{"id":480,"date":"2012-11-27T17:14:12","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T16:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/?p=480"},"modified":"2015-08-26T10:14:49","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T08:14:49","slug":"end-of-an-era-and-the-start-of-a-new-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"End of an era\u00a0\u2013 and the start of a new one?"},"content":{"rendered":"

China is changing, not only with the CPC leadership change through the 18th party congress a few weeks ago. Thursday morning last week, 22 November, bishop Ding Guangxun (K. H. Ting \u4e01\u5149\u8bad) passed away, just over 97 years old. Today, 27 November, his funeral was held in Nanjing. You never heard of him? Well, he was not that often mentioned in Western media, and his death seems to have escaped Western attention almost totally, except for brief statements by the World Council of Churches<\/a> (\u4e16\u754c\u57fa\u7763\u6559\u4f1a\u8054\u5408\u4f1a), the Fuller Theological Seminary<\/a> (\u798f\u4e50\u795e\u5b66\u9662) and a few others.<\/p>\n

This is quite remarkable. Bishop Ding was one the major Protestant leaders in China for nearly 60 years, and from the late 1970s he was predominant leader of the\u00a0Three-Self Movement<\/a>\u00a0(\u4e09\u81ea\u7231\u56fd\u8fd0\u52a8) until his death. He established the\u00a0China Christian Council<\/a>\u00a0(\u4e2d\u56fd\u57fa\u7763\u6559\u534f\u4f1a) in 1980, which became a more church-like structure in post-denominational China. All Protestant denominations were abolished in 1958<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Bishop Ding Guangxun<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When he died the registered congregations within China Christian Council had around 25 million members, probably the largest Protestant church in the World. It is noteworthy, however,\u00a0that so-called ”house churches” (\u5bb6\u5ead\u6559\u4f1a), or better ”unregistered churches” (\u975e\u767b\u8bb0\u6559\u4f1a), probably have even more members together, making the total number of Protestants in China more than 50 million.<\/p>\n

Bishop Ding initiated one of China’s first NGOs, the Amity Foundation<\/a>\u00a0in 1985. But he was also very controversial, because of his close relation to the party-state. He was one of the Vice Chairmen of the the\u00a0Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference<\/a>\u00a0(\u4e2d\u56fd\u4eba\u6c11\u653f\u6cbb\u534f\u5546\u4f1a\u8bae<\/a>\u00a0CPPCC) for almost twenty years (until 2008). He was also on the standing committee of the\u00a0National People’s Congress<\/a>\u00a0(\u4e2d\u56fd\u4eba\u6c11\u4ee3\u8868\u5927\u4f1a<\/a>\u00a0NPC), China’s parliament. The\u00a0CPC called him a\u00a0”close friend of the Communist party” (\u4e2d\u56fd\u5171\u4ea7\u515a\u7684\u4eb2\u5bc6\u670b\u53cb)<\/a>\u00a0after his death.<\/p>\n

He was often criticized for being a ”non-believer” (\u4e0d\u4fe1\u6d3e), and for what some saw as theological deviations. Such comments have dominated Chinese microblog Weibo writings about him the last few days. Others loved him, and credited him for making it possible for the church to function openly in China at all. He was respected by many as an important ecumenical leader in the worldwide church.<\/p>\n

His last years were darkened by dementia (\u5931\u667a\u75c7) and hospitalization, but as long as he lived his thinking and theology continued to influence church life in China. Research on his life and theology is only starting, but Philip L. Wickeri<\/a>\u00a0(\u9b4f\u514b\u5229) and Li Jieren<\/a>\u00a0(\u674e\u6d01\u4eba) have\u00a0already\u00a0<\/span>made good contributions. But what will happen now? Will the church be even more fragmented, will denominations come back? How will the party-state react? At best Ding’s legacy will serve as a reminder and inspiration for the future, and a new era will start. At worst things will just continue, without reflection and change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China is changing, not only with the CPC leadership change through the 18th party congress a few weeks ago. Thursday morning last week, 22 November, bishop Ding Guangxun (K. H. Ting \u4e01\u5149\u8bad) passed away, just over 97 years old. Today, 27 November, his funeral was held in Nanjing. You never heard of him? Well, he … <\/p>\n

Forts\u00e4tt l\u00e4sa \u201dEnd of an era\u00a0\u2013 and the start of a new one?\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kinafunderingar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2crM2-7K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":677,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}