From: iscleekk@nuscc.nus.sg (LEE KOK KIONG JAMES)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: 3-Self movement? (Re: On China's Christian population)
Date: 13 Dec 92 04:50:44 GMT
Organization: National University of Singapore

davidh@cascade.ens.tek.com (David Hatcher) writes:
: >                                               He did his doctorate on
: >the 3-self movement:
: 
:   Could someone who is in the know please explain what this movement is
: about?
: 
:   Thanks.
: 	
: 	David Hatcher

I do not have my books with me now, but I'll just hazard a quick 
answer from my memory. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'll just talk about the Protestant scene in China. Basically, we can
find two groups of Christians there, those belonging to the Official
Church sanctioned by the Chinese government, and those from the
unregistered home churches. 

The former type of protestant churches are organized into the Three 
Self Patriotic Movement, which are unanswerable to the Religious Bureau, 
a government watchdog agency that watches over all the religious groups 
of China. (The Catholic Church, the Buddhist and the Muslims also have 
similar Three self movements, all also answerable to the Religious 
Bureau). I vaguely remember that three-self refers to self-supporting, 
self-governing, and self-something (which I forgot). 

Anyway, any form of outside guidance, preaching by outsiders are not 
allowed (hence the "Self" part). The "Patriotic" part also means that 
the churches are to be patriotic to the country and hence also communism
and the Chinese Communist Party. There have been accusations of 
government officials who are not Christians being sent to pastor TSPM 
churches. Some of the pastor's sermons are reportedly political in nature. 
Currently, Bishop Ding heads that TSPM, who in recent years have spoken 
more and more on the government interference of the Church.

The government of China requires that all preaching be done within
the church walls. Because of the restrictions placed on the TSPM, many
of the churches refused to bow to pressures to come under TSPM, and
therefore remain illegal. These are commonly called the "house churches"
because they typically meet in homes of members.  Itinerant missionary / 
pastoring work is illegal. Reports of arrest / harrassment of pastors and 
Christians continue to flow out of the country. However, we do find quite 
an array of such churches since China is very big and populous. Among them, 
we have some of the more famous ones -- Wang Ming Dao (who died not long 
ago), Samuel Lamb, Watchman Nee's Little Flock, etc.

The relationship between TSPM and the house churches varies quite
vastly in different parts of China. In some places, TSPM leaders even
spoke out against repression of house churches. In other places,
however, relationships are strained. During the Cultural Revolution,
many of the house church Christians and leaders were put into jail
through the accusations of the TSPM leaders, and suspicion continues
to this day.

While the number of Christians grows quite phenomenally in China, the
problem both TSPM and house churches faced is the lack of teachers.
Usually, a house church pastor has to look after a flock of a few
thousand to tens of thousands. Also, many of the leaders are old 
(>70) with not enough young people with theological training.

James Lee
-- 
James Kok-Kiong LEE                              leekk@iscs.nus.sg 
Dept of Information Systems & Computer Science   Tel: (65) 772 2906
National University of Singapore, S(0511)        Fax: (65) 779-4580