[aron]

A word about "no denominations". Watchman Nee came of age in a time when resentment against Western imperialism in China was widespread and acute. Nee found the idea of the British Brethren attractive, that names of churches became points of division. We should have no other name but Jesus Christ.

Watchman Nee shoehorned this idea onto the Chinese resentment, and "denominations" became spiritual code for the Western imperialists. The "local" church was indigenous and therefore wholly Chinese. The Normal Christian Church was read entirely within a cultural lens, and it matched the views and dispositions of so many that within a decade his group was arguably one of the largest and most prominent in the land.

Then Nee suddenly got the revelation that the local churches should come under central authority. He called it the Jerusalem Principle. He essentially did a 180-degree turn. And this was what was exported. Each local assembly is essentially a franchise of the Mother Ship. So the group that started out by rejecting imperialism became the most authoritarian and imperial of them all!

But they don't have a name. . . thank God for that. They got that right, anyway. (insert sarcastic face here)