Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
...there's hardly anything local at all about the Local Church of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.
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I think the title is also interesting: "Globalization of Chinese Christianity" -- The Little Flock/Local Church assemblies grew and spread as an Asian reaction to Western globalist imperialism. The indigenous assemblies were indeed local, and were also Chinese, because the people living there were exclusively Chinese.
Nee looked abroad, yes, but for the legitimacy of the Protestant reformation. And thus we see the rise of yet another Protestant splinter cell, claiming Luther as its wellspring. "Salvation is by faith", not obedience to the Church authority.
But look how it turned. Nee's localist movement became consolidated in the "Jerusalem Principle", and became nationalist, then spread to an internationalist movement under Witness Lee. So the "local" reaction to foreign imperialism became imperialist, expansionary, yet another irony... none of which should really be shocking in retrospect. As Jesus noted well, it's the way of the Gentiles.
If the highest revelation of the Bible really were about "building up the Church as the Body of Christ", then Luther probably never should have left Catholicism. That was the point of the RCC: the Church (their church, not the EO) held the legitimacy and access to God. They held, "There's no salvation apart from the sacraments of the Church". Now it's become quite similar, here: the spirit of fear and control., aka "You must do what I say, or I'll be unhappy." To me it looks like self-absorption, cloaked in human reasoning. And if you go to the "Local Church" in the USA, you'll see mostly Chinese immigrants and their offspring, because this kind of reasoning jives well within their cultural yardsticks. Tight operational control equals order and prosperity.
But, Local? No.