Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
If you ask me, and I have good off topic reasons for thinking this, Jessie Penn-Lewis was the demon, the serpent, in Nee's TSM paradise.
At this point, 1920s, we're at the West coming to the East, and bringing it to Nee and Lee. This was actually the point when syncretizing between East and West began, and a new Christian hybrid was born, that deformed both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee into Chinese Minister's of the Age.
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I've read European writers, who seem to know something, who present Penn-Lewis as a terrible, corrupting influence in the revivals of the early 20th century there. Certainly she seems to have been overtaken by the idea of subjectivism, that whatever she was "feeling" at any moment came straight from God and therefore she could A) ignore the plain words of the Bible, and B) interfere with the lives of others, sometimes disastrously so, for the "the move of God" or "God's will" as she saw it.
So did an Asian-flavored variant of this make its way, via Lee, into the USA & S. Cali in the early- and mid-60's and create a kind of mass hysteria, subjectivist "primal scream therapy" charismatic phenomenon? I don't know; I wasn't there, but some of its effects I still felt 10 years later when I arrived. The sort of 'elevated sensations' phenomena was very prevalent, and pronounced, and you'd become susceptible to whatever was shouted from the podium or the seats. You were expected to chant or scream the latest slogan, and let it flood your consciousness.
The second thing about Penn-Lewis that I find interesting is the "Jezebel" idea. It seems to be a topic that no one wants to touch, at least in a balanced way: the ability (i.e. weakness?) of women to be channels or vectors of instability.
I say this here, particularly, because as I have noted, Nee & Lee made a big deal out of being influenced by several women's ministries, yet no woman could so much as speak (i.e. teach) in Lee's meetings! The only "functioning" women that I'm aware of were Jane Anderson & Sandee Rappoport & a few others, who merely had the temerity to try to privately counsel people, and help them. You know, shepherding, etc. Care. This was termed a "sisters' rebellion." Yet in addition to Penn-Lewis, others like Margaret Barber, Peace Wang, Dora Yu, Ruth Lee, were publicly waved as "early pillars" in the historical rise of the Little Flock.
So there is clearly some tension there in the narrative, and some glaring unresolved contradictions, but since this is a "lightning rod" issue it's hard to approach. And to do so through the "Asian cultural lens" that I present on this thread makes it even more challenging. I don't have any ideas here, and won't even try my "flaky hypotheses", which may insult everybody involved, to no benefit. But it's an obvious issue in the Lord's Recovery discussion.