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Originally Posted by Ohio
It has long been my understanding that Lee's entire "denominational" paradigm was receive from Nee, whose views basically reflected the contemporary Chinese mindset towards Western culture, post Boxer rebellion. aron has recently posted many thoughtful observations to provide support to this conclusion. In order to condemn western churches, and yet receive western Christian writings, Nee also developed the saying that they "stand on the shoulders" of Christian ministers before them. So nice to have things both ways.
Lee's comments about "denominations" pervade his early writings in the US. By the time he began speaking the Life Studies, these comments were for the most part irrelevant. Denominations were declining, and new born believers (like myself) everywhere were seeking new venues to pursue their Savior. This is why I find it almost ludicrous for some of the posters here to continus to reference Lee's denominational mindset as if it were still relevant. It's like they are 17th century Anabaptist Amish still reading about organized church oppression in north central Europe. They really need to get out more.
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This is a good point. I’m inclined think that whatever criticism of denominations that Nee originally had was linked to a fear of their influence. He wanted a homegrown movement and that’s exactly what he started. It’s interesting that such criticism of denominations would continue after the movement had been started. Why worry about what the denominations were doing? At some point, the LCM in China was deemed to have application outside of China. At least the story that Lee told was that in the wake of the communist takeover, he was sent by Nee to Taiwan to save what they had ‘recovered’ there in China. That first transplant, along with a subsequent one to the U.S., suddenly made it a movement that was removed from its original intended context.
In the U.S., Lee was met with suspicion and there was a strong reaction to his rhetoric about denominations and Christianity. It obviously wasn’t the best approach if he really felt that he had something of benefit to share with those in the U.S. So essentially, his ministry in the U.S. ended up being the exact thing that those in China were resistant to, the foreign missionaries and all. In fact, Nigel’s latest writing makes mention of this phenomena in the section under the heading
What Happens when the West-East Flow is reversed? It’s not to say that Lee didn’t have the right to try to accomplish something here. It’s just that he expected to be able to do what he wanted with no roadblocks and that obviously didn’t happen.
It seems that the LC has made these frequent attempts to characterize Nee and Lee as ‘undiscovered’ or ‘underrated’ ministers that Christian need to hear about and appreciate. Obviously, that sidesteps the entire issue at hand. All the ‘opposition’ to Lee was directly related to his belligerent attitude towards Christianity. At a basic level, the underlying lack of interest in Nee/Lee is most likely a simply issue of relevancy. What they taught was most applicable in another place at another time. Taking all the questionable teachings out of the equation, I think people simply don’t know how to relate to these ministries.