Another Christian Renaissance?
This is the epilogue to Samuel Ling's Xian Qu Yu Guo Ke, the Chinese translation of The Other May Fourth Movement: The Chinese Christian Renaissance, 1919-1937. This Chinese paperback was published in October 1996 by Christian Communications Inc. of Canada, 3838 Midland Ave., Scarborough, Ontario, Canada M1V 5K5, phone 416-297-0147, fax 416-297-6675.
Will there be a successful Christian Renaissance in China's future? Will Christianity save China, or regenerate Chinese thought and culture?
The May Fourth Movement (1915-1927) was a watershed, because Chinese intellectuals drank deeply of the springs of "crisis of consciousness." Both Christian and non-Christian intellectuals struggled with the angst of searching for the road to China's national salvation. After 1922, they either joined, or felt the pressure to respond to, mass movements, including the Anti-Christian Movement (1922-1927). In the 1920's, the young Communist Party set the agenda for China's intellectuals, including Christians.
Seventy years after the May Fourth incident of 1919, another watershed in Chinese history brought China's intellectuals into a new crisis of consciousness. With the opening of China to outside influence after 1979, Chinese scholars and students looked to the modern west for ideas, for lifestyles, for institutions and for personal prosperity. Then came the tragic event of June 4, 1989, which further drove many Chinese intellectuals to search for an alternative to what they had known hithertofore as "Chinese culture." Instead of being hemmed in by the Great Wall, they now looked to the blue ocean and the blue sky (foreign ideas and religious experience) for meaning and direction. After 1989, "Christianity fever" hit China, and Chinese intellectuals outside China also felt it. Christianity became an option, an idea, an institution for Chinese young intellectuals to consider.
The difference between the May Fourth generation and the June Fourth generation lies in the new realities: satellite communication, and the search for economic power. Instead of being faced with labor unions and the Anti-Christian Movement in the 1920's, China's intellectuals in the 1990's must ponder whether to "dive into the sea" (i.e., go into business), and whether to join the Christian church. While the contrasts are startling, one commonality holds seventy years of Chinese thought together: What will save China? Will Christianity do it?
Christians responded to the May Fourth Movement by providing an alternative to personal identity: a liberal Christian vision of self-fulfillment grafted onto Confucian tradition. Christianity, they said, came to rejunvenate Confucianism. This Christianized Confucian man is at the same time reasonable, scientific, and capable of creating a new Chinese society. How did Christians respond to June Fourth and the drive toward modernization in the 1990's?
As we observe the evolving relationship between Christianity and Chinese intellectuals in the 1990's, we discover three groups of Chinese intellectuals, each with a unique response. First, Christianity became a live option among the democracy movement in exile. Some even wrote on "Christian democracy," citing examples from the anti-Nazi and the post-World War II Christian Democratic Party in Europe as sources of inspiration for China. Others receive concrete help from Christians both during the Beijing Spring of 1989, and afterwards as many leaders escaped from China. Thus Christians, the Christian church and the Christian faith no longer are alien to most democracy leaders. Some take elements from the Christian faith and transform it for their own thought, e.g. equating the human conscience with the Christian God (Yan Jiaqi).
Second, an increasing number of authors and teachers look to Christianity as a dimension of human experience which is viable for China in the post-modern world. Beginning with Liu Xiaofeng, these so-called "Cultural Christians" read everything from the novels of Dostoyevsky to the sociology of Peter Berger, and fuses the liberal-humanist tradition in the west with a unique form of the Christian religion. Like their May Fourth forbears, these "Cultural Christians" find in Christianity the symbol of human liberation; unlike the intellectuals in the 1920's, they have experienced and rejected both Maoist communist ideology and the post-modern, deconstructionist nihilism of the 1980's. They do not belong to the official church, they do not attend the house churches in China. Writing and publishing books and journals, they call for the emergence of a Christian culture for China.
Third, as these Cultural Christians travel from their experience inside China to the world of the humanist-liberal west, overseas Chinese Christians in North America and elsewhere watch this with utter amazement. Among them are intellectuals who seek to develop an approach to China's intellectuals with a cultural-intellectual approach, akin to the May Fourth Christians?Renaissance program. They speak to their non-Christian contemporaries in the realm of culture: literature, poetry, the arts, and philosophy. Their posture is one of dialogue, often one of fellow-seeker of truth. Often rejecting a direct, clear proclamation of the gospel as a viable alternative, they find arguments for Christianity in western culture, e.g. the Protestant Reformation as the wellspring of ideas for the American Revolution. They portrayed Christian images to promote the development of Chinese culture (an agenda similar to the Christians of the 1920's). Christianity is a tool for China's cultural suvival in the post-modern reality. Addressing the New Confucianists among overseas Chinese, or speaking to mainland Chinese scholars studying abroad, these new cultural apologists have developed an existential, aesthetic, literary and irrational approach to Christianity. In their writings we almost see T.C. Chao.
What is the future for these cultural apologists? One possible development is the fusing of these Christians with "Cultural Christians," an option which some apologists reject. Another option is to return to Confucianism, in the form of the New Confucianism among overseas Chinese thinkers, as an answer for Chinese people to survive in the post-modern world. A third alternative would be to succumb to the deconstructionism of the post-modern west, and give up meaning, truth and order in the universe. Most cultural apologists, along with their "Cultural Christian" friends, would reject this option, since their very efforts were designed to counter postmodernity's despair.
Beyond the cultural-intellectual approaches of the 20th century, a viable, reasoned and compassionate approach to China's intellectuals lies in the historic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Instead of seeking the truth with our secular contemporaries, the Christian faith calls believers to listen to non-Christians in order to understand their values, assumptions, norms and needs. This listening is done out of a passion for, and toward the goal of, proclaiming the historic gospel of Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection offers forgiveness of sins and liberation of the human spirit from condemnation and despair. Scriptures speak of an infinite, absolute, eternal and unchanging God, who has chosen to come into time and space to reveal himself. God has a plan for the Chinese people: to seek Him and find Him. And God has provided messages in the human conscience, in history, in nature as well as in Scripture. A bold, compassionate proclamation of salvation in Jesus Christ, done in a spirit of gentle listening, friendship and servanthood, remains the most viable, reasonable and effective approach.
Will Christianity save China? If by "save" we mean social and political solutions, the answer is "No." If by "save" we mean forgiveness of sin, deliverance from despair, and the development of a corporate civic spirit for social cohesion and selfless service, the answer is a resounding "Yes." Will "Christianity" save China? Christianity as a social historic institution can save no one. However a living encounter with Jesus Christ, followed with commitment to community to build the Church as a change-agent in society, can go a long way to influence a culture, specifically Chinese culture. The agenda is not so much China's or Confucianism's rejuvenation, but rather the end of a search, the encounter of man with Almighty God His creator. This encounter offers hope, meaning, and a purpose for Chinese thought and culture.
Will China hear the clear revelation of God in Jesus Christ in the 21st century?