Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
There are more data points suggesting Witness Lee was the leader of a Chinese-flavored personality cult than there are suggesting he was the apostle of the age. And those seem to be the two options here.
Actually, recent attempts to mainstream and legitimise Lee & LSM are perhaps pointing to a third path, that Witness Lee was a "global Chinese Christian leader" or some such. Theresa Zimmerman-Liu's work is in this vein, as well as 'gotquestions.org' which is now aligning with CRI. All these sources say that the lawsuits and cult-label controversies stem from culturally-derived misunderstandings, on both sides (e.g., Witness Lee as well as Harvest House).
But if that's so, then arguing that the LC movement isn't shot through with Chinese culture becomes more difficult. And we're back to wondering why the LC has an gotten an increasingly Asian face. And we then see their efforts to "gain African-Americans", like the one previously to "gain typical Americans" (i.e. Caucasian males).
The more LC looks like an Chinese sect, the harder it is to recruit non-Asian members. Why has the LC demographic tilted so strongly away from the rest of the USA in the past 30 years? The LC I first saw was full of Caucasian families with young children. Now most of those children are gone. A few are off in Europe or somewhere serving the ministry. The only ones left in the pews are recent (>10 years) immigrants from China. In some places they don't even attempt one meeting - the Chinese are off meeting by themselves.
"Oh, it's a language thing." But it has nothing to do with culture, right?
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I agree it's Chinese culture flavored and would take more work to gain the "typical Americans". It could also be the quality of the crab cakes, I don't know. Grandma's recipe for pot luck stew from mainland China may not be a hit with the locals. But we all know Americans still are struggling with the white superiority complex so that could play a part as well.
We tried to stop people speaking Chinese in the meetings, so we let them have their own meetings where they can speak Chinese as much as they want.
But if we can't see beyond the cultural divisions then we have no business calling ourselves the one body of Christ do we ? You are obviously treating the local churches as the "Chinese body of Christ" and Paul never made those distinctions where there is "no Jew or Gentile". Even though Paul and the other apostles traveled extensively in their time, the Bible is fairly silent about these sorts of matters. Paul never addresses cultural issues in his letters.