The Church in China in the 20th Century
Collected Writings
Chen Zemin
Edited by Ruomin Liu and Richard J. Mouw
The Church in China in the 20th Century
Collected Writings
Copyright © 2019 Chen Zemin. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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Preface
Richard J. Mouw
This important book of essays makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the recent history of the church in China. The fact that the first essay was published in 1939—a decade before the Communists came to power— points to the importance of this collection as a documentary history of the life of the Protestant churches during seven decades of significant—and frequently turbulent—changes in Chinese life and culture.
What adds greatly to this book, however, is that the author, Dr. Chen Zemin, is a dedicated Christian leader who has experienced much of this history first hand, having celebrated his 101st birthday in October 2016. He has served as a pastor, a composer of hymns, a teacher, a theologian and a historian. And in all of this he has played a key role in church-state relations, as well as in representing Chinese Christianity in a global context.
I made the first of twenty-plus visits to China in 1994, shortly after being appointed to the presidency of Fuller Theological Seminary. I met Dr. Chen and became one of his admirers, and over the next decades I witnessed personally how Dr. Chen has mentored a number of scholars and church leaders who have themselves made significant contributions to the cause of Christianity in the Chinese mainland.
Dr. Liu Rumin, my fellow editor of this volume—who did the hard work of collecting and in several cases translating these essays for an English-speaking audience—is a prime example of how Dr. Chen’s mentoring has borne much fruit in Chinese Christianity. He has taught systematic theology and New Testament at Nanjing’s Union Theological Seminary, and is engaging in research and teaching in Germany, where he received his PhD degree from the University of Heidelberg. Like his mentor, Dr. Liu Rumin serves, through his own important scholarship, as an important voice for the Chinese church in global settings.
This volume also features an Introductory Essay by Dr. Raymond Whitehead, a distinguished Canadian theologian who taught for a number of years at the Nanjing seminary, where he was a colleague of Dr. Chen’s.
In preparing this English translation of Dr. Chen’s writings for publication, I have been able to draw upon support from Fuller Seminary funds specifically designated for partnering with China’s “Three-Self” churches. I also received much technical help from several people, and I am particularly grateful to Shi-Min Lu, a PhD candidate in Fuller Seminary’s School of Intercultural Studies; she supervised the final typing of the manuscript, with particular attention to the consistent use of Chinese characters throughout.
In 1984 my distinguished predecessor in the Fuller presidency, David Allan Hubbard, led a delegation of trustees and administrators to China, making direct contact with church and seminary leaders in the “Three-Self” churches. That pilgrimage was the beginning of an exciting learning experience for the Fuller community about how God has blessed Chinese Christianity’s sustained efforts to be obedient to the Gospel. In that learning experience Chen Zemin has been one of our important teachers. The publication of these essays means that his teaching ministry can now be expanded in the English speaking world.
Introductory Essay
Raymond L. Whitehead
The reader of this important collection of papers of Professor Chen Zemin might well approach the book with some questions in mind. Does the Protestant Christian Church make a significant contribution to the people of China and beyond? What are the special characteristics of the theology emerging in China? How does Protestant Christianity relate to the official atheism of post-revolutionary China and where does Protestant Christianity fit in among the competing secular and religious world-views in contemporary China? How do Protestant Christian communities in China express themselves in the language and culture of their country? Insights on these and other questions can be found in these writings.
Chen Zemin has served the Church in China for over seven decades. His remarkable career spans a period of war, revolution and social upheavals. The first article in the collection was written in 1939, when Japan had occupied much of China and all out world war loomed in Europe and the Pacific. In the Pacific region the following decade witnessed the Japanese sweep into Southeast Asia and the Philippines, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, years of battle on Pacific Islands, the struggle in Burma, the airlift over the Himalayas into Western China, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrender, revolutionary civil war in China and the establishing of the People’s Republic in 1949 under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
Chen Zemin survived all this with a strong faith and a commitment to peace. He was already teaching at the Seminary in Nanjing when Bishop K. H. Ting arrived in 1952 to head up a reconfigured “Jinling Union Theological Seminary” or in its official English name “Nan Jing Union Theological Seminary” (NJUTS). He continued through the ups and downs of social and cultural revolutions and was on hand when the seminary, after a period of closure, re-opened in 1981. The reader may appreciate more deeply these works by Professor Chen keeping in mind this historic panorama as the context of his life’s work.
A word must be said about “Protestant Christianity” for readers unfamiliar with Chinese Church history. The term “Protestant Christianity” appears numerous times in these articles. When Catholics and Protestants arrived in China (at different historical periods) questions of translation were of immediate importance. Terms for “God” and “Christ” had no exact Chinese equivalents. The Roman Catholic missionaries determined that the best translation for “God” was “Tian Zhu,” “Heavenly Lord” or “Lord of Heaven.” Catholic Christians became known in China as “Tian Zhu Zhao” (“Tian Zhu Jiao”), followers of the Lord of Heaven Religion. Later when Protestant missionaries arrived they chose other translations for “God”—”Shan g Di” (“High Ruler”), or “Shen” meaning “god or spirit.” But Protestants called themselves by the transliterated word for Christ, “Ji Du Zhao” (Ji Du Jiao) followers of “Christ Religion” or “Christianity.” To this day Tian Zhu Zhao (Tian Zhu Jiao) and Ji Du Zhao (Ji Du Jiao) are seen by many in China as two different religions. Ji Du Zhao (Ji Du Jiao) is often translated as “Christian” or “Christianity” but it can be unclear if the term is being used to refer to all Christians—Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, or if it is intended to mean Protestant Christianity specifically. Therefore it is translated often in these writings as “Protestant Christianity” reflecting the context of the Chinese original.
The very first article in this collection speaks to two of the questions raised above. In 1939 Professor Chen writes of the contribution of the Chinese Protestant Church to the building of a “New China.” From the Sun Yat-sen revolution of 1911 through the “May Fourth Movement” of the 1920s (1919) and succeeding years, in spite of foreign invasions and competing “War Lords” inside China, Christians were part of the struggle for social, political, cultural and spiritual renewal. (Sun Yat-sen of course