The Hidden Church

Die verborgene Kirche

• 

  Die verborgene Kirche

  • Published on July 6, 2016
  ·                

  
  

  

  Uwe Siemon-Netto

  Founder, Center for Lutheran Theology and League of Faithful Masks

  

  The Hidden Church

  • Published on July 6, 2016

  ·                

  
  

  

  Uwe Siemon-Netto

  Founder, Center for Lutheran Theology and League of Faithful Masks

  Is it time that Christians prepare an ordeal in Westenauf?
  

  
  

  Uwe Siemon-Netto

  (Factum cover story 5/16)

               While America's voters, lemmings equal almost fix, unswervingly to jump into the disaster, is prayed in many Katakombenkirchen China that the Christians in the United States to re-learn to suffer for their faith. "These brothers and sisters do that for our sake", told me an American missionary after his return from a study trip in which he explored the phenomenal growth of Chinese house churches. "You keep the complacency of modern Western Christians for bible illegal and disastrous, because ultimately urge Jesus, I will come after, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me '(Matthew 16.4) someone", he continued. "If they want us to martyrdom, it is only because they have experienced firsthand what Tertullian said already 1,800 years ago, the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church '." The early Christian writer Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (ca. . 150-220 AD), short Tertullian called, lived in Carthage.

              Theologically the "Chinese prayer" is, of which the missionary said, clearly in line a key message of the hanged by the Nazis Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote in his letters from prison: "Man is called mitzuleiden with God in a godless world. "

              I had observed in the sixties as Asia correspondent of the Axel Springer publishing house, the suffering of Chinese Christians and their unstoppable growth at close range. Daily landed new alarming news about her gruesome fate especially during Mao Zedong's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976) on my desk in Hong Kong, which was still a British colony. Christians were pilloried, forcibly deported, tortured, sent to labor camps, shot and killed, and yet the forbidden house churches had a feed, we journalists felt they were sensational. Even today they are oppressed. Nevertheless, the American religious sociologist Rodney Stark has determined that their number swells annually by seven percent. Stark expects that in 2030 nearly 250 Chinese will go every Sunday to worship, which, although only a fraction of the present 1.4 billion Chinese people, but the largest community faithful churchgoer in any country of

  of the world.

              "Catacombs are a good thing", explained the missionary, "as long as they are not exclusive club but preserve spiritual and civilizational goods to pass them on." Although the Chinese Christians are suppressed as before, they carry the gospel now incomparably more dangerous plain, even to North Korea, where missionaries and baptized either immediately killed or sent to death camps. Its capital Pyongyang was before the Communist takeover in 1948 a stronghold of reformed Christianity in East Asia.

              How long will these spiritual treasures -Saatkörner the Church, to paraphrase Tertuillian - can rest in catacombs before they bear fruit, one can only speculate, but there are indications that the decades, perhaps may take centuries. Perhaps we see a late crop of germs that Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803-51) from Stettin in the first half of the 19th century was under mortal danger to China. Gützlaff had the Bible and Luther's Small Catechism translated into Chinese and penetrated with these documents until well into the Middle Kingdom. The British evangelist Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) called Gützlaff any case the "grandfather of Chinese Inland Mission".

              Whether to use another metaphor, the current conflagration of the Christian faith in China is directly or indirectly the result of sparks, the Gützlaff and others had smuggled into the country nearly 200 years ago, has not been conclusively proven. But we know from other examples of how the Holy Spirit over long periods of time preparing the ground for such a thing. Suppose the continued success of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach in Japan. As musicologists found out, this phenomenon is rooted in the work of missionaries Christianized mid-16th century to the south of this island kingdom to a great extent; Nagasaki was for decades a Catholic city. The missionaries introduced Gregorian chants. They built organs with bamboo pipes and instructed young princes to play this.After a few years traveled young Japanese organist to Europe to play music on the Spanish and Portuguese royal courts.

              But the early 17th century was the Shogun (imperial general) brutally eradicate Christianity in Japan. Clergy and believers were burned or crucified droves, often with his head down on septic tanks. Only a tiny minority, called Kakure Karishitan (crypto-Christians), survived in secret. When Christianity in the 19th century were readmitted, dived 30,000 this faithful on from the underground. For two hundred years, this small band had kept the treasure of Christian doctrine. At the same time the Holy Spirit but also acted on a second rail: Japanese Folk Music integrated the introduced by the missionaries Western tonality. That's why the Japanese had easy access to the music of Bach, were listed as the works for the first time in the late 19th century in Tokyo. Today pay Japanese up to 1,000 euros for a ticket to St. Matthew Passion or the Christmas Oratorio.

              This in turn has a missionary consequences. Japan's most important Bach interpreter, Masaaki Suzuki, told me once that his listeners would read carefully the texts of the cantatas and oratorios in German and Japanese during the concerts. Then they jostled before his stage to can be spiritual terms, had noticed them at this reading explain.Especially the word hope they fascinate because it for the Japanese was no real equivalent."We either use the vocabulary, Ibo ', the desire means or, Nozomi', which actually something unattainable, it is meant," said Suzuki, a Presbyterian. "In this way, quickly deep faith discussions with pagans relax. The Japanese are a searching people that suffer as spiritually impoverished it. Under the impression of a Bach oratorio then talk to me on topics that are normally taboo with them, for example, death. "

              Not that now equal a revival throughout Japan grabbed. Less than one percent of Japanese are Christians, and to speculate on if or when once a larger part of the 127 million citizens of this hochsäkularisierten Empire is committed to Jesus, would be unbiblical. But I know beautiful stories of Japanese who came on stream to faith. There's Yuko Maryama, a formerly devout Buddhist, baptize settled after studying the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and afterwards organist was at a large Lutheran church in Minneapolis. There is a Japanese professor who for months Lutheran Wochentagsperikopen studied even in GDR times at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig from the time of Bach and afterwards my friend, the then Superintendent Johannes Richter asked: "Baptism me!" There is finally the former atheist and afterwards became professor of theology Masashi Musada who not attributed his conversion as a Choralwerk the former Leipziger Thomascantor but to its more abstract Goldberg variations, so piano music. "I had to find out just what spirit has the composer Bach entered this," said Musada.

              What spirit was it? The Anglican theologian and biologist Arthur Peacocke once said of a similar composition, The Art of Fugue: "The Holy Spirit personally she Bach dictated in the spring."

              This brings us back to the martyrdom, the Chinese Christians want us West Europeans and Americans - and the Katakombenschicksal which is inevitably connected.As the martyrdom of the West will ultimately look like, can only be guessed. Will it be an apocalyptic battle? Unit of the West under the heel of Islam? Or is the martyrdom in initially small, but increasing, homeopathic doses?

  Where in the mass media, a bible believing Christian still have a career? What about regional secular journal, except perhaps in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, an author can shine through his Christian worldview? At which state or municipal university the US, such a bird of paradise has views of a full professor? Where in America can a civil registry office a same-sex couple impunity denying the marriage? Which confectioner may refuse in the US yet, for the marriage of homosexuals to bake a cake? Where can you get there make a nativity scene on public display without einzuhandeln an expensive civil proceedings, where it is today in this formerly Christian nation no risk when a business owner decorated his shop windows during Advent with Christian motives? Where in the Western world must not keep the hand in front of your mouth when you call unnatural sexual behavior just as Plato nearly 2,400 years ago, namely para physin - just contrary to nature? How many more are subject to the state-sanctioned abortion publicly call what it is, namely murder?

  Seen, experience Western Christians already their martyrdom; still in North Korea and the Middle East, where the Chaldean Christians had to afford a martyrdom as their coreligionists once in Japan and China and today retains its ancient culture over half millennia - they suffer for their commitment fidelity, even if they still - still before radical Muslims they systematically eliminated in recent years.

  One need not be soothsayer to know that for us, the time has come, determined to create the catacombs, but not in the sense of caves where Cringe true believers anxiously but catacombs figuratively: networks of Christians who maintain their treasures and are willing to share with anyone who she desires. The greatest treasure, the Christian doctrine and a clean theology, but after that come other goods: our music and visual arts, our manners, history and literature knowledge, our willingness to serve in everything we do, our neighbor and - Evangelicals like it please consult a high church Lutherans when he writes them this in the album - our songs and our wonderful liturgy comes from the every word of the Bible and always out of our consciousness is available, especially in emergency situations. Your Free Church brothers and sisters, believe it just an old driving man who for two years was sitting night after night in the bomb cellar in his childhood and as a front rapporteur in Vietnam was often in action: Nothing changed in such situations, the fear so quickly in a God-given calmness as the Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy), which I had learned in Sunday school and since then sang in my head when I was in utmost need.

  Here, the future Katakombenmenschen should not be embarrassed to make one of the two worst persecutor of Christians bonds: communism. Its strategic success was yes, to form within society cells and to link them loosely, but in a way that was hardly attackable from the outside. In GDR times also acted as Christians and took so inconspicuous influence on the changes in their environment verheideten. I examined this phenomenon to turn time and learned especially in Saxony Amazing: This Christian cells were tiny, but knew no denominational differences more. Unlike their Marxist models they practiced on their fellows not apply pressure and already certainly no terrorist. They also distributed religious tracts but no negotiated unobtrusive; their first missionary tool was her elegant, considerate occurrence in the workplace and in public.

  In factories and offices they aroused by their language, their open look, I preppy appearance and helpfulness curiosity and the confidence of their colleagues when they were in distress, were not directed at the designated SED or union official but at this simple Christians. In the soulless prefabricated they went from door to door, to their often lonely neighbor introduced, came with them quickly this week and invited them to be.Again and again I heard the addressees responded. They asked the Christians: "Why are you so different? Why are you acting so credible and righteous? Where do you get your composure? What drives you on? "And so the path was then wisely guided faith talks open. The huge crowd dissident "cute Gentiles" who in the GDR churches took shelter at the turn of time and so the regime were able to overthrow, so did not get there because believers would they like with their selnstgerechten penetrance on the nerves, but on the contrary, because they had them easily encountered human-integer. The fact that the citizens of the new states have not rewarded this after the turn, by they were converted, has something to do with the original sin, to have true fear of God with innate inability of man (see Augsburg Confession article two) and with the monopoly of Holy Spirit to act faith.

  We would do well working to develop along the lines of the GDR Christians own strategies entzivilisierenden to the noise of the media, the demagoguery of political discourse, the vulgarity in literature and everyday language, the vulgar manners, in short, the egotism of our be godless society counteract. One must not let these influences his offspring. To Hamburg's St. Nicholas Church there used to Pastor Peter Barth. In his rectory of television remained under wraps until the family council decided what you wanted to watch in the evening. "But what answer their children in school are addressed by their classmates to any moronic TV programs?" I asked Pastor Barth. He replied, "Then just ask back: Can you play trumpet? Or oboe or the harpsichord? Do you know what is a fugue? "That Barths children not arbitrarily dived refrigerator, out brought something edible, then mampfend ran into the street, but cultivated with parents after the grace took their food, understood. There are no apparent reason, this brave Pastor not imitate.

  What form have the new catacombs and how the interdenominational Christian cells function in our time with their vorapokalyptischen trains to be seen. But that time is pressing, we organize for a period of suffering, is obvious. Probably we will certainly even have no direct profit from the fact that we faithful, joined together, but remain open to the outside world. But it is good to learn from the Japanese and Chinese Christians, that what sow here today will bear fruit in many hundreds of years, namely, when it pleases the Creator who indeed thinks not only by the minute and is but over eons.

   
  Published on July 6, 2016

·                

Uwe Siemon-Netto

Founder, Center for Lutheran Theology and League of Faithful Masks

The Hidden Church

• Published on July 6, 2016

·                

Uwe Siemon-Netto

Founder, Center for Lutheran Theology and League of Faithful Masks

Is it time that Christians prepare an ordeal in Westenauf?

Uwe Siemon-Netto

(Factum cover story 5/16)

             While America's voters, lemmings equal almost fix, unswervingly to jump into the disaster, is prayed in many Katakombenkirchen China that the Christians in the United States to re-learn to suffer for their faith. "These brothers and sisters do that for our sake", told me an American missionary after his return from a study trip in which he explored the phenomenal growth of Chinese house churches. "You keep the complacency of modern Western Christians for bible illegal and disastrous, because ultimately urge Jesus, I will come after, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me '(Matthew 16.4) someone", he continued. "If they want us to martyrdom, it is only because they have experienced firsthand what Tertullian said already 1,800 years ago, the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church '." The early Christian writer Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (ca. . 150-220 AD), short Tertullian called, lived in Carthage.

            Theologically the "Chinese prayer" is, of which the missionary said, clearly in line a key message of the hanged by the Nazis Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote in his letters from prison: "Man is called mitzuleiden with God in a godless world. "

            I had observed in the sixties as Asia correspondent of the Axel Springer publishing house, the suffering of Chinese Christians and their unstoppable growth at close range. Daily landed new alarming news about her gruesome fate especially during Mao Zedong's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976) on my desk in Hong Kong, which was still a British colony. Christians were pilloried, forcibly deported, tortured, sent to labor camps, shot and killed, and yet the forbidden house churches had a feed, we journalists felt they were sensational. Even today they are oppressed. Nevertheless, the American religious sociologist Rodney Stark has determined that their number swells annually by seven percent. Stark expects that in 2030 nearly 250 Chinese will go every Sunday to worship, which, although only a fraction of the present 1.4 billion Chinese people, but the largest community faithful churchgoer in any country of

of the world.

            "Catacombs are a good thing", explained the missionary, "as long as they are not exclusive club but preserve spiritual and civilizational goods to pass them on." Although the Chinese Christians are suppressed as before, they carry the gospel now incomparably more dangerous plain, even to North Korea, where missionaries and baptized either immediately killed or sent to death camps. Its capital Pyongyang was before the Communist takeover in 1948 a stronghold of reformed Christianity in East Asia.

            How long will these spiritual treasures -Saatkörner the Church, to paraphrase Tertuillian - can rest in catacombs before they bear fruit, one can only speculate, but there are indications that the decades, perhaps may take centuries. Perhaps we see a late crop of germs that Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803-51) from Stettin in the first half of the 19th century was under mortal danger to China. Gützlaff had the Bible and Luther's Small Catechism translated into Chinese and penetrated with these documents until well into the Middle Kingdom. The British evangelist Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) called Gützlaff any case the "grandfather of Chinese Inland Mission".

            Whether to use another metaphor, the current conflagration of the Christian faith in China is directly or indirectly the result of sparks, the Gützlaff and others had smuggled into the country nearly 200 years ago, has not been conclusively proven. But we know from other examples of how the Holy Spirit over long periods of time preparing the ground for such a thing. Suppose the continued success of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach in Japan. As musicologists found out, this phenomenon is rooted in the work of missionaries Christianized mid-16th century to the south of this island kingdom to a great extent; Nagasaki was for decades a Catholic city. The missionaries introduced Gregorian chants. They built organs with bamboo pipes and instructed young princes to play this.After a few years traveled young Japanese organist to Europe to play music on the Spanish and Portuguese royal courts.

            But the early 17th century was the Shogun (imperial general) brutally eradicate Christianity in Japan. Clergy and believers were burned or crucified droves, often with his head down on septic tanks. Only a tiny minority, called Kakure Karishitan (crypto-Christians), survived in secret. When Christianity in the 19th century were readmitted, dived 30,000 this faithful on from the underground. For two hundred years, this small band had kept the treasure of Christian doctrine. At the same time the Holy Spirit but also acted on a second rail: Japanese Folk Music integrated the introduced by the missionaries Western tonality. That's why the Japanese had easy access to the music of Bach, were listed as the works for the first time in the late 19th century in Tokyo. Today pay Japanese up to 1,000 euros for a ticket to St. Matthew Passion or the Christmas Oratorio.

            This in turn has a missionary consequences. Japan's most important Bach interpreter, Masaaki Suzuki, told me once that his listeners would read carefully the texts of the cantatas and oratorios in German and Japanese during the concerts. Then they jostled before his stage to can be spiritual terms, had noticed them at this reading explain.Especially the word hope they fascinate because it for the Japanese was no real equivalent."We either use the vocabulary, Ibo ', the desire means or, Nozomi', which actually something unattainable, it is meant," said Suzuki, a Presbyterian. "In this way, quickly deep faith discussions with pagans relax. The Japanese are a searching people that suffer as spiritually impoverished it. Under the impression of a Bach oratorio then talk to me on topics that are normally taboo with them, for example, death. "

            Not that now equal a revival throughout Japan grabbed. Less than one percent of Japanese are Christians, and to speculate on if or when once a larger part of the 127 million citizens of this hochsäkularisierten Empire is committed to Jesus, would be unbiblical. But I know beautiful stories of Japanese who came on stream to faith. There's Yuko Maryama, a formerly devout Buddhist, baptize settled after studying the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and afterwards organist was at a large Lutheran church in Minneapolis. There is a Japanese professor who for months Lutheran Wochentagsperikopen studied even in GDR times at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig from the time of Bach and afterwards my friend, the then Superintendent Johannes Richter asked: "Baptism me!" There is finally the former atheist and afterwards became professor of theology Masashi Musada who not attributed his conversion as a Choralwerk the former Leipziger Thomascantor but to its more abstract Goldberg variations, so piano music. "I had to find out just what spirit has the composer Bach entered this," said Musada.

            What spirit was it? The Anglican theologian and biologist Arthur Peacocke once said of a similar composition, The Art of Fugue: "The Holy Spirit personally she Bach dictated in the spring."

            This brings us back to the martyrdom, the Chinese Christians want us West Europeans and Americans - and the Katakombenschicksal which is inevitably connected.As the martyrdom of the West will ultimately look like, can only be guessed. Will it be an apocalyptic battle? Unit of the West under the heel of Islam? Or is the martyrdom in initially small, but increasing, homeopathic doses?

Where in the mass media, a bible believing Christian still have a career? What about regional secular journal, except perhaps in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, an author can shine through his Christian worldview? At which state or municipal university the US, such a bird of paradise has views of a full professor? Where in America can a civil registry office a same-sex couple impunity denying the marriage? Which confectioner may refuse in the US yet, for the marriage of homosexuals to bake a cake? Where can you get there make a nativity scene on public display without einzuhandeln an expensive civil proceedings, where it is today in this formerly Christian nation no risk when a business owner decorated his shop windows during Advent with Christian motives? Where in the Western world must not keep the hand in front of your mouth when you call unnatural sexual behavior just as Plato nearly 2,400 years ago, namely para physin - just contrary to nature? How many more are subject to the state-sanctioned abortion publicly call what it is, namely murder?

Seen, experience Western Christians already their martyrdom; still in North Korea and the Middle East, where the Chaldean Christians had to afford a martyrdom as their coreligionists once in Japan and China and today retains its ancient culture over half millennia - they suffer for their commitment fidelity, even if they still - still before radical Muslims they systematically eliminated in recent years.

One need not be soothsayer to know that for us, the time has come, determined to create the catacombs, but not in the sense of caves where Cringe true believers anxiously but catacombs figuratively: networks of Christians who maintain their treasures and are willing to share with anyone who she desires. The greatest treasure, the Christian doctrine and a clean theology, but after that come other goods: our music and visual arts, our manners, history and literature knowledge, our willingness to serve in everything we do, our neighbor and - Evangelicals like it please consult a high church Lutherans when he writes them this in the album - our songs and our wonderful liturgy comes from the every word of the Bible and always out of our consciousness is available, especially in emergency situations. Your Free Church brothers and sisters, believe it just an old driving man who for two years was sitting night after night in the bomb cellar in his childhood and as a front rapporteur in Vietnam was often in action: Nothing changed in such situations, the fear so quickly in a God-given calmness as the Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy), which I had learned in Sunday school and since then sang in my head when I was in utmost need.

Here, the future Katakombenmenschen should not be embarrassed to make one of the two worst persecutor of Christians bonds: communism. Its strategic success was yes, to form within society cells and to link them loosely, but in a way that was hardly attackable from the outside. In GDR times also acted as Christians and took so inconspicuous influence on the changes in their environment verheideten. I examined this phenomenon to turn time and learned especially in Saxony Amazing: This Christian cells were tiny, but knew no denominational differences more. Unlike their Marxist models they practiced on their fellows not apply pressure and already certainly no terrorist. They also distributed religious tracts but no negotiated unobtrusive; their first missionary tool was her elegant, considerate occurrence in the workplace and in public.

In factories and offices they aroused by their language, their open look, I preppy appearance and helpfulness curiosity and the confidence of their colleagues when they were in distress, were not directed at the designated SED or union official but at this simple Christians. In the soulless prefabricated they went from door to door, to their often lonely neighbor introduced, came with them quickly this week and invited them to be.Again and again I heard the addressees responded. They asked the Christians: "Why are you so different? Why are you acting so credible and righteous? Where do you get your composure? What drives you on? "And so the path was then wisely guided faith talks open. The huge crowd dissident "cute Gentiles" who in the GDR churches took shelter at the turn of time and so the regime were able to overthrow, so did not get there because believers would they like with their selnstgerechten penetrance on the nerves, but on the contrary, because they had them easily encountered human-integer. The fact that the citizens of the new states have not rewarded this after the turn, by they were converted, has something to do with the original sin, to have true fear of God with innate inability of man (see Augsburg Confession article two) and with the monopoly of Holy Spirit to act faith.

We would do well working to develop along the lines of the GDR Christians own strategies entzivilisierenden to the noise of the media, the demagoguery of political discourse, the vulgarity in literature and everyday language, the vulgar manners, in short, the egotism of our be godless society counteract. One must not let these influences his offspring. To Hamburg's St. Nicholas Church there used to Pastor Peter Barth. In his rectory of television remained under wraps until the family council decided what you wanted to watch in the evening. "But what answer their children in school are addressed by their classmates to any moronic TV programs?" I asked Pastor Barth. He replied, "Then just ask back: Can you play trumpet? Or oboe or the harpsichord? Do you know what is a fugue? "That Barths children not arbitrarily dived refrigerator, out brought something edible, then mampfend ran into the street, but cultivated with parents after the grace took their food, understood. There are no apparent reason, this brave Pastor not imitate.

What form have the new catacombs and how the interdenominational Christian cells function in our time with their vorapokalyptischen trains to be seen. But that time is pressing, we organize for a period of suffering, is obvious. Probably we will certainly even have no direct profit from the fact that we faithful, joined together, but remain open to the outside world. But it is good to learn from the Japanese and Chinese Christians, that what sow here today will bear fruit in many hundreds of years, namely, when it pleases the Creator who indeed thinks not only by the minute and is but over eons.