A Lack of Confidence?

           Is there a danger that missionaries, especially priests, are becoming more involved in social issues than in religious? Or at least, they are tending to put more emphasis on community service than religious leadership?

In a March 2010 speech, Pope Benedict spoke of the danger of priests being seen as social workers rather than as spiritual intermediaries.

A recent IMU Report (2010, No1) summarized a discussion among missionaries as to whether they had anything special to offer in the field to development. Their suggestions included: missionaries live closer to the people, witness by their lives, involve locals, look at development in holistic terms and so on. What was surprisingly missing was the absence of a religious element.

Perhaps the missionary focus on community development took the spiritual for granted but the writer of the report reflects an opinion that Vatican II “portrayed the missionary as an agent of human development, liberation, dialogue with other religions, justice and social change.”

            Should we be concerned? Recent history does show a deliberate move to downplay the religious aspect of mission. How this occurred is described by Oborji (Concept of Mission, p. 134 ff), Yale historian, Lamin Sanneh, (‘Disciples of all Nations’, p. 272 ff) and others. I will summarize Sanneh’s version.

            After World War I, there was a crisis of confidence about the value of the gospel following the mutual slaughter of so-called Christians. If ‘Christians’ could kill each other like that, what had the churches to offer the non-Christian world?

            At the second World Missionary Conference in 1928, the idea spread that the uniqueness and finality of Christ was no longer tenable in view of the reality of other faiths. In the spirit of the growing ecumenical movement, there was a further call for Christians to show an attitude of humility, equality and interdependence toward other religions. The mission of the Church would no longer be to share its spiritual message with the world. Rather, it should renounce any goal of conversion and devote its energies to improving economic and social life. A new international order of cooperation and autonomy would be initiated. There was a call to “End Mission Imperialism Now!”    

            At the beginning this was mainly a Protestant movement and at the 1960 conference of the World’s Student Christian Federation at Strasbourg the decisive step was taken of calling on Christians to shun primacy of doctrine and to commit instead to contextual social engagement. As a report from the World Council of Churches put it, it is the world, not the Church, that now writes God’s agenda. It did not take long for Catholic groups to join the movement and from then on Catholic missionary documents began to reflect the new attitude.

            Were there other reasons for this shift in mission focus?

            In a recent interview, Cardinal Danneels, former Primate of Belgium, stated, “The biggest obstacle to the proclamation of the gospel is the lack of confidence in those who want to evangelize.” There does seem be something holding back missionaries from addressing strictly religious concerns. Confidence in the message itself seems to remain but there is less confidence in the way it is expressed or practiced. Today, the Church’s traditional language, explanations and activities fail to attract, not just the millions of Asia, but people in the Americas and Europe.

            Many missionaries have experienced the problem of talking about faith matters with their own younger relatives back home. It is easier to chat with nephews and nieces about poverty, injustice, global warming or even sport.

The first question this poses is an alarming one: Do we consider our own faith worth sharing with them? Do we really believer it can make a useful contribution to their lives? This deserves more than a minute’s consideration, but we will take the answer as ‘Yes’.

The next question to be answered is whether it is just our type of religion that fails to interest them. Might they have their own valid ideas on religion? If we believe they have no religious sense at all, then we and they are in deep trouble. It would indeed be time to abandon any hope of talking with them about matters of the spirit and to turn our show of concern to financial, health or emotional areas.

If however we believe that everyone has a spiritual side to them, and that this can express itself in different ways, then we should be making efforts to understand where they are and how we can find common ground with them.

As professional missionaries we should have been trained in how to do this properly but our formations was designed for life within traditional parish structures and priestly activity. Those who saw the need to move out beyond those limits in order to engage the unreached had to find their own way by trial and error. Missionary work is not rocket science and some of the most valuable insights were gained, not from books, but from working with people.  It would be a pity if the experience gained by such interaction was not shared and built upon. So I am thinking of setting up a blog or discussion group to gather people’s ideas on topics like the following.

Listening: How do we listen without letting our own interests, such as a wish to talk about a particular spirituality, poverty alleviation program or caring apostolate get in the way?

Distinguish: How do I separate in my own faith what is essentially Christian and what are cultural and non-essential expressions I have inherited?

Articulate: How do I express my faith in ways that make sense to others, allowing for their particular background and concerns? Faith is not isolated from life. As Christians we should all be involved in the economic, cultural and social realities around us but, at the same time, how do I highlight the essential element for human wellbeing that only religion can offer?

               Hugh MacMahon     4/27/10

The Dangers and Benefits of ‘Localization’

            There were three different periods in the history of the Church in China when efforts were made, consciously or unconsciously, to make the Christian message more comprehensible and acceptable to the local people. It is worth examining them to see what can be learnt from their successes or failures and how this can help our own efforts to share the gospel where cultural differences pose an obstacle.

            Hugh MacMahon traces the three  stages and the questions they pose for today.   

            Before the arrival of the Jesuits in 1580 there had been a number of attempts, going back to the Nestorians in 635, to bring the Christian message to China. They had little success mainly because they made no deliberate effort to adapt the Christian message to the religious traditions and spiritual heritage of the people.

The Jesuits were the first to recognize the importance of making the message understandable and acceptable in the Chinese language and Confucian world view.

The Jesuit Accommodation with Confucianism

             It took twenty years for the Jesuits who entered China in 1580 to work their way up to Beijing and get acceptance from the Emperor. By showing deep respect for the Chinese way of life and offering their services to the court they were given a degree of freedom to evangelize inside and outside Beijing. For the next 120 years they had comparative freedom to introduce Christianity in Chinese terminology and religious experience. By 1700 there were about 200,000 Catholics in the country, mainly in the countryside

            The ‘Chinese Rites’ controversy brought their efforts to an abrupt end. The Dominicans opposed the Jesuit’s policy of honoring Confucius and ancestral tablets and in 1701 the Vatican banned participation in sacrifices for Confucius or ancestors. In response to this snub to Chinese culture the Emperor Kiangxi, who had been very favorable to the Catholic Church until then, prohibited all forms of evangelization.

            The Yongzheng Emperor, for similar political reasons, renewed the ban on Christianity and expelled all missionaries. This policy was continued under the Emperor Qianlong, who reigned for sixty years from 1735. It is interesting that all three emperors befriended individual Jesuits and allowed as many as twenty of them to continue working for the court in Beijing. However they were not allowed to preach.

The Chinese Church Left on Its Own

            The initial effort to inculturate by the Jesuits was followed by 120 years of oppression and persecution when the Chinese Catholics were more or less left to themselves without foreigners or priests. Rather than continuing the Jesuit’s efforts to adapt Catholic tradition to the local culture, they allowed church practices to merge with traditional religiosity to the extent that a modern scholar could accuse their church of becoming “as much a folk religion as a world religion”.

From 1742 to 1842 small numbers of Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans were able to make covert visits to the countryside and tried to provide basic pastoral services. However, their visits to the scattered communities were irregular and in the absence of priests the local Catholic leaders (jiao-tu and hui-jang) led the communities on a permanent basis.

Most of them had little training in the official teachings of the church and were open to the influences of the traditional popular religion around them. Thus a form of ‘indigenized Christianity’ developed that would shape the Catholic church in China up to modern times. Since the Korean church got many of its practices from China, it too was to be deeply influenced by these developments.    

An Indigenous Chinese Church?

The distinctive form of the Chinese church, evolved over 120 years outside foreign supervision, is an interesting example of how a Local Church might emerge if left to the ordinary people. It poses the question whether it ended up more ‘Chinese’ than ‘Christian’?

            According to Daniel Bays, (A New History of Christianity in China, 2011, p 25) in the 1700s, “The religious consciousness of Catholic congregations in the countryside was to a great extent drenched in the world of miracles, visions and other manifestations of the supernatural.” The ‘new’ Christian world differed little from the religious world the people had always known, with Christian saints replacing traditional spirits and rituals taking forms that resembled those of popular religions. 

            The mainly rural church conformed to its local environment in a number of ways.

It supported filial piety and family solidarity despite the Vatican condemnation of ancestral tablets.

The separation of men and women in gatherings was strictly observed, sometimes leading to separate services.

            In line with Confucian thinking, the people were motivated by a desire to develop the innate human goodness within people than a remorse for ‘original sin’. As a result, confessing a felt need for redemption was not a major step in converting to Christianity.

The practicality of the people also led to compromise on the church’s insistence on monogamy and some other moral demands. Strong millenarian traditions in the Chinese countryside began to find expression in Catholic communities.

Religious identity centered around Christian symbols (holy water, crosses and statues), rituals (baptism, marriage and funerals) and the observance of Church holydays. 

            All this has led scholars such as Jacques Gernet to question whether conversions at that time were authentic since they often seemed to come with a desire to gain benefits (healing, effectiveness, power) rather than an understanding of the teachings of the gospels.

            For such reasons the Chinese church of that period has been likened to folk Buddhist sects. Local persecutions were sometimes caused by the authorities fearing that its Buddhist-like millenarianism might cause disturbances at times of crises.

Korea, a Mirror

            Working in Korea in the early 1960s, I could see many of the above characteristics (except the millenarianism) still visible in remote rural outstations which might be visited by a priest only once or twice a year. They were run by lay leaders (hui-zhangs), had a daily schedule of morning and evening prayers and large gatherings on Sunday or when the priest visited.

The leader performed baptisms and funerals, though often baptisms and first communions were held over for the priest’s annual visit when marriages were also held solemnized. Being able to recite the catechism, as taught by the leaders, was the main condition for baptism.

Communal Faith versus Individual Faith

While this is a fairly broad sketch of an era and situation for which little historical data exists, it does illustrate a question that has troubled missionaries for centuries. When are communities or individuals considered genuinely Christian or when are they just practitioners of ancient popular religion with some Christian externals? 

In any rural Catholic communities of that time, in Europe and elsewhere, the same questioning could just as easily have been posed. Is it sufficient to be baptized, observe certain festivals and rituals and, as best one can, observe certain rules of morality, to be considered a true Christian?

On the one hand it can be asked whether a person who claims to be a Christian should not at least be aware of the main message of the gospel and try to follow Christ. Many members of the rural Catholic communities in China, and elsewhere, would have failed if that was a requirement. They were more familiar with God than with Christ, and with a divine Christ rather than a human Christ. God was a remote potential helper or judge rather than a living inspiration and example who too form in a person like Christ. For them the Kingdom of God was to be experienced in the next world, not this one.

On the other hand, it could be claimed that the rituals, prayers and symbols of the Church, formal and foreign as they might be, were effective. They could bring a deeper awareness of God’s presence, concern and assistance into the lives of people than their previous understanding and practices were able to do. After all, deepening the relationship between God and people are the ultimate goal of religion and Christianity.

 It was the indigenous practices of the Catholic communities that kept the faith alive during the 120 year of persecution and also in the later period of Communist suppression. Today it is the background from which most of the new leaders – priests, Religious and lay -- have emerged.  It must have certain strengths and value. 

When the Catholic faith was strong in Ireland it did provide this function for most of the population. The doctrines of the church may not have been deeply understood, and often seemed unrelated to the realities of daily life, but its practices helped to keep the sacred alive in people’s lives and gave them inspiration as to how they should live and die.  

Relevance Today

These are not just academic or armchair concerns, at least two realities demand that the question be taken seriously and some agreement reached on how to deal with them.

First, in our developing understanding of the Christian message today, does the gospel not seem to demand a personal relationship with Christ, a sense of being called,  of relationship developed through reflection and prayer and a conscious effort to practice charity? How do modern Christian match that description? Missionary and pastoral responses depend on knowing the answer.

Second, rural communities that supported a family or community style faith, centered on ritual and a publicly supported morality are disappearing as people move to cities. In an unfamiliar urban setting they had to depend on their own resources, find an individual relationship with God and develop a personal conscience.

While it can be said that ‘communal faith’ provided a useful function in the past, it is not adequate in the modern urban situation. A new attitude to evangelization is inevitable.

For Chinese Christians, these realities became urgent as their county moved towards the modern era. How they coped with the challenges can be found in their later history. We leave that for another time.

The Confucian Revival

          Over the past twenty years there has been a dramatic change in the Chinese government=s attitude toward Confucius. From being regarded as a anti-progress millstone he is being hailed as a possible model to renew and unite Chinese society and individuals. Hugh MacMahon traces how and why this transformation has come about.

A Confucian Reversal

The re-emergence of Confucius as a national icon is a good illustration of how much China has changed, and not changed, in the  past forty years. 

In November 1966, encouraged by Mao=s instructions to smash everything connected with traditional life, two hundred teachers and students came from Beijing to >de-culturalize= the Confucian Temple in the sage=s home town of Qufu.

They destroyed  6618 cultural objects including 929 paintings,  2700 manuscripts and 2000 graves of Confucius= descendants. The intensity of the anti-Confucius movement was to be renewed when Mao claimed that the assassination plot of his proposed successor, Lin Biao, was intellectually inspired by Confucianism. In retaliation he launched a new  >Anti-Lin and Anti-Confucius= campaign.

However, with the liberalization of the county after the fall of Mao, a need to reinstate Confucius was gradually  recognized. In 1989, just weeks after the crackdown on democracy in Tiananmen Square, Deng Xiaoping proclaimed the need to rid the country of Western influence and ordered a celebration of Confucius= birthday. Jiang Zemin, the new leader, made an unannounced appearance signaling the Party=s approval.

Recently, in September 2005, the government hosted another birthday celebration for Confucius, the most lavish since its take-over in 1949. In February of that year President Hu Jintao had quoted Confucius as saying, AHarmony is something to be cherish@ and launched a buzzword that still resonates whenever Party members give a speech on creating a >harmonious society=.

At the Confucian celebration in 2005 over a hundred scholars gathered to discuss how the teachings of the Sage could serve as the >moral foundation= for the country today. Confucius was no longer an object of ridicule. 

The Confucian Institutes

Since 2004 China=s Foreign and Education ministries have being quietly establishing a worldwide network of Chinese cultural centers called >Confucian Institutes=. They are modeled on the Goethe Institutes of China, the British Council of the United Kingdom and Alliance Francaise. The program will cost $10 billion and lead to a chain of one hundred institutes worldwide by 2010.

The charter for the institutes explains, AConfucius is a famous thinker, educator and philosopher in China. His doctrine has a very important influence throughout the world. To name this institute after him shows the longevity of the Chinese language and culture. It also embodies the development trend of the integration of Chinese language and culture in the new century.@

A Convergence of Interests

The re-emergence of Confucius over the past twenty-five years has roots in a number of vested interests at various levels of  Chinese government and society. They can be summarized under the headings of the search for a new national identity, the development of cultural industries and the need for a moral basis to promote national harmony and prosperity.

National Image

Today China is seen as an economic, if not military, threat by the United States. Many Americans still regard China with suspicion and fear. In Asia, China=s neighbors are aware of the growing power of the >Middle Kingdom= and want to enjoy the benefits of economic relations with it while avoiding coming under its political and cultural control.

In the face of this ambiguity, China can amicably  promote the image of the Sage of Qufu as Aa softer Confucian face rather than the hard-line communist face.@ It is thoroughly Chinese but is also recognized as peaceful, non-threatening and non-radical. It promotes good relationship between individual and teaches  datong, the concept that all the world=s peoples should behave like one big family.

While the worldwide network of >Confucian Institutes= will concentrate on teaching the Chinese language, they will also introduce the country=s tourist spots and culture. With Beijing due to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the next few years are seen as an opportunity to show that the county is more than just the world=s largest workshop.

Cultural Industry

Authorities in Shandong, Confucius= home province, are drawing up plans to increase the number of tourists. AShandong has the advantage of assets such as Confucius and Mount Tai to help develop a strong culture-based economy. The opportunity lies in marketing those cultural resources.@

Officials in Beijing see even wider possibilities for Confucius. Aware that they have produced no popular literature on the level of >Harry Potter= or >The Da Vinci Code=, they believe they have a cultural deficit to catch up on.

The People=s Daily lamented, AWhile China continues to welcome foreign cultural products, a >China wind= has still not stirred up much dust.@ The >Confucian Institutes= are expected to play a rule: the ministry of education says some 40 million people are learning Chinese at present but expect the figure to hit one hundred million by 2010. At present some 36,000 foreigners are studying Mandarin in China. This is expected to be an ever-growing source of income also. 

Business people are looking for success in the book market also. They want to establish China on the literary map and have foreign publishers queuing up to bid for translation rights. Penguin Books set a Chinese record when they paid US$100,000 for the worldwide English rights of Jiang Rong=s The Wolf Totem.

Similarly, China would like to rival Korea and Japan in the area of pop songs, films, movies and art.

At present China=s cultural industry is worth about US$ 42 billion but that is only a small percentage of the world market. There are now some 10 million people working in the domestic cultural industries and this figure will continue to grow .

While Confucius-related products will only play a small part in this >culture industrial revolution= the leaders who are directing the expansion are well aware of the Sage=s symbolic value and support the revival of Confucian exposure to the national and world consciousness.    

A Moral Force

AMoney worship is eroding the body of society and morality has lost its sacred meaning,@ lamented the People=s Daily earlier this year.  Marxism no longer has any credibility and with the nation engrossed in consumer materialism  a moral and philosophical vacuum has been created.

The Confucian scholar, Professor William de Bary, was a speaker at a 2545^th birthday celebration for Confucius in Beijing, October 2005. In a recent reflection on the event he remarked, AChina is confronting the specter of an unrestrained individualism and the worry is articulated in the form of an attack on Western individualism. The complaint about Western individualism actually reflects a concern about a Chinese individualism that is running rampant. It=s the consequence of the failure of Marxism or Maoist morality. Their idea is to try to shore up public morality somehow by going back to Confucianism.@

Kang Xiaoguang, the country=s top proponent of Confucian education, thinks Confucian values are the answer to China=s needs. AChinese society today is at its worst ever. The problem is that there are no moral standards to regulate how people treat each other, their business partners, their friends or families. Relationships are ambiguous and we have no way of judging what makes a happy life.@

Kang wants Confucian education to become mandatory for all school children. More than 5 million primary school student now study Confucius in the classroom and 18 major universities hold courses in Confucian philosophy or host Confucian research institutes. However the government is reluctant to put its full weight behind the Confucian way as that might be seen as official recognition that Marxism has failed. 

A United Counttry

With the weakening of Marxist ideology, China has lost its strongest unifying force. The only remaining >national glue= is nationalism and the leaders in Beijing use it with moderation lest it get out of control.

Confucianism it a tempting alternative. Traditionally it prizes social harmony, calls for obedience to the emperor and other authority figures and expects that the emperor, in turn, will wield the so-called mandate of heaven in a moral way.

AThe government has found that a Leninist method of government is too rigid, while democratic government has an anarchic quality that is too destabilizing,@ say Richard Baum, director of the UCLA center for Chinese studies. AThe Confucian ideal of a >mandate of heaven=, where the emperor rules with a virtually absolute mandate, provided he takes care of the people, is very close to the modern-day notion of benevolent despotism.@

However even some Chinese critics see this as unrealistic.

Hu Xingdou, a lecturer at Beijing Institute of Technology, says, AYou cannot completely copy  a traditional belief system in the modern era. Confucius places a priority on how people should behave, asking them to suppress desires and adhere to a high level of moral etiquette. This is unrealistic.@

Professor Baum agrees. He believe the Confucian craze Ais a weak substitute for real institutional reform .... Mao always used to stress that the people could change their consciousness through self-criticism and now the authorities are doing it again by saying the  solution to corruption is to educate moral people. It is a coat of paint.A

A Viable Solution?

Kang Xiaoguang says the debate is not whether to resurrect Confucius but on which pedestal to enshrine him B as part of the education system,  as political ideology or as a national religion. He says, AI don=t expect other countries to accept Confucius but if China and the world uses Confucian theory as a basis for international relations it would benefit everyone as moral rightness would overcome self-interest.@