Southern Baptist Theology in the Late Twentieth Century
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 54, No. 2 – Spring 2012
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Lian Xi. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. 292 pages. Hardcover, $45.00.
Although we will never know the exact figures, modern China has experienced amazing growth in the number of Protestant Christians during the twentieth century. Lian Xi’s valuable book postulates that this growth came largely because the “alien faith preached and presided over by foreign missionaries” was transformed “into an indigenous religion of the masses.” (2) Xi unveils modern Chinese Christianity in his carefully researched and written book, providing a much-needed overview of the rise of the indigenous church in the Middle Kingdom.
Xi begins his investigation with a brief historical treatment of early Christianity in China, tracing the religion from its initial introduction, through the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and culminating in the Boxer Uprising. Having introduced us to his opinion on the failure of mission-directed, western Christianity to provide significant results, the author quickly turns to the major, indigenous Christian sects that arose after the start of the twentieth century, examining the history, method, and extension of these Chinese adaptations of Christianity. Weaving together his own research with unpublished materials, Xi provides chapters on the True Jesus Church, Watchman Nee and the Little Flock, and the underground church under the Chinese Communist Party, to name just a few of his topics. Xi contends that one cannot understand modern indigenous Chinese Christianity without understanding the pentecostal, chiliastic roots of Chinese folk Christianity, which he deems the “defining feature of popular Christianity in . . . twentieth-century China” (47).
Lian Xi has gathered a large amount of disparate material into a single volume, attempting to demonstrate why apocalypticism/millenarianism has flourished in the Chinese Christian church. The author’s handling of the Chinese sources alone makes this volume of immense value to scholars in the field. Xi seems to have analyzed all the most relevant scholarship in the field of study, and his laudatory effort has provided scholars with tantalizing hints for further research. The addition of an exhaustive bibliography of relevant source material, coupled with a glossary providing pinyin and hanzi, make this a resource for every person interested in this field.
In many ways, Redeemed by Fire echoes the thesis expounded by Norman Cohn in his 1957 work, The Pursuit of the Millennium. According to Cohn, “eschatology came to exercise a powerful and enduring fascination” for European culture, when “needy and discontented masses were captured by some millennial prophet.” Following the basic theme of Cohn’s research, Xi applies the British historian’s interpretation to his own reading of Chinese religious history. Xi compares the “Great Harmony” teaching of Confucianism (83), the White Lotus tradition, and the Eight Trigrams (73–74; 237), to the developments experienced in western Europe during times of cultural stress. Cohn ended his famous work by observing that the western world had yet to see “what happens when a paranoiac mass movement captures political power.” For Xi, Christianity may provide the Chinese answer to Cohn’s question, even if Communism does not.
By relying heavily on Chinese sources, and particularly on post-Liberation governmental documents, Xi sometimes falls victim to assuming the veracity of the “party line.” For example, he generally presents orthodox Christianity, for him a representative of the “foreign domination” of the Chinese church, as oppressive. Heterodox Christianity, found in varying degrees within the indigenous millenarian movements, he terms “indigenous,” and praiseworthy. In fact, early in the book Xi informs us that by the simple addition of Christian terminology, heterodox millenarian movements became “Christian.” By positing that all indigenous movements were positive developments in creating an autonomous Chinese Christian church, Xi obfuscates the very definition of “Christian.” Thus, the repeated condemnation of developing millenarian sects by those within the mainstream of Christian orthodoxy, becomes simply the work of western minions of a “foreign religion” as the investigation unfolds. Often, terminologies found within these unsympathetic sources leads the author to use terms such as “fundamentalist” (110), “proselytizing” (rather than “evangelizing,” 17), and “eschatology” (168), without providing adequate conventional definitions.
Laying aside the small criticisms voiced above, a reviewer would be remiss in not giving Redeemed by Fire its proper accolades. Lian Xi’s work fills a tremendous void for scholars of missionary history and indigenous church growth in China, as well as those studying millenarian revolts around the world. This work will continue to occupy a central place in the ongoing discussion of the growth of Protestant Christianity in China for some time to come.
