Shanghai Faithful by Jennifer Lin

[aron]

https://www.shanghaifaithful.com/excerpt

Introduction

I had never seen my father like this, and it frightened me.

His face was ashen and blank, his eyes puffy and bloodshot from a night without sleep. He stood beside me on the second-floor balcony of his childhood home in old Shanghai in what used to be his parents’ bedroom. It was the first morning of my first full day in China—June 18, 1979—and I listened as he recounted for me what he had learned only hours before from an elderly uncle. His words came out mechanically, as if he were running the information through his brain again, still struggling to grasp the meaning. In that moment on the porch, I began to feel that everything I knew about his family had been a façade carefully constructed to obscure the truth by the relatives I had met for the first time only the night before.

One of those people was no longer there; my grandfather—my dad’s father—had died six years earlier. He had been our window into the house on Jiaozhou Road. Every month, without fail, he wrote to us in Philadelphia with an update on family life. He reported on everyone’s health. He recounted a trip to the mountains, a visit to the zoo, a morning stroll in the park. He quoted a Tang dynasty poet or a verse from St. Paul. He described the bowl of noodles he had for his birthday and the blooming rosebush outside the front door. Sometimes he tucked black-and-white photographs of family members into the folds of the blue airmail letters. With impeccable English, he often ended his notes with reassuring words: “We are all well as usual. Do not worry about us.”

..With the Vietnam War playing in the background of my childhood, I was indifferent to my Chinese heritage. I wanted nothing more than to look like my best friend, an auburn-haired Irish girl whose four sisters presented a stark contrast to the mongrel look of my four sisters and me. My mother was the face of the family at our Catholic school and church. She provided some links to her husband’s homeland at the dinner table, cooking daily servings of rice in a tin pot he bought when he first arrived from Shanghai. After Mass on Christmas Eve, she served Peking duck along with her traditional beef stroganoff. But my busy father, a neurosurgeon, had neither the time nor interest to properly introduce us to Chinese ways. Every now and then, he would make a comment about his family’s religious life. His father, he told us, had been an Anglican priest who had studied as a young man at a seminary right here in Philadelphia. And he mentioned that another relative—an uncle with the curious name of Watchman Nee—was a Christian leader as popular in his time as the Reverend Billy Graham. That’s all I knew and all I cared to know. My mother had a firm hand on our Catholic upbringing. My Protestant roots in China would remain an exotic curiosity.

​But when I was twenty and a college student, President Carter normalized diplomatic relations with “Red China.” The era of the Cultural Revolution had ended in 1976, and China was beginning to recover from decades of isolation. Beneath all the formal State Department language was this: families like ours would be permitted to visit. Up until then, we could communicate only through letters. Now my father would be able to return home to see the brother and sister who stayed behind. His parents by then were deceased, as was Watchman Nee...

We arrived on the tarmac of the Hongqiao Airport in Shanghai on a blazing hot June afternoon. For the relatives who welcomed us, it had been a mere three years since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the dark decade when Red Guards attacked anyone with educational status, religious background, and Western ties...

At the airport, our entourage split up into two borrowed vans that picked their way down a bike-choked road. Cousins who had been only faces in photographs came to life with names and personalities. To make it easier for us, they let us refer to them by their Western names. Maozhi was Aunt Martha. Her daughters Tianlin and Zhongling were Terri and Julia. Rice paddies and squat brick buildings gave way to tree-shaded avenues with storefronts that looked like they belonged in Paris of the 1930s. What few cars were on the road were antiques from decades ago. The streetscape, too, flashed by in black and white, with everyone wearing white short-sleeved shirts and dark pants...

Everyone jammed inside the main room. Neighbors who heard what was going on stood in the doorway, straining to glimpse the foreigners. My father held court for hours, filling the gap of thirty years and answering a battery of questions. His Shanghai dialect was rusty. We relied on Julia’s husband, an English teacher named Victor, to translate for us. Who looks most like your Italian wife? How big is your house? Do you have a car? How many? Scanning the room, I tried to match names with faces. The eldest cousin, Julia, was polite and demure and, we were told, worked as a pianist for a theatrical troupe. Her younger sister, Terri, cradled a newborn and said little.

My father was still talking when I retreated to my aunt’s room a floor below and climbed into her bed, exhausted from our trip but happy to see my father home.

That first morning, blaring patriotic music from a loudspeaker mounted on a pole in the alley woke me. The energetic voice of a young woman roused the neighborhood. I didn’t understand a word, but it was obvious this was our wake-up call, and I got dressed. Outside, bike bells thrummed like cicadas. A stream of cyclists already choked Jiaozhou Road. In the distance, the baritone moan of ships on the Huangpu River joined the morning chorus. Standing on the balcony off the bedroom, I could peer into the lives of families on the other side of the alleyway, or longtang. A woman plopped dumplings into a wok of sizzling oil. An older man in a white undershirt stood on his balcony, swinging his arms like a windmill for exercise.

That was when I heard my father coming down the steps and turned to see him approaching me on the balcony. His words that morning would stay with me forever: “My god, this is so depressing.”

He explained. After my sisters and I had turned in for the night, he stayed up talking to his Uncle George, the younger brother of Watchman Nee. George asked him in a hushed voice, “Do you have any idea what happened to us?”

The uncle proceeded to tell him about the madness of the Cultural Revolution, when good people committed sadistic acts to curry favor with rebels and to protect themselves. My grandmother, his older sister, had it the worst. She was brutalized again and again for not disowning her brother, Watchman Nee, who had been branded an enemy of the people. Many times, her tormentors dragged her from her home, forced her to kneel on the pavement, and pressured her to denounce him.

The constant humiliation and physical torture, this uncle told my father, had hastened her death. But the family’s hardships began long before the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. Did my father know that his father, Lin Pu-chi, had been pushed out of his church work in the 1950s? Did he know that Watchman Nee had been sentenced to prison in 1956 after a trial, public shaming in the press, and the arrest of his “counterrevolutionary clique”?

The answer, sadly, was that my father had been clueless. Of course, we had read about the destructive Cultural Revolution, a decade of anarchy and struggle, when friends betrayed friends and children turned on their parents. And we knew that Watchman Nee had been sentenced in 1956 as a counterrevolutionary. But what we didn’t understand—what I didn’t sense until that trip—was how the political drama of the era had played out within the walls of this very house. We had been assured time and again by my grandfather that everything was fine. “Do not worry,” he wrote to us. “All’s well.” Now as I thought back to the faces that surrounded us the previous night, I wondered: Who were the victims? Who the collaborators?

During our two-week stay, my father tried to draw more details from his siblings but failed at every turn. No one wanted to talk; George alone revealed the truth, but even then only fragments. Fear kept their voices in a tight vise. They had been targeted once before; no one could assure them it wouldn’t happen again. My father didn’t press it. Instead, he vacillated between enjoying the here and now and brooding over disturbing scenes from the past that played out in his mind. It was as if an uninvited guest kept showing up as we went sightseeing from the Bund in Shanghai to the Forbidden City in Beijing. One moment, we would be sitting around a big table, laughing, enjoying a banquet, and listening to stories from long ago. The next moment, my father would drift off, anguished over thoughts of his mother in pain and his inability to help her.

When we returned to Philadelphia, my father seemed to take what he had learned, place it in a box, and put it somewhere far away. Maybe it was his temperament and training as a brain surgeon: assess, intervene, cure. Next patient. There was no way he could undo the past, so he would not dwell on it. He moved on. My reaction was different. Maybe it had something to do with the way I was wired. I was emerging as the reporter I wanted to be, and I couldn’t let go. I had read the last page of a mystery and needed to read all the preceding chapters. I wanted to know: What happened to them and why?

For the next three decades, I worked for a newspaper in Philadelphia. As a reporter, I learned how to talk to people and to peel back layers on complex issues. I parachuted into breaking news events all over the world—from Lower Manhattan after 9/11 to protests in the streets of Jakarta. Investigative work taught me how to drill into a topic like a miner until I reached the core of truth. But of all the subjects I took on, of all the events I covered, there was the story I could not shake, the one right in front me, the story of my family in China.

My grandfather and Watchman Nee both devoted their lives to nurturing the growth of Christianity in China. My grandmother was so devout that she clung to her Christian beliefs even in the face of unspeakable torment. All of them paid dearly for their choices. But the story of the family didn’t begin there. My grandparents and Watchman Nee were third-generation Christians. Who came before them? What were their experiences? And why, in a culture steeped in the teachings of Confucianism and Daoism, did they embrace the ideas of “foreign ghosts” from a world away?

[aron]

"My grandfather and Watchman Nee both devoted their lives to nurturing the growth of Christianity in China. My grandmother was so devout that she clung to her Christian beliefs even in the face of unspeakable torment. All of them paid dearly for their choices."

As a reader, one can't doubt the authenticity of the author, her grandparents and of Watchman Nee. All of them have lived lives as very real as mine or any. But we don't compare ourselves to each other. Our standard is Jesus, and we all orient to Him. We will all be judged on that standard and no other. So judging one another isn't relevant.

What is relevant is following. I was once an ardent disciple of Nee through his writings, which I carried around and shared freely, even aggressively at times. No longer.

When reading these stories, what really stands out for me, as an former LC attendee, is that in China there's no Bill of Rights. Brutality, humiliation and torment are tools for social conformity. This carried over, albeit in muted and/or cloaked fashion, into the LC. I didn't see physical brutality, but something more nuanced, carefully refined, only there we called it "perfecting" and "training." They said, "You are in the army." If you got humiliated publicly you were "in". I understood this implicitly in watching WL treat TC in front of perhaps thousands at a national training in Anaheim. It was ritualistic, formal even, and it then empowered TC to go back home to Cleveland Ohio and do the same to his underlings.

"The uncle proceeded to tell him about the madness of the Cultural Revolution, when good people committed sadistic acts to curry favor with rebels and to protect themselves. My grandmother, his older sister, had it the worst. She was brutalized again and again for not disowning her brother, Watchman Nee, who had been branded an enemy of the people. Many times, her tormentors dragged her from her home, forced her to kneel on the pavement, and pressured her to denounce him. The constant humiliation and physical torture, this uncle told my father, had hastened her death."

The Chinese church is as legitimate as any other - it's content of lives of faith is just as real and true. But be warned, it contains the thrust of thousands of years of human culture, which influence should never be confused with a so-called normal Christian church life. As Lin writes, "Good people do brutal things to curry favour". Jesus is normal, the rest of us try to struggle forward. If we think we're at something like normal, we're fooled, and stop going forward. Don't make that mistake - keep going.

[aron]

Quote from the first post:

Originally Posted by Jennifer Lin

During our two-week stay, my father tried to draw more details from his siblings but failed at every turn. No one wanted to talk; George alone revealed the truth, but even then only fragments. Fear kept their voices in a tight vise... My father didn’t press it.

This picture above is of the bad Communists and the poor persecuted saints of the church. But what happens when the poor, persecuted church gains power, and control? The same dynamics reappear - that's the influence of the native culture. Whether "communist" or "christian", there are some variations, but the pattern repeats again in the social collective. Because to members of the collective, that's what's normal. To them, transparency and open-ness isn't normal. They have given up freedom for stability. Silence equals safety.

When I came in to the LC, nobody wanted to talk about the latest "storm". I heard two people talking about it quietly, and when I asked them, they looked at the floor and said nothing. I was total newbie, just arrived in love with "Christ and the church life", so just like Jennifer Lin's father, I didn't press it. There was definitely this strong, unspoken undercurrent, "If you know what's good for you, don't say anything. Don't ask too many questions."

So is anyone in this group going to tell you the truth about Watchman Nee? Will either the Communists or the Christians? It's a challenge to get information. And yet, if you gave your life to follow in the footsteps of this man, wouldn't you want to know what you were following? I did.

[aron]

Interview Podcast with Hank Hanegraaf

---------------------

Hank: We are talking to Jennifer Lin. She is an award-winning journalist, a former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the book that she has written, Shanghai Faithful, truly, I could not put this book down. Now, I have a deep and abiding interest in China, but seeing what has gone on in China, talking about the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and so much more, through the eyes of Jennifer Lin’s family has been absolutely revolutionary for me.

Jennifer, that makes me think of an ultimate question. Why would the average American or the average American Christian be interested in this particular story? Maybe better yet, why should they be?

Jennifer: Well, you know, Hank, the story is set in China, but really it is a story with universal themes. One of the themes is just the faith of a family. I think Americans might be interested in knowing that. I think there is also kind of a curiosity about China. You know, Hank, there are many books that have been written over the years, over the century really, by missionaries who went to China, and they told their stories. British missionaries, American missionaries, libraries are filled with books by missionaries. What I try to do in my book is really to tell the story from the other perspective, from the people they were encountering in China, the Chinese themselves. I think anyone who would be interested in China or interested in the missionary experience would be also I think intrigued with the story of family because, again, the Christian roots of my family go back five generations. The first convert was a fisherman in the Fujian province who went to work then for the Anglican missionaries in the city of Fozhou as a cook. He was a simple cook. That really was the start.

Hank: I think in some way this is the story of how Christianity gains a foothold in a culture steeped in the teachings of Confucianism. When you think about two of the most exemplary people that came out of China; you immediately think of Confucius, and then you think of Watchman Nee. ( !! ) I mean Watchman Nee, though he was imprisoned in 1956, originally arrested in 1952, and he died in prison, the branch grew over the wall, and made a real impact and continues to make an impact around the world.

Jennifer: Yes. You know after the Opium War, and that was like 1852, China was forced to open up port to foreigners and so the traders came into China and then the missionaries. The missionaries, the Jesuits, had been in China for hundreds of years, the Catholics, but in terms of the Protestant missionaries, waves of them came into China after 1850. The foreigners introduced Christianity to the Chinese, but really the point I am trying to make in my book, Hank, is that it was Chinese Christians like Watchman Nee, like my grandfather the Reverend Lin Pu-Chi, who had really created a foundation of Christianity.

After 1949, things became really difficult. As I said before, churches closed in 1966, and they only reopened in 1979. At the time, I was in China, as I mentioned on that family reunion in 1979, and there was a news account in the paper in the English language, China Daily, saying churches would reopen. I remember talking to my cousin about it, who was my age, and saying, “Wow, I wonder what’s going to happen?” This cousin said, “Oh, nothing’s going to happen, it’ll only be the old people because for young people, you know, we grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and we saw how churches were closed, and no one is going to be interested.” He and I were very wrong in our projection, because now Christianity is flourishing but the reason is because of the Chinese Christians themselves who really helped to build a foundation for the Christian church.

Hank: Tell me about your grandfather. I almost feel like I could pick him out in a crowd after reading the book.

Jennifer: I am so glad to hear that. He became the central character really. Hank, he was an intellectual. He went to St. John’s University, which was run by the Episcopal missionaries in Shanghai, and then from there he went to the United States to go to graduate school. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school. He studied philosophy. He also was sent by the Episcopal Church to Philadelphia to the seminary. The missionaries knew that they needed to cultivate Chinese clerics, so they encouraged men like my grandfather to go to the United States or to go to seminary.

Interesting story, my grandfather really wanted to help make China strong again. This was after 1911 and the fall of the Qing Dynasty. He wanted to get an American education. He really wanted to get his doctorate in philosophy, but it was two years into his stay in the United States and all of a sudden, he got a letter from home from his father saying you need to come home because I found a woman for you to marry. It was an arranged marriage. He was facing this dilemma. He wanted to be a modern man. He wanted to grab everything he could get in the United States, but at the same time, he was brought up in a Confucius culture, and he was very much the dutiful son. He was torn between goals and desires. At the end of the day, he was the dutiful son and he went home. He cut short his time in the United States, and he went back to Fozhou and married by grandmother, who was only nineteen years old, and she was the older sister of Watchman Nee.

So my grandfather then became very active in the Anglican Church. He was an editor. He edited The Chinese Churchmen, which was a Chinese language magazine that went out across China, and he was a very deep intellectual man, who also like you, Hank, had a deep interest in the teachings of Confucius. He really felt Christianity as complementary, in fact. He was a very empowering figure.

https://equipblog.wpengine.com/explo...ghai-faithful/

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I was struck by the fact that Watchman Nee's older sister was given in arranged marriage to an Anglican scholar. There was an uneasy bled of Chinese and Western. (I suppose all of us are an uneasy blend of something - I'm pointing out this particular history).

In the LC, I don't ever remember hearing of WN's Anglican sister and brother-in-law. I remember reading/hearing that he came from an Anglican background. But of course in the LSM narrative of church history I don't think his Christian family would be a useful part of the "recovery" story. Maybe others heard of details, I don't remember any.

But what I was struck by in the Jennifer Lin story is that some Chinese Christians were resistant to the Communists, and some went along with the new reality, some going so far as to renounce the faith and denounce those former associates.

Now, the $64 question is: did WN go along? Did he resist? It seems from the Lily Hsu book, that he confessed to "immoral" practices. But what is the context? Did others resist such charges? And I still am not sure that the people who contacted Roberts weren't Communist plants. You just don't know - the Communists would have had reasons to discredit WN. It's possible. Perhaps he never confessed, but Lily Hsu and others made it up.

WL was a source of disinformation, only giving the story that would prop up his Guanxi Network (the Local Church/Lords Recovery dba Living Stream Ministry). I'm not sure Uncle George told Jennifer Lin's father anything that might make the immediate or extended family look bad. But I'd trust a reporter for the Philadelphia Enquirer more than either the Communists, or LSM. Lin was trained to go after the truth, no matter who looks bad (or good). The truth is a thing-in-itself which is more important than any Guanxi Network, or "church" narrative, or Government Party Line. With the Witness Lee Guanxi Network (i.e. the Local Church), as with the one running the PRC, the guanxi network is the thing-in-itself, and whatever story props that up is their "truth".

We'll have to wait until a real reporter takes on the Watchman Nee story. Dana Roberts lent his name to a very poorly done work. Someone else has to step up.

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

We'll have to wait until a real reporter takes on the Watchman Nee story. Dana Roberts lent his name to a very poorly done work. Someone else has to step up.

Here's a fairly even-handed review/synopsis of the Lin book. Interesting comment toward the end that some 15 million identify as 'Little Flock', with ex-patriot communities outside China.

https://www.globalchinacenter.org/an...nghai-faithful

The other interesting thing is how the two distinct cultures East and West will merge, as when Chinese study under Edinburgh-trained seminarians, and occasionally break up, as with the Boxer Rebellion, and the anti-"imperialist" show trials of the Cultural Revolution, when anyone associated with the West was cruelly treated.

With so many millions revering Watchman Nee today, even in a cult-like way, the questions remain important. In 1956, did WN confess to immoral acts as charged? And if so, how does his response compare to others? If he confessed, how did this affect the many adherents of his style of Christianity?

Given the fact that his defenders seem to avoid these questions, even assiduously, I think the cause for real concern is warranted. Given that his ministry is based on false premises - "I wrote this work" in the preface to Spiritual Man - one suspects that levels of untruth and myth-building are interwoven throughout.

There are a number of agents on both sides of the growing narrative who have vested interests in continuing untruth. I suspect that some, like Jennifer Lin, want to know what really happened, believing that truth itself has its own liberating power.

What follows is an example where an insider knows something is wrong, but in his culture he reflexively wants to cover up. Witness Lee's "church" was being used as a cover for the Lee family business. And ones who knew of it, and that a pattern of failed history was repeating on new ground, were concerned but were unable to do or say anything.

Originally Posted by Church History by Isitt

In 1966 Samuel Chang revealed to a young prospective elder, Don Hardy, his serious concern for Brother Lee and a defect in his character related to his son, Timothy, and all his seven children. Don was exhorted to keep the matter covered much in prayer. Samuel’s concern was well-founded given the record of the extent Brother Lee would go for his son, Timothy, in business at the expense of others and the church. His word to Don portended for far more serious developments in the future with Timothy Lee and another son, Philip, who were made heads of businesses for Brother Lee, involving the saints.

What provoked Samuel Chang to speak to Don Hardy as he did was that the meeting place of the church in Los Angeles was being used by Brother Lee to store the unsold expensive suits and shirts left over from his World’s Fair business with Timothy. This was a source of irritation and concern to Samuel, especially since he knew of the problems Brother Lee’s business excursions had caused the church in the past in Taipei.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Lin p 7-9

On the cold afternoon of January 30, 1956, armed guards stood at each entrance. A sullen line of people, clad in padded grey and white blue cotton coats, filed through the doors. They were Christians, summoned by the Communist government to the theater just off the new People’s Square in the city’s center. They had been identified as followers of the teachings of Watchman Nee, and they were about to learn what it meant to be an enemy of the people in the PRC.

On this Monday afternoon there would indeed be a performance – a carefully scripted “political struggle meeting.” The target was not present. Watchman Nee sat in isolation in a concrete cell in the Number One Detention Center of the Shanghai Police. He had been in custody for four years, following his arrest on a train en route to the northern city of Shenyang.

It was chilly inside the theater. Watchman Nee’s followers, called the “Little Flock” by outsiders, filled every seat. Most of them went to the same Christian assembly hall on nearby Nanyang Road, including the preacher’s frail, sickly older sister, Ni Guizhen. Seated in the front row were sober-faced representatives from other religious groups – Protestant clerics, seminary students, an Anglican bishop, a Catholic priest, and a Buddhist monk. Onstage were a dozen party officials and prosecutors, who sat under a banner with Chinese characters that read: “Down with counterrevolutionary clique of Watchman Nee.”

The head of the Shanghai Bureau of Religious Affairs stood and approached a microphone. For the first time since the arrest of Watchman Nee, the government would reveal its case against him. The bureau chief told the audience that prosecutors had accumulated an overwhelming file of evidence – 2,296 pages of confessions, documents, testimonies, and photographs – to prove that Watchman Nee tried “to supersede revolution with evangelism.”

In the seven years since the dawn of Communist China, the new regime had asserted control over nearly all churches, mosques, temples, and religious groups. Some, however, resisted joining the new party-approved “patriotic” Protestant movement. Among them were Watchman Nee and many who followed his religious teachings.

Next up onstage was the head of the Shanghai Public Library Security Bureau, the omnipotent agency that kept tabs on all of the city’s residents. He had an announcement. Late the night before, several elders with the Nanyang Road assembly had been arrested in their homes and sent to the bureau for further interrogation. They were, he declared, members of Watchman Nee’s “counterrevolutionary gang.”

The thousands in the audience listened, stunned and mute. Bodies froze and minds raced. The official was talking about respected associates and confidants of Watchman Nee. No one dared react: There were no cries, no gasps, no movement. Had there been, officials of the Religious Affairs Bureau seated at either end of each row were there to take note.

Prosecutors next laid out their case for imprisoning Watchman Nee. They did not scrutinize his religious teachings or Christian beliefs. They went after his character. Act I: he was a spy. Watchman Nee, an official recited, fed information to enemies in the United States Air Force and the Chinese Nationalist Party about Liberation Army troop movements during the civil war. He concocted an insidious plot to infect the troops in Jiangsu with a parasitic worm by dropping snails into their water supply from Lake Tai – and then withholding the materials for a curative drug. He encouraged the Nationalists to target attacks on water and electric plants, a strategy that had succeeded in Shanghai.

Act II: he was an economic criminal. The pharmaceutical factory that he ran with his brother – the China Biological and Chemical Laboratories – evaded taxes, bribed officials, and dodged foreign-exchange rules.

Act III: he was a “dissolute vagabond of corrupt and indulgent living.” Watchman Nee was accused of forcing himself on young women; taking nude photos and movies as licentious mementoes; and frequenting prostitutes, including one particular “White Russian” refugee.

The meeting went on for hours. A handful of his followers took to the stage to vent emotions of anger and betrayal about their spiritual leader. Some shouted, “We will smash the reactionary clique of Watchman Nee!”

Why is this different from the Lily Hsu account? Did WN respond to the charges? If so, was his response different from others facing similar charges? She just says that he wasn't there that day. Did he ever respond, and how?

Also, I'm interested in how he got money to run a pharmaceutical factory. Was this after the "handing over"? Was this embarked, similar to how Witness Lee funded his son's Motor Home business? I notice that the factory is co-owned by Nee's brother. It always seemed odd, to me. And still does. If the money came from Nee's brother, why did he need a Christian author to run it? It may all be very innocent, but at least it looks quite odd.

And if he really "evaded taxes, bribed officials, and dodged foreign-exchange rules" then we know that at least two of those three was done by WL as well. So it's really not as fantastic as we might imagine. The "snails" thing seems fantastic. The rest seems plausible. Even though the Communists were not above lying if need be, they would also use the truth when convenient. Strange, that's also like Nee and Lee; funny thing, tis.

[HERn]

Originally Posted by aron

Why is this different from the Lily Hsu account? Did WN respond to the charges? If so, was his response different from others facing similar charges? She just says that he wasn't there that day. Did he ever respond, and how?

Also, I'm interested in how he got money to run a pharmaceutical factory. Was this after the "handing over"? Was this embarked, similar to how Witness Lee funded his son's Motor Home business? I notice that the factory is co-owned by Nee's brother. It always seemed odd, to me. And still does. If the money came from Nee's brother, why did he need a Christian author to run it? It may all be very innocent, but at least it looks quite odd.

And if he really "evaded taxes, bribed officials, and dodged foreign-exchange rules" then we know that at least two of those three was done by WL as well. So it's really not as fantastic as we might imagine. The "snails" thing seems fantastic. The rest seems plausible. Even though the Communists were not above lying if need be, they would also use the truth when convenient. Strange, that's also like Nee and Lee; funny thing, tis.

It seems like if you are a self-proclaimed MOTA the normal rules on ethics, honesty, loving one another, and avoiding self promotion do not apply.

[aron]

Originally Posted by HERn

It seems like if you are a self-proclaimed MOTA the normal rules on ethics, honesty, loving one another, and avoiding self promotion do not apply.

You can even occasionally borrow from your foes, whom you just finished condemning. Why did WL tell us, at the height of the New Way, in his Ministry Reeducation Camps - sorry, that's FTTT - that "we need to learn from the Red Guards"? Was that a Freudian slip?

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

You can even occasionally borrow from your foes, whom you just finished condemning. Why did WL tell us, at the height of the New Way, in his Ministry Reeducation Camps - sorry, that's FTTT - that "we need to learn from the Red Guards"? Was that a Freudian slip?

I thought it was Philip who said that.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I thought it was Philip who said that.

Thanks for the correction. Before we get to opinions we should get to the facts.

This goes to my recent reading - who do you trust for the facts? The communist government? Uh, no - not unless independently verified. They clearly want WN's reputation destroyed. They will use truth if they can find it, but if they can't, they'll settle for disinformation and misinformation.

Witness Lee? Same as above. Truth was whatever was convenient to the narrative at hand, and now his ministry acolytes. Verify everything. Reports, stories, articles, books, websites, Amazon book reviews? All the same. Verify it all, independently. I recently read two books, one said that WN was arrested in Shanghai, one that he was on a train north of Shanghai.

Dana Roberts & Lily Hsu? Hsu was too consumed by an agenda to report accurately. She may even be a communist plant, and/or others contacted by Roberts. I wouldn't put it past them. Shoddy work is a poor indicator of factual accuracy, and the book is shoddy.

Jennifer Lin? She seems to be an accurate reporter, but would she leave out WN confession, or other materials, if it made her family look bad? Perhaps.

Others? Same thing. There are too many people out there with agendas. If you read the Amazon reviews of Spiritual Man, there are over 1,000 5-star reviews, most saying that this book is second only to the Bible. Somehow, if you read it, you get taken to this, ahem, mystical realm, touching God.

It's a pretty short trail, that I can see, from J Penn-Lewis, who may have channeled Freemason philosophy into her work, into MEB asking WN to translate J P-L in this "end-of-the-world" intensity, to WN feverishly (literally, with TB) cribbing it and passing it off as his own (no surprise he tried, his Chinese readers wouldn't know the original), to it being a surprise best-seller, first in China then in the West, which captivates thousands as the decades roll past, in spite of all the suspicious information that keeps coming forth about WN. And the more you read the worse it looks.

All that has to be got through, all the agendas and their accrued stories, to find out what happened. And only when we find out what happened, only then, can we make an assessment. Otherwise, we say, "Thus far, it looks like this..." Which is what I've been doing. Seeing which way all the arrows are pointing. None of them really look very good.

[aron]

I've learned more from Joseph Tse-Hie Lee's 2005 paper "Watchman Nee and Maoist China", which references works only available in Chinese, and whose authors had access to primary sources. Most striking is the claim that Nee participated in the denunciations and counter-denunciations in the political unrest of the early 1950s. There's this cultivated public image of a reticent WN, too humble and spiritual to defend himself - apparently not always the case.

Another notable thing that is that he was the owner of considerable property. When the communists took over and began collectivism, he and some close associates spread property & tools among 63 church members, to try and shield it from seizure.

Nothing wrong with owning property, but if you lead a church that demands handing over, and you're found to be holding substantial property yourself, what does that look like? Imagine that in Acts 4, they sold properties and laid the proceeds at Peter's feet, and later we find out he was running family business(es) on the side? What does that look like?

Doesn't say how many in his inner circle converted their holdings to a shell company of 63 peasants. But it looks just like WL thirty years later: having a family-led businesses "for the gospel" funded with church members' $$ and having a shell company in between, with himself & a few cronies, dba Phosphorous and Overseas Christian Stewards. If it wasn't for Sal Benoit's phone call, we'd probably know none of this. And if it wasn't for the J T-H Lee paper, I doubt we'd know about Nee, either. Neither story helps to maintain of the myth.

[aron]

Following previous post (#11), are quotes and sources for J T-H Lee 2005 paper on Nee

"What happened inside the Little Flock communities?. . . It has been difficult for Chinese and foreign researchers to conduct fieldwork among the Little Flock in China today. It's also difficult to piece together the thorough account of their leader. There are a few biographical works on Watchman Nee written by Christians abroad. Aimed at the Overseas Chinese churches critical of Communist religious policy, these works emphasize the saintly character of Watchman Nee without addressing the contexts in which he interacted with the government. Recent studies by Leung Ka-Lun and Ying Fuk-Tsang of Hong Kong are important for our understanding of the subject. Drawing on published and unpublished Chinese official sources, Leung and Ying present invaluable findings about the changing attitude of Watchman Nee towards the Communist state and his ambiguous relationship with leaders of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement." ~p.70

~Leung Ka-Lun, Ni Tuosheng de rongru shengchu [Watchman Nee: His Glory and Dishonour] (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 2003); and Ying Fuk-Tsang, Ni Tuosheng yu sanzi gexin yundong [Watchman Nee and the Three-Self Movement, 1949-1951] Jian Dao: A Journal of Bible and Theology 20 (July 2003): 129-75

Then Lee's 2005 paper covers how Nee reversed field completely from autonomous local churches to a centralized movement, and adds this:

"Institutionally speaking, the Shanghai Assembly was the de facto headquarters of the Little Flock Movement in China. The authority was concentrated in the hands of "God's apostles", namely Watchman Nee and his female co-workers, Li Yuanru, Wang Peizhen, and Yu Chenghua, who were famous evangelists before joining the Little Flock. The Home of Deacons and Guling in Fuzhou was the national training center of Little Flock leaders while the Gospel Bookstore in Shanghai published Christian pamphlets. There were many such business enterprises run by Watchman Nee in support of the Little Flock activities." ~p.79

Doesn't this look odd? Three women as "God's apostles" whilst they can't be elders in local churches because we all know that women can't hold authority in church? Witness Lee's bio of Nee has a whole chapter on women leaders in the Little Flock emergence. Why does no one ever question this? It's a strange position and stranger still that no one seems to notice this. Or care.

"The government had introduced in June 1950 the Agrarian Reform Law, which abolished the landownership system of feudal exploitation and confiscated landowners' holdings for redistribution to landless peasants in order to destroy the gentry. Some Little Flock leaders, notably Watchman Nee, owned large land properties in Fujian province. He immediately advised Wang Peizhen, who supervised the Home of Deacons in Guling, to redistribute land and farm implements among sixty-three Little Flock members during land reform." ~p.83

Interesting that Nee promoted collectivisation just as the communists did. But when he did it, it was okay.

"In September 1951, four Little Flock members in the Nanjing Assembly denounced Watchman Nee as a reactionary. In response, Nee launched a counterdenunciation campaign and disciplined those progovernment Little Flock members. But one year later, he was arrested." ~p.86

There is a LOT here on Little Flock mobilization and resistance tactics before they were crushed in the Great Leap Forward. I didn't want to start a new thread, but tagged it onto the Jennifer Lin thread for one reason: because so few Little Flock voices came out of China. We have WN's sermons and WL's myths. I'd strongly urge anyone who's given their lives to follow this way, to try to find out what happened. To do otherwise is to choose a course of deliberate ignorance. And those who don't learn from history are getting set up to repeat it.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

Another notable thing that is that [Nee] was the owner of considerable property. When the communists took over and began collectivism, he and some close associates spread property & tools among 63 church members, to try and shield it from seizure.

Nothing wrong with owning property, but if you lead a church that demands handing over, and you're found to be holding substantial property yourself, what does that look like?

I also find this very troubling.

The real estate holdings of LSM are enormous, and also troubling. Think about it. What ministry owns a cemetery and sells plots to members to be close to their MOTA after death?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I also find this very troubling.

The real estate holdings of LSM are enormous, and also troubling. Think about it. What ministry owns a cemetery and sells plots to members to be close to their MOTA after death?

Everything is supposedly for the furtherance of the gospel. And much of it is. However, some, perhaps a not-inconsiderable part, seems to be feathering one's own nest. Everyone makes a big deal about how ascetic Lee was, but his non-ascetic family's had their hands in church finances to be sure. As he told Sal Benoit, "This is my personal business", even though it was Sal's money.

Likewise with Nee, who had a pharmaceutical business with his brother and we don't know what the details are, but Nee ran multiple businesses, some directly connected to church, some not, and the opportunities to skim funds and set up side deals and real estate holdings were too numerous to count. Like with Lee in the USA and Dong in Brasil, how many church members got recruited to be church-qua-family-qua-business "workers" at some cut rate?

Here's a Bible teacher that could fill 5,000 seats every single Sunday morning. He built a 3,000-seat hall when he was 28 years old for his meetings! Why did he need to go into business? And, why did he get pushed out of church leadership for business dealings? Can anyone see this scenario unfolding with Paul or Peter or John? If not, how can this person have the so-called ministry of the age, assuming there even is one, which is dubious? It rather looks like the "Seer of the Divine Revelation" narrative was convenient myth, to prop up the narrator's personal interests.

The facts, as they slowly emerge, don't support the narrative.

Remember, that Paul collected funds from every locality, not only to support his entourage but also to bring to Jerusalem, to the poor. Peter got estates sold and the proceeds distributed. Jesus had someone following him around with a bag of money (John 13:29), taking care of physical needs. But nobody ever said of any of them, that what they were doing was a scam. They gave no ground for any such concept to enter anyone's heads. I've never seen any record of any suspicion by anyone of low dealings. Yet over and over we see this with Nee and Lee, occasionally blatantly. I'll never forget Ohio's story of Lee calling Chu: "You just bought 1,000 chairs". Avariciousness is all over this operation, and it probably didn't start with Lee.

And it didn't end with Lee, either, if you hear what's happened with Dong et al. The flock is a captive vehicle for family business. The reason the LSM is so afraid of Dong is that one can see the same pattern of isolation, predation and paranoia repeated, and they know that people might get wise. Likewise, you can see the pattern faintly, in the few details we know, of Watchman Nee.