admittedly, i dun noe very much about Japanese Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries..i do noe that American Christian missionaries came over in the mid 1800s, starting with Divie Bethune McCarthee...and how the Protestant Christian population in Japan is around 500000 today..i do noe that the fastest growing church is the Jesus Lifehouse Church in Tokyo which has branches in Osaka and other cities..this church was started by Australians in fact, based on the Hillsongs formula..and here is a typical sermon they have on their website.....
http://www.jesuslifehouse.tv/2008/10/30/if-god-wants-to-bless-
me-%e2%80%a6-why-am-i-not-promoted-video/
there seem to be 2 schools of thought regarding Missions these days..one is the Universal Church of Jesus Christ idea that downplays local culture and language because Jesus' Church on earth is universal and should have recognizable aspects anywhere in the world..the other school of thought is the "Going Local" view which calls for local ministers, translations of the Bible into local languages, local Christian worship songs in the languages of the local population and local ideas of church..both schools are prone to abuses..the effects of the first model may be seen in the online article i've just posted up..the second in the story of the True Jesus Church..a church denomination present in Asia only and which has a huge following in Korea and China, but with branches in Japan, Malaysia and Singapore..this is a pretty regional church which grows precisely because it caters to local ideas about church and God and worship..pretty interesting.. except for the unfortunate problem of not believing in the Trinity..they believe that Jesus is the same person as the Father and the Spirit..and sadly, my great-grandmother was a missionary sent by the Malaysian branch of this same church to Indonesia in the 1930s..sins of the fathers eh..
The best and most successful mission organisation probably is the Japanese Bible Society, which is independent and financially self-supporting, but related to the American Bible Society and the Scottish Bible Society and has been present in Japan since 1937...the first Japanese bible was printed in 1887 by missionaries who were the fore-runners of this organisation..today, there is even a Manga Bible produced by this organisation...which i hail as a triumph of post-modern ideas about modes of communication with different groups...visit http://www.bible.or.jp/e/brief_history.html for more information
incidentally, does anybody have an online website for information on the work of CMS or IFES in Japan? well, next time i think i'll summarise Maiko's recent newsletter from CMS which i received recently..
oh, and regarding contemporary 'popular' Christianity in Japan..i paraphrase the words of Charles Jencks, an Architectural and Artistic Critic: Popular Christianity, like popular Science is debasing to true Science and true Christianity as it only takes the parts it likes and twists them beyond recognition. Popular ideas like these are very harmful to our view of the universe and life because they are incomplete and shallow. And i will add, true Christianity is neither provincial or heartlessly imposed, like in the story of the French woman who came to the French Revolutionary leader Robespierre and asked for the release of her husband, since he was the sole breadwinner of the family. "Take this woman away and execute her, for she considers herself a wife and mother first before a citizen of the French State. We cannot permit our citizens to have divided loyalties." Not so in Christ...
Showing posts with label Mission in Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mission in Japan. Show all posts
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Cut and Paste
this is a rehash of the stuff i posted on the Other Japan Focus Blog which was placed there rather than here:
about ministry in Japan: the first christian missionaries arrived in Japan in the 1400s...these were mainly Jesuits from Rome..even though certain apocryphal sources state that St Francis Xavier travelled to Japan in the 1100s, and, finding a cold reception there, went to China since the way into Japan traditionally is always through her larger neighbour, China..thats how buddhism came to Japan in the 800s along with chinese temple architecture..
anyways, the Jesuits came at the right time when local warlords or daimyos were looking into ways in which to break free of the Tokugawa's control..so of course they adopted christianity of the Roman Catholic variety in places like Nagasaki and various other areas..interestingly this is the same Nagasaki that would eventually receive another gift whole-heartedly from the west in the form of the A-bomb in 1945..historical ironies eh?
and of course, persecution of Christians began in earnest and culminated in the 1600s with the expulsion of western people from all Japan..except the Dutch, who were confined to a small island outside Tokyo..being Dutch Calvinists i wonder if it had anything to do with God's pre-destination?
as for the japanese Christians, their struggles are documented by the japanese Catholic author Shusaku Endo...but suffice to say, japanese Christianity never fully died out..it went underground and emerged after 1850 when the Americans forcefully opened Japan under Commodore Perry's literal gunboat diplomacy..when a fleet of American gunboats sailed into Tokyo harbour unmolested..and then the japanese Christians emerged from hiding wanting to partake of the Lord's Supper and be readmitted into communion with the Universal church of Jesus..
i would like to meet descendants of these "native" japanese Christians who were saved through the faithful perserverance of their forebears under persecution rather than through the work of missionaries in the last 100 years..i wonder if they still exist and if i'll get a chance to meet them this time?
well, enough of my rambling..next time i shall blog about Christianity in japan within the last 100 years..so apologies on the long history lesson..but i do believe its neccessary since church history is a continuous unfolding process throughout the ages until Jesus returns and not a series of discrete stages which are divorced from one another..it just doesnt start from Martin Luther and the Reformation unfortunately much as i respect that German monk..
about ministry in Japan: the first christian missionaries arrived in Japan in the 1400s...these were mainly Jesuits from Rome..even though certain apocryphal sources state that St Francis Xavier travelled to Japan in the 1100s, and, finding a cold reception there, went to China since the way into Japan traditionally is always through her larger neighbour, China..thats how buddhism came to Japan in the 800s along with chinese temple architecture..
anyways, the Jesuits came at the right time when local warlords or daimyos were looking into ways in which to break free of the Tokugawa's control..so of course they adopted christianity of the Roman Catholic variety in places like Nagasaki and various other areas..interestingly this is the same Nagasaki that would eventually receive another gift whole-heartedly from the west in the form of the A-bomb in 1945..historical ironies eh?
and of course, persecution of Christians began in earnest and culminated in the 1600s with the expulsion of western people from all Japan..except the Dutch, who were confined to a small island outside Tokyo..being Dutch Calvinists i wonder if it had anything to do with God's pre-destination?
as for the japanese Christians, their struggles are documented by the japanese Catholic author Shusaku Endo...but suffice to say, japanese Christianity never fully died out..it went underground and emerged after 1850 when the Americans forcefully opened Japan under Commodore Perry's literal gunboat diplomacy..when a fleet of American gunboats sailed into Tokyo harbour unmolested..and then the japanese Christians emerged from hiding wanting to partake of the Lord's Supper and be readmitted into communion with the Universal church of Jesus..
i would like to meet descendants of these "native" japanese Christians who were saved through the faithful perserverance of their forebears under persecution rather than through the work of missionaries in the last 100 years..i wonder if they still exist and if i'll get a chance to meet them this time?
well, enough of my rambling..next time i shall blog about Christianity in japan within the last 100 years..so apologies on the long history lesson..but i do believe its neccessary since church history is a continuous unfolding process throughout the ages until Jesus returns and not a series of discrete stages which are divorced from one another..it just doesnt start from Martin Luther and the Reformation unfortunately much as i respect that German monk..
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