颜色模式
第四章 王怡公共神学的处境 (CHAPTER 4 THE CONTEXT OF WANG YI’S PUBLIC THEOLOGY)
引言 (Introduction-6)
第三章论证了凯波尔和巴文克在一个边缘化但未达到逼迫程度的处境中事奉。本章将从凯波尔和巴文克的处境转向王怡的处境。目的是证明与凯波尔和巴文克相反，王怡的处境是边缘化导致逼迫。为了得出这个结论，本章将介绍王怡及其社会政治背景，其结构与前一章呈现凯波尔和巴文克背景的方式相同，涵盖以下四个领域：思想、社会、政治和教会。[1] 这个概述将使我们能够充分比较凯波尔和巴文克的处境与王怡的处境，并证明王怡在一个边缘化导致逼迫的处境中事奉。本章进行的处境比较将为第五章分析王怡的公共神学并与凯波尔和巴文克的公共神学进行比较和对照提供可能。这种比较将有助于解释凯波尔主义如何在逼迫处境下成为一种忠实的公共神学，以及这种处境如何有助于纠正第三章中指出的凯波尔和巴文克公共神学中融合主义的方面。
王怡：生平简介 (Wang Yi: A Biographical Introduction)
王怡于 1973 年出生在四川省一个小镇三台。1989 年震撼人心的民主抗议事件爆发时，他还是个青少年。像他那一代的许多人一样，那次事件极大地影响了他对治理和执政的中共的看法。[2] 考虑到在这些事件发生后的几年里，王怡在成都上大学，而成都长期以来一直被认为是自由政治思想的中心，他成为一名政治自由派并在成都大学教授法律时参与人权倡导也就不足为奇了。[3] 他活跃的网络存在使他声名鹊起，并在 2004 年被《南方人物周刊》评为“影响中国的 50 位公共知识分子”之一。[4] 王怡的妻子蒋蓉（生于 1973 年）于 2004 年成为基督徒，他在参加了一个查经班后于 2005 年跟随她信主。[5] 因此，王怡既是知名的自由派知识分子，也是基督徒，于 2006 年受邀作为家庭教会代表会见美国总统乔治·W·布什。[6]
2008 年，王怡和蒋蓉的查经班，即秋雨之福团契，成为了秋雨之福改革宗教会（后更名为秋雨圣约教会，ERCC），王怡成为了该教会的牧师。[7] 2010 年，他在纽约市参加了城市植堂事工 (City to City) 的植堂培训，并于 2011 年被美国长老会教会的长老们组成的委员会( a committee of Presbyterian church elders from the United States)按立。[8] 王怡成为牧师正值中国基督教充满活力的时期，当时人们乐观地希望家庭教会能够在中国社会中拥有更公开的地位。[9] 这样的环境对他很有利。王怡既是基督徒又是知识分子，早已为人所知，他因公开讲道反对中共干预教会事务及其对家庭教会的迫害，以及公开对抗政府承认的三自教会而获得进一步认可。[10] 同样，ERCC 作为一个教会也因其在成都各地的植堂努力、建立地方教会的区会、积极参与社会议题（如为纪念 1989 年政府镇压民主抗议者举行的祷告会、在一个常常强制堕胎的国家公开反堕胎立场）以及公开宣传其聚会场所而闻名。[11] 然而，王怡和 ERCC 也并非没有内部动荡。该教会在 2017 年经历了一次恶劣的公开分裂，王怡对此负有部分责任，并被其区会纪律处分了一段时间。[12]
当习近平开始实施其加强政府对社会和意识形态控制的纲领时，王怡作为一位在政府之外且常常反对政府而获得社会影响力的牧师，自然成为了当局的目标。在政府 2018 年修订其《宗教事务条例》（以下简称 RAR）之后，他公开批评了该文件。[13] 当修订后的条例于 2018 年生效时，政府在 5 月份逮捕了他并在第二天释放了他，以此向王怡发出了警告。[14] 王怡并未被吓倒，继续讲道反对政府控制教会。2018 年 12 月，王怡再次被捕，同时被捕的还有 ERCC 的长老和一百多名会友。[15] 这次，他没有被释放。2019 年，王怡被控“煽动颠覆国家政权罪”和涉及出版基督教材料的“非法经营罪”，被判处九年有期徒刑。[16] 他至今仍在狱中。虽然王怡的监禁提醒人们中国家庭教会牧师所处的危险境地，但他的公共神学及其对中国社会的应用，或许是他和 ERCC 遭受迫害的最根本原因。
王怡的家庭教会处境 (Wang Yi’s House Church Context)
中国思想：1990–2018 (Chinese Thought: 1990–2018)[17]
哲学 (Philosophy-1)
儒家思想 (Confucianism)
与家庭教会背景相关的第一个中国思想领域是儒家思想。[18] 尽管孔子（公元前 551-479 年）生活在王怡时代数千年前，但他所阐述的思想和伦理体系至今仍然是中国思想和伦理的主要特征。姚新中评论道：
儒家传统与现代中国之间的脐带不易切断。儒家遗产的元素已经传递到现代，要么隐藏在国民党和共产党的教条、原则、伦理、公共舆论和官僚精英体系等之中，要么含蓄地支撑着中国社群（家庭、社区、社会和国家）的整个结构，无论其采取何种形式，无论是资本主义还是社会主义，国民党还是共产党。[19]
儒家思想仍然根植于中国的价值观中。虽然儒家思想以多种方式影响着中国的家庭教会，但为了本研究的目的，有必要聚焦于古典儒家思想中潜在的国家主权假设。[20] 孔子关于治理（政）的许多论述都暴露了这种关切。[21] 他的追随者孟子说：“天下之本在国，国之本在家，家之本在身。”[22] 在这里，孟子展示了一种世界观，即帝国是终极的，其他一切都存在于帝国之下的等级结构中。国家在中国生活中的主导地位贯穿了中国王朝历史，并且至今仍然是中国思想的一个关键假设，并为当今执政的中共所遵循。因此，任何站在中国传统文化之外的宗教通常都被怀疑地视为外来宗教，并且国家对宗教的任何容忍都以该宗教不质疑国家自主权为条件。[23]
对家庭教会而言，儒家关于国家主权的假设以及对外来宗教的怀疑，创造了一个环境，使得在法律上骚扰那些试图在这种文化假设框架之外运作的教会变得自然。虽然三自教会愿意在忠诚结构和国家中心主义的传统框架内运作，但家庭教会基于一种挑战儒家国家至上假设的更高的国度忠诚而拒绝这样做。[24] 在中国历史上，这类宗教表达常常导致边缘化和逼迫。[25] 今天，中国家庭教会在共产主义统治下的处境也是如此。
现代主义 (Modernism)
与王怡家庭教会背景相关的第二个哲学思想领域是与凯波尔和巴文克共享的一个领域：现代性。事实上，中国过去两百年的大部分历史都被呈现为现代性与传统儒家思想之间的斗争。[26] 鉴于前一章已经从浪漫唯心主义和历史乐观主义的角度概述了现代思想，本章将重点介绍现代性在过去三十年中对中国及其家庭教会影响最大的两个方面：马克思主义社会主义及其对经济发展的强调。
现代性影响中国的第一个方面是毛泽东具体阐述的马克思主义社会主义思想。卡尔·马克思（Karl Marx, 1818–1883）的理论通过阐述从原始封建主义到平等共产主义的历史进程，认为社会将通过生产资料赋权而日益富裕，其理论本质上既是现代的又是黑格尔式的。[27] 弗拉基米尔·列宁（Vladimir Lenin, 1870–1924）将马克思的理论发展成其更为人熟知的共产主义政治形式，即由共产党领导的“工人国家”控制生产资料并创造更先进的社会。[28] 毛泽东的天才之处在于将一场主要针对后工业社会的革命带到了前工业化中国的农民阶级中。[29] 虽然中国的共产主义常常不同于马克思和列宁以西方为中心的思想，但中共至今官方仍坚持作为其基础的马克思共产主义意识形态。[30]
然而，在过去三十年的中国，这种官方立场更多地扮演了意识形态门面而非社会现实的角色。[31] 虽然中国仍然从小就向其公民灌输马克思主义，但很少有公民真正信奉马克思主义意识形态。[32] 如今，具有讽刺意味的是，加入中共被视为通往非常不符合马克思主义的目标——即个人和家庭经济稳定——的社会垫脚石。[33] 尽管如此，习近平试图通过在社会各个领域复兴马克思主义原则来加强中共的统治，他通过教育系统、广泛的媒体宣传以及通过互联网审查控制对外部观点的接触，来加强马克思主义灌输的强度。[34]
至于马克思主义如何影响家庭教会，有两个具体领域。首先，马克思主义无神论是中国官方的宗教意识形态。这对基督教构成了挑战，基督教不得不在一个官方宗教立场反对其存在的政权下运作。正如将要看到的，这对家庭教会和三自教会都造成了困难。此外，虽然中共在历史上争取中国公民意识形态皈依的能力值得怀疑，但它成功地创造了世界上最大的无神论人口。[35] 中共实施其无神论立场采取了多种形式。文化大革命的破除偶像运动清除了该国先前宗教表达的残余，而改革开放时期引入的宗教法规虽然允许了更多的宗教表达空间，但其基础是相信随着国家经济发展，宗教将会消亡。[36] 最近，消费主义唯物主义填补了中共摧毁宗教后留下的意识形态真空。[37] 虽然基督教在中国的许多地方受到了广泛欢迎，但它仍然远远偏离中国主流思想。
其次，在共产主义假设国家中心主义和国家至上——这一假设与儒家社会观大体一致——之下，教会必须宣誓最终效忠于中国国家。贝斯（Bays）解释说：“中华人民共和国（PRC）新政府从帝国时代继承了这种默认态度，并在其上添加了源于其马克思主义意识形态的另一层敌意。”[38] 教会愿意宣誓效忠国家的程度决定了它所面临的逼迫程度。
伴随着马克思主义社会主义，与家庭教会相关的现代性的第二个领域是对物质进步和经济繁荣的追求。毛泽东通过共产主义革命承诺繁荣，而他的继任者们则在很大程度上抛弃了这种现代主义意识形态形式，转向了另一种现代主义发展：市场资本主义，正式称为“中国特色社会主义”。[39] 这导致了中国经济的全球化、中产阶级的崛起以及消费主义的增长。[40] 过去三十年的中国以现代主义对不断进步的发展和财富的信念为标志。[41] 现代思想的这一方面在 2000 年代头二十年的人们心中持续存在，因为中国继续经历着持续的经济增长。
对家庭教会而言，现代思想的这一方面提出了重大挑战，因为它试图从其最初的贫困农村人口基础进行调整，以接触那些被物质财富所吸引、日益向上流动和城市化的人口。[42] 对许多教会的牧师来说，争夺教区居民心灵的斗争并非与中共进行，而是与购物中心以及确保经济安全的激烈教育竞争进行。[43] 根植于农村农业社会的家庭教会，常常难以应对这种日益增长的唯物主义。与此同时，正如将要看到的，城市改革宗教会则更好地装备起来，能够对那些被现代物质进步机会所吸引的向上流动人口说话。中国社会的任何方面都未曾免受现代物质进步的影响，包括其家庭教会。总之，王怡处境下的中国哲学思想受到其传统儒家思想根基以及相对较近的现代性通过马克思主义社会主义和物质发展产生的影响。现在，本研究将转向审视对中国家庭教会的神学影响。
神学 (Theology-1)
基要主义神学与重洗派公共神学 (Fundamentalist Theology and Anabaptist Public Theology)[44]
神学上，家庭教会极其多样化。因此，对家庭教会神学进行详尽的调查超出了本研究的范围。然而，着重介绍两种家庭教会神学形式是有帮助的，这两种形式分别与两种独特的公共神学形态相关。第一种神学影响是基要主义神学，它导致了一种重洗派公共神学。[45] 这种神学形态源于被普遍认为是中国家庭教会奠基人的两个人：倪柝声（Watchman Nee, 1903–1972）和王明道（Wang Mingdao, 1900–1991）。[46] 虽然对他们思想的全面探讨超出了本研究的目的，但值得简要介绍他们各自的神学，以解释他们关于教会应如何参与社会的愿景。这种神学介绍将有助于解释他们对当今中国家庭教会的影响。
倪柝声的神学 (The Theology of Watchman Nee)
倪柝声的神学是独特的，难以归入特定传统。李健安 (Ken Ang Lee) 指出倪柝声最突出的四个影响是神秘主义、凯西克神学 (Keswick Theology)、弟兄会神学 (Brethren Theology) 和时代论 (Dispensationalism)。[47] 他尤其受到凯西克派作家宾路易师母 (Jessie Penn-Lewis, 1861–1927)、慕安得烈 (Andrew Murray, 1828–1917) 和迈尔 (F. B. Meyer, 1847–1929)；神秘主义者盖恩夫人 (Madame Guyon, 1648–1717)；以及弟兄会领袖达秘 (John Nelson Darby, 1800–1882) 的影响。[48] 此外，倪柝声将以时代论前千禧年主义闻名的司可福研读本圣经 (C. I. Scofield’s Study Bible) 的注释翻译成了中文。[49]
在宇宙论方面，倪柝声写道：“上帝在完成创世六日中每一天的工作后，除了第二天，都看为‘好’。他在第二天创造穹苍后，没有说那是好的。这是因为撒旦在空中（弗 6:12）。”[50] 倪柝声的教导中隐含着一种似乎从创世就存在的二元世界观：上帝的世界和撒旦的世界。然而，倪柝声宇宙论的大部分内容集中在创世记第二章，因为他正是在这里推导出他著名的三分法神学人类学。李健安写道：“倪柝声的整个神学框架取决于他对人的构成和功能的理解。它是一个窗口，必须透过它才能感知他的人类学教导，而这反过来又打开了他整个神学体系的大门。”[51] 倪柝声解释说，人的灵是比魂更高层次的非物质存在。一个类似于天使，另一个类似于动物。[52] 他澄清说：“正如电通过电线传输，以光的形式表达出来，灵作用于魂，而魂反过来通过身体表达自己。”[53] 在伊甸园中，人被赋予在地上选择上帝在天上的道路和撒旦在空中的道路。[54] 人选择撒旦而非上帝导致了他的魂篡夺了他的灵，以及撒旦在世界上战胜了上帝。[55] 上帝创造的“地”被撒旦变成了“世界”。[56] 因此，倪柝声相信创造物在本体上被撒旦邪恶化了。救赎涉及基督在魂、灵、体三方面的替代性死亡，从而使人的灵得以重生。[57] 然而，因为人仍然在世界上，魂与灵必须继续争战，直到人通过死亡从世界的邪恶中被拯救出来。[58] 倪柝声的末世论反映了时代论前千禧年主义。它讲述了一个由撒旦统治、无法修复的世界，这个世界将被毁灭并被一个新世界所取代。[59]
倪柝声神学框架在其公共神学方面的结果是一种强烈的世俗-神圣二元论，其中教会之外的一切都被认为是邪恶和正在灭亡的，甚至包括世俗的工作场所。[60] 倪柝声的神学在这一点上接近诺斯替主义。[61] 相反，教会是拯救之地。因此，对倪柝声而言，教会不应与世界接触，而应退缩，专注于祷告、传福音和绝对顺服上帝的旨意。[62]
王明道的神学 (The Theology of Wang Mingdao)
与倪柝声不同，王明道的出版著作并未坚持特定的神学主题，王明道受西方神学的影响也不如倪柝声那么直接。[63] 此外，王明道的著作不像倪柝声那样被广泛翻译成英文出版。围绕王明道的二手文献往往更侧重于他的历史遗产而非详述其神学，或许因为他不被视为一位神学家。[64] 曾（Tseng）描述他的教导“以其朴实和常识为标志”。[65] 王明道主要关注的是因西方自由派宗派传教士的影响而在中国教会中抬头的现代主义神学，他的许多神学著作都是为了回应这一点而写的。因此，王明道的神学强烈地属于二十世纪初基要主义-自由主义神学论战中的基要主义阵营。[66] 与现代主义者相信世界正在稳步改善的观点相反，王明道像倪柝声一样，认为罪已经如此败坏了世界，以至于它作为撒旦的领域已无法救赎。[67] 然而，倪柝声侧重于撒旦对人的影响，而王明道的焦点则在于人的罪。对王明道而言，重生的目的是伦理上的改变。相应地，他的讲道和写作集中在个体基督徒和教会的道德改革上。[68] 李振群（Chun Kwan Lee）评论道：“王明道反复强调善行的重要性，并将其视为基督徒生活中最重要的方面。”[69] 在末世论方面，王明道相信即将到来的国度其主要益处是逃离一个最终将灭亡的罪恶世界。[70] 因此，他认同倪柝声的灭绝论末世观。
至于王明道的公共神学，林荣洪 (Wing-hung Lam) 解释说：“王明道不关心文化价值的保存或改革，因为它们最终都会消逝。逻辑上，王明道不期望文化中有任何神圣的活动，否则上帝就不得不在末日毁灭他自己的工作。”[71] 与他那个时代侧重于建筑项目、医疗保健和扶贫的自由派宗派教会相反，王明道认为教会的主要工作是传福音。吴利明 (Lee Ming Ng) 很好地阐明了王明道的观点：
基督教并没有向我们提出任何明确的政治和社会行动方针。但接受这种基督教本身就是一种行动方针。诚然，基督教与社会问题无关。但基督教并非在社会中毫无关联，因为它为那些不想面对这些问题的人提供了一条出路。正是在这个意义上，王明道的信息，以及那些接受他信息的人，成为了一种社会回应。[72]
托马斯·艾伦·哈维 (Thomas Alan Harvey) 解释说，王明道并未拒绝社会改革，但与中国现代派基督徒相反，他认为这种改革只能通过教会来实现。[73]
从这个意义上说，王明道的神学与当代新重洗派思想有相似之处。[74] 这种观点呼吁教会从世俗社会结构中的影响力地位回归到社会边缘地位。约翰·霍华德·尤达 (John Howard Yoder) 是最著名的新重洗派之一，他提供了一个新重洗派发展其公共神学的基础原则：“但在我们这个时代，一种新的清晰理解正在兴起，即教会的意义必须在对其与非教会，即‘世界’关系的更清晰把握中找到。”[75] 这种教会与世界的分离驱动着新重洗派的社会愿景。然而，新重洗派并不认为他们的立场是为了分离而退缩。相反，像王明道一样，尤达认为，为了以任何有影响力的方式与世界互动，教会必须作为一个与周围世界不同的替代性社群而存在。[76] 只有当教会通过顺服基督的伦理而成为其真实的自我时，它才能影响世界。通过效法基督超凡脱俗的伦理，教会见证了基督的主权和国度。因此，新重洗派的立场宣扬一种教会通过一套独特的原则和伦理参与世界——这种独特性如此之强，以至于排除了积极参与许多世俗结构，如国家。多萝西娅·贝尔奇曼 (Dorothea Bertschmann) 引用尤达的话说：“尤达声称‘耶稣事工的核心在于形成一个非暴力、非民族的“城邦” (polis)，一个结构化的社群。这是耶稣卓越的政治行动：他拒绝参与众所周知的政治游戏，而是通过形成一个团体发明了一个全新的游戏。’”[77] 她解释说：“尤达对政治权威持有大多是消极的、常常是模棱两可的，充其量是清醒的看法。”[78] 因此，“教会作为一个和解社群的存在本身就是其首要见证。”[79] 教会要从这种替代性聚集的立场出发影响社会，而不是通过直接参与社会领域。[80] 因此，王明道的公共神学在其坚持内在改革——无论是在个体还是在信仰社群中——最终将带来社会影响方面，与新重洗派思想有相似之处。[81]
从倪柝声、王明道到家庭教会的神学演进 (The Theological Progression from Nee and Wang to House Churches)
倪柝声和王明道的神学都导向一种根植于二十世纪初基要主义的重洗派式公共神学，即与世界分离和区别。虽然倪柝声更直接地受到英国弟兄会重洗派倾向的影响，但王明道也认为教会应成为一个完全与世界分离和脱离的地方。从这个意义上说，两者都清晰地属于“恩典反对自然”的范畴。[82] 但这种公共神学如何影响中国的家庭教会呢？由于倪柝声的地方教会网络以及王明道在其广为阅读的《灵食季刊》上发表的公开反三自言论，两人在二十世纪五十年代之前追随他们神学的基要主义中国教会中都极受欢迎，其中许多教会后来转入地下成为家庭教会。[83] 陈剑光 (Kim-Kwong Chan) 解释说，由于中国在二十世纪中期对世界关闭，“西方的神学发展，如福音派的兴起、礼仪改革、普世教会合一运动、解放神学和女权主义神学——自 1960 年代以来流行——对中国的更正教徒没有影响。”[84] 因此，当家庭教会在文化大革命后的日子里能够更自由地运作时，由于几十年前神学发展机会甚少，倪柝声和王明道的神学仍然是持久的影响力，并且至今对许多家庭教会仍然如此。[85] 例如，李晋 (Jin Li) 如此描述这些家庭教会的末世论倾向：“这些家庭教会网络所持守的末世论神学……有一个共同的影响来源，即倪柝声和他建立的小群（xiao qun）派神学。”[86] 康婕 (Jie Kang) 在她对一位年长教会领袖的访谈中很好地描述了这一点，这位领袖以二元论框架看待世界。她用类似倪柝声的话阐述道：“他将世界描述为由两部分组成。一部分是属于主的，比如在教会里，这被视为好的。其余的是‘社会’（shehui）或‘世界’（shijie），他将其视为属于魔鬼的，充满黑暗。”[87] 追随王明道，许多家庭教会倾向于更注重敬虔道德和个人救赎，而牺牲了社会参与和转变。马丽 (Li Ma) 和李晋 (Jin Li) 解释说：
由于一种倾向于在神圣与世俗之间划清界限的敬虔主义或分离主义神学的广泛影响，这些领袖并不认为社会不公和环境污染等问题是基督徒的高度优先事项。尽管中国社会因普遍存在的不公正而社会冲突不断升级，但他们的讲道很少触及社会不公。[88]
这些家庭教会中分离的公共神学植根于一种强烈的教会-世界二元论，这种二元论源于倪柝声和王明道的基要主义神学和重洗派公共神学。
改革宗神学 (Reformed Theology)
1990 年代见证了中国家庭教会内部改革宗神学运动的开端，并在整个 2000 年代扩展开来。[89] 虽然中国家庭教会中的改革宗神学形式多样，但这些教会的“改革宗”性质更倾向于集中在荷兰新加尔文主义的世界观神学上，而非传统改革宗关于 TULIP 的救赎论原则上。[90] 尽管改革宗教会并不否认传统改革宗救赎论，但改革宗神学的这一方面并非吸引年轻城市居民的主要因素。[91] 城市寻求者渴望一种能够回应生活各个领域问题的信仰，而不是一种与世界隔绝、 compartmentalized 的信仰。[92] 正如一位牧者评论的那样：“只有加尔文主义神学以上帝的主权为框架，并且涵盖生活的各个领域。”[93] 作为神学的一个例子，北京守望教会期刊《杏花》的一卷专门探讨了凯波尔主义的文化使命概念。[94] 这些改革宗家庭教会的许多领袖都毫不畏惧地直接谈论中国社会面临的问题，包括政治、法律、环境和艺术。考虑到倪柝声和王明道神学的分离主义性质，这一公共神学因素或许比任何其他因素更能将这些教会与遵循倪柝声和王明道的典型家庭教会区分开来。司马懿 (Chloë Starr) 写道：“他们的神学常常远离像王明道或倪柝声（尽管他们可能钦佩其坚定的信仰）这样的前辈那种隐修或否定世界的信仰，并表现出与世界的强烈互动，这与许多主流家庭教会的信仰形成鲜明对比。”[95] 杨富雷 (Frederik Fällman) 解释说：“文化开放和社会参与，再加上政治批判，使得这成为一个引人入胜且相当出人意料的发展。”[96] 曹荣锦 (Alexander Chow) 评论道：“他们是牧师和长老，渴望阐述能够与教会内外人士就公共领域共同关心的问题进行对话和互动的基督教神学。”[97] 在 2000 年代相对开放的时期，改革宗家庭教会开始以不同方式寻求更多地参与公共领域。有时，例如在 2008 年四川地震救援工作中，这些方法甚至得到了政府的支持。[98] 正是由于这个原因，曹荣锦称这些教会领袖为“中国公共神学家”。[99]
王怡是这种参与型神学最杰出的神学声音之一，而秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 则被广泛认为是该运动的标杆性教会之一。虽然像 ERCC 这样的教会在多大程度上认识到自己受惠于荷兰新加尔文主义尚不确定，但很明显，凯波尔和巴文克对改革宗神学的影响已经传递到了中国。[100] 然而，考虑到儒家思想和共产主义中潜在的国家中心主义，以及中国对宗教的国家控制，这些教会的公共神学常常被视为对国家的直接冒犯。一种参与社会的公共神学至少暗示了教会在塑造社会方面与国家并存的作用。仅这一假设本身就挑战了国家对社会所有领域拥有权威的传统假设。此外，2018 年《宗教事务条例》的修订旨在扩大政府对宗教活动的监督，并限制在此监督之外发生的教会活动。这加剧了国家对所有家庭教会的挑战，尤其是对改革宗家庭教会，因为其公共神学明确挑战国家对教会事务的监督。
中国社会：1990–2018 (Chinese Society: 1990–2018)
城市化 (Urbanization)
前一节从思想层面介绍了王怡的背景。接下来关注王怡家庭教会背景的领域涉及中国社会。首先，本节将聚焦于社会的一个特征，它有助于解释家庭教会如何陷入边缘化并导致逼迫的处境：城市化。
邓小平（1904-1997）的改革开放计划开启了中国经济的转型，这将极大地影响中国的人口结构。为适应新兴产业而增加对城市地区的投资，导致了从农村到城市的大规模迁移。布伦特·富尔顿 (Brent Fulton) 解释说：“作为本世纪中国飞速崛起的一个显著特征，其城市前所未有的增长在许多方面一直是推动中国非凡经济增长和发展的驱动力。”[101] 2011 年，中国城市居民首次超过农村居民。[102] 到 2018 年，60%的人口居住在城市地区。[103] 这种从农村到城市的迁移导致了巨大的社会变革，特别是在年轻一代中，他们比以前在毛泽东时代更容易获得技术、金融和法律等领域的白领工作。此外，中国的城市化也受到其在全球经济中日益重要作用的推动，使其更多公民接触到西方文化。[104] 虽然中国的城市化带来了经济繁荣和日益增长的全球影响力，但它也给中共维持其在公民生活中意识形态合法性的能力带来了许多挑战。[105] 结果，习近平试图通过挑战日益城市化和全球化的国家中任何社会竞争者来恢复这种信誉。
在家庭教会内部，改革宗教会的增长很大程度上遵循了这种城市化趋势。其中较为知名的教会存在于像北京这样的中国首都，或者像成都这样的中国西部最国际化的大都市之一，王怡和秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 就居住在那里。结果，ERCC 吸引了许多从事白领工作的城市专业人士。[106] 许多人被王怡的讲道和著作所吸引，这些讲道和著作不像许多家庭教会那样充满个人经历和道德说教，而是对圣经进行精炼的阐释，触及文化议题，并针对受过教育的城市精英。[107] 此外，王怡在纽约市接受了提摩太·凯勒 (Timothy Keller, 1950–2023) 的城市植堂 (City to City) 组织的培训，这意味着他的植堂重点是有意针对这些城市居民的。[108] 事实上，很像凯勒在曼哈顿的救赎主长老会 (Redeemer Presbyterian Church)，ERCC 的许多增长和王怡的声望都可以归功于他有效对话年轻城市文化的能力。
王怡反映了凯波尔呼吁基督徒积极参与社会的能力。在一个日益城市化的中国，一个在其年轻影响者生活中占据主导地位的教会，被一个寻求在生活各个领域拥有至高无上地位的政府视为竞争对手。陈剑光 (Chan) 解释说，在习近平治下，“宗教不再被视为一种文化现象或社会群体，而被视为具有国家安全影响的社会因素。”[109] 虽然凯波尔的民粹主义政治技巧可能激怒了许多构成议会自由派队伍的荷兰贵族，但他的公共神学从未像王怡那样使他成为政府的敌人。正是在这种背景下，2018 年，习近平为了在一个日益城市化的中国恢复中共的合法性，动用了前所未有的资源来迫害像 ERCC 这样的城市家庭教会以及像王怡这样的牧师，他们被视为对国家至高无上地位的挑战。[110] 在习近平的统治下，做一个小型的农村家庭教会比做一个大型有影响力的城市家庭教会更安全。
技术与经济进步 (Technological and Economic Advancement)
需要强调的王怡家庭教会社会背景的第二个领域是过去三十年来该国所经历的经济和技术进步。中国的人均 GDP 在 1900 年至 2018 年间增长了三十一倍。[111] 没有其他国家接近过这个增长水平。[112] 扎克·戴奇瓦尔德 (Zak Dychtwald) 将此置于背景中：
仅仅三年时间，从 2011 年到 2013 年，中国浇筑的混凝土比美国在整个 20 世纪浇筑的还要多。1990 年，中国农村人口每 100 户拥有一台冰箱；今天[2021 年]这个数字是每 100 户 96 台。（食物保鲜是衡量发展的一个常见基准。）1990 年，中国道路上只有 550 万辆汽车；今天有 2.7 亿辆，其中 340 万辆是电动汽车，占全球电动汽车总量的 47%。[113]
事实上，中国过去三十年所经历的生活方式和经济变革远超地球上任何其他国家，标志着世界历史上最快的进步之一。中国的经济和技术进步远超凯波尔和巴文克时代荷兰的显著进步。然而，正如将要看到的，与凯波尔不同，王怡时代的技术和经济进步似乎并未像凯波尔在他那个时代那样，对他的普遍恩典理解产生重大影响。这种差异对于分析逼迫对王怡公共神学的影响至关重要。
中国政治：1990–2018 (Politics in China: 1990–2018)
为了理解王怡公共神学在其逼迫处境下的意义，有必要概述过去三十年中国政治的广泛轮廓。本节将首先介绍 1990 年至 2018 年的中共领导层，然后解释不同的领导人如何影响政府政策关注点，最后将政府政策与像王怡的秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 这样的家庭教会联系起来。
虽然讨论凯波尔和巴文克时代的荷兰政治涉及自由政府下不同政党的各种政策和观点，但王怡所处的中国却截然不同。尽管中国政府在技术上仍然独立于中共，但毛泽东之后的中国政治一直被中共主导，以至于两者实际上是同义词。[114] 尽管如此，该党远非团结一致，其过去三十年的历史包含了派系权力分享。1990 年，邓小平卸任，让江泽民（1926-2022）接掌中共。江泽民是中共“上海帮”派系的成员，他统治了十二年，然后在 2002 年将党和政府的控制权移交给了胡锦涛（生于 1942 年），胡锦涛是中共对手“中国共产主义青年团派系”（共青团）的成员。[115] 因此，中共似乎将在派系之间轮流掌权以维持团结。当胡锦涛任期结束后，上海帮成员习近平于 2012 年上台时，这一点似乎更加明显。[116] 然而，与预期相反，习近平发起了一场反腐运动，不仅针对对手共青团官员，也针对他自己上海帮内部的人员。然后他迅速将自己的亲信安插到权力位置，形成了一个新的派系，“习家军”。这些转变结束了中共的权力分享时代。[117]
就政策而言，江泽民倾向于发展中国东部沿海主要城市的经济。[118] 同样，胡锦涛侧重于中国内陆西部地区的经济增长。[119] 因此，无论是在江泽民还是胡锦涛治下，在 1990 年代和 2000 年代，政府的主要关注点都是经济而非意识形态。然而，江泽民和胡锦涛取得的经济进步伴随着代价，即由于政府臃肿、大规模腐败以及党的经济目标与其马克思主义意识形态之间的公然对立，党在人民眼中的整体合法性丧失。[120] 习近平试图恢复党的合法性。结果，理查德·麦格雷戈 (Richard McGregor) 解释说：“他[习近平]开始了一项拯救任务。他将成为他那一代人中最红的领导人。”[121] 中共在习近平的领导下，不再专注于经济发展，而是将政策重点放在塑造意识形态上。该党变得比江泽民和胡锦涛任期内更为专制，并试图通过宣布官方的“习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想”，或简称“习近平思想”，来根据习近平重新定义其意识形态。[122] 通过这种方式，习近平试图回归马克思列宁主义原则，并严厉镇压任何异议迹象。
对家庭教会而言，江泽民和胡锦涛治下不惜一切代价转向经济发展意味着，在这些年里，对家庭教会的监管在中共的关注清单上排名较低。[123] 结果，家庭教会能够相对自由地运作，以至于迟至 2013 年，一些学者呼吁结束关于中国教会受迫害的叙述，并相信家庭教会将继续获得自由，并可能在社会中有更多发言权。[124] 然而，习近平转向意识形态关注意味着家庭教会在他治下发现政策不那么宽松。习近平将家庭教会视为对其党在公众眼中绝对主权和合法性目标的直接威胁。习近平认为家庭教会相对自由的存在是党软弱的表现，因此它们成为 2018 年《宗教事务条例》修订的明确目标。该修订加强了长期存在但常常被忽视的要求，即教会必须向政府登记，只能在政府批准的场所敬拜，并且只能由政府批准的神职人员领导。[125] 此外，在修订后的条例发布后不久，负责监管教会的政府机构国家宗教事务局 (SARA) 被置于中共机构统战部 (UFWD) 的控制之下。[126] 此举被视为进一步集中控制宗教并确保基督教信徒效忠中共的努力。[127]
总而言之，在 1990 年代江泽民和 2000 年代胡锦涛的领导下，中共主要关注经济进步，并通过改善生活条件来建立民众对党的忠诚。习近平则试图通过关注民众的意识形态来恢复党的合法性。对家庭教会而言，结果是江胡治下二十年的相对自由运作和增长被习近平终结，2010 年代变成了一个日益严格和严厉管制的时期，最终以 2018 年《宗教事务条例》的修订达到顶峰。因此，王怡在一个对家庭教会限制日益增加、政府对社会各领域控制日益加强的环境中事奉。这些政治转变将导致王怡和秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 遭受迫害，并且对于王怡公共神学思想的发展也至关重要。
中国新教教会：1990–2018 (The Chinese Protestant Church: 1990–2018)
介绍了中国的思想、社会和政治之后，注意力现在转向中国的两种新教教会结构：三自爱国运动（TSPM）和家庭教会。[128]
三自爱国运动 (The TSPM)
三自爱国运动（TSPM）是在中共掌权后的几年里形成的，作为政府努力解决一个无神论政党如何监督和控制其公民中宗教信徒问题的方案。[129] 在像吴耀宗（Y. T. Wu, 1893–1979）这样倾向于神学自由派的教牧领袖领导下，三自作为一个政府控制的组织运作了多年，甚至参与了对那些不愿将其教会纳入该运动的牧师的谴责和迫害。[130] 然而，在文化大革命的动荡岁月中，三自与所有其他宗教活动一起被解散。它将在邓小平的改革下复兴。[131] 虽然三自的领袖通常是自由派神学家，但现实是，自 1990 年以来在三自下登记的大多数教会这样做更多是出于务实而非神学原因。因此，三自当局提出的神学自由派前提在很大程度上被许多三自教会所忽视。[132] 相反，连曦（Xi Lian）描述三自的讲道包含“温和的福音派教义以及‘谦虚、诚实、耐心’和爱国的品德。”[133] 陈剑光（Chan）解释说：
尽管官方的三自/两会（TSPM/CCC）机构和资源推广此类神学思想，但它们似乎对中国日常的新教生活影响甚微。除了处于等级制度顶层的人之外，三自/两会内部的新教徒更关心的是一个稳定和开放的环境，以便进行他们的宗教活动，而非这些官方的神学立场。[134]
因此，三自教会的一个关键特征是它们能够在一个具有无神论意识形态的政权下公开运作。通过将教会登记在三自之下，就能获得公开运作的许可。
在许多方面，三自与凯波尔和巴文克时代的荷兰改革宗教会（NHK）有相似之处。两者都是国家支持的教会分支，虽然在组织的权力结构中神学上是自由派的，但在全国范围内表现出更保守的表达方式。然而，王怡所处的中国的国家控制程度远大于凯波尔和巴文克的荷兰。虽然能够在中国共产党统治下公开运作有其好处，但对三自教会而言，代价是活动仅限于当地中共允许的范围。这种限制在凯波尔和巴文克的自由化环境下是不存在的。因此，三自教会能够举行的活动和礼拜的范围通常因地区而异，取决于当地政府对基督教的态度，但甚至可以达到在教堂内悬挂中国国旗或习近平照片的程度。[135] 因此，即使是那些以前作为福音派教会公开运作的三自教会，在习近平治下也发现这种持续运作变得更加困难。
家庭教会 (House Churches)
家庭教会与三自教会形成对比，因为它们拒绝在中共监督下敬拜。它们的处境可与 1848 年之前荷兰的“分离运动”(Afscheiding) 相提并论。王怡和秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 就属于中国新教的这个分支。虽然家庭教会在其传统、礼仪、聚会地点和网络方面极其多样化，但为本研究之目的，将它们划分为“传统家庭教会”和“城市改革宗家庭教会”。[136]
传统家庭教会 (Traditional House Churches)
在那些最终拒绝加入三自并面临政府迫害的人中，包括倪柝声和王明道。倪柝声的地方教会网络在他被捕后继续未登记聚会，并转入地下，形成了后来的家庭教会。尽管倪柝声和王明道在家庭教会开始时都已入狱，并且两人都从未牧养过家庭教会，但他们的影响力使他们被誉为中国家庭教会的先驱。[137] 李约瑟 (Joseph Lee) 解释说，在毛泽东统治下最严酷的迫害年代里，倪柝声的地方教会运动“保持非常低调，并在基层组织细胞小组和家庭聚会，这后来构成了中国家庭教会运动的骨干，并在改革时期播下了宗教复兴的种子。”[138] 王怡将这些传统家庭教会归因于其先辈的基要主义神学，“持守圣经”，并“走十字架的道路”。[139] 最后一个属性很重要。“走十字架的道路”是中国家庭教会常用的一个说法，指的是在中国共产党统治下作为基督徒所预期的充满苦难的生活。它与中国家庭教会的经历同义。[140] 文化大革命期间极端迫害的经历将家庭教会标记为一个受苦的教会，即使在毛泽东之后控制有所放松。家庭教会最初在农村地区发展，并倾向于具有灵恩色彩，强调个人经历和神迹医治。在领导方面，教会是父权制的，通常在一个没有结构化政体的单一领袖指导下组织起来。[141] 这些领袖常常缺乏教育，并且仍然是农民而非全职传道人。[142] 康婕 (Kang) 解释说：“那时几乎没有传道人接受过正规的神学训练。任何能够阅读圣经，并在聚会中向他人解释经文的人，都可能逐渐被视为传道人……可以肯定地说，农村信徒基本上对他们的传道人要求不高。”[143] 在公共神学方面，农业生活方式与教会的地下存在相结合，意味着参与更广泛社会的想法在这些基督徒的头脑中仍然遥远。这些早期的家庭教会也以其千禧年末世论极端主义而闻名，当考虑到他们的威权领袖时，这常常导致异端或异端宗派主义。[144]
在整个 1990 年代和 2000 年代，随着宗教法规执行的放松，传统家庭教会在神学上有所发展，并大体上坚持一种正统、广泛的福音派神学，同时在日益公开的聚会场所运作。此外，这些教会不一定停留在农村，而是要么迁入更大的城市，要么因发展扩张进入其村庄而被城市化。[145] 像王明道的基督徒会堂一样，这些教会中有许多仍然是非宗派的或“跨宗派”的。[146] 它们倾向于在情感表达而非依赖神迹方面保持灵恩色彩。[147] 由于对传统的尊重和缺乏按立牧师的综合原因，许多这些传统家庭教会称自己为团契而非教会，并且在没有按立牧师在场的情况下不提供洗礼或圣餐。[148] 尽管它们在网络中运作，但它们对准入会众以及与其他教会的互动非常谨慎。[149] 许多会众在更宽松的环境中得以成长和倍增，许多开始在更显眼的地点聚会。[150] 然而，自习近平上台以来，传统家庭教会面临着更严格的审查。对于城市地区可见的传统家庭教会来说尤其如此。其中许多被迫分裂成更小的聚会以求生存，这一举措被称为“小组化”。[151] 对于农村教会来说，情况没有那么严峻。[152] 然而，无论是城市可见的还是农村小型的，这些传统家庭教会都有一个共同的神学特点，即它们通常持守某种版本的倪柝声和王明道的基要主义神学和重洗派公共神学，使它们保持封闭并与社会分离。这使它们区别于城市改革宗家庭教会。
城市改革宗家庭教会 (Urban Reformed House Churches)
在 1990 年代之前，中国的城市中心在很大程度上没有教会，尤其是在大学毕业生和留在城市的毕业生中。这个群体感受到传统家庭教会与他们之间的强烈脱节，传统家庭教会虽然进入了城市，但仍然保留着农村家庭教会的文化。[153] 家庭教会所缺乏的是一种能够吸引这个具有社会影响力的群体的教会文化和神学框架。马丽 (Ma) 和李晋 (Li) 解释说：“城市事工的发展创造了对神学发展的需求，这种发展能够有效回应年轻一代提出的广泛问题。”[154] 虽然改革宗神学在 1949 年之前的中国教会中存在，但在毛泽东统治下随着外国宗派主义一起基本消失，并且在 1980 年代和 1990 年代初的家庭教会中基本上不存在。[155] 然而，由于改革宗作者翻译作品的出现以及海外华人基督徒的影响，这个城市群体被改革宗神学所吸引。结果，马丽和李晋报告说：“当今中国新教教会神学版图的一个不可否认的事实是加尔文主义的兴起。”[156] 因此，许多在 1990 年代末和 2000 年代开始的城市教会都是作为改革宗教会建立起来的。以下是这些教会共有的一些相关特征。
首先，从人口统计学上看，这些教会主要由年轻的知识分子和城市居民组成，他们是中国日益壮大的中产阶级的一部分。[157] 马丽 (Ma) 和李晋 (Li) 解释说：“在 2000 年代初，加尔文主义传播最快的地方是[精英]大学，那里的基督教哲学家和教育家正在[教授]、写作和翻译更多的加尔文主义著作。”[158] 由于传统家庭教会更为敬虔和经验性的神学未能回应这些寻求者生活中的问题，对一种能够应用于这些年轻城市居民生活的神学的需求导致了对改革宗神学的兴趣，特别是约翰·加尔文 (John Calvin) 的框架和凯波尔 (Kuyper) 的世界观塑造神学。[159] 张彦 (Ian Johnson) 评论道：“像秋雨圣约这样的新兴城市教会是为现代城市居民量身定做的，拥有受过教育的牧师、强调知识探究、朴素的美学以及负责教会事务的长老会或长老团体。最重要的是，它提供了坚定的指导。”[160] 曹荣锦 (Chow) 解释说，这些教会的领袖“是牧师和长老，他们渴望阐述能够与教会内外人士就公共领域共同关心的问题进行对话和互动的基督教神学。”[161] 结果，许多被这些教会吸引的人包括大学教授、律师以及从事白领城市商业的人，他们想知道如何将基督教应用于他们的工作和社会。
其次，这些教会倾向于在中国社会中寻求更公开的存在。然而，它们拒绝通过向三自登记这种合法途径来实现这种公开性。[162] 相反，它们追求一种“第三条道路”，既不像传统家庭教会那样封闭和秘密，也不像三自教会那样受政府控制。[163] 其中一个这样的教会，北京守望教会，因其牧师金天明（生于 1968 年）寻求向政府登记但拒绝通过加入三自而服从政府对教会的统治而引起了国际关注。[164] 正如曹荣锦解释的那样，这样的举动是受神学驱动的：“金天明，追随加尔文的遗产，正在提倡一种观点，即教会必须与公民政府建立更积极的关系，同时不像三自那样在福音上妥协。”[165] 一些教会则在公开性方面走得更远。在秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 被关闭之前，该教会自愿每周向警方提供其参加者的名单。王怡解释说：“我们不想陷入旧的地下教会心态。那是不健康的。”[166] 然而，这些教会的公开性不仅仅是对政府的公开；它也延伸到对公众的公开。像 ERCC 这样的教会常常直接宣传其聚会地点和时间。[167] 在一项引人入胜的社会学研究中，马丽和李晋绘制了上海和成都几个家庭教会在其神学传统方面的开放性图表。[168] 结果显示，在所有神学背景中，只有改革宗教会在所研究的每个类别中都以开放性为特征。[169] 这种公开的开放性表明这些教会渴望作为一个独立于政府的实体存在于社会中——这一举动植根于凯波尔主义公共神学。[170]
第三，与传统家庭教会相比，这些教会倾向于采用更结构化和更有组织的政体。传统家庭教会通常由单一的父权式人物领导，这更符合儒家文化期望，而改革宗教会则常常采用权力更分散的教会结构，设有多个长老。[171] 这些教会常常在章程的治理下运作其政体和实践。[172]
最后，虽然这些家庭教会在许多层面上可能在神学和结构上与传统家庭教会不同，但它们有一个共同点，即认为走十字架道路对于教会生活是必要的。金天明如此描述走十字架道路：
既然家庭教会拒绝与政府妥协，如果以史为鉴，他们将走十字架的道路，毫不犹豫地放弃一切，包括他们的生命和家庭。因此，在这一独特的历史时期，受苦将成为中国基督徒的标记。真正的基督徒将坚守他们的信仰，拒绝成为在真理上妥协的门徒。到那时，几乎不可能避免受苦（除非主提供超自然的看顾和保护）。特别是那些领导教会的人必须面对经历逼迫的责任。[173]
然而，根据十字架道路受苦并不仅仅是暂时的忍耐，而是始终是熬炼教会所必需的。金继续说道：“我们相信受苦熬炼牧师和信徒的生命，也熬炼教会。正是通过属灵长辈的受苦，为中国教会奠定了不可动摇的基础。”[174] 因此，对这些教会而言，像之前的教会一样，走十字架的道路并非可选。相反，它对于领袖和会众的属灵成熟都是必要的。走十字架的道路是如此理所当然的成熟步骤，以至于金甚至警告那些长期遭受逼迫的人要警惕因受苦而产生的属灵骄傲。[175] 像这样的陈述将年轻的城市改革宗家庭教会与其在传统家庭教会中的前辈联系起来。有一种源于逼迫的受苦遗产被视为中国家庭教会经验的本质，城市改革宗家庭教会与传统家庭教会在走十字架道路上团结一致地承担着这种遗产。[176]
王怡不仅是一位城市改革宗家庭教会牧师，而且是该运动最知名的面孔之一，也是其最直言不讳的成员之一，尤其是在法律和政教关系领域。秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 在吸引年轻城市居民、对政府和公众开放以及推行有组织的政体结构方面是领先的教会。此外，王怡的许多著作都涉及“走十字架道路”的观念。[177] 可以肯定地说，王怡极大地影响了这场教会运动。
在许多方面，城市改革宗家庭教会将自己置于在中国共产党统治下的土地上运作风险最高的位置。牧师无需直接公开反对政府就会引起怀疑。他们的公开性是对长期存在于家庭教会与政府之间潜规则的最大胆、最具争议性的抗议形式之一。异议人士冉云飞（生于 1965 年）阐述道：“未登记的教会是公共空间。它们可能是目前中国唯一真正的公共空间。”[178] 正是这种另类的“公共”让中共感到紧张。政府将这些会众的公开性视为越界之举，教会也因此遭受了相应的苦难。守望教会在 2009 年被驱逐出租用的场地。他们将公共聚会移至户外，并持续面临警方的阻挠，直到 2011 年金天明及几位长老被软禁。[179] 至于秋雨圣约教会 (ERCC) 和王怡，张彦 (Johnson) 在 2017 年写下的文字具有预言性：“我一直在想他能继续讲道多久才会惹上麻烦。让我疑惑的其实并非他的讲道。而是他的教会是一个独立于党控制之外的平行领域。”[180] 2018 年 12 月 9 日，ERCC 的财产在一次突袭中被警方没收，同时王怡及几位长老和 ERCC 成员被捕。那些试图在接下来的主日进行户外聚会的剩余成员，其聚会被警方打断。[181] 在一个以国家中心主义构建的社会中——这种国家中心主义在习近平治下日益加强——教会没有空间可以作为一个独立于政府的自由实体公开存在。因此，这些教会面临着显著的逼迫。
王怡处境分析 (Analysis of Wang Yi’s Context)
介绍了王怡的社会政治背景之后，现在有必要分析他的处境。这个分析将证明王怡的处境是边缘化导致逼迫。在此过程中，将把王怡的处境与凯波尔和巴文克的处境进行对比。从这个分析中得出的见解将在接下来的章节中进一步考虑，以就凯波尔主义公共神学在逼迫处境下的有效性以及凯波尔和巴文克运用其公共神学时融合主义方面的问题得出结论。
边缘化的领域 (Areas of Marginalization-1)
王怡家庭教会背景的第一个边缘化领域体现在植根于儒家和马克思主义思想的社会对国家主权的假设中。在中国历史的大部分时间里，国家在社会的各个领域都占据首要地位，无论是通过皇帝无可争议的统治还是中共的统治。对教会而言，这意味着服从执政国家是预期。在一个将更高或甚至与之并列的忠诚置于人民心中和头脑中的宗教，是没有空间的。因此，基督教要求完全效忠耶稣王权的诉求意味着，作为一个宗教，它很少在中国社会中找到受欢迎的位置。这体现在三自教会和家庭教会的区别上。愿意接受国家从属地位的三自教会，被允许在国家统治下运作。与此同时，那些拒绝这种地位的教会则最终陷入非法或法律灰色地带。[182] 无论哪种方式，都没有像凯波尔和巴文克时代的荷兰那样为教会留出公开的社会空间。凯波尔主义领域主权的概念对于一个建立在国家中心主义之上的社会来说是格格不入的。此外，虽然 1990 年代和 2000 年代的关注点转变在很大程度上允许家庭教会开始在社会中占据更公开的地位，但在习近平治下，2010 年代见证了回归毛泽东时代严格的意识形态坚持。因此，凯波尔和巴文克在一个日益自由和开放的社会中事奉，而王怡则主要在一个日益专制、自由度更低的社会中事奉。
其次，与凯波尔和巴文克时代的荷兰（至少在名义上仍然是一个基督教社会）不同，中国拥有世界上最大的无神论人口。与此同时，基督教仍然处于边缘地位，占人口比例不到 10%。王怡的家庭教会背景是一个基督徒显然是少数群体的背景。
第三，这种基督徒数量上的边缘化导致了基督教在社会上的边缘化。虽然中国政府与中共是分开的，但党对政府的牢牢控制意味着只有党员才能在政府中担任职位。由于党员必须遵守中共的无神论意识形态，公开的基督徒信徒除了通过三自之外，不可能在中国社会中获得有影响力的职位。虽然三自教会在中国各地的城市中心常常拥有教堂般的建筑，但它们的运作是基于一种理解，即它们不会寻求改造社会，以换取在不受骚扰的情况下运作。因此，它们对社会的整体影响微乎其微。与此同时，传统家庭教会主要在农村农业地区发展，即使它们扩展到城市，其分离主义的公共神学也导致它们在很大程度上以生存为名接受其边缘地位。政府期望教会要么像三自一样在其控制下存在，要么保持小规模并隐藏起来。这与凯波尔和巴文克的处境截然不同，在他们的处境中，他们能够基于其改革宗基督教信仰建立和维持一个政党并获得政治权力。总之，王怡的家庭教会处境是一种社会边缘化，其程度超过了凯波尔和巴文克所经历的边缘化。
逼迫的原因 (Causes of Persecution)
虽然中国更广泛的基督教教会背景是边缘化的，但与凯波尔和巴文克的处境不同，中国没有提供社会或文化保障来防止社会边缘化转变为公然的逼迫。相反，在习近平治下，教会经历了日益加剧的逼迫，其严酷性和持续性在 1990 年代和 2000 年代是前所未见的。造成这种情况的一个原因是，习近平对意识形态霸权的渴望自然地对基督教所要求的国度级忠诚产生了强烈的敌意。也就是说，在像凯波尔和巴文克那样的西方自由主义背景下，基督教的要求不必与当权政权的要求直接对立，但在像习近平那样具有意识形态驱动议程的政权下，基督所要求的绝对忠诚使得避免政治冲突变得困难。因此，正如王明道在 1950 年代被指控犯有反革命的政治罪行一样，王怡在 2019 年也被指控犯有煽动颠覆国家政权的政治罪行。[183] 习近平恢复了一种国家寻求意识形态霸权的局面。这种转变是自他上台以来教会面临更大压力的一个主要原因。
此外，2018 年《宗教事务条例》的修订为家庭教会划定了一条界线：要么向三自登记，要么重新转入地下。在习近平的中国，教会没有空间可以作为一个独立于政府有限参数之外的实体公开存在于社会中。对于许多选择在三自之外公开存在的城市改革宗家庭教会来说，中共在 2018 年修订案中要求的本质就与其神学相悖。结果是，城市改革宗家庭教会在习近平统治下经历了一些最严重和最引人注目的逼迫案例，包括王怡的被捕和监禁。虽然凯波尔能够通过“哀痛运动”(Doleantie) 和荷兰改革宗教会 (GKN) 实现他自由教会的理想，但在王怡的处境下，这种情况是不可能的。
多元性的再探讨 (Plurality Revisited)
凯波尔和巴文克的社会政治背景与王怡的背景之间的差异，从社会多元性的角度来看更为清晰。回顾第三章介绍的理查德·莫尔 (Richard Mouw) 和桑德·格里菲恩 (Sander Griffioen) 的多元性分类，凯波尔和巴文克时代的荷兰是一个既经历规范性又经历描述性方向性多元性，以及规范性和描述性社团性多元性的国家。这种社会多元性阻止了宗教迫害。然而，中国的情况非常不同。中国很少是一个具有规范性方向性多元性的地方——在中共统治下肯定不是。充其量，方向性多元性以有限的形式被容忍，例如在江泽民和胡锦涛治下，当时中国似乎正朝着更具描述性方向性多元性的方向发展。然而，习近平的意识形态关注挤压了迄今为止在中国社会中为描述性方向性多元性留出的任何微小空间。同样，除了不断增长的经济私营部门外，中共的国家中心主义在很大程度上排除了规范性和描述性社团性多元性。一切都由国家统治控制。这种社团性多元性可能正在增长的各个领域正被习近平重新置于国家控制之下，因为他试图恢复党在公众眼中的合法性。因此，在很大程度上使荷兰成为一个多元社会并保护其教会免受迫害的类别中，这种多元性在中国并不存在。[184] 在这些情况下，教会，作为一个独立于国家的既具有方向性又具有社团性的社会实体而存在，更有可能经历来自一个不仅不承认而且积极反对这种多元性的国家的迫害。这就解释了为什么王怡的处境不仅是边缘化，而且是导致逼迫的边缘化。
结论 (Conclusion-4)
本章从思想、社会、政治和教会论的角度介绍了王怡及其服事的家庭教会所处的社会政治背景。这样的分析绝非详尽无遗，但所选择描述的领域是那些与比较王怡处境和凯波尔、巴文克处境（就逼迫而言）最相关的领域。对王怡处境的介绍为后续分析奠定了基础，分析确定与生活在边缘化但无逼迫处境的凯波尔和巴文克不同，王怡生活在一个边缘化导致逼迫的处境中。通过重新审视莫尔 (Mouw) 和格里菲恩 (Griffioen) 的多元性类别，与凯波尔和巴文克时代的荷兰不同，王怡的中国既不存在描述性也不存在规范性的方向性或社团性多元性，从而消除了凯波尔和巴文克所拥有的防止逼迫的保护措施，使得与他们的处境比较更加清晰。通过强调这些差异并确定王怡的处境是逼迫处境，本章为后续重新审视先前指出的凯波尔和巴文克公共神学中可通过王怡的凯波尔主义公共神学表达加以纠正的融合主义盲点铺平了道路。下一章将介绍并分析王怡的公共神学，以证明它不仅是一种凯波尔主义公共神学，而且是一种“代价高昂的凯波尔主义”，并且他这种代价高昂的凯波尔主义提供了一个框架，证明凯波尔主义公共神学并未因逼迫处境而受到损害。相反，正如王怡所展示的，凯波尔主义公共神学在文化边缘化和逼迫中仍能保持忠实。
Due to the vast literature produced in a variety of scholarly fields regarding the breathtakingly rapid pace of change and development in the People’s Republic of China over the past thirty years, an assessment of the numerous trends and evaluation of these trends in China and its churches is beyond the scope of this study. Rather, the aim of this chapter will be to summarize the context in which Wang Yi’s church ministry took place until his arrest in 2018. Such a summary will seek to include the broader areas of agreement between the literature rather than a detailed analysis of the various views. ↩︎
Li Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism in China’s Urban House Churches: The Rise and Fall of Early Rain Reformed Presbyterian Church, Routledge Studies in Religion (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019), Kindle edition, 27, 35–36; Ian Johnson, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2017), Kindle edition, 55. Ma’s Religious Entrepreneurism is used as a reliable source for the broader areas of Wang Yi’s biographical information presented here in spite of the controversy surrounding the quality and ethics of scholarship in the work. While the one-sided nature of this work, ethical issues of putting missionaries and Chinese Christians at physical risk by openly naming them, and lack of explanation from those Ma accuses—some of whom were incarcerated during the writing and publication of the work—bring into question the reliability of the research presented, her biographical account tracing Wang Yi’s early life and career largely agrees with other biographical profiles of Wang Yi and draws from Wang Yi’s letters written to his church. ↩︎
For Chengdu as a center for politically liberal thought, see Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 23; Johnson, The Souls of China, 55. For Wang Yi’s political liberalism, see Wang Yi [王怡], “Christian Community Is the Hope of This World [基督徒社区是这个世界的希望],” in On the Relationship Between Church and State [《论政教关系》] (Chengdu: Early Rain Covenant Church, 2019), 307, https://www.wangyilibrary.org/post/《王怡牧师文集：论政教关系》; Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 27. See also Hannah Nation, Introduction to Faithful Disobedience by Wang Yi, et al., ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 8. ↩︎
Nation, Introduction, 8; Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 29. ↩︎
Nation, Introduction, 8; Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 36–37. ↩︎
Nation, Introduction, 8–9; Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 24–26. ↩︎
Nation, Introduction, 9; Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 43. ↩︎
Nation, Introduction, 9; Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 76. ↩︎
Brent Fulton, China’s Urban Christians: A Light That Cannot Be Hidden, Studies in Chinese Christianity (Cambridge, U.K.: The Lutterworth Press, 2016), 67–93. ↩︎
Nation, Introduction, 9. For an example Wang’s work against the TSPM, see Wang Yi [王怡], “Why We Are a House Church,” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State From a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 25–30. ↩︎
Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, xv (regarding the formation of the Western China Presbytery), 8 (regarding its prayer services for 1989 and anti-abortion campaigns), 73–74 (regarding the open advertising of meeting sites), 77–80 (regarding church planting). For ERCC’s open advertising of their meeting space, see also Chloë Starr, Chinese Theology: Text and Context (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 264. The author personally experienced the open advertising of ERCC’s meeting space on two occasions. First, the author was shocked to see the church’s name openly listed on the name-board in the elevator lobby at the bottom of its old location at River Trust Mansion in Chengdu. Later, when travelling with a friend to ERCC’s new location for a service, the author searched the address of the location on Baidu Maps (China’s version of Google Maps) to get GPS directions, only to discover that the address search was accompanied by the church’s name on the GPS directions. Such open advertising among house churches in China is very rare and bold. ↩︎
Nation, Introduction, 9; Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 153 (for Wang Yi’s discipline). The church split is the primary focus of Ma’s Religious Entrepreneurism. Ma offers details on the church split, but the questionable nature of her research makes it difficult to confirm the details without delving into anecdotal and often contradictory evidence from a variety of sources that leave things unclear. Therefore, this study does not seek to delve into these details. ↩︎
People’s Republic of China State Council [中国人民共和国国务院令], Religious Affairs Regulations: Document Number 686 [《宗教事务条例: 第 686 号》], 2017. For examples of Wang Yi’s criticism of the revision, see Wang Yi [王怡], “An Opportunity for Churches to Walk the Way of the Cross,” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 190–98; Wang Yi [王怡], “‘Christ Is Lord. Grace Is King. Bear the Cross. Keep the Faith.,’” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 199–206; The Leadership of Early Rain Covenant Church, “A Joint Statement by Pastors: A Declaration for the Sake of the Christian Faith,” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 211–14. ↩︎
Wang Yi [王怡], “The Way of the Cross, the Life of the Martyrs,” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 153–54. ↩︎
June Cheng, “Chinese Police Raid Prominent House Church,” World, 10 December 2018, https://wng.org/articles/chinese-police-raid-prominent-house-church-1617299829. ↩︎
Associated Press, “Outspoken Chinese Pastor Wang Yi Sentenced to 9 Years in Prison,” Christianity Today, 30 December 2019, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/december/chinese-pastor-wang-yi-early-rain-house-church-sentence-pri.html. ↩︎
The years 1990–2018 were chosen for Wang Yi’s context due to the nature of change that took place throughout China and particularly in its urban centers during this time. While much growth and transformation took place among Chinese house churches in the post-Cultural Revolution China (1966–1976) of the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening” (Gaige Kaifang 改革开放) period, the shift to urban house churches away from their traditional moorings in rural villages began to take shape in in the 1990s. 2018 is chosen for two important reasons. First, February of 2018 is when the China’s Central Government began its enforcement of its revised Religious Affairs Regulations. See PRC State Council, Document 686. Second, December of 2018 is when Wang Yi was arrested and put into confinement where he remains today for, among other things, his outspoken criticism of the revised regulations. See Wang Yi [王怡], “My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience,” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State From a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 221–27. Furthermore, Wang converted to Christianity and began his ministry in the mid-2000s in the middle of this period, making it an appropriate time period by which to analyze both the church situation leading up to his conversion and the situation during the decade of his full-time ministry in Chengdu. However, due to the thousands of years of culture and history and the almost seventy years of Communist rule in the country that remain determinative of Chinese life today, it will be necessary at times to give attention to historical periods that pre-date 1990. ↩︎
The term “Confucianism” here refers more to classical Confucian thought as it developed as a philosophy and ethical system rather than Confucianism as a religious tradition. The debate over whether Confucianism constitutes a religion dates to Matteo Ricci’s (1552–1610) arrival as a Jesuit missionary in China and continues to today, suggesting that a major cause of the debate is the attempt to place Western concepts of religion on East Asian thought. For a history of the debate, see Ming-huei Lee, Confucianism: Its Roots and Global Significance, ed. David Jones, Confucian Cultures (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2017), 26–37; Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 38–47. Though Confucius himself never promulgated a religious system, his philosophy was rooted in the religious beliefs and rites of his time. Lee, Confucianism, 32–33. The introduction of Buddhism into the Chinese religious landscape of China led to the development of Confucian metaphysics under the guide of the scholar Zhu Xi (朱熹) (1130–1200), which allowed Confucianism to take a more religious than humanist philosophical form. Daniel K. Gardner, Confucianism: A Very Short Introduction (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014), Kindle edition, 72–77. ↩︎
Yao, Introduction to Confucianism, 275. ↩︎
Yao, Introduction to Confucianism, 21–22. ↩︎
See, for example, his second section of the Analects titled “Governing [为政]” comprised of twenty-four different sayings regarding appropriate governance and the character of a politician. Confucius [孔子], Analects [论语], ed. Hong Zhentao [洪镇涛], trans. Cheng Mingxia [程明霞], Repr. ed., Selected Classic Chinese Works [国学精粹] 2 (Shanghai: Shanghai University Press, 2013), 2.1–24. Even the better-known aspects of Confucian thought regarding individual morality such as filial piety (xiao 孝) are often framed in line with the idea that the appropriate recognition of familial relationships will lead to appropriate governance. For example, “Someone says to Confucius, ‘Master, why don’t you participate in governing?’ Confucius says, ‘The Book of History says, “Filial piety is showing filial piety to your parents and friendship to your brothers, and through this you will reach the government.” This is participating in governing. Why do you have to have to be a politician to participate in governing?’” Confucius, Analects, 2.21. ↩︎
Mencius [孟子], Mencius [孟子], ed. Hong Zhentao [洪镇涛], trans. Zong Qiong [宗穹], Repr. ed., Selected Classic Chinese Works [国学精粹] 3 (Shanghai: Shanghai University Press, 2013) 4.A.5. At the time, China as an empire was divided into several states, hence the differentiation between “Empire” and “State” in Mencius’s writings. ↩︎
Kim-Kwong Chan, Understanding World Christianity: China (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2019), 42. Daniel H. Bays, “A Tradition of State Dominance,” in God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions, ed. Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 25–39. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 45–46. ↩︎
Bays, “State Dominance,” 25–28. ↩︎
Joseph B. Tamney and Fenggang Yang, “Introduction: Nationalism, Globalization, and Chinese Traditions in the Twenty-First Century,” in Confucianism and Spiritual Traditions in Modern China and Beyond, ed. Fenggang Yang and Joseph B. Tamney, Religion in Chinese Societies 3 (Boston, MA: Brill, 2012), 1–3. Historically, this view was present in China in the May Fourth Movement that grew out of a student protest on May 4, 1919, and served as a reaction against Confucianism. The prevalent view in this movement was that Confucian culture was keeping China from advancement and that modernity was the way forward for the country’s development. Lai Chen, Tradition and Modernity: A Humanist View, trans. Edmund Ryden, Brill’s Humanities in China Library 3 (Boston, MA: Brill, 2009), 79–88. Most notable among Western scholars on the opposition of Confucianism and modernity is Max Weber’s work on rationality and irrationality in relation to Confucianism. A thorough explanation of Weber’s argument is presented by Horst Jürgen Helle, China: Promise or Threat?: A Comparison of Cultures, Studies in Critical Social Sciences 96 (Boston, MA: Brill, 2017), 59–70. See also Jie Kang, House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors, Global Diversities (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 16–18, 241–45; Chen, Tradition and Modernity, 235. ↩︎
Geoff Boucher, Understanding Marxism, Understanding Movements in Modern Thought (Durham: Acumen, 2012), 58. While Marx was indebted to Hegel’s dialectic, there was also much of Hegelian thought that he sought to undo. “Marx rejects Hegel’s idealism for a materialist position based in a philosophical anthropology whose core is the idea of human labour as creative praxis, as the transformation of nature, and the self-transformation of humanity” (45). Contrary to popular belief, Boucher points out that in Marx’s mature thought, capitalism was not an enemy as much as it was an underdeveloped or more primitive form of economic and societal structure that would evolve into communism. See also Trueman’s discussion of Marx and Hegel in Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 178. ↩︎
Boucher, Understanding Marxism, 69–70. ↩︎
Boucher, Understanding Marxism, 72. ↩︎
See, for example, The National People’s Congress of the Republic of China, The National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, 2004, Preamble, http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/15/content_1372964.htm.” ↩︎
Thomas Alan Harvey, Acquainted with Grief: Wang Mingdao’s Stand for the Persecuted Church in China (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 148–49. ↩︎
A 2014 Pew Research survey reported that approximately 76 percent of Chinese believe “[m]ost people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor.” Katie Simmons, “China’s Government May Be Communist, but Its People Embrace Capitalism,” Pew Research Center, 10 October 2014, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/10/chinas-government-may-be-communist-but-its-people-embrace-capitalism/. ↩︎
R. W. McMorrow, “Membership in the Communist Party of China: Who Is Being Admitted and How?: The Composition of the Communist Party of China Has Evolved Considerably Since the Party Was Founded in 1921,” JSTOR Daily, 19 December 2015, https://daily.jstor.org/communist-party-of-china/; Associated Foreign Press, “Having Chinese Communist Party Membership Is Like Having ‘A Diploma’, ‘Opens Doors,’” The Straits Times (Singapore, 21 October 2017), https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/having-chinese-communist-party-membership-is-like-having-a-diploma-and-opens-doors. These articles are backed by sociological data from Li Chunling. Li reports that in arts and humanities institutions, the places where graduates have the most difficulty finding employment, almost 80 percent have applied for membership to the CCP by their senior year. Such membership, however, has mixed results in helping graduates obtain employment. Li Chunling, China’s Youth: Increasing Diversity amid Persistent Inequality (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2021), Kindle edition, 149–51. Furthermore, while CCP membership correlates with increased national identity in older generations, Li’s data shows it does not have an impact on national identity among younger generations. Li, China’s Youth, 304. ↩︎
Timothy Cheek and David Ownby, “Make China Marxist Again,” Dissent Magazine, Fall 2018, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/making-china-marxist-again-xi-jinping-thought. For a clear introduction to Xi’s reform efforts, see Kerry Brown, The World According to Xi: Everything You Need to Know about the New China (New York, NY: I. B. Tauris & Company, 2018). ↩︎
Laura Oliver, “Losing Their Religion? These Are the World’s Most Atheistic Countries,” World Economic Forum, 25 July 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/losing-their-religion-these-are-the-world-s-most-atheistic-countries/. ↩︎
This idea is captured in the 1982 Document 19 of the CCP titled “The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question During our Country’s Socialist Period” [关于我国社会主义时期宗教问题的基本观点和基本政策: 第 19 号文件]. See Carsten T. Vala, The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party-State in China: God Above Party?, Routledge Research on the Politics and Sociology of China (New York, NY: Routledge, 2018), 32–33. ↩︎
Fulton, China’s Urban Christians, 71; Kang, House Church Christianity, 69. ↩︎
Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China, The Global Christianity Series (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 159. ↩︎
Deng Xiaoping, Build Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, trans. The Bureau for the Compilation and Translation of Works Under Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin Under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1985). ↩︎
Fulton, China’s Urban Christians, 7–8. ↩︎
Fengshu Liu, Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the Self (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011), 57–60. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 116–27. However, based on sociological works like Fulton, China’s Urban Christians; Liu, Urban Youth in China; and the data from Simmons, “China’s Government May Be Communist,” the author believes that Chan overstates the impact that Marxist-Leninist thought has on urban-dwelling Chinese. Kang offers an extensive case study of this house church shift from rural poor to urban wealth within house churches by focusing on one specific geographic area of China. Kang, House Church Christianity. ↩︎
For an example, see the sermon by J. Elem, “Walking with God in the Last Days,” The Center for House Church Theology, 2022, https://www.housechurchtheology.com/walking-with-god-in-the-last-days; T. Jarred Jung, Editor’s Note to “Walking with God in the Last Days” by J. Elem. The Center for House Church Theology, 2022, https://www.housechurchtheology.com/walking-with-god-in-the-last-days; See also Kang’s discussion of ascetism and consumerism in Kang, House Church Christianity, 203–10. ↩︎
This section and the following section, “The Theology of Wang Mingdao” are adapted from a previously unpublished paper by the author. T. Jarred Jung, “The Public Theology of Watchman Nee and Wang Mingdao: Heritage for China’s House Churches” (Unpublished Paper, 3 November 2020), typescript. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 102; Alexander Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology in Urban China,” IJPT 8 (2014): 168. Here, fundamentalism refers to the theological movement named after the twelve-volume publication of Lyman and Milton Stewart: The Fundamentals. Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930, Repr. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1978), 188–207. While Sandeen focuses on the dispensational premillennialism of the movement, George Marsden marks out four aspects: “dispensational premillennialism, the holiness movement and its implications for social reform, efforts to defend the faith, and views of Christianity’s relationship to culture.” George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 6. While Marsden’s focus on the movement is broader than Sandeen’s, both definitions relate to the theology of Nee and Wang presented here. This is because both are dealing with the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy of the 1920s to the 1940s that spilled over into missionary work and divided church denominations within China. As will be seen, dispensational premillennialism, holiness and social reform, and Christianity’s relationship to culture were all critical aspects of Nee’s and Wang’s fundamentalism. “Anabaptist public theology” here refers to the withdrawalist and separatist nature of Nee’s and Wang’s stance towards culture. ↩︎
Li Ma and Jin Li, Surviving the State, Remaking the Church: A Sociological Portrait of Christians in Mainland China, Studies in Chinese Christianity (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018), Kindle edition, 5; Baiyu Andrew Song, “Christ Against Culture? A Re-Evaluation Of Wang Mingdao’s Popular Theology,” JGC 3 (2017): 49–50, https://trainingleadersinternational.org/jgc/75/christ-against-culture-a-re-evaluation-of-wang-mingdaos-popular-theology; Ken Ang Lee, “Watchman Nee: A Study of His Major Theological Themes” (Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1989), 4; Lee Ming Ng, “Christianity and Social Change: The Case in China, 1920–1950” (Th.D. diss., Princeton University, 1970), 56; Lian Xi, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 155; Chun Kwan Lee, “The Theology of Revival in the Chinese Christian Church, 1900–1949: Its Emergence and Impact” (Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1988), 262. ↩︎
Lee, “Watchman Nee,” 46. See also Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 74–75; Jin Li, “Eschatology and China’s Churches,” CSQ 17.2 (2015), https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/articles/eschatology-and-chinas-churches/. ↩︎
Lee, “Watchman Nee,” 42–43, 46; Xi, Redeemed by Fire, 163–65. ↩︎
Xi, Redeemed by Fire, 169. ↩︎
Watchman Nee, Conferences, Messages, and Fellowship (4), vol. 44 in The Collected Works of Watchman Nee (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1992), 8.1, Online Edition, https://www.ministrybooks.org/books.cfm?id=3A58EB. See also Nee, Conferences (4), 7.1. ↩︎
Lee, “Watchman Nee,” 54. See also Lee, “The Theology of Revival,” 254. ↩︎
Watchman Nee, The Spiritual Man, 3 vols. (New York, NY: Christian Fellowship Publishers, 1968), 1:43. ↩︎
Nee, The Spiritual Man, 1:25. ↩︎
Nee, Conferences (4), 7.1. ↩︎
Nee, The Spiritual Man, 1:47–51; Watchman Nee, Love Not the World: A Prophetic Call to Holy Living (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1968), 13–25. ↩︎
Nee, Love Not the World, 16. ↩︎
Nee, The Spiritual Man, 1:57–63. ↩︎
Nee, The Spiritual Man, 1:77–82. ↩︎
Nee, Love not the World, 57; Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1977), 87. For Nee’s detailed eschatology, see his commentary on Revelation: Watchman Nee, “Come, Lord Jesus”: A Study of the Book of Revelation (New York, NY: Christian Fellowship Publishers, 1976). Lian comments, “From its beginning, the Brethren search for a genuine and primitive Christian unity—which dictated separation from the decadent world (and the ‘fallen’ Christendom)—had proceeded amidst intense end-time speculations.” Nee’s preaching accordingly “rendered all the contemporary chaos and evil in the world intelligible. And for the ‘victorious’ Christians—the ‘faithful Little Flock’—it also promised a most dramatic escape from end-time tribulations and from death itself through ‘rapture.’” Lian, Redeemed by Fire, 168. ↩︎
Nee, Love not the World, 60. ↩︎
For a comparison of Nee’s eschatology to Gnostic thought, see Li, “Eschatology and China’s Churches.” ↩︎
Nee, Conferences (4), 11.2. ↩︎
Harvey, Acquainted with Grief, 160. Wang earnestly sought to establish his church and ministry apart from foreign missionary influence. For the independent funding and growth of his Beijing Christian Tabernacle (Beijing jidu huitang北京基督会堂), see Wang Mingdao [王明道], The Last Fifty Years [《五十年來》], Selected Works of Wang Mingdao [王明道文宣] (Taipei, Taiwan: Olive [橄欖], 2012), 159–200.Therefore, his work is largely devoid of citations or references to other theologians. ↩︎
See for example Harvey, Acquainted with Grief; Stephen Wang, The Long Road to Freedom: The Story of Wang Mingdao, trans. Ma Min (Kent, TN: Sovereign World, 2002). Detailing Wang’s theology is more difficult than Nee’s because Wang nowhere published a theological treatise like Nee’s The Spiritual Man. The general consensus is that Wang’s teaching and writings were so straightforward and simple that he is not considered a theologian in the academic sense of the term. ↩︎
Gloria S. Tseng, “Revival Preaching and the Indigenization of Christianity in Republican China,” IBMR 38.4 (2014): 179. Similarly, Ng explains, “It was quite clear that there was nothing really unique in Wang’s understanding of Christianity. All his ideas did appear at one time or the other in the history of the church, and they may still be shared by a large number of people both in the East and West.” Ng, “Christianity and Social Change,” 80. ↩︎
Harvey, Acquainted with Grief, 28–41. ↩︎
Wang Mingdao [王明道], The True Meaning of Rebirth [《重生真義》], ed. Lai-ha Cheng (Hong Kong: China Alliance Press, 2017), 114. ↩︎
See for example, Wang Mingdao [王明道], “Dangers in the Present Day Church,” in Spiritual Food, trans. Arthur Reynolds (Southampton, England: Mayflower Christian Books, 1983), 36–50. ↩︎
Lee, “The Theology of Revival,” 249. See also Harvey, Acquainted with Grief, 34–38. ↩︎
Wang Mingdao [王明道], “Who Is Jesus? [耶穌是誰?],” in Only Follow God’s Will, Do Not Ask the Future [《但遵神旨，莫文前程》], Selected Works of Wang Mingdao [王明道文宣] (Hong Kong: Olive [橄欖], 2012), 68; Wang Mingdao [王明道], “How Long Will You Be of Two Minds? [你們的心持兩意到幾時呢?],” in Only Follow God’s Will, Do Not Ask the Future [《但遵神旨，莫文前程》], Selected Works of Wang Mingdao [王明道文宣] (Hong Kong: Olive [橄欖], 2012), 362. ↩︎
Wing-hung Lam, “Patterns of Chinese Theology,” OBMR 4 (1980): 23. ↩︎
Ng, “Christianity and Social Change,” 82–83. ↩︎
Harvey, Acquainted with Grief, 40. ↩︎
Alexander Chow, Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in Chinese Christianity (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018), Kindle edition, 44. Chow makes his comparison between Wang Mingdao and neo-Anabaptist Stanley Hauerwas. ↩︎
John Howard Yoder, “Let the Church Be the Church,” in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1998), 170. ↩︎
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 154. ↩︎
Dorothea H. Bertschmann, Bowing Before Christ—Nodding to the State?: Reading Paul Politically with Oliver O’Donovan and John Howard Yoder (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2014), 47. ↩︎
Bertschmann, Bowing Before Christ, 53. ↩︎
Bertschmann, Bowing Before Christ, 52. ↩︎
Bertschmann, Bowing Before Christ, 53–54. ↩︎
While there are similarities between Wang and contemporary Neo-Anabaptist thought, it cannot be said that Wang was influenced by Neo-Anabaptism since his theological works predate the development of Neo-Anabaptism under theologians like Yoder and Hauerwas. Wang was incarcerated for much of the time that Yoder produced his theological works. After his release, his writing focused on memoirs rather than ecclesiological or theological polemics like before his incarceration. ↩︎
Based on a critique of Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture and a contextual analysis of Wang’s ministry, Song argues that Wang falls “in between the ‘two kingdoms’ and ‘transformationist’ models. Song, “Christ Against Culture?,” 64. For Song, Wang’s focus is on individual reform that would result in social reform, rather than on direct engagement with social reform itself. Song, “Christ Against Culture?,” 62. Therefore, Song concludes, Wang is concerned with social reform. Song goes as far as to conclude that Wang’s view of Christians in the secular workplace actually shows he supports a form of Calvinist common grace. Song, “Christ Against Culture?,” 64. While Song amply takes into consideration the primacy Wang gives to individual reform, his argument does not bear enough weight to draw the conclusions he does about Wang’s public-theological stance. Most importantly, Song’s argument does not take into consideration the overall theology underlying Wang’s public theology. Wang’s views on the extent of sin’s impact on the world, his soteriological emphasis on holiness, his annihilationist eschatology, and his reasons for engaging the political realm when forced to demonstrate that his public theology best fits into a “grace against nature” category. ↩︎
Harvey, Acquainted with Grief, 58, 72–75. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 84. ↩︎
Lian, Redeemed by Fire, 206. ↩︎
Li, “Eschatology and China’s Churches.” ↩︎
Kang, House Church Christianity, 58. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 116. Elsewhere, Ma and Li explain that even in Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, the influence of the Little Flock—Nee was based in Shanghai—leads to a pietistic and separatist theology among the house churches. Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 77. ↩︎
In his search of Chinese research articles, Fällman reports, “I found that of the around 4300 articles mentioning Calvin or Calvinism in CNKI until the end of 2010, around 20 per cent were published in 2009 or 2010 and only 8 per cent before 1990, showing the great interest developing especially in the 2000s.” Frederik Fällman, “Calvin, Culture and Christ? Development of Faith Among Chinese Intellectuals,” in Christianity in Contemporary China: Socio-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Francis Khek Gee Lim (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 156. Of the various influences on the Reformed movement in China, Kang credits overseas Chinese seminaries in Southeast Asia, the disseminated sermons of Chinese-Indonesian pastor Stephen Tong, and Korean missionaries who have established seminaries mainland China with this rise. Jie Kang, “The Rise of Calvinist Christianity in Urbanising China,” Religions 10.8 (2019): 2, https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3155465/component/file_3155466/content. Fällman’s list adds “overseas Chinese and Mainland exiles” like Samuel Ling (b. 1951) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and its International Mission Board (IMB). Fällman, “Calvin, Culture, and Christ?,” 156–57. Chow credits the influence of Westminster Theological Seminary professor Jonathan Chao who worked in China among house churches in the 1980s and 1990s. Chow, Chinese Public Theology, 103, 105. As Shao Kai Tseng explains, Chao and Tong are particularly influential. Chao convinced Tong to make efforts to bring Reformed theology into China. Shao Kai Tseng [曾劭愷], “Editorial,” JCT 8.2 (2022): 129. Wang Yi himself comments: “We can say that the entire Reformed gospel movement was brought about by the Pastor [Stephen] Tong’s hard work, Pastor Tong’s sermons, and Pastor [Jonathan] Chao’s translations.” Wang Yi [王怡], Bearing the Cross: Chinese House Church History 1807-2018 [《背负十架：中国家庭教会史 1807 年-2018 年》] (Chengdu: Early Rain Covenant Church, 2021), 162, https://www.wangyilibrary.org/post/《背负十架-中国家庭教会史》. Ma and Li add the influence of American Reformed leaders like Timothy Keller and American church planting networks like Keller’s City to City who trained well known Reformed pastors like Wang Yi, as well as organizations like China Partnership who actively train Reformed Chinese pastors. Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 120. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 123–24. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 124. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 60. ↩︎
Quoted in Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 124. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 168; Beijing Shouwang Church, Almond Flowers [杏花], 2008, https://t5.shwchurch.org/category/杏花期刊/2008年/冬季号/. The entirety of this volume of Almond Flowers concerns the cultural mandate. ↩︎
Starr, Text and Context, 236. ↩︎
Fällman, “Calvin, Culture, and Christ?,” 155. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 173. ↩︎
Fulton, China’s Urban Christians, 68–69. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 173. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 123–27; Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 170; Chow, Chinese Public Theology, 105. ↩︎
Fulton, China’s Urban Christians, 1. ↩︎
“China Becomes More Urban in Historic Population Shift,” BBC News, 17 January 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-16588851. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 116. ↩︎
Fulton, China’s Urban Christians, 7–8. ↩︎
For example, online censorship struggles to keep up with the marketplace of ideas emerging from cities on the internet. Fulton, China’s Urban Christians, 7. ↩︎
Johnson, The Souls of China, 196, 294. ↩︎
June Cheng, “House Church on a Hill,” World, 15 April 2016, https://wng.org/articles/chinese-police-raid-prominent-house-church-1617299829. Starr, Text and Context, 264; Johnson, The Souls of China, 60. ↩︎
Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism, 68. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 53. ↩︎
Along with ERCC, well known Reformed churches in Beijing like Shouwang Church and Zion Church were also raided and shut down. World Watch Monitor, “China Bans Zion, Beijing’s Biggest House Church,” Christianity Today, 10 September 2018, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/september/china-bans-zion-beijing-house-church-surveillance-ezra-jin.html; Kate Shellnutt, “China Shuts Down Another Big Beijing Church,” Christianity Today, 27 March 2019, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/march/china-shouwang-church-beijing-shut-down.html. Furthermore, Rongguili Church, in Guangzhou, an urban non-Reformed house church and one of the oldest in China, was also raided, presumably for its blatant openness to the public. Kate Shellnutt, “China Closes Megachurches Before Christmas,” Christianity Today, 17 December 2018, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/december/china-churches-early-rain-rongguili-wang-yi-samuel-lamb.html; Mimi Lau, “China Shut Prominent Christian Church, Third This Winter,” South China Morning Post, 16 December 2018, § Politics, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2178216/china-shuts-leading-underground-christian-church-third-winter. ↩︎
The World Bank, “GDP per Capita (Current US$)- China,” 2023, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CN. ↩︎
Second place on the list is Poland, whose growth is a less than a third of China’s. Zak Dychtwald, “China’s New Innovation Advantage,” Harvard Business Review, May 1, 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/05/chinas-new-innovation-advantage. ↩︎
Dychtwald, “China’s New Innovation Advantage.” ↩︎
Srijan Shukla, “The Rise of the Xi Gang: Factional Politics in the Chinese Communist Party,” Observer Research Foundation, February 2021, 6. ↩︎
Shukla, “Xi Gang,” 12. ↩︎
Shukla, “Xi Gang,” 10. Xi is often identified as a “princeling” (taizi dang 太子党), a group of children and family members of Communist revolutionaries. However, Shukla points out that this group is considered a sub-group within the Shanghai faction (12). ↩︎
Shukla, “Xi Gang,” 18–21. ↩︎
Shukla, “Xi Gang,” 10–12. ↩︎
Shukla, “Xi Gang,” 13–14. ↩︎
Shukla, “Xi Gang,” 17. ↩︎
Quoted in Shukla, “Xi Gang,” 17. ↩︎
By officially proclaiming his own thought, Xi placed himself alongside other great CCP leaders with Mao’s “Maoist Thought” (Mao Zedong Zhuyi 毛泽东主义) and Deng Xiaoping’s “Deng Xiaoping Theory” (Deng Xiaoping Lilun 邓小平理论). Neither Jiang nor Hu accredited themselves with an official ideology in this fashion. ↩︎
This is not to suggest that ideology was of no concern to Jiang or Hu, or that they totally ignored the growth of house churches. Vala persuasively argues that Jiang was concerned with the growing influence of religion in the 1990s. The CCP’s response under Jiang and Hu was to provide more of a legal framework for the operation of religious groups that what previously existed rather than cracking down on unregistered religious groups. Rather than legalizing religious practice in full, Jiang and Hu preferred a set of regulations to define more clearly what was allowed and not allowed. However, Vala concludes that the resources allocated to enforcing these regulations in the 1990s and 2000s were insufficient and the departments in charge were inept at the large task as Protestantism continued to spread. Vala, The Politics of Protestant Churches, 35–46. ↩︎
Brent Fulton, “China’s Church through Western Eyes,” ChinaSource, 25 February 2013, https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/blog-entries/chinas-church-through-western-eyes/. Starr agrees with Fulton in this regard, but with her work being published in 2016, she provides the telling addendum, “but new directions under Xi Jinping still surprise.” Starr, Text and Context, 216. More recently, Fulton stated, “Today the persecuted church narrative has once again become dominant, particularly in media reporting on China.” Brent Fulton, “The Evolving Narratives,” ChinaSource, 5 February 2020, https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/blog-entries/the-evolving-narratives/. ↩︎
PRC State Council, Document Number 686. ↩︎
Joann Pittman, “Goodbye, SARA,” ChinaSource, 2 April 2018, https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/blog-entries/a-new-new-normal/. The UFWD always controlled SARA even though they were separate entities, one governmental and the other party controlled. Vala, The Politics of Protestant Churches, 39; Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 42–43. ↩︎
Pittman, “Goodbye, SARA;” Joann Pittman, “A ‘New’ New Normal?,” ChinaSource, 28 May 2018, https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/blog-entries/a-new-new-normal/. ↩︎
While the distinction between TSPM and house churches or registered and unregistered churches is not the only—or in many situations the most accurate—way to categorize China’s Protestant churches, the reality is the division still exists in the minds of many Chinese pastors today. Kang aptly defines the relationship between the two: “At the present time, house church Christianity is theoretically opposed to government-backed Christianity. In some areas, including major cities such as Beijing, this opposition is marked, but in other areas, it is much more blurred.” Kang, House Church Christianity, 43. See also Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 59–63. For the purposes of this study, this TSPM-house church division is highlighted because of the importance of the distinction to Wang Yi, who as will be seen, holds an antagonistic view of TSPM churches for theological reasons. ↩︎
Bays, A New History, 158–60. ↩︎
Bays, A New History, 164–65. ↩︎
Bays, A New History, 184–85. ↩︎
One such example of theological liberalism within the TSPM is Ting’s “justification by love,” which Chan explains, “implied that communists with good deeds would not necessarily end up in hell but instead may be found in heaven.” Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 60–61. ↩︎
Lian, Redeemed by Fire, 206. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 61. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 61; ChinaAid, “ChinaAid: China Forces Churches to Align with Government Ideals,” ChinaAid, 22 August 2018, https://www.chinaaid.org/2018/08/china-forces-churches-to-align-with.html. ↩︎
Scholars have categorized China’s Protestant churches in different ways. The categorization of TSPM churches, traditional house churches, and urban Reformed house churches used here largely agrees with two other scholarly studies, one by Zhao Wenjuan and one by Alexander Chow. Zhao’s division is made in terms of differing views of church and state. What Zhao calls “the conservative house churches” this study calls “traditional house churches,” and what Zhao calls “radical house churches” this study calls “urban Reformed house churches.” Wenjuan Zhao, “Being a Protestant Church in Contemporary Mainland China: An Examination of Protestant Church-State Relations,” AJT 33.2 (2019): 4. Chow, on the other hand, divides Chinese Protestantism into TSPM churches, “traditional house churches,” and “urban intellectual churches.” Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 163; Zhao, “Being a Protestant Church,” 4. Chow’s choice of omitting “house church” from “urban intellectual church” is perhaps due to his emphasis on the open nature of these churches that no longer meet secretly in congregants’ homes.
The reason for the categorization used in this study is that while church-state relationships are certainly an important part of this study and serve as a differentiating factor between traditional house churches and urban Reformed house churches (like in Zhao’s study), this study is also concerned with the deeper theological roots that lay underneath the expressions of church-state relations between the two groups of house churches. Thus, this study uses “Reformed” rather than “radical” as a theological identity marker for these churches. Similarly, unlike Chow, the author chooses to use “house churches” as a descriptor of these churches because of their own self-identity as house churches. See for example Wang Yi, “Why We Are a House Church;” Jin Tianming, “The Spiritual Legacy of the House Church,” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State From a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 31–38; Jin Mingri, “The Rise of House Churches and Urban Churches,” in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State From a Chinese House Church Movement, ed. Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 45–50.
The reality is that the diversity of house churches in China in many ways precludes settled categories. Therefore, the division in this study between “traditional house churches” and “urban Reformed house churches” is not meant to offer a categorization that would exhaustively include all house churches. Rather, the two types of house churches studied help to provide a rough theological distinction that helps to identify Wang Yi’s position among the house churches. Admittedly, many house churches do not fit neatly into either of the two categories covered here. ↩︎
Chan comments, “Many attribute the survival of Chinese Protestantism under severe communist suppression to the Local Church and its ecclesiology, which enabled Chinese Protestants to survive without the traditional denominational institutions such as church buildings, polity, liturgy, and clergy.” Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 75. Similarly, Wang has been called “The Dean of House Churches.” Harvey, Acquainted with Grief, 7. Though there were many other Chinese Protestant leaders who resisted joining the TSPM and were arrested, Wang was so influential that other pastors’ arrests were on a charge of being a part of the “Wang Mingdao Counterrevolutionary Clique” (Wang Mingdao Fan Geming Fenzi 王明道反革命分子). Song, “Christ Against Culture?,” 49. ↩︎
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, “Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China,” Church History 74.1 (2005): 93; Lee, “Watchman Nee and the Little Flock,” 93. Lee’s study is one of the few that offer details to the survival of house churches during the most severe persecutions under Mao. In terms of the details of house church survival, Bays calls these years “a black hole, the details of which are very scarce.” Bays, A New History, 185. Lian reports pockets of reported church activity during the Cultural Revolution with Little Flock churches and True Jesus congregations operating underground in Fujian province and other house churches operating in Wenzhou. Lian, Redeemed by Fire, 207–8. ↩︎
Wang, Bearing the Cross, 172. ↩︎
Part of Wang Mingdao’s rhetoric against the TSPM involved emphasizing the necessity of suffering. See Harvey, Acquainted with Grief, 75–77, 141–45. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 110. ↩︎
See Chan’s description of rural 1980 preachers in Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 108–13. ↩︎
Kang, House Church Christianity, 164. ↩︎
Of these sects, Lian highlights the Weepers (Kupai 哭派), Established King Sect (Beili Wang 被立王), the Lord God Sect (Zhushen Jiao 主神教), the Narrow Gate in the Wilderness Sect (Kuangye Zhaimen 旷野窄门), the Three Grades of Servants Sect (Sanban Puren Pai 三班仆人派), and Eastern Lightning (Dongfang Shandian 东方闪电). Lian, Redeemed by Fire, 218–30. ↩︎
Kang’s study on the house churches of Linyi district in Shandong Province provides a case study of these urbanizing traditional house churches. Kang, House Church Christianity. ↩︎
Kang, House Church Christianity, 89. ↩︎
Kang, House Church Christianity, 73–75, 91. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 91. ↩︎
See for example Ma and Li’s comparative study of traditional house churches in Shanghai and urban churches in Chengdu—of which ERCC is almost certainly included—particularly, the description given of the closed nature of traditional Shanghai churches to the public and their suspicion of other churches. Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 65–81. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 172–76. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 118. Adding the character 化 to the end of any word in Chinese indicates a change to a state characterized by the preceding word. There is no English equivalency, hence the moniker “small groupization.” Chan does not use the term “small groupization,” but the author heard the term used as late as 2019 as house churches continued to face crackdowns. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 118. ↩︎
Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 92; Johnson, The Souls of China, 294. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 120. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 121. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 120. Ma and Li use “Calvinist” differently than the way this study uses the term, but their usage still applies correctly to describe Reformed theology in China’s house churches. ↩︎
Fulton, China’s Urban Christians, 23–24; Chan, Understanding World Christianity, 93. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 123. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 120, 124; Johnson, The Souls of China, 294. ↩︎
Johnson, The Souls of China, 294. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 173. ↩︎
Fenggang Yang, “Evangelization Amid Cooperation, Accommodation, and Resistance: Chinese Christian Response to Persecution in Communist China,” in Under Caesar’s Sword: How Christians Respond to Persecution, ed. Daniel Philpott and Timothy Samuel Shah (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 352–53. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 163. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 167–68. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 168. ↩︎
Quoted in Johnson, The Souls of China, 59. ↩︎
Starr, Text and Context, 236; Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 73–74. ↩︎
This chart is available in the appendix. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 179–82. This is not to suggest that there are not churches from other theological backgrounds that are not open across all categories. Rather, the point here is that the Reformed churches were the only theological background of all studied in which every church was open in every category. ↩︎
Chow, “Calvinist Public Theology,” 170. ↩︎
The cultural expectations of a single patriarchal figure are often held by the congregants as much as by the leader. ↩︎
Ma and Li, Surviving the State, 126. ↩︎
Jin, “The Spiritual Legacy,” 33–34. ↩︎
Jin, “The Spiritual Legacy,” 34. ↩︎
Jin, “The Spiritual Legacy,” 34. ↩︎
For a scholarly treatment of the idea of suffering as the way of the cross in Asian contexts, including the cultural thought leading to its importance, see Aldrin M. Peñamora, “The Way of the Cross and the Good Life,” in Asian Christian Ethics: Evangelical Perspectives, ed. Aldrin M. Peñamora and Bernard K. Wong, Foundations in Asian Christian Thought (Carlisle, UK: Langham Publishing, 2022), 165–88. Peñamora’s explanation of the way of the cross differs somewhat from the house church understanding, dealing more with suffering in service to others than persecution. ↩︎
See for example Wang, “The Way of the Cross;” Wang, “An Opportunity for Churches.” ↩︎
Quoted in Johnson, The Souls of China, 65. ↩︎
Kang, House Church Christianity, 249. ↩︎
Johnson, The Souls of China, 60. ↩︎
ERCC posted a running update of arrested members and prayer requests from the 2018 events, a list that continued until summer of 2021 through the website of the organization China Partnership. This list contains what may be the best summary of information and specifics about the December 9 persecution of ERCC. Early Rain Covenant Church, “Early Rain Covenant Church Urgent Prayer Updates,” China Partnership, 14 December 2018, https://www.chinapartnership.org/blog/2018/12/live-post-early-rain-covenant-church-urgent-prayer-updates. The crackdown on ERCC was also covered by a variety of well-known international media outlets. Javier C. Hernández, “As China Cracks Down on Churches, Christians Declare ‘We Will Not Forfeit Our Faith,’” The New York Times, December 25, 2018, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/world/asia/china-christmas-church-crackdown.html; Ian Johnson, “Chinese Police Detain Prominent Pastor and Over 100 Protestants,” The New York Times, December 10, 2018, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/world/asia/china-protestant-pastor-detained.html; Cheng, “Chinese Police Raid Prominent House Church.” ↩︎
For a description of the legality of China’s protestant churches, see Fenggang Yang, “The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China,” SQ 47.1 (2006): 93–122; and Vala, The Politics of Protestant Churches. ↩︎
Associated Press, “Outspoken Chinese Pastor Wang Yi Sentenced.” ↩︎
In terms of contextual plurality, China is a very culturally homogenous nation, with Han Chinese making up 92 percent of the population. However, China officially recognizes fifty-five other ethnic groups, suggesting a small degree of descriptive contextual plurality. “Chinese Ethnic Groups: Overview Statistics,” UNC University Libraries, October 10, 2022, https://guides.lib.unc.edu/china_ethnic/statistics#:~:text=The largest group%2C the Han,regraded"as "Chinese culture". However, many of these people groups have assimilated into Han culture. Furthermore, those that stand most aloof from Han culture have not fared well under Xi. The most notable example of this is the campaign against the Uyghur people of Xinjiang who have been held in internment camps in attempts to neutralize both their Islamic beliefs and the cultural distinctives connected to those beliefs. “The Upper Han,” The Economist, 19 November 2016, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/11/19/the-upper-han. Thus, China is increasingly becoming a place without descriptive and normative contextual plurality. ↩︎