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Chinese Churches and the

Ecumenical Movement from an
Asian Perspective
Theresa Carino

Theresa Carino is the senior research consultant of the Amity Foundation. Her research has included
water and renewable energy projects in China. She was the director of the Amity Foundation Hong
Kong Office from 2001 to 2008 and has promoted south-south exchanges between the Philippines and
China over the last 20 years. In recent years, she has contributed several articles on religion and
development and edited the book Christianity and Social Development in China
(Hong Kong: Amity Foundation, 2014).

Abstract

The involvement of Chinese churches and Chinese Christians with the ecumenical movement
preceded the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Recurring themes in
the encounter have been de-colonization and indigenization, church unity and post-
denominationalism, and Asian regional ecumenism. There was also a determination among
Chinese church leaders to reconfigure mission and relations between churches in the West
and those in Asia. These concerns have their origins in the chequered history of Christian
missions and their association with imperialism in the last century.

One of the most significant ecumenical events held in the Asian region in the
early 1990s was the seventh assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in
Canberra, Australia, in 1991. It was at this assembly that the China Christian Council
(CCC), the post-denominational Protestant church in the People’s Republic, was unani-
mously accepted as the 317th member of the WCC. This, according to Ninan
Koshy, in fact represented a reactivation of the membership of the Chinese church in the
WCC and its return to the fellowship of the ecumenical body after almost four

DOI: 10.1111/erev.12320
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decades.1 The lapse in formal membership was the result of the wars (both hot and
Cold, colonial and ideological) that divided many parts of Asia in the 20th century. His-
torically, Chinese Christian participation in the ecumenical movement antedates the
formation of the WCC, as Chinese Christian leaders played prominent roles before and
at the time of its formation.
This article will highlight several themes that Chinese Christian leaders brought to the
ecumenical table, their efforts in realizing church unity and independence from West-
ern mission boards, and how they sustained contact with the ecumenical movement
even under the most difficult political circumstances. To understand why indigeniza-
tion or contextualization and post-denominationalism have always been recurring
themes among Chinese churches, we must look at the historical circumstances under
which Christianity was introduced to China in the 20th century.

Indigenization and Anti-denominationalism

The flood of missionaries who went to China in the early 20th century reached a peak
in the 1920s, and the rapid growth in the number of Christians, with the concomitant
rise in the influence of Christian missions through schools and hospitals, elicited a
powerful backlash from ordinary Chinese people and intellectuals. Reflecting on 20th-
century mission in China, Cao Shengjie (CCC president, 2003–2008) noted that in
1920, there were 4,726 churches in China run by 54 mission boards from seven large
denominations.2 They were generally led and run by overseas missionaries from the
West. Chinese Christians themselves were often perplexed by the large number of mis-
sions working in China. At the same time, the early 20th century was also an era which
saw the rise of indigenous and traditional religions.
The drive for indigenization of Christianity had already manifested itself in the latter
part of the 19th century, when a Chinese scholar, Chen Mengnan, became Christian.
He said, “The truth of God is from heaven, when it comes to certain foreign countries,
it is theirs; yet when it comes to our country, it is ours. We should propagate the truth
by ourselves.” He then started a church run by Chinese people rather than by
foreigners.3

1
Ninan Koshy, A History of the Ecumenical Movement in Asia, vol. 1 (Hong Kong: WSCF AP, YMCA & CCA,
2004), 273.
2
Shengjie Cao, “Churches Together in God’s Mission – China,” in Asian Handbook for Theological Education and
Ecumenism, ed. Hope Antone et al. (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), 501.
3
Ibid., 500.

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Other indigenous churches emerged, such as the True Jesus Church (c. 1917), the Fam-
ily of Jesus (1922), and the Little Flock (1926).4 These groups rejected teachings of
Western denominations and “returned” to the Bible. They also refused aid from for-
eign missionaries and rejected foreign church organizations, making efforts to develop
their own style of spirituality and worship. These churches were widely popular, and by
the 1940s, they accounted for 20 to 25 percent of all Protestants in China.5
By the 1920s, confronted by the new culture movement and the anti-Christianity drive,
which perceived Christianity as the vanguard of Western imperialism, Christian intel-
lectuals began to advocate the “indigenization of Christianity.” T. C. Chao (Zhao
Zhichen) and Timothy Liu (Liu Tingfang) were prominent among them.6 They sought
to develop indigenous theology through a process of “inculturation” and tried to
understand and interpret the Christian faith in relation to Chinese classics, customs,
and culture.7 While they did not believe that ties with mission boards should be severed,
they strongly pushed for Chinese churches to be run by the Chinese and for Christian
theology to be integrated with Chinese culture.

Indigenization and Overcoming Denominationalism

Some Christian leaders recognized that overcoming denominationalism was an essen-

tial step toward indigenization. Timothy Liu stressed that “there is strong sentiment
against denominationalism.” The Chinese Christians put forward denominational dif-
ferences as one of the serious obstacles to making the church indigenous.8
Confronted with growing nationalism and criticism of Christianity, Chinese Christians
found it imperative to rid the image of imperialism attached to their faith. There was
growing indifference and resistance to confessionalism and denominationalism among
Chinese Protestants. This gained impetus in the 1920s at the First National Chinese
Christian Conference, held in Shanghai in 1922 (also known as the 5th General
Missionary Conference), where 50 percent of the participants were Chinese.9

4
Miikka Ruokanen, Yongtao Chen, and Ruomin Liu, eds, “Is Post-denominational Christianity Possible?
Ecclesiology in the Protestant Church of China,” Ecumenical Review 67:1 (March 2015), 81.
5
Ibid.
6
Cao, “Churches Together in God’s Mission – China,” 501; Ruokanen, Chen, and Liu, “Is Post-denominational
Christianity Possible?” 82.
7
Ruokanen, Chen, and Liu, “Is Post-denominational Christianity Possible?” 82.
8
Cao, “Churches Together in God’s Mission – China,” 501.
9
Ruokanen, Chen, and Liu, “Is Post-denominational Christianity Possible?” 81.

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The Shanghai Conference saw the establishment of the National Christian Council of
China, a historic turning point in the life of the churches. Its main functions were “to
foster and express the fellowship and unity of the Christian Council of China and the
realization of its oneness with the church throughout the world,” and to help “the
development of the Church in self-support, self-government, and self-propagation.”10
Cheng Ching-yi, who became the chair of the council, recalled the “Three-Self
principles” introduced in 1850 by the British missionary Henry Venn. According to
Cheng, denominationalism was of little interest to the Chinese, who saw it as harmful
to Christians, weakening them in their struggle against “the powerful force of
heathenism.”11
The Chinese leadership of the newly established council believed that Christian unity
with a theological and doctrinal pluralism was desirable. Liu Tingfang’s famous phrase
“to agree to differ but to resolve to love” conveyed the attitude very well.12

Unity and the Three-Self Principles

The historic 1910 Edinburgh Conference on mission provided the impetus to establish
the National Council of Chinese churches in 1922. At this first World Missionary Con-
ference in Edinburgh – which included only 17 Asians among 1,200 missionary leaders
– Cheng Ching-yi (who would later become the chair of the National Council of
Churches) famously said, “Speaking plainly, we hope to see, in the near future, a united
Christian Church without any denominational distinctions. This may seem somewhat
peculiar to some of you; but friends, do not forget to view us from our standpoint, and
if you fail to do that, the Chinese will remain always as a mysterious people to you!”13
Cheng Ching-yi was the youngest delegate at the Edinburgh conference. He had been a
leader in the Chinese Student Christian Movement (SCM) and a translator of the Bible
into Chinese “for effective evangelization and building up a church which was indige-
nous, self-propagating and self-supporting.”14 His brief intervention at Edinburgh
1910, together with that of A. Z. Azariah from India, left a deep impression on confer-
ence participants.

10
Ibid., 82.
11
Ibid., 79–80.
12
Ibid., 82.
13
Philip Potter and Tom Wieser, Seeking and Serving the Truth: The First Hundred Years of the World Student Christian
Federation (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1997), 32.
14
Ibid.

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In 1927, a united church – under the banner “church unity in the spirit of self-ruling,
self-supporting and self-propagating” and comprising mainly Presbyterians and
Congregationalists – was formed, called the “Church of Christ in China.”15 A series of
declarations and calls by Chinese church leaders for independence from Western-
sponsored churches and missions was also heard. The movement for autonomy
pressed for the Three-Self principles to be put into practice, stressing the need for
administrative and economic independence from foreign control. Members of this
movement were highly critical of the denominationalism that characterized churches in
the West, feeling it was irrelevant to the context and history of China. The idea of creat-
ing a united church of China became commonplace.16

The Leadership Role of Chinese Christians in the Formation of the WCC

When the WCC was formed in 1948 at its Amsterdam assembly, four of the founding
members were Chinese churches – the Church of Christ in China, Chung Hua Sheng
Kung Hui (Anglican), the Congregational Church (south China), and the Baptist
Church (Shanghai and Zhejiang Synod) – and T. C. Chao was elected as one of the six
WCC presidents.17
However, it was notable that not a single representative of the “younger churches” was
invited to join the Committee of Fourteen that had been entrusted with the organiza-
tion of the WCC.18 The statements of the Amsterdam assembly on unity were disap-
pointing to Asian members, since they had already witnessed the inauguration of the
Church of South India in 1947. They challenged the whole concept of denominational-
ism and advocated the visible unity of the church.19
One other major concern of the Asian churches, including the Chinese, at the begin-
ning of the WCC was whether the new body would manifest the essential missionary
dimension of the ecumenical movement.20 Many Asian member movements of the
International Missionary Council (IMC) were national councils of churches, and almost
all Asian member churches of the WCC were therefore also involved in the IMC. In

15
Ruokanen, Chen, and Liu, “Is Post-denominational Christianity Possible?” 83.
16
Ibid., 80.
17
Cao, “Churches Together in God’s Mission – China,” 501.
18
Koshy, History of the Ecumenical Movement in Asia, vol. I, 92.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., 93.

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that sense, in Asia, the two bodies had been merged long before they were formally
integrated in 1961.21
As early as 1939, at the first World Conference of Asian Youth in Amsterdam, Asian
leaders such as D. T. Niles and T. Z. Koo insisted that “the ecumenical vision revealed
indeed God’s pilgrim people on the way to the centre and frontier of the Church
and the world” and “not just a Christian fellowship of humanitarian service.”22 At
the inaugural assembly of the WCC, leaders from the “younger churches” such as
G. T. K. Wu (China) stated, “No mere humanism, not just Christ as teacher! . . .
What is needed is the whole Christ and the whole Gospel for the total need of the
total world.”23

Eastern Asia Christian Conference (1949)

Chinese Christians, together with other Asians, had been active in the process of devel-
oping a regional body. It was not surprising that the first Eastern Asia Christian Confer-
ence, a conference to discuss the formation of a regional organization, met in Bangkok
in December 1949, a year after the establishment of the WCC. Originally planned to be
held in Hang-Chow (Hangzhou), China, the conference was moved to Bangkok in
view of the uncertain situation in China. Although organized by the Chinese S. C.
Leung, the Chinese churches were absent.24
Again, at the Prapat Assembly (Indonesia), where the East Asia Christian Conference
(later renamed the Christian Conference of Asia) was eventually established as a
regional organization in March 1957, delegates from the People’s Republic of China
were notably absent, although they had earlier responded positively to the invitation.
An official letter from Y. T. Wu (Wu Yaotsung) in January 1957 said that meetings and
responsibilities in China made it impossible for the churches to send a delegation. He
expressed the great desire of Chinese Christians “to share in the world Christian fellow-
ship and in the common task of bearing an effective witness to the power of salvation
of our Lord Jesus Christ.”25

21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid., 93.
24
Ibid., 97.
25
Kim Hao Yap, From Prapat to Colombo: A History of the Christian Conference of Asia (1957–1995) (Hong Kong: CCA,
1995), 20–21.

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The Three-Self Movement

The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 created a new situation. Y. T.
Wu led the formation of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), based on the
Three-Self principles that earlier Christian leaders had advocated. With the expulsion
of missionaries from China, churches came under the leadership of Chinese Christians,
leading to a “compelled unification” of the churches.26 Bishop K. H. Ting explained in
1979: “The whole movement to promote self-government, self-support and self-
nurture, to make the churches in China Chinese is something that is extremely prophet-
ic.”27 The movement for a Three-Self Church necessitated that the church grow roots
in its local context and shed the image of Christianity as a foreign religion. It is unfortu-
nate that in many parts of multi-racial, multi-religious Asia, Christianity was imposed
through the process of imperial conquest and colonization. Today, with the exception
of the Philippines, Christianity is still a minority religion in Asia.
The call for contextualization of Christianity in Asia is therefore not a new one. Neither
is it a challenge faced by the Chinese churches alone. The contextualization of Christian
theology was very much a part of the post-colonial movement in Asia to reconstruct a
new Asia.
Philip Potter posits that the SCM, as part of the World Student Christian Federation
(WSCF), was a significant school for enabling students to devote themselves in every
land to a church that is self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating.28

Role of Youth in the Ecumenical Movement

It should be mentioned that the participation of Chinese youth in the ecumenical

movement antedated the WCC’s formation. For the Asians, the IMC, the WSCF, and
the YMCA pioneered and represented ecumenism. Their participation in the youth
movement helped nurture life-long friendships and solidarity.
Asians played prominent roles at the two conferences of World Christian Youth. The
first World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam in July 1939 was organized
by the provisional committee of the WCC, the World Alliance of International

26
Ruokanen, Chen, and Liu, “Is Post-denominational Christianity Possible?” 84.
27
K. H. Ting, “Prophetic Challenges,” in No Longer Strangers: Selected Writings of K. H. Ting, ed. Raymond Whitehead
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989), 109.
28
Philip Potter, “The Student Christian Movement and the Chinese Church,” Chinese Theological Review 10 (1995),
75–76.

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Friendship through the Churches, the World YMCA and YWCA, and the WSCF. No
fewer than 108 delegates came from Asia.29 T. Z. Koo from China gave the address on
“The Christian Community and the World of Nations.” The Amsterdam conference
declared: “The nations and peoples of the world are drifting apart, the Churches are
coming together. There is a growing conviction of the essential togetherness of all
Christians.” Within four weeks of the closing, the Second World War had broken
out.30
The second World Conference of Christian Youth in Oslo in 1947, a year before the
WCC’s formation, was initiated by the World YMCA and YWCA, the WSCF, and the
WCC Youth Department. It was the first great post-war ecumenical gathering and had
a large contingent of 129 Asian participants. C. W. Li of China spoke on the theme
“There is a World Church.”31 The conference reflected the challenging rediscovery of a
fellowship in common obedience to Jesus Christ as Lord, which bound the delegates
together in spite of strong tensions and disagreements on political questions.

The Cold War: Disruptions and Continuity in Ecumenical Relations

The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and the ideological divide between the Soviet
Union, China, and the US had a tremendous impact on Chinese Christians and their
ties with the WCC. A recent study by Heung Soo Kim attempts to examine the various
positions of churches in the different “blocs” at the time.32 He maintains that the
Korean War was a local armed conflict between South and North Korea, but the entry
of United Nations forces (pushed for by the US) led to its escalation into a global
conflict.
When the UN Security Council passed its resolution to send forces to Korea on the rec-
ommendation of the US, the central committee of the WCC issued a statement on the
Korean situation. Pivotal to the WCC’s involvement on the issue was the controversial
Toronto statement on “The Korean Situation and World Order,” issued by the central

29
Koshy, History of the Ecumenical Movement in Asia, vol. I, 95.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
32
Heung Soo Kim, “The Korean War – Different Responses from the World Council of Churches, Chinese
Churches, and Korean Churches,” in Unfinished History: Christianity and the Cold War in East Asia, ed. Philip L.
Wickeri (Leipzig: Contact Zone, 2016), 232–35.

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committee of the WCC in 1950 and that supported the US position to have UN forces
enter the fray.33 It elicited sharp criticism from churches in Eastern Europe and China
as echoing the voice of the US. The WCC was seen as a tool of US imperialism.34 T. C.
Chao, dean of the School of Religion, Yenching University, sent his letter of resignation
from his position as one of the six presidents of the WCC on 28 April 1951.35 As a
result, the Chinese churches’ relationship with the WCC was suspended. It was a pain-
ful moment in ecumenical history.
The Cold War era may have built a wall between China and the ecumenical movement,
but to some extent, ties were never completely broken and personal relationships con-
tinued to transcend political and ideological barriers in keeping Chinese Christians in
touch with the ecumenical movement.
In March 1956, an ecumenical delegation consisting of J. L. Hromadka (dean of the
Comenius Theological Seminary in Prague), Bishop Janos Peter (Reformed Church in
Hungary), K. G. Nystrom (former Mission Covenant Church of Sweden missionary),
and Bishop Rajah Manikam (Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church in India and secretary
of the East Asia Christian Council of the IMC) visited China. The TSPM then estab-
lished an International Affairs Committee in May 1956 to broaden ecumenical
exchanges with overseas churches. In November of the same year, a delegation from
the Australian Anglican Church led by Howard Mowll (Archbishop of Sydney) also
visited China. In addition, six visitors from the Indian church and the Indian YMCA
visited in April 1957.36
Most touching were the efforts of Japanese Christians to initiate reconciliatory moves
with the Chinese church. As early as November 1954, a proposal was submitted at the
Eighth General Assembly of Kyodan (the United Church of Christ in Japan) by the
Rev. Jun’ichi Asano, “On sending the Kyodan delegation of apology and greeting to
churches in new China.”37 The following year, the committee decided to send a
“Friendship message to Christian churches in China” through Tamotsu Hasegawa, a
Christian politician from the Social Democratic Party of Japan who was visiting China.
He met Y. T. Wu and conveyed the wish of Kyodan to send a delegation to China. One
of the stated objectives of the visit to China was “to restore the fellowship of faith and

33
Ibid., 234.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., 239.
36
Yosuke Matsutani, “Crossing the Bamboo Curtain – The Japanese Christian Delegation to the Chinese Church
in 1957,” in Unfinished History: Christianity and the Cold War in East Asia, ed. Wickeri, 177.
37
Ibid.

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love in Jesus Christ the Lord between the Japanese church and the Chinese church,
which had been disrupted by the war and the revolution.”38 It was only in April 1957
that a delegation of 15 Japanese Christians finally visited China. They received a warm
welcome from Chinese Christians and held two conferences with standing committee
members of the TSPM, with some Japanese delegates given the chance to preach in
churches.39 It was a significant event and a major contribution toward reconciliation
among churches caught in the throes of a Cold War whose impact was not only physi-
cal but also psychological.
Much effort had been made on the part of Kyodan members, through different chan-
nels, to be received by the Chinese, and it had taken them three years. Interestingly, the
breakthrough came in the form of a letter of invitation from the TSPM to the office of
Kyodan. It was an invitation addressed to Prof. Kiyoko Takeda, who was a good friend
of Bishop K. H. Ting, to visit China. They had been colleagues at the WSCF in Switzer-
land. Takeda and Y. T. Wu had also become acquainted at a WSCF conference in Sri
Lanka in 1948.40 It was only after the successful visit by Takeda to China that a letter of
invitation was eventually sent to Kyodan for a delegation of 15 people.
This demonstrates the importance of friendships and personal contacts in maintaining
the fellowship in the ecumenical movement and how these have transcended political
obstacles and walls erected by war and the ideological divide.

Restoration of Relations after the Cultural Revolution: Interest in Asia

The Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976 involved years of hardship for many Chinese
Christians, and contact with the ecumenical movement was very much reduced if not
brought to a halt. Churches, like other places of worship, were closed down, and some
leaders were imprisoned or sent to the countryside. The policy of opening and reform,
declared in 1978, opened up possibilities for Chinese Christian leaders to re-establish
relations with the ecumenical movement.
It was a historic moment when four Chinese Christian leaders were included in the
Chinese delegation to the World Conference on Religion and Peace held in Princeton
in the US in August/September 1979. The delegation was led by Bishop K. H. Ting.
When news reached the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), it sent its general

38
Ibid., 181.
39
Ibid., 187.
40
Ibid., 178.

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secretary, Bishop Yap Kim Hao, to establish contact with the Chinese church.41 The
third Chinese National Christian Conference, held in Nanjing in October 1980,
affirmed an openness to having friendly relations with Christians outside China, but it
also stressed the importance of equality and mutual respect in the relationship. A week
after this conference, the CCA general secretary arrived in China to meet with leaders
of the China Christian Council (CCC) and TSPM on their invitation, the first Christian
from outside China to be invited after the establishment of the CCC.42
Reflecting on his visit, Yap felt that the CCA did not really have much to offer the
Chinese Christians. He was reminded that it had not really shared in their struggles and
sufferings. “With humility, we must accept that we have much to learn from their spirit-
ual experiences and their faith. The task ahead of the Chinese Christians was to articu-
late their theological understanding of the work of God among the Chinese people and
the place of the church in Chinese society.”43
Bishop Ting, then president of the CCC, readily agreed to Yap’s suggestion that the
first ecumenical meeting of the CCC should be with fellow Asian Christians. A consul-
tation sponsored by the CCA in Hong Kong in March 1981 provided a platform
for CCC leaders to meet with leaders from Asian churches and national councils.
Represented in this important meeting were the WCC and YMCA. The CCC delegation
also took the opportunity to meet with church leaders from Hong Kong.44

New Ways of Mission and Partnership

China’s reform and opening up policy after 1978 opened the doors for Chinese
Christians to interact, dialogue, and cooperate once more with fellow Christians in
other parts of the world. Bishop Ting was quick to seize the opportunity to engage the
Chinese church in social projects. The creation of the Amity Foundation as a faith-
based NGO in 1985 provided a channel for Chinese Christians to engage and hence
integrate more fully with non-Christians and non-believers in Chinese society.
Amity’s stated mission and goals were very broad: to contribute to China’s opening and
reform; to help Chinese society better understand Christianity; and to contribute to
social development, to world peace and the ecumenical sharing of resources. Stated in
1985, these three goals were extremely far-sighted and also extremely ambitious. No

41
Yap, From Prapat to Colombo, 89.
42
Ibid., 90.
43
Ibid., 91.
44
Ibid.

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Chinese NGO in China has ever expressed such goals. When we re-examine Amity’s
goals today, we can only say that they were truly prophetic. They testify to the boldness
of Bishop Ting’s vision and his commitment to church reconstruction, not only in
China but globally. For Bishop Ting, being a church that adheres to the Three-Self
principles never meant closing the doors to cooperation with Christians from other
parts of the world.45 However, Bishop Ting expressed the hope “that Western
Christians will honor the desire of Chinese Christians to make the churches in China
Chinese and look for alternative ways of giving help.”46
The formation of Amity Foundation and the new experiment in partnership with over-
seas churches represented the search for new ways for churches to relate to one another
in the ecumenical movement. For overseas church organizations, working with Amity
in the Chinese context was an experiment in practising a new understanding of
Christian mission. Reminiscing about the Chinese-European dialogue that accompa-
nied the founding of Amity, Gerhard Kobelin47 noted that it aimed at developing “a
relationship of partners, a reciprocity of giving and receiving, involving equality,
mutuality and trust.”48 There was a very conscious attempt to get rid of the old, colonial
model of mission that had alienated many Chinese in the past and to introduce a new
way of doing things that was mutually respectful and empowering. The “ecumenical
sharing of resources” was undergirded by an understanding that while funding, training,
and personnel would be contributed by overseas organizations, there must be respect
for the Three-Self principles of the Chinese church and for Amity as a Chinese-run
organization with Chinese leaders.
The formation of the Amity Foundation also reflected Bishop Ting’s ideas about how
the church should be doing theology in the Asian context. Writing from Geneva, where
he was on the staff of the WSCF in 1949, Ting pointed out that in the West, people had
the tendency to think of Asia in terms of its problems – its over-population and pov-
erty. “But the real Asia,” he emphasized, “is the people of Asia. To understand the real
Asia we have to identify ourselves more closely with the people – their suffering and
needs, their aspiration and struggle, their frustration and heroism, their yearning and
indignation.” With tremendous foresight, he goes on: “Their awakening today and their

45
“Three-Self, as he had said on many occasions, did not mean self isolation.” See Philip L. Wickeri, Reconstructing
Christianity in China: K. H. Ting and the Chinese Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 272.
46
Ting, “Prophetic Challenges,” 108–109.
47
Then the representative from the Association of Protestant Churches and Missions in Germany (EMW).
48
Gerhard Kobelin, “The Amity Foundation Begins with Practice, Northerners begin with Definition,” in Amity’s
Founding: Recollections from Abroad, ed. Ewing W. Carroll, Jr, Oliver Engelen, and Beate Engelen (Hong Kong:
Amity Foundation, 2010), 44.

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present determination to get freedom and keep it is a most important new factor in
modern world history and its repercussions on the future will be far greater than those
created by the invention and the use of atomic bombs.”49
Bishop Ting was always concerned about distributive justice and sensitive to the situa-
tion and needs of poor people in China. In 1992, at an Amity consultation in Nanjing,
overseas partners, including some from Asia, challenged Amity as to why its develop-
ment projects were mainly concentrated in Jiangsu Province, which was already then a
relatively prosperous province. What about serving the “poorest of the poor”? In
response, the Amity Board, led by Bishop Ting, made a historic decision in 1993 to
focus its work in the western, remote, and poorest parts of China.
It was clear that for Bishop Ting, theology was not a neat set of dogmas or principles.
A living theology required “engaging with our neighbors,” and in the process reading
and rereading the Bible to better discern the gospel message. His challenge to Chinese
Christians, and for that matter, to all Christians, was the need to be engaged in this
world rather than worry about being saved in the afterlife.
Many Christian evangelists worry about the salvation of sinners. Bishop Ting asked the
question “What about those sinned against?” Should we, as Christians, not be con-
cerned about them? In a sermon preached at Riverside Church in New York in 1979,
Bishop Ting said:

In the gospels we often find comments on the compassion of Jesus for others. What we see is
not pity, not just almsgiving or condescension, but identification with the weak and poor and
hungry, with those deeply hurt by an unjust system, who as ‘non-persons’ are alienated,
dehumanized and marginalized – in short, those who have been badly sinned against.50

If I understand Bishop Ting correctly, it is out of praxis, through identification with

the weak and marginalized, that the substance for the contextualization of Chinese
Christianity emerges. In the same sermon delivered in New York, he said, “It is when
men and women who are sinned against become our concern that God can put in our
mouths the word that witnesses to Christ, the saver of sinners.”51

49
K. H. Ting, “Asia, China and the Chinese,” Chinese Theological Review 10 (1995), 13.
50
K. H. Ting, “The Sinned Against,” in No Longer Strangers, ed. Whitehead, 72–73.
51
Ibid.

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Theresa Carino Chinese Churches and the Ecumenical Movement

Conclusion

There is little doubt that the involvement of Chinese churches and Chinese Christians
with the ecumenical movement has been an ongoing process even before the establish-
ment of the WCC in 1948. The earlier contexts of imperialism, civil war, upheaval, and
Western missions had a tremendous impact on the response of Chinese Christians and
led to their call for indigenization and church unity. Chinese Christians provided
important leadership in the early formation of the Asian ecumenical movement and the
WCC.
The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, however, led to the suspension of ties with
the WCC by the Chinese. Both the Cold War and the Cultural Revolution in China
imposed formidable barriers to participation by Chinese representatives in international
ecumenical activities until the era of reform and opening up in China post-1978. It was
only in 1991, after an almost 40-year hiatus, that the CCC rejoined the WCC. Despite
the break in formal ties during those four decades, it is important to note that there was
never a total break in contact and exchange between individual Chinese Christian lead-
ers and those in other parts of the world. Many of the personal ties, such as those
between K. H. Ting and Philip Potter, had been forged during their formation and par-
ticipation in the ecumenical youth movements associated with the WSCF, YMCA, and
YWCA. These ties attest to the importance of youth organizations in keeping the ecu-
menical movement alive. These personal ties lasted a lifetime and helped to maintain
the bonds of ecumenical fellowship that transcended political and ideological divides,
contributing to the building of peace and solidarity in a region that had been wracked
by war and violence.
Recurring themes in the encounter of Chinese Christians with the ecumenical move-
ment have been decolonization and indigenization, church unity and post-
denominationalism, and Asian regional ecumenism. There was also a determination
among Chinese church leaders to reconfigure mission and relations between churches
in the West (the “older churches”) and those in Asia (the “younger churches”). These
concerns have their origins in the chequered history of Christian missions and their
association with imperialism in the last century. These concerns remain today, and
Chinese Christianity is still being challenged to grow deeper roots in Chinese soil.
The churches in China have come a very long way in the last 30 years and there is much
that they can share with other Asian churches. Chinese churches have proven in prac-
tice that it is possible to be self-financing, self-governing, and self-propagating. In fact,
the church has grown bigger and stronger precisely because of the Three-Self

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principles. There remain many challenges to church unity, but Chinese churches have
demonstrated that reconciliation is possible and desirable.
Today, becoming a church that observes the Three-Self principles is a goal
toward which many Asian churches still aspire. In many parts of Asia, Christian
churches continue to be divided by denominationalism and are still very dependent on
partner churches in the West. There is much that other Asian churches can learn
from the practice of Christianity in China. They need to understand what Chinese
churches have been able to achieve in the last two decades in their particular context,
just as much as Chinese churches need to understand developments in other Asian
churches.
The CCC’s presence, for the very first time, at the general assembly of the Christian
Conference of Asia in Jakarta in May 2015 was a historic moment and signifies another
milestone in Asian ecumenism. As Asian churches grow in terms of numbers and ma-
terial resources, what does it mean to adhere to the Three-Self principles? In an Asia
that is “rising,” what would be the content of contextual theology? Countries in Asia
have moved from being colonies and battlefields in the 20th century to becoming the
engines of the global economy in the 21st. Asia’s renaissance and re-emergence as a
driving force in global geo-politics is accompanied by new challenges for society and
for the church. How will Chinese and other Asian churches meet the challenges of the
21st century together?

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