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Christianity in China

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Christianity in China has developed since at least the 7th century AD. The introduction of Nestorianism, a Christian sect, around 635 is considered by some to be the first entry of the Christian religion into China. Today, the population of Chinese Christians constitutes at least 3% of the general population, but Christian demographers in the West estimate the Christian population numbers 80 million to 100 million because they claim that there are many "underground houses" of worship.[1] [2] The Christian population in China comprises Protestants, Catholics, and a very small number of Orthodox Christians.

(For more background see Religion in China.)

History

Earliest period

For a fuller account see Nestorianism in China

Traditional Christian thought suggested that St. Thomas, known as "the Apostle of India" or possibly St. Bartholomew were the first to spread the Christian gospel in China. Third century Christian writer Arnobius mentions in a text a people known as the "Seres" as being among the groups (he enumerates also the Persians and Medes) which had been evangelized at that time. While there is evidence that Christianity existed in Mesopotamia and Persia by the early fourth century, there is no documentation that it had entered China.

Nestorianism in China was spread by European or Middle-Eastern travellers who arrived in the seventh century AD or earlier, as documented by the Nestorian Stone of Xi'an (then called Chang'an), dating from 635. Through several ups and downs it survived until the end of the Yuan dynasty.

Medieval period

In 1289, Franciscan friars from Europe initiated mission work in China. For about a century they worked in parallel with the Nestorian Christians. The Franciscan mission collapsed in 1368, as the Ming Dynasty set out to abolish Christianity (Nestorian and Catholic) in China.

Post-Reformation

For a fuller account see Jesuit pre-modern China missions

The first Jesuit attempt to reach China was made in 1552 by Francis Xavier, but he died the same year on the Chinese island of Shangchuan, without having reached the mainland. In 1582, Jesuits once again initiated mission work in China, introducing Western science, mathematics, and astronomy. One of these missionaries was Matteo Ricci.

In the early 18th century, the Chinese Rites controversy, a dispute within the Catholic Church, arose over whether Chinese folk religion rituals and offerings to the emperor constituted idolatry. The Pope ultimately ruled against tolerating the continuation of these practices among Chinese Catholic converts. Prior to this, the Jesuits had enjoyed considerable influence at court, but with the issuing of the papal bull, the emperor circulated edicts banning Christianity.

In Tibet

Patriarch Timothy of the Church of the East mentioned Christians in greater Tibet in the eighth Century. Catholic Capuchin friars settled in Lhasa between approximately 1719 and 1745.

  • Francisco Orazio della Penna, well known from his description of Tibet.
  • Cassian di Macerata, also studied Tibetan
  • Petrus and Susie Rijnhart, Canadian missionaries around late 19th century and early 20th century

Modern Age

The Missionary Period

Robert Morrison, regarded among Protestants as being the first Christian missionary to China arrived in Macao on 4th September, 1807. Morrison produced a Chinese translation of the Bible. He also compiled a Chinese dictionary for the use of westerners. The Bible translation took twelve years and the compilation of the dictionary, sixteen years.

During the 1840s, Western missionaries spread Christianity rapidly through the coastal cities that were open to foreign trade; the Taiping Rebellion was connected in its origins to the missionary activity.

The missionary Hudson Taylor has been called one of the most significant figures in Chinese history in the 1800's - native or foreign. The China Inland Mission was the largest mission agency in China and it is estimated that Taylor was responsible for more people being converted to Christianity than at any other time since Paul the Apostle brought Christian teaching to Europe. It was Dixon Edward Hoste, the successor to Hudson Taylor, who originally expressed the self-governing principles of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, at the time he was articulating the goal of the The China Inland Mission to establish an indigenous Chinese church that was free from foreign control.

British and American denominations, such as the British Methodist Church, continued to send missionaries until they were prevented from doing so following the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Protestant missionaries played an extremely important role in introducing knowledge of China to the United States and the United States to China. The book The Small Woman and film Inn of the Sixth Happiness tell the story of one such missionary, Gladys Aylward.

It is recorded that the first martyrdom of a Protestant Christian Chinese occurred in 1871 in Poklo, Guangdong. Che Kam Kong (or Chea Kunkong) visited Hong Kong in 1865, and in 1866 became a Christian. He proseltyzed extensively over the next five years, allegedly bringing about the conversion of over a hundred people in Poklo. Town elders, concerned with this abandonment of tradition, warned Che to stop, yet he refused. He was kidnapped and tortured in 1871 in an attempt to force him to give up his beliefs. He is said to have declared, "You may kill my body but you cannot destroy my soul". He was taken outside the city gates and killed; his body was cut up and thrown into a nearby river.

One of the most well-known Protestant missionaries in China was The Rev. Young John Allen, a Methodist missionary from the United States. Allen helped to spread knowledge of the West and for the need for Chinese reforms through his various Chinese-language newspapers. His publications, including 'The Church News', ran from 1868-1907. His most famous paper was the monthly 'Wan Guo Gong Bao', or 'A Review of the Times,' which discussed international politics, economic theory, the possibilities for reform in China and the repercussions of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Contributors to the 'Review' included Western missionaries, Chinese converts and Allen himself. Although much of his papers' subject matter was secular, the writings had a decidedly Protestant Christian slant as it was his goal to convert China to Christianity.

Rev. Dr. Nathan Sites

One of the major points of contention about the Chinese missions, and about the missionary movement in general, regards the development of independent native churches. Since the beginning, Chinese and foreign critics have accused the 19th-century Christian missionaries of keeping the native churches dependent on the mission boards in Britain and the U.S. for financial support and clerical leadership alike. In some cases, the criticism is warranted, but much can be attributed to jingoism and xenophobia on the part of succeeding Chinese governments, and in the West to ideological rejection of perceived Victorian era priggishness and paternalism. The survival of the Christian movement through such upheavals as the Boxer Rebellion, the Japanese occupation, and the Cultural Revolution suggests that most of this criticism is unfounded. This topic is addressed repeatedly in the journal of Dr. Nathan Sites, a missionary who served in Fukien (Fujian) province from 1861 until his death in 1895. Dr. Sites, like many other missionaries, argued and labored for the creation of a strong and independent Chinese church. In this effort, he ordained many of the earliest native Christian ministers, most famously a former Confucian scholar by the name of Sia Sek Ong. After his ordination, Rev. Sia toured the United States, where he was feted with honorary degrees and an audience with President Grover Cleveland.

(Sites, Sarah Moore (1912). "Nathan Sites: An Epic of the East." New York: Revell.)

Protestant Missionaries

Catholic Missionary Efforts

Church education

Both Catholics and Protestants founded numerous educational institutions in China from the primary to the university level. Some of the most prominent Chinese universities began as religious-founded institutions.

Japanese Occupation

As a result of being separated due to World War II, Christian churches and organizations had their first experience with autonomy from the Western-guided structures of the missionary church organizations. Some scholars suggest this helped lay the foundation for the independent denominations and churches of the post-war period and the eventual development of the Three-Self Church and the CCPA. After the end of the war, the Chinese Civil War began in earnest, which had an effect on the rebuilding and development of the churches after the close of Japanese occupation.

Christianity in the contemporary PRC

Today, the Chinese language typically divides Christians into two groups, members of Jidu jiao, (literally, Christianity) Protestantism, and members of Tianzhu jiao (literally "Lord of Heaven" religion), Catholicism (see Protestantism in China and Catholicism in China.)

Official Christian Organizations

Since loosening of restrictions on religion after the 1970s, Christianity has grown significantly within the People's Republic. It is still, however, tightly controlled by government authorities. The Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council (Protestant) and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which has disavowed the Pope and is considered schismatic by other Roman Catholics, have affiliations with government and must follow the regulations imposed upon them.

House Churches

Many Christians choose however to meet independently of these organisations, typically in house churches. These fellowships are not officially registered and are seen as illegal entities and are often persecuted heavily. For this reason some meetings take place underground, coining the term "underground church". These Christians have been persecuted throughout the 20th century, especially during the Cultural Revolution, and there remains some official harassment in the form of arrests and interrogations of Chinese Christians. At the same time, there has been increasing tolerance of house churches since the late 1970s.

Chinese Christian Brother Yun's book "The Heavenly Man" achieved the Christian Book of the Year award in 2003. The book describes Yun's life from his call to preach the gospel across China and the enlargement of the house church movement.

Estimates of Christians in China are difficult to obtain because of the numbers of Christians unwilling to reveal their beliefs, the hostility of the national government towards some Christian sects, and difficulties in obtaining accurate statistics on house churches.

Recent estimated figures of the number of Christians in China are varying. The official figure in 2002, which consist of members from Official Protestant churches is about 15 millions, while some estimation on members of Chinese house church vary from 50 millions to 100 millions. But some suspect such a figure of members of Chinese house church is largly exaggerated for some reasons. Kiven Choy stated in a Chinese weekly newspaper in Hong Kong that, the correct number of Protestant in China should be at around 20 millions.

Most Famous Chinese Missionary

Minnie Vautrin a missionary and founder of the Christian girls school, the Ginling College in Nanjing has been memorialized in a novel called NANKING. The novel is a fictionalized account of what happened to her during that fateful month of December, 1937, when she personally saved the lives of over 10,000 innocent women and children. A recent review of this novel is available. Review written by the New York Times best-selling author, Ellen Tanner Marsh, the book, NANKING is written by author, Kevin A. Kent.

"All too often in the literary world, the horrors of war are made even more grotesque by bad writing about war, from poorly plotted action-adventure tales to cloying melodramas. In contrast, author Kevin A. Kent’s WWII epic, Nanking, is a highly-informed, crisply written novel that, though set in a period of intense conflict, does not rely upon the setting alone to drive the tautly-paced narrative. Nanking is the story of the eponymous city in China that was the target of invading Japanese forces in the late 1930s. More than a historic account of a siege, it is the wrenching drama of the everyday heroes—mostly foreign—who stayed through the city’s occupation in order to help save its beleaguered residents. Kent’s heroine is diminutive Minnie Vautrin, an idealistic American missionary who chooses to remain in the doomed city to safeguard the students of the all-girls school she administers. Yet this is no overblown melodrama; Minnie’s journey is tragic, and Kent knows better than to romanticize even the most inconsequential detail. Yes, the reality is stark, but the tone is never maudlin, while Kent’s carefully executed series of flashbacks, along with deliberate and tautly stylized pacing, allow readers to empathize with the characters and the situation—one that, thankfully, falls outside the bounds of common experience. Nanking is vivid and cinematic, a tale that is evocative of a place and time that, played out on so many ferocious fronts, forever changed the world. Readers will no doubt look forward to future works by this author—although writing a novel as compelling as Nanking would be a feat, indeed. " [3]

International visitors and Christianity

In large, international cities such as Beijing, foreign visitors have established Christian church communities which meet in public establishments such as hotels. These churches and fellowships, however, are typically restricted only to holders of non-Chinese passports.

American officials visiting China have on multiple occasions visited Chinese churches, including President George W. Bush, who attended one of Beijing's five officially-recognized Protestant churches during a November 2005 Asia tour. [4] [5]. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended Palm Sunday services in Beijing in 2005.

Demographics/Geography

A relatively large proportion of Christians are concentrated in Hebei province, in particular Catholics. Many internationally-reported arrests of Catholic leaders have occurred in that province. Hebei is also home to the town of Donglu, site of an alleged Marian apparition and pilgrimage center.

A famous magazine Christianity Today, brought out that demographers estimate that an average 200,000 Chinese people convert to Christianity every year, meaning that it is the fastest growing religion in the nation, and has outpaced the Communist Party's population of 70 million people.

Orthodox Christianity in China

See Orthodoxy in China for fuller coverage.

There are a small number of adherents of Russian Orthodoxy in northern China, predominantly in Harbin. The first mission was undertaken by Russians in the 17th century. Orthodox Christianity is also practiced by the small Russian ethnic minority in China.

Some Chinese terms in Christianity

For full coverage see Chinese terms for God

Names of God in Chinese:

Shangdi (上帝, literally, "Sovereign King Above") is one of the most prevalent terms for God in modern Chinese, used by non-Christians in conversations as well as Christians. The Catholic Church historically favored Tianzhu (天主, literally, Lord of Heaven) over Shangdi, more commonly by Protestant Christians. 基利斯督 was an old term for Christ pronounced "gaylayseedok" in Cantonese, which tries to capture the Greek (Χριστός, Christos) or Latin (Christo) pronunciation. The shortened form 基督 (Pinyin is "Jidu") is used more commonly in both Catholic and Protestant circles. In most modern Protestant Chinese Bibles, the word 神 (Shen, a reference to a godly supreme being or a spirit or spirit generally) is used widely as well as Shangdi. The space used before the character "神" is intentional, in order to demonstrate reverence. The Protestant verson of the Chinese Bibles use 靈(Ling, which means "spirit") to refer to the Spirit. The Catholic Verson, in contrast, uses 神 ("sheng", or spirit). When it is refering to the Holy Spirit, a word 聖(sheng, holy) is used before the word spirit to refer to the Holy Spirit. An evil spirit will have a modifier "evil" before the spirit. In addition, the Hebrew word "YHWH" is translated into 雅威 "yǎwēi" by Catholics (This translation is used only in the Catholic Church. It is only to capture the most sacred Hebrew pronunciation of the name of God, but 雅 means refined or graceful while 威 means might.) and "Jehovah" into 耶和華 (yēhéhuá) by Chinese Protestants (Similarly, the term is used only in Chinese-speaking Protestant circle). Originally, 爺火華 (yéhuǒhuá) was used, which had a much more violent connotation than the modern translation. Some versions translate this term as 上主 (shang zhu, Above Lord), similar to the translation decision made as capitalized "LORD", used by both Catholics and traditional Protestants like Anglicans and Lutherans, specially in the prayers in the Eucharist. However, the term 主 (zhu, Lord) is used by both Catholics and traditional Protestants in list formal prayers, and always by contemporary Protestants.

Chinese-language terms for God have, since the introduction of Christianity to China, proved a point of contention for Chinese Christians and non-Chinese Christians in China, especially missionaries.

Chinese for Three Main Types of Christians:

The modern Chinese language typically divides Christians into two groups, believers of Protestantism Jidu jiaotu (基督教徒, a term that sometimes refers to Chritianity), and believers of CatholicismTianzhu jiaotu (天主教徒). Orthodox are refer to as 東正教徒"dongzheng jiaotu", but more correctly 正教徒"zhengjiaotu," because there is only one Chinese term for both Eastern and Oriental which is 東 "dong" and simply means the east. The latter term is more correct also because Eastern Orthodox churches are not in communion with and thus differ from the Oriental Orthodox churches.

Chinese for Christianity:

基督教 has traditionally referred to Christianity; however, to reduce confusion and for ecumenical movement, 基督新教 is used to denote Protestant churces, while 基督宗教 represents the religion of Christianity.

See also

Catholic missionaries in China

Protestant missionaries in China

Further reading

  • Robert Morrison - A Master Builder, Marshall Broomhall , SCM, London, 1924
  • The Church of the Tang Dynasty, John Foster, SPCK, London, 1939
  • The Lost Churches of China, Leonard M. Outerbridge, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1952
  • The Story of Mary Liu, Edward Hunter, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1956
  • Come Wind, Come Weather, Leslie Lyall, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1956
  • Red Sky at Night, Leslie Lyall, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1961
  • Christianity in China, George N. Patterson, World Books, London, 1969
  • The Cross and the Lotus, Lee Shiu Keung, Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, Hong Kong, 1971
  • Decision for China, Paul T. K. Shi, St John's University Press, N.Y., 1971
  • The Jesus Family in China, D. Vaughan Rees, Paternoster Press, Exeter, 1973
  • Christians and China, V. Hayward, Christian Journals Ltd, Belfast, 1974
  • Nathan Sites: An Epic of the East, Sarah Moore Sites, Revell, New York, 1912
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