In his book, A New History of Christianity in China, Daniel H. Bays explored the evolution of the Christian creed, as an imported Western religion that metamorphosed into a new belief system. Its present form can be described as a unique brand of Chinese Christianity. Bays’ weaved a compelling narrative of Christian history in China that began 15 centuries ago (4).
According to Bays, it was the Apostle Thomas who brought Christianity to pre-modern China (4). Nevertheless, it is important to find out his reasons for saying it is a new history of Christianity in China. The author made this claim because Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution forced Chinese Christians to create a new type of Christianity that meets the needs of the people.
Christianity in Pre-Modern China
Historians traced the emergence of Christianity in the first century AD (Johnson 14). It was founded by Jesus of Nazareth in the city of Jerusalem. It is important to remember this piece of information because, in this same century, the Apostle Thomas traveled to India to evangelize the people in that continent. After some time, he went to China to establish Christianity in the Middle Kingdom. Nevertheless, the first attempt to evangelize China ended in failure. As a result, Christianity was unable to make a permanent mark in China until the Nestorian Christians came as missionaries in 635 AD (Bays 6). It is interesting to note that they were actually Christians from the ancient kingdom of Persia.
Recent archaeological discoveries supported the claim that Persian Christians were the first missionaries that were sent to China, and they were able to establish churches in the said country, six hundred years before the First European emissaries came in the 13th century AD (Bays 6). Pope Innocent IV commissioned Franciscan friars to enter Mongolia in 1245 AD. This marked the beginning of the importation of a Western-brand of Christianity to China. The Roman Catholics introduced their version of Christianity, and the Protestants did the same a few centuries later.
Christianity after the Cultural Revolution
From the 16th century to the modern period, Roman Catholics and Protestants modeled a European version of Christianity to the people of China. European missionaries expected the emergence of a Christian religion that was influenced by Chinese culture. The same phenomenon is evident in other Christianized populations outside Europe. However, they did not anticipate the radical changes that will occur within the Christian churches of mainland China. The socio-political forces that ignited Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution paved the way for the creation of a religion that can be characterized as China’s unique version of Christianity.
In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution to demonstrate his commitment to the Marxism-Leninism philosophical framework. He called for pragmatic actions that will lead to the creation of a classless society. The unintended victims of the new movement were the Chinese Christians. During this particular time period, all religions were abolished, and houses of worship were closed (Bays 185).
When government officials declared the end of religious life in China, Chinese Christians went underground, and they continued to worship inside house churches. The Christian faith was alive and well during the Cultural Revolution. However, Christian activities remained hidden from view.
The government’s decision to outlaw religious activities backfired, and as a result, the world saw the revival and the expansion of Chinese Christianity in the years after the end of the Cultural Revolution (Bays 187). Nevertheless, the unexpected outcome was the interaction of “Radical Protestant millenarianism and the eschatological features of traditional Chinese religion” (Bays 188). It paved the way for the emergence of a new form of Christianity, one that is characterized as folk religion.
The metamorphosis was made possible by several factors. First, the absence of European missionaries in the rural areas made it impossible to counter the proclamation of heterodox Christian doctrines. Second, the Cultural Revolution destroyed the lives of Christian leaders. Finally, there were large counties with hundreds of thousands of people that have no access to a regular Christian church. As a result, a great number of Chinese Christian sects were established. The belief systems in some of these sects were radically different from the doctrines that were brought by European Catholics and Protestants before the onset of the Cultural Revolution.
For example, the founder of “The Established King” sect, created an organization that deified its leaders. A woman surnamed Deng was one of the leaders of “The Lightning out of the East” sect. She became the “female Christ,” and she declared that her presence fulfilled the Second Coming of Jesus (Bays 188). This new development compels people to alter their interpretation of the history of Chinese Christianity.
Conclusion
The Chinese people adopted a form of Christianity from European missionaries. For several centuries, Roman Catholics and Protestants from the Western world modeled a type of Christianity that was practiced in Europe and America. However, the radical changes to China’s social structure, during the reign of Mao Zedong, annihilated traditional Christian churches in China. The persecution paved the way for the revival and expansion of Chinese Christianity. Nevertheless, the absence of leaders from traditional churches, and the expulsion of foreign missionaries from China, paved the way for the emergence of a new form of Christianity that merged traditional doctrines with heterodox doctrines taken from indigenous religions within China.
Works Cited
Bays, Daniel. A New History of Christianity in China, Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print.
Johnson, Paul. The History of Christianity, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print.