Wright Doyle's Biography of Nee

[Ohio]

The Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity had a brief biography of Watchman Nee (Ni) by G. Wright Doyle.

Here are a few excerpts pertinent to the events being discussed on the forum ...

For a variety of reasons, including the anti-Western movement of the 1920s, many Chinese Christian leaders were seeking ways to form indigenous churches that would be free from Western missionary control. Having moved to the International Settlement in Shanghai in 1926, Ni constituted in 1932 a group of “apostolic” co-workers that would lead what became the Little Flock Movement: Wang Peizhen (Peace Wang) and Li Yuanru (Ruth Lee), with Ni himself as supreme. They soon grew from a small household gathering to a network of local churches.

When he married Zhang Pinhui in 1934, there was an expose in the media about his alleged romantic involvement with other women, which damaged his reputation, so he stepped down as leader of the movement, handing it over to elders whom he had previously appointed. He resumed his position the next year.

1942, Ni was expelled from leadership for several reasons: His increasing, and finally full-time, work with his brother’s pharmaceutical company; multiple instances of shady business practices; and the exposure of ongoing sexual immorality with female co-workers and other women, including prostitutes.

After the war, Ni published several books on ecclesiology, including The Orthodoxy of the Church, Authority and Obedience, and On Church Affairs, which stated the “Jerusalem Principle,” according to which the authority of elders in local assemblies was restricted and the entire movement came under direct central control. These works represented a major change in emphasis, from the spiritual life of the individual and the local church to the authority of “apostles,” of whom Ni was pre-eminent, to direct the entire organization and its work.

A campaign of “handing over” possessions to the local church was promoted in 1947, ostensibly to fund evangelistic migration of believers. At the same time, Ni was preaching absolute, even unthinking, submission to church leaders, especially himself. Only those who had been trained by Ni and Li could become leaders in the local churches. Believers were fired with zeal to give all they had to the work of the Lord, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were contributed. Some of the money went toward the construction of a very large meeting place for the Shanghai assembly, whose numbers had reached 1,700.

Ni was arrested in Manchuria in April, 1952 on charges of tax evasion and corrupt business practices. Four years later, in a public trial in Shanghai, he was found guilty on political grounds and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His followers were devastated by revelations of his dishonesty both in business and in church dealings, and even more by his sexual transgressions, which started in the 1920s and continued into the 1950s. Disbelief turned into grief as the evidence (including photographs, Ni’s signed confession, and admission of guilt by at least one female co-worker) became conclusive. At the same time, Ni’s ten-year absence from the Lord’s Table was explained by his admission that he had had a guilty conscience. He died of natural causes in prison in 1972.

Several commendatory biographies of Watchman Ni have added to the enormous influence of his writings. He is remembered mostly for his early emphases: life centered upon God; devotion to Christ; reliance on the Holy Spirit; the centrality of the church; memorization of, and meditation upon, Scripture; and the indigenous nature of the Local Church. Among those who knew of Ni’s serious faults and failings, there is an awareness that no mere man should be looked to as a teacher of truth or a paragon of virtue. Others see the dangers of concentrating power in the hands of a single person or small group of elite leaders.