Abstract
The 21st century is marked by the exponential growth of Christianity in the Global East beyond Christendom. In the last thirty years, Canaan Hymns (jianan shixuan, 迦南诗选), over two thousand indigenous songs composed by a rural woman named Lü Xiaomin (吕小敏, 1970–) have spread and been sung from the underground to the world. They have become a hallmark of the Chinese church and mission movement beyond the borders of the Mainland. Coined as “God’s gift to China,” Xiaomin, a junior high school drop-out without any musical training, wrote these songs inspired by the Holy Spirit from the village fields of northern China. Despite ample video clips and documentaries of Xiaomin and Canaan Hymns being made available online, scholarship on their missiology has been underheard and underdeveloped. Drawing from the methodologies of “lived theology,” “grassroots theology,” and “biography as theology,” this article studies the formation, themes, and styles of Canaan Hymns through textual analysis, literature reviews, and interviews. In conversation with missiologists and theologians of the West and Asia such as Bosch, Moltmann, and Chan, a grassroots missiology that is contextual, pneumatological, and communal is discerned and articulated. In doing so, not only voices from the margins are heard and brought into global conversations, missio Dei is also given new meanings and significance in the context of the contemporary indigenous mission movement.
One would not be able to discuss the Chinese church movement without mentioning the Canaan Hymns (jianan shixuan, 迦南诗选) (Lü, 2020; 2001). This collection comprises over two thousand indigenous songs composed by a rural woman named Lü Xiaomin (吕小敏), with only primary school education and without any musical training. She has been likened to the blind American hymn writer, Fanny Crosby (1820–1915), who wrote more than eight thousand hymns in her lifetime (Aikman, 2006: 108). Over the last thirty years, Canaan Hymns, born in village fields of northern China, have been sung amongst Chinese churches from the fields to villages, towns, cities, and countries around the world. The most well-known hymns, “The Most Intimate Friend” (#34《最知心的朋友》) and “Five O’Clock in the Morning in China” (#268《中国的早晨五点钟》) (the song numbers follow [Lü, 2020]) help the Chinese church to hold on to hope in times of trial, and to revive and thrive in their evangelistic and mission endeavors. Due to their ability to capture the intrinsic experience of the Chinese people and become an instrument in shaping the Chinese church movement, Canaan Hymns have become a hallmark of Chinese Christianity beyond the borders of the Mainland.
Despite ample video clips and documentaries of Xiaomin and Canaan Hymns being made available online (Yuan, 2003), scholarship on their missiology is underdeveloped. Research on Xiaomin tends to focus on her life story and the history of the development of Canaan Hymns without constructive analysis of the undergirding missiology (Tang, 2013; Sun, 2007; Stroud, 2012). Xu Songzan (2017, 2020) presents the historical evolution of hymn singing in the context of the Chinese missionary movement, especially through Xiaomin’s later hymns. Chloë Starr (2016: 267–68) briefly mentions two key theological themes in the hymn collection: the eschatological tenor and the missional impulse. This article draws from the methodologies of “lived theology” (Marsh et al., 2016), “grassroots theology” (Chan, 2014), and “biography as theology” (McClendon, 2002) and studies the formation, themes, and styles of Canaan Hymns through textual analysis, interviews, and literature reviews. In dialogue with scholars of the West and Asia, a grassroots missiology that is contextual (inculturation), pneumatological (Spirit-Christology), and communal (ecclesiology) is articulated while Christendom’s ways of mission are challenged.
Inculturation: Germinal faith
Chinese culture highly honors poetry and music and has done so throughout the centuries. The phrase “words carry the Dao; songs express the will” (文以载道，歌以咏志) speaks of how Chinese culture employs poetry and music as key vehicles of communication (Yuan, 2003; Yang, 2018b). The local innovative Canaan Hymns were born and embedded in the soil of the village fields in Henan province. This area is dubbed “the Galilee of China” (Hattaway, 2009) or “the Jesus nest” (Lambert, 2006: 85–97), one of the first places where indigenous church revivals broke out and spread like wildfire in the 1980s and 1990s. The embodiment of creative endeavor demands that Xiaomin’s narratives and associated missiology are not treated as segregated parts, but are entwined as one. In McClendon’s (2002) words, it is the subject of convictions that forms the substance of the theology. Canaan Hymns, in both form and content, are born out of Chinese soil organically revitalized by the germinal faith of the grassroots—the “Grassroots from the Central Plain” (#325, 《中原草》), which refers to the itinerant unschooled evangelists from Xiaomin’s hometown traveling to other parts of the country to preach the gospel. The making of the hymns demonstrates the inculturation illustrated in metaphors by Bosch thirty years ago. He contested the model of “faith” as kernel and culture as “husk” by Schreiter, and likened inculturation to “the flowering of a seed implanted into the soil of a particular culture” (Schreiter, 1985: 465; Bosch, 2011). Canaan Hymns have indeed become blossoming flowers in the indigenous soil.
Bypassing scientific and cognitive analysis and reaching to the heartland within a culture, Canaan Hymns embrace Chinese folk song style, local sound, parables, and imageries. For example, the image of the verse “Great Union tonight, full of joy” (今宵 我 们 大团 圆. 心中喜 洋 洋) in the song #1174 resonates with the Chinese ideal of homecoming, where families gather around a meal table during the Spring Festival (Yang, 2018a: 113–19). The creative imagination of these hymns is filled with the metaphors of the country landscape, where Xiaomin spent her formative years in rural China. The seasons, spaces, and labor of peasants on her homeland soil are Xiaomin’s primary creative ingredients. The cycle of life is mediated with the vision of eschatological urgency, giving new meanings and significance to the Chinese scenes and festival seasons. For example, the song “Five O’Clock in the Morning in China” (#268) not only depicts the scene of a community in fervent prayer in the early morning, but also the harvest season of a countryside as the vision of eschatological future for the faithful.
Starr (2016) comments on how the tunes draw on a repertoire of Chinese folk songs accompanied by folk troupes and fast rhythms or solos in Chinese operatic style. The short and simple rhythms with modulating Chinese pitch are easy to grasp for anyone including unschooled children and the elderly amongst the congregants. One of such songs is “Sing a Heavenly Song” (#574《唱一首天上的歌》), which was selected and modified in a well-known movie 1942 and received good reviews from the public, and was later performed in Korea. “The Most Intimate Friend” (#34《最知心的朋友》) was even made into a Henan opera—a traditional performance in local dialect (interviews). The “catchy” and “colloquial” lyrics in the pentatonic scale are combined with affectionate and fluent melodies in Chinese folk style. In particular, the “lively and terse” songs have become popular amongst urban youth who are seeking a new language of worship in the wave of urbanization and globalization in recent years (Sun, 2021; Fang-Lan, 2021).
Not only in form, the content of the hymns often express affectionate love for one’s country that unites “Chineseness” and Christian mission, seeing Chinese taking a key role in worldwide mission. The song “Mission of China” (#1693《中国要宣教》) has been especially popular amongst a new generation of young people. The potential to develop a Chinese version of Christendom has been heeded by scholars, as Christianity should never be a culturally adopted tribal religion (Moltmann, 2002). In addition, while the grassroots in the official church welcome the hymns, the leadership is cautious of their theological orthodoxy and casual style (Letters from Readers, 1988; Xu, 2017: 145–46). Within the house church, however, the hymns remain popular as a vehicle of lively worship while clinging to theological orthodoxy (Lian, 2010: 220–21). The posture of welcoming suffering even to death itself for the sake of the gospel, with the distinctive Chinese Jing (劲, meaning “energy of persistence,” or “zealousness”) expressed in these hymns gifts the world with a Chinese theology of suffering. Through participation in the suffering of Christ, they simultaneously experience the resurrection and glorification of God (Rom 8:14–17; cf. Phil 3:10–11). These hymns provide a form of theological-liturgical inculturation, “the process by which believers seek to articulate their understanding of God during worship by reorienting the language and symbols of their cultural context” (Sun, 2007: 99). The Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako (1945–2008) puts it like this: “theology is called to deal always with culturally rooted questions” (Bediako, 1999: xv). In essence, Canaan Hymns, with distinctive Chinese folk melodies intermingled with biblical themes, serve as an expression of the gospel in Chinese culture beyond worship music, drawing all to be in alignment with God, including sacrifice and suffering within a culture. These embodied indigenous hymns reach deep into the spiritual realm forming a Chinese aesthetic beauty of the Spirit beyond cognitive understandings.
Instead of the imperializing ideology of western philosophy that has created a Christianity dominated by intellectualism, a grassroots missiology based on the lived experience of everyday Christians by faith and prayer pays attention to the affective dimension of heart and emotion through inculturated worship songs, music, poetry, and stories. When Bosch (2011: 463–64) challenged Christendom’s 20th-century ways of mission from the perspective of outsiders to indigenous culture, he charged missionaries to be learners, rather than providing answers. In practice, however, the question remains: How can the epistemological path towards God in poetry, songs, parables, and stories that the Majority world is familiar with be listened to and appreciated by missionaries trained in academic theology captured by propositions and intellectualism “couched in the Enlightenment” (Cooper, 2005: 9; Nicholls, 1983)? How can a form of inculturation such as Canaan Hymns enrich or even challenge the methodology of western theological and ways of mission built on scientific abstracts and propositions (Shaw and Dharamraj, 2018; Yang, 2018b)? Makoto Fujimura (in Fujimura and Wright, 2020: 29) asserts that the West tends to depict the gospel as a message that “God fixes things”—a kind of “plumbing theology.” Instead, Canaan Hymns offer a bottom-up construction in that the lived experiences in the affective dimension of everyday life take priority as sources of theology of mission in the Chinese church movement. Bosch (2011) also names the term “inculturation” as an important model of contextualization—a missiological framework with colonial connotations although with the commendable effort to make Christianity local or indigenized by foreign force. This one-way of missiologizing lacks self-awareness of the culture in which missionaries are embedded and inevitably bring to another culture. It lacks a further step of the missionary learning that the local culture serves as a mirror offering a new lens through which to understand one’s own culture and faith.
The “lived” life and theological making of Canaan Hymns were born out of indigenous soil form a grassroots missiology that is contextual. This process of inculturation could inspire post-Christendom ways of mission, in both method and content. How do we imagine the churches of the 21st century creatively in local soil? How do we nurture the biological organic growth of communities, not shipping out the global brand of mass consumerism, but discerning and empowering the raw sounds of the grassroots in their own ways?
Spirit-Christology: Cries from the depth
While the themes of Christology, pneumatology, and eschatology are prominent in Canaan Hymns, the central theme against the backdrop of the Chinese church movement is arguably Spirit-Christology. This Christ-centered life in the Spirit propounds Chinese Christians a gospel-centered, Bible-based evangelical conviction coupled with mission motivation. Simon Chan (2014: 106–108) identifies Spirit-Christology as the Christology that believes “baptism in the Spirit” enables one to experience the “full gospel” of Jesus Christ. It is characterized by personal intimacy, glossolalic prayer, immediacy of God’s intervention and passion for evangelism and mission. Jesus Christ anointed by the Spirit becomes healer, life-giver, inspirer, sanctifier, and coming King through the healing and transformative experience of these Christians. Instead of sociopolitical liberation that elitist theologians argue, the grassroots take priority in their freedom cries from the depth in Asia. Their personal encounter with the risen Lord answers their cries for healing from physical sickness and deliverance from psychospiritual bondage (2014: 104, 126).
This is precisely Xiaomin’s narrative in which she received miraculous physical healing following a dramatic encounter with the living Christ in 1989. Since then, she joined the Fellowship and devoted herself to mission, prayer, and songwriting (Yuan, 2003). The Spirit-Christological center can be seen throughout Canaan Hymns, not as a propositional doctrinal statement, a logocentric Christology, but declaration of living faith that reflects the ongoing mission of the Son and the Spirit. In the collection, the word “Lord” (Zhu, 主) that refers to Jesus Christ occurs 465 times and the name “Jesus” (耶稣) appears 104 times in hymn titles. The Lord Jesus is depicted as the guide, the good shepherd, the gatekeeper, the Almighty, the King, the hope, the refuge, the weeper, the healer, the light, the crucified, the resurrected and the coming one. In contrast, there are only 22 titles with the term “Spirit/spirit” and 27 titles with the term “Father.” In addition, the term “Shen” (神), a more generic term for (a) God used in a version of the Chinese Union Bible, is preferred to “Shangdi” (上帝), which signifies specifically the Christian God (Lü, 2020). Here is another sign of Chinese folk Christianity.
Clearly, the overwhelming usage of the term “Lord” indicates the heightened sovereignty and lordship of Jesus Christ in the collection. This God-image results profoundly in the endless gratitude and pious affection towards the Spirited Christ, who comes and stands with the Chinese church in times of suffering, brings comfort in the weeping, rejoices in breakthrough, and brings eschatological hope of promises in the full restoration of the creation. The emphasis on “Lord” in Chinese contexts for the Greek term κύριος demonstrates their faith in the One who is in control of the universe and human history and who is also the source and enabler of transformation and mission of the Chinese church in a restrictive environment. Beyond this article, it would be interesting to explore further how the traditional Chinese culture of filial piety (xiaoshun, 孝顺) has influenced the God-image, and how the overuse of the term “Lord” which the New Testament church replaced Caesar with has been a response to the atheist regime.
According to Xiaomin, different aspects of the multidimensional Spirit-Christology are emphasized in different seasons of church growth and development (interviews). During the period lacking in biblical and doctrinal literature, Xiaomin’s early hymns (1989–1998) focus on the nature of Christ. For example, “Rock, Rock, Jesus Christ” (#77《磐石磐石，耶稣基督》) affirms the dual nature of Jesus Christ: “You are the Son of Man / You are the Mediator / You are the Son of God / You are the Lamb.” This song incidentally provides a theological and spiritual foundation for a church that was prone to heresies and false teachings during the period of revival. During the season of reflection when consumerism and secularism crept into the church (1999–2008), songs tend to focus on God’s unconditional sacrifice and invited believers to enter into a tangible love communion with God; for example, songs entitled “Your Eyes Must Turn to God” (#832《你的目光要转向神》), “It is Real that God Loves You” (#733《真的有一位神爱你》), “How Deep and How Great is the Lord’s Love” (#635《主的爱比天高》). In the recent season of recovery (2009–2018), Jesus Christ as missio Dei has become more explicit, for example, “Mission of China” (#1693《中国要宣教》). The song “Lord Jesus, Send me” (#1720《主耶稣，差遣我》) expresses “The fire of mission fills our lives / Climbing over mountains / Crossing over deserts / Sharing the gospel with Arabs.” The eschatological and apocalyptic tenor intensifies with the expectation of the imminent return of the Lord in recent years. Following the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan in 2020, Xiaomin wrote “Wuhan Wuhan, You Are Not Alone” (#1946《武汉武汉，你不孤单》) to strengthen the people of the city during the Pandemic crisis. Since then, she also wrote “When the Lord Returns” (#1954《主回来的时候》) and “Before Jesus Returns” (#1955 & #1965《耶稣回来之前》).
Canaan Hymns provide a grassroots missiology of the Chinese church movement centered on Spirit-Christology which leads to paradigmatic changed lives. God is expected to perform miracles and healings, and speaks to believers through dreams, visions, and voices (Jenkins, 2006). It is neither Bosch’s assertion of one Spirit from above, nor Kim’s proposal of the experience of spirits below (Kim, 2000: 176). Rather it is the Spirit/spirits (of Christ) akin to the early church where Christianity was a lively and dynamic faith in the face of much opposition (Cox, 2009). This challenges post-Christendom’s ways of mission to let go of the old wineskins and release new wine into new wineskins (Matt 9:17). Could grassroots missiology be a call for the western church to return to the basics, that is commitment to the Word and the Spirit? Could it be a time for the institutional churches to abandon a maintenance mode and openly embrace the new movement of God undergirded by prayer and confession to the Spirited Christ?
Ecclesiology: Community in mission
The formation and circulation of Canaan Hymns is not only out of Xiaomin’s personal spiritual encounters, but also closely tied with the communal activities of kin of family, the Fangcheng Fellowship and the Chinese house church as a whole. From the beginning, Xiaomin’s aunt was instrumental sharing the gospel in the fields with her. Her healing and transformation took place within a local fellowship. She recognizes the ecclesial significance and cohesiveness of a community as the basis of her song writing (Yuan, 2003). The family-based culture that places high value on guanxi (关系, meaning one’s connection with others) or qing (情, meaning sentiment with each other) enhances the organic growth of the church. The term “family church” (jiating jiaohui, 家庭教会) would be a more appropriate replacement of the traditional term “house church” to represent the contextual nature of the body of Christ in China. In a “high context” culture where relationship and collectivism are given a high value, Chinese see themselves as part of a close-knit community web which cannot be separated from other interpersonal relationships. Chan (2014: 65–68, 186–88) highlights how Asians prioritize the family plays a part in shaping Asian theology. Families and friends tend to be the first they seek to evangelize, thus forming the basic components of ecclesial gatherings.
Beyond the sociocultural system and ethics, this is the church community where Christ has taken form among human beings. In Bonhoeffer’s (2005: 96–97) terms, the new humanity is a people awakened to new life in Christ, forming the body of Christ. Moltmann’s (1977: 64) ecclesiology with a vision of pneumatological eschatology, however, provides a trinitarian understanding. He states clearly that it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that creates such a community. Christian faith is revitalized because of the active work of the Spirit through faith in Christ in these organic ecclesial gatherings. The communion of the Spirit of such ecclesiology enables the members to love, serve, suffer, and share the joy of fellowship (1977: 65). The eschatological community, born of the Spirit, is the fertilizing soil where Xiaomin and Canaan Hymns were born, nurtured, and grown, as she creates these hymns from the core of community life as a member.
The sociocultural community combined with the pneumatological orientation of “collective effervescence” in tongues, singing, and dancing through Canaan Hymns has enabled the Fangcheng Fellowship to become one of the centers of the greatest and most sustained revival of Christianity over the last thirty years (Hattaway, 2009; Bays, 2012: 195). In his autobiography, key church leader Zhang Rongliang (2015; Zhang and Bach, 2015) explains how Canaan Hymns acted as a guiding light in challenging times when he faced team conflicts and decisions to go abroad. This bears resemblance to the experience of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) who found encouragement and strength from the singing of the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972) during the hard hours of the American civil rights movement (1955–1968). Needless to say, without Canaan Hymns, the life of Zhang and the history of the Fangcheng Fellowship would be written very differently. Zhang (2015: 396) notes how the Canaan Hymns summarize the lived experiences of the co-workers in the large network (tuandui, 团队). “We have cried, laughed, sung, silenced, walked, stopped, been passionate, been disappointed . . . Look, here is a river of life flowing to China, healing China, claiming China” (#520). Under pressure, the fellowship of living members of the body of Christ becomes intensified in sharing passion, tears, suffering, and pain. The mutuality of love becomes the key to forming and sustaining an eschatological community that carries the vision to preach the gospel westward with hope for the imminent return of Christ.
Canaan Hymns is a collection of hymns that not only echoes with, but also shapes the collective identity of the ecclesial community in mission. Xiaomin records that she once composed the song “One Person cannot Complete the Great Commission” (#270, 一人不能完成大使命) for a co-worker who had returned from the frontline alone and was about to give up on ministry (interviews). The lyric “the grass will never complain about the barrenness and poverty of the land / it takes root wherever it is” (“小草 永不会抱 怨 土地的瘠 贫 / 在 哪里都能够 深深扎下根”) became a vehicle of empowerment through which the co-worker wept and held the hands of others to continue the missionary journey. The verses not only show the connection between the literal text of the hymns and communal life, and articulate the concrete lived experience of Christian faith in times of struggle and suffering, but also invite the participants to revitalize their faith in their missionary journey. The song “Deep Night, Sleepless Night” (#1688) speaks of prayers for a brother in prison on a sleepless night. “Fellow Pilgrims” (#40《同路人》), in symmetrical rhythm, summarizes the togetherness of a community in mission, sharing joy and pain, tears and sweat on the pilgrimage. It has become a popular song that strengthens itinerant evangelists who travel to and preach in all corners of the country (Lü, 2020; Yuan, 2003).
It is through the community of all people who share one spirit and one mind on the pilgrimage that missio Dei is manifested. By telling and retelling the history of the Chinese church, Canaan Hymns have become a living entity inviting the audience to be a part of the performance, together in the participation of mission. The resounding voice of singing and cheering in vernacular language, combined with hand clapping and body movement, provides a lively worship experience with emotional intensity in ecclesial gatherings.
Canaan Hymns demonstrate that a grassroots missiology of the Chinese church movement is essentially communal. It is found at work on the basis of love in trinitarian community cultivated in a collective culture of guanxi and qing, where the members of the body walk and share life together in community. The cohesiveness of their fellowship centered on the suffering Christ is intensified and purified under fire. How does grassroots missiology challenge the western church to turn away from an individualistic and consumeristic posture to disciple-making faith and communal belonging? How does the post-Christendom church turn from a mode of complacency to genuine love and sacrifice for one another?
Conclusions
This article has discussed a grassroots missiology of the Chinese church movement that is contextual, pneumatological, and communal through the lens of Canaan Hymns. These hymns are deeply rooted and organically grown in local soil, centered on Spirit-Christology and nurtured in ecclesial community in mission. By hearing with ears and singing with mouths in the spirit of missio Dei, the experiential epistemology by faith through Canaan Hymns focuses on lived experience in worship, prayer, and mission; in other words, orthopathy and orthopraxy take priority over orthodoxy. It challenges Christendom’s ways of mission built on intellectualism, institutional maintenance, and individualistic and consumeristic faith.
At the end of 2020, Xiaomin’s new hymn “Hope” (#1986《祈盼》) captured the culture in a winter season of the decomposing and maturing of seeds before the joy of rebirth. She sings prophetically of the shaking of such seeds in the dark soil before the arrival of “spring winds and thunder.” This crisis moment is too a “κιρος” moment signaling that faith is to grow and spread like mustard seeds. For many, when church growth plateaued over the last decade, these songs provided renewed vision to hold onto the hope found in a suffering God who had never left nor forsaken them since the beginning of time. Their vibrant faith at the margins may also pave the way for increasingly marginalized Christians to live faithfully as disciples of Christ in the secular West of the post-Christendom era.
