Jesus in Beijing: Book Review
by Paul GrantThe story of the Chinese church in the last half century is nothing short of miraculous. Although many thinkers have cast about for any of several profane causes for this explosive growth under totalitarian oppression, no other explanation suffices. Chinese Christians have proven more resilient than Mao anticipated, more steadfast than the departing missionaries hoped, and more independent than the government currently desires.
This story has been told many times, but it receives a refreshing and at times stunning treatment in Jesus in Beijing, by David Aikman, the former chief of TIME magazine’s Beijing bureau. Aikman’s qualifications for the task are plenty: He’s a top-notch investigative journalist, with a long connection to China. He is no missionary; he is accordingly unburdened by occupational blinders. He also doesn’t have too many axes to grind, though he is anything but impartial. In fact, Aikman can hardly disguise his enthusiasm for the Chinese church’s success.
This book is a must-read. Many great books are profiled on this site; this is really important. The stories presented here are part of a trend more significant to world history in the 21st century than America’s war on terror.
Aikman’s method is broad themes explored through personal profiles. This approach lets him avoid theological depth, keeping the skeptical reader on track. It also helps him avoid drowning in numbers and statistics. That could be the great strength of this book: he demonstrates the vitality of many millions of believers by the stories of a handful. While Aikman has a sense for the truly important few people, he is able to spot significance in the lives of supporting characters.
He also adds a few stories of the miraculous, lest anyone forget that this is God’s story. One traveling Chinese evangelist in the 1960s, for example, was hiding out in the jungle during a particularly intense period of communist persecution. In a story straight out of the bible, for several months he was sustained by meat brought to him daily by a puma. Who can move a church built on this kind of rock?
As a bit-player in the missionary world, I have heard this story for a long time. In fact, I focused my undergraduate career on the Chinese church, studying everything from Chinese philosophy to Catholic missions, trying to learn more. None of the trends Aikman highlights were news to me, but the overview was more stunning than I could imagine. Truly God is doing a big thing here; the question now becomes: are we standing in the way of God as he uses his Chinese disciples?
No longer an issue of survival
Aikman’s major claim is that the Chinese church’s survival is no longer an issue. This is an amazing thought in itself. Christianity was introduced to China three times, starting (depending on who you ask) in the 700s. Its growth to a self-sustaining, fully contextualized church mostly took place since 1960.
The first missionaries were Middle Eastern Nestorians, a splinter group of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is important for Westerners to note: China was part of the global church before Scandinavia. Chinese believers were reading the Bible on their own by the time Charlemagne converted the Saxons at sword point.
The first church struggled along for several centuries, surviving some major persecutions, before finally dying shortly before the second wave of missions began in the 1500s. At one point, Chinese Christians were in direct dialogue with Rome, and the Pope received Eucharist from a Chinese priest.
Counterreformation Catholics caught a missionary spirit several generations before Protestants. Indeed, the first generation of Jesuits saw brilliant missionaries like Matteo Ricci make into the imperial courts of Beijing. But the Catholics fell into strife with each other, and the church faded, thought it did not die.
During the 19th century, Protestants found their way to China, mostly coming from America and Western Europe. While they brought a real gospel, a gospel that would prove able to survive persecution, it was also a tainted gospel. Many missionaries caught the easiest fare available to China, which happened to be on Opium- or Military-boats. Many rode foreign gunboats up Chinese rivers into the heartland, and fell back on military and imperialist power when their lives became endangered.
This is an important story. The missionaries brought a gospel that was inseparable, to the Chinese mind, from aggressive foreign power. Imagine for example, that Muslim missionaries to the United States drew their funding from al-Qaeda. Imagine, further that some of these missionaries got deported for fraternizing with terrorists. Qaeda’s response is to sink American boats, destroy buildings and otherwise terrorize Americans into not harming those few Muslim missionaries. The run-of-the-mill American’s response, Muslims included would be anger, humiliation, frustration and bitterness, mixed with incredulity toward those missionaries’ claim of independence from terror.
It is no surprise that one of Chairman Mao’s first acts upon consolidating power in 1949 was to deport all foreign missionaries. Contrary to the standard American telling of this story, this was not primarily an act of state-sponsored atheism. Mao’s violence was an act of nationalism. All Chinese Christians, according to his reading, were in collusion with aggressive imperialists.
There are two major lessons here for Western Christians. First, we must humbly own at least a little responsibility for the outrageous suffering experienced by the Chinese church during the last half-century. The Communists oppressed the indigenous religions as well as the foreign ones, but our irresponsible collusion with China’s humiliation in the 19th century tarnished the reputation of China’s Christians in the 20th. That American believers have lent much support to the battered Chinese church does not change the fact, it merely brings some reparation to the damage.
Second, the explosive growth of the Chinese church during the last thirty years took place not because of the American church, but mostly despite us. Since 1980 our approach has been much better, so it’s easy to forget: This revival is homegrown Chinese. More importantly, the Chinese church has been refined by fire and is a sibling – and a stronger, wiser sibling at that – of the American church; certainly not a child.
Jesus in Beijing explores the homegrown Chinese church, giving the foreigners one chapter near the end of the book.
Who is Bishop Ding?
No account the contemporary Chinese church would be complete without a discussion of the major struggle between the underground church and the registered church. Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, the worst period of Communist violence against believers, the state decided to allow moderate Christian activity, provided it took place under the watchful eye of an atheist government. The result was the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (whose “three selves” refer to self-regulating, self-propagating and self-supporting, all which is code for independent of foreign attachments).
The Three-Self church was highly regulated, and pastors were watched and censored. They were not, and still are not, allowed to preach on certain subversive parts of the bible, such as the second-coming of Christ.
Many Christians refused to join such a church, starting their own house-churches instead. While there was a philosophical debate going on regarding the appropriate relationship between the church and the government, there is a lot of hurt involved. Many house church leaders spent decades behind bars, they claim, due to false witness by Three-Self leaders.
Bishop Ding is the long-standing leader of the Three-Self church, and no one has a neutral opinion of the man. Many house-church leaders feel he is the devil from hell, an atheist in a frock, intent of destroying the church. Others feel he is a quiet saint who has spent a lifetime quietly interceding with the government for the health and safety of the Chinese church. The question of Bishop Ding’s salvation ultimately is for Jesus to answer. David Aikman does not try, but he does manage a very insightful interview with the man.
Charismatic Rebirth
One story that is far less published than the church’s survival in a communist world is a new story: over the past fifteen years a large-scale charismatic revival has taken place, with tongues and prophecy becoming a normal part of house-church life. Indeed, if Aikman is correct in estimating that the majority of Chinese churches are now Pentecostal, this development would have global implications, far beyond measure. Half of the Chinese church can mean anything from 20 to 50 million believers, making this the largest Pentecostal body outside of Africa.
When the smoke clears, and Americans begin to develop peer-relationships with the Chinese church, our success with depend in part on our ability to commune with Pentecostals.
Our God is more than a Chinese God
Meanwhile, God has called the Chinese Church to be more than a mission field. Thousands of Chinese Christians are participating, or are trying to, in taking the gospel across cultural boundaries. Many are led by a vision of taking the Gospel westward across Asia, “back to Jerusalem”. That road leads across the Muslim heartland, an area Americans are working hard to close to a western Gospel. If the Chinese church makes a dent in this world, it will be a tremendous story of God’s using the weak and the broken to establish his kingdom, while the powerful and wealthy church stands bewildered.
It falls to the American church to not stand in the way. If the Chinese church decides to make use of American skills and connections, so be it. But the day is long past when American leadership in missions will determine the course of coming events.
Pro-American?!
The book concludes with its weakest segment: platitudes about a Christian China being pro-America. Probably inserted by publishers trying to market the book to non-religious policy wonks, these passages seem to contradict much of the book and should be ignored. Pro-American is a very short-term development. Most of the stories contained in this book carry ramifications that will remain relevant a thousand years from now.
Jesus in Beijing is not a theological or a missiological book. It is not explicitly
Christian. But the picture painted here is a testimony of God’s goodness.
It is a powerful demonstration of God’s ability to lift up the humble.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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