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Originally Posted by Nigel Tomes
Watchman Nee’s “Little Flock” churches in the Far East were an “indigenized” version of Christianity, “contextualized” to Chinese culture and values. This Chinese incarnation of Christianity was further developed by Witness Lee in Taiwan. Despite their claims to have “recovered” the original, culture-free form of the New Testament Church in all its pristine purity, T. Zimmerman-Liu contends that Watchman Nee’s “Little Flock” church and Witness Lee’s “Local Church” each represent “a Chinese interpretation of Christianity,” a “Sinicized version of Christianity.” (see footnote 11) These developments in the Far East “created a form of Protestantism that is very different from its Western counterparts.” Hence, on his arrival in the West, “Witness Lee brought Chinese Christianity to the United States in the 1960s.” This assessment directly contradicts Local Church’s official “party line” about recovering the original biblical pattern; nevertheless it rings true. This insight explains why LSM’s Local Church has proved attractive to Asian (particularly Chinese) immigrants to North America and their descendents. It also provides a rationale for the Local Church’s failure to attract significant numbers of “typical North Americans” (a Local Church euphemism for Caucasians). Simply put, despite its name, LSM’s “Local Church” is not local in the context of the Western world. Rather than indigenizing the Local Church, “contextualizing” it to western culture and values, Witness Lee presented and LSM currently propagates an imported version of Asian (Chinese) Christianity, miss-matched with 21st century North America. The Local Church is in many ways (which Zimmerman-Liu identifies) an ethnic, Oriental expression of the Christian faith.
11. T. Zimmerman-Liu’s other paper seeks to “describe in detail how an indigenous Chinese Protestant group—the Local Churches—reconstituted guanxi during the twentieth century. It will show how in the process of redefining guanxi to make its members committed Christians, the Local Churches also Sinicized Christianity.” [Teresa Zimmerman-Liu, “From ‘Children of the Devil’ to ‘Sons of God’: The Reconfiguration of Guanxi in a 20th Century Indigenous Chinese Protestant Group,” p. 1 (emphasis added), Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, Working Paper] She also asserts that, “The Local Church founders further sought to emphasize the elements of scriptural and historical Christianity that would most appeal to their audience of Republican-era (1911-1949) Chinese people.” [T. Zimmerman-Liu, “From ‘Children of the Devil’ to ‘Sons of God’...” p. 2 (emphasis added)] Again she says, “The Local Churches reconstituted guanxi relationships among their members, and they also Sinicized their version of Christianity.” [T. Zimmerman-Liu, “From ‘Children of the Devil’ to ‘Sons of God’...” p. 3 (emphasis added)]
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Two points: first that I tried to make some of this explicit in the thread "The Asian Mind and the Western Mind", and elsewhere. It would be fun if someone like Zimmerman-Liu would come on this forum and mix it up with the hoi palloi, but it would probably be a bad career move, if she is trying to be seen as a serious scholar and an academic.
Nonetheless, I can say, "Yeah, that's what I was talking about!"
Secondly, in her footnote (11) she says that the LC leaders tried to redefine quanxi for the Christian polity. That would be an interesting read, no? Maybe someone can post that paper. I bet that would be a hot cake. Seriously, that paper should see the light of day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi