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第17章 TheLocalizationMovementof......(2)

He had a good command of both Chinese and English, and wasgood at presenting Christian theology in the form of Chinesetraditional culture. Many of his works won praise from the people,such as Christian Philosophy in the form of fiction and dialogue,and The Legend of Jesus Christ that combined history, biographyand literature. In the course of the localization of the ChristianChurches, he considered that Chinese Christianity should becomea part of Chinese culture. The prospect he depicted for thelocalized Churches was like this: "they should integrate all truths generated by Christianity and the ancient Chinese culture andmake Chinese Christians‘ religious lives and experiences accordwith the national situation. Developing in this form for sometime, the localized Churches are supposed to be managed by theChinese themselves economically, organizationally andtheologically. Without this being realized, the localization of theChristian churches in China will be incomplete.‘From the 1920s, discussions about the localization of theChristian churches in China had been very heated. Manypublications published articles, not only pointing out the necessityand imperativeness of the localization, but also putting forward some concrete plans as to its theoretical guidance.

There were three directions for the localization movementinitiated by the Chinese Christian Churches, namely:independence, integration and localization. Many churches madehelpful explorations and experiments on the above-mentionedthree directions to promote the movement.

Independence In the years of pressing ahead with the localization ofChurches, several major churches previously controlled byforeign missions all added "China‘ ahead of their names. However,their leadership still rested in the hands of foreign missionaries,and the churches still relied on financial support from the foreignmissions. The leaders of the Chinese Churches also hadcontradictory feelings about these facts. On the one hand, theywanted independence from the foreign missions, while at thesame time, being part of the movement to spread Christianitythroughout the world, they did not want to be totally separatedfrom the foreign missions. What they thought was the best modelwas that Chinese Christians should take over the local work whilestill cooperating with the Western missionaries, who would retaina position in the churches. However, this could only be an ideal and was very hard to realize. Actually, most of the Churches inthe 1920s did not have a great number of members or enoughfunds, and could barely win financial independence, while theWestern missionaries could offer the churches financial supportthrough the foreign missions. Economic support simply meantcontrol in management. Therefore, the independence movementcould not survive despite having undergone vigorousdevelopment. That was why Zhao Zichen wrote in Some of MyOpinions on Creating Chinese Christian Churches that, "If theChurches were run by Chinese Christians, they would fall shortin funds and talent‘。 He pointed out in 1927 that one of the majorreasons for the unsatisfactory results of the localization movementwas "no organization of localized churches had been created.‘Integration

The Christian doctrine of "Justification by Faith‘ providedlarge room for the free development of the churches. There wereso many factions in the Christian world with each runningseparately and individually. After China"s door was opened, manyreligious groups came to preach on their own. According tostatistics in the History of the Chinese Christian Churches, thetotal number of foreign missions and missionary groups coming to China exceeded 130.

To a Chinese Christian,the Western sectariant raditionwa smeaningless and had nothing to do with hisreligious life. What ismore, it had hinderedthe union of the Christian Churches andaffected their work,which the Chinese Christians felt greatly discontented about. Zhao Zichen pointed out that narrow-mindedsectarianism could only impair and endanger the churches inChina. As a matter of fact, he would not have opposedsectarianism in the Christian world if it had simply been anexpression of diversified faiths. However, different factionsdisputed with each other on theological issues to the extent thatnobody cared about the overall task. It was exactly this resultthat he felt uncomfortable with.

In the localization movement, the union of different churches became the unanimous request of Chinese Christians. Some hadthe churches in the same faction united to form a large group.

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