments. Consequently, my father’s illness got worse and worse. More than once my father almost fell to the ground during last November.
Finally when he got the checkup on November 26th 2013, the doctor said my father’s illness was not very optimistic. He was having Cerebral Infraction, Encephalatrophy, Brain Lesions and Leukoaraiosis, etc. The doctor said that my father needs to have checkup every three months. So we repeatedly requested the prison officials to perform checkup accordingly, once every three months. The prison said that they had one done on April 17th, but refused to release the hospital’s medical treatments records and conclusions to neither my father nor the family members. They would not make any specific statements about my father’s illness. Now, my father and our family have no ideas about the level of his illness.
Since my father illness, previously we could buy some appropriate medicines for him according to his known conditions pieced together from oral communications of diagnosis, after consulting with doctors. Though this won’t amount to totally healing, it was the only way our family could do for him under the circumstances. But now, as the prison withholding medical records from us, we are unable to know his condition and thus cannot providing suitable medicines for him-the very minimum request was denied of us.
The inadequate medical treatments within the prison cannot give my father prompt and sufficient treatments. Yet the prison won’t send him to hospitals outside for necessary treatments and regular checkups, causing further serious damages to his health. The prison won’t allow him the fundamental human rights; they also deprive his right to know about his illness condition. The prison as law enforcement agency behaves illegally. Effectively, they are directly pushing my gravely ill father to dead end street of death.
I appeal to the international communities concerning my father’s health and human rights conditions. Please join us to rally for my father and our family’s rights to medical records and the right to know the situation of my father’s sickness; also his right to have regular medical treatments, thereby saving his life and protect his fundamental rights!!
Pastor Shengliang Gong’s daughter: Huali Gong
June 30th 2014
Cell Phone: 13241248388
Han Kou prison department phone number: 027-83556018
Instructor Hanwen Wang: 15327298562
中國福音化
五十年來，中國大陸的信徒從不到100萬（1949）遽增到八千萬（2000），這是中國五千年來難得的宣教黃金時期；在中國教會裡，也普遍呈現「羊在找牧人」的現象，上帝為中國敞開了大門！現在就是「中國福音化」的關鍵時刻！
教會國度化
教會是基督榮耀的身體，是一切事工的根柢。今日世界各地的基督教宗派都去中國宣教，如何促使海外教會超越宗派主義，中國教會突破山頭主義，共同營造具有「國度觀」的宣教事工，將是中國教會拓展生根的關鍵時刻！
文化基督化
1989年「六四」之後，大批的中國知識分子信主，他們承認了理性的局限性，也不再提「反宗教、反帝國主義」，轉而思考基督教對中國現代化有何貢獻？如今正是因勢利導，以基督思想來影響中國文化，以聖經真理來更新中國文化的關鍵時刻！
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