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.
Uwe Siemon-Netto
Founder, Center for Lutheran Theology and League of Faithful Masks
The Hidden Church
Uwe Siemon-Netto
Founder, Center for Lutheran Theology and League of Faithful Masks