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Originally Posted by aron
This comment is very much in line with my recent points, that just as 19th century Western imperialism brought both gunboats and soldiers to China, as well as the gospel of Jesus Christ, so Witness Lee returned the favor in the 20th: this is Eastern imperialism that we're seeing here.
Yes they do own men. The Church owns the people, and the ministry owns the church. Period. Point-blank. They can pussy-foot around it, but in cases like what Ohio outlined above, the issue raises itself in all its blatant ugliness. Who owns the saints? Titus and the GLA, or the Blendeds and Anaheim? Elsewhere in Africa the Brasilian Dong Yu Lan is prying ownership of the territory and its Christian flock. Eventually these competing imperialist strains explode in a colonial war, with unwitting locals being sucked in just as they were 150 years ago when European powers divided the continent.
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I will preface my post with a statement that Lee made:
I hate imperialism, but I thank the Lord that He used imperialism to save me. Without imperialism, the gospel could never have gone to China and to my hometown there.
What I think
aron has done a good job of in his posts is to point out WL's aversion to
Western imperialism. Maybe WL saw himself as someone who was adversely affected by western influences. If there was any amount of truth to this, then WL's response to western imperialism was that of reacting to a perceived threat, not actually reacting to the fundamental problems of the
ideology of imperialism.
When we discuss imperialism here and now, we are fully aware of many of the ills that happened. When Lee said that he hated imperialism, the specific problem that he was referring to was a
western problem. In this day and age, we no longer approach imperialism as a threat needing to be deal with. Instead, we discuss it as a political force at play at a certain time in history, which had unfortunate ramifications that were felt all over the world.
Because WL didn't see things from this kind of objective view, what it all boiled down to for him was this: western imperialism/culture = bad, eastern culture = good. Although WL spoke strongly against culture, eastern culture got somewhat of an exemption. In both the ministries of WN and WL numerous references are made to Chinese proverbs and even Confucius, many of these references were used in a positive sense to help make a point. Why was it that all these 'Chinese' elements got a free pass? The fact of the matter is, it was never about eradicating so-called 'culture' from the LC, it was about eradicating the
western element. In all fairness, western culture has inflicted its fair share of damage over the course of history. But the fallacy at hand was the assumption that if western culture is bad, that means that eastern culture was a suitable or 'safe' replacement.
With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that WL set out on a course that he spoke against. It wasn't long before he had followers and churches in multiple countries and the territorial mentality set in. Is it not true that the LC has been plagued by this mentality? On numerous occasions, WL accused workers of being 'territorial' or 'regional'. In some cases it was probably true, in other cases it wasn't. Probably many of LC leaders are guilty as charged, but who was the real instigator of all of this? Who was it that headed this campaign?