Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: The Local Churches -- cult or Christian Body Message-ID: Date: 29 Oct 90 07:11:03 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 226 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I have had contact with, and to some degree been involved with, a Local Church group for the last 4 or 5 years. The following is my view of it, and in no way reflects the opinion of anyone else (including my employer). First, a little history. The Local Church came from an indigenous Chinese Christian movement called the Little Flock (this was the name of the hymnal they used). One of the leaders of this group was named Watchman Nee; several people have mentioned him favorably. I think he had some good points but was theologically shaky. By the time of the communist takeover of China, he was the leading figure in the group. This group was inspired by the teachings of the Plymouth Brethren; it emphasized the oneness of all believers. It was strongly anti-denominational. It also emphasized local autonomy for a given body. It downplayed professional clergy, though it did have ``full-time workers.'' When the communists took over, Watchman Nee asked several people, including Witness Lee, who had become one of the more prominent co-workers, to go to Taiwan to continue the work there. The Little Flock in China was one of the last Christian groups to fall under persecution because it was indigenous and was not dominated by foreign missionaries. It seems that it has, to some degree, served as an element of the ``house-church'' movement in China that was so unexpectedly strong. There is a book called AGAINST THE TIDE about Watchman Nee that discusses much of this, including Watchman Nee's relationship to the Plymouth Brethren. As time went on, Witness Lee (in Taiwan) became the head of things there. He downgraded others of similar stature and attempted (though unsuccessfully) to control the publication of Watchman Nee's books and talks. Eventually he moved to the U.S. where the Local Church movement started. The term ``Local Church'' comes from the idea that Christians should be united in every matter; the only thing that divides Christians is where they live. Thus, for each ``locality'' there should only be one body of Christians. Watchman Nee, in the collection of talks called ``The Normal Christian Church Life'', claims that this is the pattern the New Testament followed. The leaders of a particular body were supposed to be over that body alone (``local administration''). In fact, they claimed that there was NO CHURCH in an area unless it stood upon this ``ground''. Any group that called itself a church but was not organized in accordance with these principles (e.g. denominations) was not really a church; thus when Local Church people started a church in a given region they would call themselves ``The Church in San Jose'' or whatever. My own experience with the Local Church brought out four tendencies that concern me. They are 1) Strong authoritarianism 2) Unusual, dubious doctrines 3) Homogeneity of practice 4) Downgrading of other groups 1) In the Local Church meetings I went to, I often heard references to `Brother Lee'. I found out that this Brother Lee was Witness Lee; he is virtually the only source of teaching and doctrine. He and some others made a translation of the New Testament called the ``Recovery Version'' (see below for a description of the Lord's Recovery). I can't stand this translation; it is even more literal-minded than the NASB. In many places it looks like a word-for-word literal translation of the Greek. Witness Lee has copiously annotated this version. It looks to me like many people treat these notes as authoritative; they are studied and ``pray-read'' along with the Bible itself. In one meeting I expressed disagreement with something the notes said, and 4 people promptly corrected me. Witness Lee gives ``trainings'' or seminars at major holidays (the Local Church takes the view that these holidays should be avoided as pagan-inspired). They are also distributed by videotape. He also puts out something called ``Truth Lessons''; these were studied at the home meetings; in our case, they were studied in preference to the scriptures themselves. That is, the home meetings started out being Bible studies, then someone announced that from now on we would study the truth lessons instead. Witness Lee passes judgement on the leadership of each body. I think he selects the leaders in some cases. He also sets policy; at one point he instituted a ``door-knocking'' campaign that many people felt uncomfortable with but participated in anyway. There is a strong emphasis on ``the Spirit'' as opposed to ``the mind'' -- for example, you can be ``in the mind'' instead of ``in the Spirit'', and this is a bad thing. This emphasis is used to suppress dissent. People who disagree are in the mind. A strong emphasis on unity also has the same effect -- people who disagree are breaking the unity, and this is considered to be spiritual adultery. There is a strong strain of spiritual intimidation that goes on. In one talk I heard Witness Lee say that people who ``love the Lord with their hearts'' ask questions and become troublemakers in the church. He said ``We don't want people to love the Lord in this way.'' Instead people should love the Lord ``in immortality'' (c.f. the end of Ephesians). This was said in the context of growing dissent in the church he was talking in. One other point -- some leaders in the Local Church have told me that Witness Lee is an apostle. They said that what this means is that he is at the forefront of what the Lord is doing today, as Paul was in his day. 2) When I first went to a Local Church meeting, I heard some strange terms. For example, they talked about the ``processed triune God.'' (This is the one that sticks in my mind most strongly). I found out that this meant something like the idea that God had to be put into a form where he was accessible to us (as, for example, food). The incarnation, crucifiction and resurrection were the process that God went through to have this happen. Another term they used that I had never heard before was ``mingled'', as in ``God mingled with humanity.'' They also talked about the ``all-inclusive Christ'', a phrase that has led some to charge them with pantheistic tendencies. There were several other strange terms that caught my attention in the beginning. In many cases, these terms could be interpreted in relatively orthodox ways. They just seemed to be put strangely. But in some cases, there were things that seemed to me to be real difficulties. For example, the Local Church believed that Christ became THE Spirit (taking off from a verse in 1 Corinthians that said that the last Adam became A life-giving spirit). This is modalistic. In another instance, they talked about the self in terms that were so extreme that, again, some have accused them of pantheism -- the self gets obliterated in union with God. Another strange doctrine was the idea that by ``calling on the name of the Lord'' -- literally saying ``Oh, Lord Jesus'' over and over again -- one could be saved, and would gain spiritual nourishment. In fact, this calling on the name of the Lord, along with pray-reading (repeating sections of the Bible -- or other approved material -- over and over) were the means for spiritually eating and drinking Christ. As I have already mentioned, there was a strong tendency to distinguish ``the Spirit'' against nature, to the point of opposition. To the Local Church people, the Spirit came to dwell in us (orthodox enough) and gave us access to a sort of autonomous goodness. One person, for example, said ``My spirit can't cheat me.'' The tendency in practice seemed to me to be to equate the spirit with one's feelings. 3) One of the things that surprised me was that all the local churches seemed pretty much the same. I went to three different local churches -- in Hayward, San Jose, and Berkeley. At each of them, the meetings were much the same. There was a lot of noise -- people saying Amen and ``Oh, Lord Jesus.'' In each one, people would repeat ``Amen'' in unison after each phrase of what someone said or prayed. There would be pray reading of the scriptures or hymns. And invariably there would be references to Witness Lee's stuff. This surprised and disappointed me, since I had gotten involved with this group because I wanted a freer environment than the denominational environment I had been in. I felt that there was more room for participation, but the participation was strongly constrained in form and content. 4) I've already mentioned that, organizationally, the Local Church doesn't recognize other bodies as representing the Church. In the original Little Flock movement, Watchman Nee refused to cooperate with other organizations to ``avoid confusion''. While, in light of the competitive nature of the missionary practices of that day, this seems understandable to me, the exclusionistic tendency has been perpetuated and strengthened in the doctrines about locality. The Local Church refers to itself as ``The Lord's recovery of his church.'' This is taken from an interpretation of the letters to the Churches in the book of Revelation (see Watchman Nee's book, THE ORTHODOXY OF THE CHURCH). The idea is that the churches to whom Christ spoke in Rev. 2-3 represent the Church through history. Thyatira, for example, represents the Roman Catholic Church; Sardis represents the Protestant Church, and Philadelphia represents the Lord's Recovery growing out of Darby's brethren movement. The point is that there is a theological teaching that says that the Local Church is the only true representation of the Lord's will for his Church today. Other denominations are referred to (in some hymns, for example) as Babylon. While I have some sympathy for this point of view, I feel that the Local Church does no better. It doesn't really even live up to its name because of the strong control Witness Lee has over the local groups. In the last two years there has been a major split in the Local Church. Several prominent people, including John Ingalls (one of the co-translators of the Recovery Version New Testament) have disassociated themselves from Witness Lee and resigned their elderships. These are people from the ``flagship'' church in Anaheim, CA. In the San Jose church I went to, the ``leading elder'', a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, quit and left. The Local Churches usually consist of Caucasians and Chinese; in the San Jose church many of the Chinese left and started meeting somewhere else; many of the Caucasians just left and went their own ways. I currently meet with the Chinese group that left the San Jose church. The split was ignited by certain moral problems that Witness Lee's son was having and Witness Lee's insistence, in spite of this, to have his son play a leading role in his ministry. The final straw seemed to be when Witness Lee's son came to take the Lord's supper; many people were outraged that he would have the gall to do this. This problem is a long-standing one; in fact there was an earlier split over this same issue about ten years ago. The current situation seems to have been more significant since several of the churches around here were strongly affected; at least one broke completely with Witness Lee. For me, the whole experience was and to some extent remains very frustrating and disappointing. I had visions of real Christian unity and freedom; instead I found spiritual pride and authoritarianism. Even in the group I am in, there are still strong patterns left over from the Local Church -- the emphasis on the spirit as a distinct component of our being, the refusal to consider other theological views, naive exegesis, the tendency to do the same old things at the meetings, and so on. One of the hardest things for me was the discovery that when my group split off, the people who assumed leadership were basically reactionary and wanted to go back to a ``golden age'' when everything was pure and simple. To me their idea of pure and simple was biased and coercive. The thing that encourages me is that several people I've talked with are starting to explicitly talk about the need to ``open up'' to other points of view, and to realize that some of the practices they do are alienating people. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com Are Saturday morning cartoons proof that adults hate kids? Answer: Yes. (From "Life in Hell")