Made in Japan

Most of my reading here at college actually has nothing to do with my course; I'm just taking the opportunity, which I probably won't have again^*, to use a lot of time and a fantastic collection of resources to prepare myself for the road ahead.

Tonight I ought to be reading more of the masterful David Bosch, but I've picked up another book on Japanese Christianity, "Christianity made in Japan", by Mark Mullins. Some choice snippets so far:

There is in Japan another Christianity than the familiar array of churches left behind by missionaries from the West, one virtually unknown abroad and as yet neglected by scholars of religion. It is the Christianity of indigenous movements established in a direct act of resistance to the failure of imported varieties of Christianity to reach deeply into the Japanese soul.

Now, a little bit of history for you.

Missionaries from Reformed, Presbyterian and Congregational church traditions met that same year [1872] for the first Protestant Missionary Conference to discuss how cooperative missionary activities could be carried out and schismatic Western-style denominationalism averted in Japan. In order to create a united "body of Christ in Japan", it was decided that denominational names would be avoided and missionaries from various traditions would all use the name "Church of Christ" when organizing new congregations.

So far, so good.

This was the general orientation of the Protestant missionaries until 1873, when the notices proscribing Christianity were finally removed. With the change in political climate to one of relative freedom came a rather sudden reversion to the old denominational orientation on the part of many missionaries. The concern for a united witness through cooperative mission was soon replaced by a focus on establishing Western denominational churches.

"Oh, those naughty missionaries"? Well, actually...

After ten years of study in the United States, Niijima Jo returned to Japan in 1874 and made a strong appeal to the Church of Christ congregations in the Kansai area to adopt the congregational polity in order to create a free and independent church in Japan.

Now I really understand what Morinaga-sensei was talking about when he planned to reunite the church in Japan. On the other hand, a useful note of caution for people like me:

If indigenization is the "cure" for nongrowth, one would expect to find indigenous movements to be dynamic and growing. An overview of growth and decline patterns of representative organizations, however, reveals a more ambiguous pattern.

Fair enough. But on the other hand, why are we still considering quantity, not quality?

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