kleucht@pensions.org<\/a>, and her work cell is 267-815-1329.\u00a0 She will be coming to a Presbytery meeting soon to meet us.<\/p>\nBut for me personally, the most interesting event happened on the day I left for Baltimore.\u00a0 Karen Sapio and I were invited to meet with the Foundation for Theological Education in South East Asia (FTESEA), who was hosting representatives from the China Christian Council (CCC).\u00a0 FTESEA is supported by ten mainline denominations, two in Canada (the Presbyterian and United Church of Canada) and eight in the United States (the \u201cSeven Sisters\u201d and the Reformed Church in America).\u00a0 The China Christian Council is the main Protestant institution in the People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n
One of the legacies of the Church Missionary Society and ABCFM is the CCC\u2019s partner \u201cThree-Self Patriotic Movement.\u201d\u00a0 This is the Chinese application of three principles of self-governance, self-support (i.e., financial independence from foreigners), and self-propagation (i.e., indigenous missionary work) for the establishment of indigenous, or local, churches in what were considered overseas mission fields.\u00a0 The CCC\u2019s relationship with the Chinese government emphasizes this approach, as the government is obviously concerned with unwelcome influence from Western nations, perpetrated through Western missionaries.\u00a0 It has been unfortunate when Western missionaries became conscious or unwitting agents in suppressing the self-determination of non-Western peoples.<\/p>\n
This three-self identity of the Chinese indigenous church extends into attempts to articulate and teach the Christian faith in authentically and distinctively Chinese ways.\u00a0 With this helpful approach, and in its relationship with the state, the CCC (and Nanjing Union Theological Seminary) reminded me greatly of the opportunity when Karen Sapio and I were invited to Matanzas Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cuba.<\/p>\n
So Karen and I found ourselves meeting with these Christian church leaders from another Communist country, with other ecumenical partners.\u00a0 In the midst of the meeting I noticed that I was the only person who used the term \u201cMainland China\u201d\u2014everyone else simply said \u201cChina.\u201d\u00a0 No one said anything, but during lunch I spoke with the Episcopal representative about my professor who served as the theological adviser to the Anglican Archbishop in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
I asked the Episcopal official about the relationship between the Anglican church in Hong Kong and mainland China, and the official said in a rather pointed way, \u201cthere is no relationship; we are ONE CHINA.\u201d\u00a0 I was a bit puzzled and asked him to clarify; he stated again \u201cthere is One China, which includes Hong Kong.\u201d\u00a0 I said \u201cyou must talk to different people than I do,\u201d and he responded with what seemed to me to be a \u201clook.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen and I went to sit with the person who spoke English the best, and learned a great deal about Christianity on the mainland\u2014the fact that they do not have denominations and resist attempts to assert denominational identities, the connections between Confucian thought and the church in China, and the impact of the growth of urbanization, individualism, and materialism in today\u2019s China, including the impact of the \u201cone-child\u201d policy that resulted in generations of young adults who were the protected center of their parents\u2019 lives.\u00a0 This is amplified because virtually all pastors have been born after the Cultural Revolution, so all they know is the last few decades of cultural and economic development.<\/p>\n
Obviously there is too much to discuss in this column, but the epilogue occurred here in Baltimore.\u00a0 Mienda Uriarte, our area coordinator for Asia with World Mission, told me that the PC(USA) and CCC have experienced some tension over the CCC\u2019s assertion of the One China policy.\u00a0 Because of our strong relationship with the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, we cannot ignore the desire for sovereignty or at least some local identity for the Taiwanese (or, for that matter, the people of Hong Kong).\u00a0 This has resulted in a stalemate of sorts, as the CCC representatives would like the PC(USA) to either leave the Taiwanese behind or report to the CCC who we are meeting with in Taiwan.<\/p>\n
Whenever I think of God\u2019s dream for the nations of the world, I think about how God chose to bring salvation through a small child in a small town in a small and relatively powerless nation, and because of that, we Presbyterians have stood with small nations as they attempt to defend their rights against the forces of empire through the centuries.\u00a0 As I lived in Hawaii, I came to appreciate the outsized impact of aloha that comes through that very small island nation that has been absorbed by the empire of the United States\u2014and yet they strive to retain their distinctive culture, which I think is universally considered to be a gift to the world.<\/p>\n
May we pray for all the peoples of the world, especially those whose identity and even their lives are being threatened by the forces of aggression and domination.\u00a0 And may we, even we who are citizens of the empire, appreciate and defend the gifts of the small nations of the world.<\/p>\n
Peace,
Wendy<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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I am writing you from Baltimore, where our Stated Clerk Diane Frasher and I are attending the Mid-Council Leaders Gathering in anticipation of GA224 next June.\u00a0 It looks like it might be a fairly quiet GA; there don\u2019t seem to be many big issues percolating but who knows what might arise in the next 8 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23900"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23903,"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23900\/revisions\/23903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangabpres.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}