Abstract
Knowing of my experience in Japan, a professor at one of South Korea’s leading theological seminaries made the following surprising comment during a recent visit to my office. “Given the current challenges of the Korean churches, such as leadership scandals, an aging and shrinking Christian population, and the secularization and materialism of society, I believe we may have something to learn from the experience of the minority churches of Japan.” With close to 30% of its population identifying as Christian, since the 1980s South Korea has been the poster child for church growth and missionary mobilization in East Asia, so I was shocked to hear a Korean theologian looking to Japan for guidance, where Christians make up a mere 1–2% of the population. In part as a response to this declaration, I plan to offer some reflections on the missional situation of the Japanese churches in my final editorials of the IBMR.
Sometime in the 1930’s, Kagawa Toyohiko, the world-renowned Japanese evangelist, social reformer, and writer, told the following story.
The parents of an eminent actress were murdered by burglars. A Christian pastor called after hearing about this tragedy. He entered very formally by the front entrance and endeavored to comfort her with the tenets of his faith. A Shinto believer also called. She entered by the back door, cleaned up the kitchen, and brought order out of the chaos caused by the incident. The outcome was that this actress espoused the Shinto faith. Her reason is interesting. She declared, ‘‘Christian teaching is sublime but too difficult for me to grasp. The Shinto believer was kind, not over dignified, and friendly, so I accepted her faith.’’ The Protestantism, introduced into Japan from Europe was strongly intellectualized and over-emphasized its theology. This left a gap between Christianity and the uneducated masses. There is danger, therefore, of it becoming merely the religion of the intelligentsia, a minority group.
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This story shows that Kagawa, who, in spite of his international fame, eventually came to be viewed as an outlier by many Japanese church leaders, was worried about the church’s captivity to an imported and abstract Western theology. In hindsight, his fear that Christianity in Japan would become “merely the religion of the intelligentsia, a minority group” was well-founded and perhaps even prophetic because, in spite of massive foreign and indigenous efforts, Japanese Christians constitute a tiny religious minority who are still highly concentrated in the port cities where the missionaries originally settled. 2 Perhaps with the exception of some even smaller indigenous 3 groups, Japanese Christianity is a Westward-leaning, individualistic, urban, middle-class phenomenon that has not been successful in presenting a convincing alternative to Japan’s traditional Shinto-Buddhist synthesis.
To further nuance this story, consider also the searing analysis of the late Japanese church historian Ishihara Ken.
While being attracted to the hearing of the exposition of gospel teaching, and accepting this as a welcome teaching, this does not lead to a basic restructuring of the self or the birth of a new human being. Thus, the old and new persons continue to coexist in conflict within the self, and while perhaps behaving at times like a Christian, one usually acts within the old environment as a full-fledged member of this society. By and large, this is the kind of ‘partial-Christian’ we have seen. . . As a result, Japanese Christianity occupies a kind of marginal ‘halfway zone’ within which a limited sphere of Christian influence is developed and a certain social influence is maintained, and while this appears to be Christian, it is no more than an embellished façade. Not only laypersons, but clergy with leadership responsibilities also tend to be seduced by such a situation.
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Whereas Kagawa criticized the church’s internal condition, Ishihara worried about how its witness was captive to “the old <social> environment.” He believed that such a situation creates an existential conflict among Japanese Christians that relegates Japanese Christianity to a “marginal half-way zone.”
From Kagawa’s moral tale and Ishihara’s analysis, we can see that both of these leaders were influenced by the New Testament vision of radical discipleship and by the kokorozashi ethic of bushido. Comprised of the Chinese characters for “kokoro/heart” and “samurai/warrior,” kokorozashi is a hard-to-translate term that describes how one’s personal ambitions are channeled in the pursuit of some just public cause. When comparing the Japanese church situation to some imagined “golden age” of early Christianity, Kagawa and Ishihara felt they had to apologize for the apparent failure of foreign missionaries and Japanese Christians to win their nation for Christ.
Without denying a place for high ethical ideals, I want to make the case that the internal and external problems Kagawa and Ishihara point out are in no way unique to the Japanese churches or to their specific cultural context. In terms of public presence and impact, one might just as easily point out that Christianity in the United States or South Korea today occupies an increasingly marginalized position in societies and cultures dominated by personal, social, and economic values that have no obvious connection to the teachings and practices of Jesus and his early followers.
Writing between WWI and WWII, French philosopher Henri Bergson said that individuals and societies tend to opt for the certainty of a closed or “static religion” 5 over the adventure of a “dynamic religion” that seeks “to effect a radical transformation of humanity by setting an example.” 6 The history of Christianity, in general, and the missionary movement as a chapter in that history, gives ample testimony to the fact that Christians have been better at building walls, which protect our personal and communal convictions and preferences, than building bridges that connect “all humanity in one simple indivisible love.” 7 Indeed, because of the temptation to restrict access to a cozy yet closed minority community, on the one hand, or to capitulate to the values of the dominant culture, on the other hand, the relationship between church and culture is always and everywhere a thorny theological issue.
Nevertheless, most Christians will agree that, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to proclaim and enact—in prophetic word and witness—the gospel in and for the world. There are two corollaries to this basic statement about the vocation of the churches.
Christian faith may never be consigned to some “private” community of like-minded individuals who hesitate to take their witness into the public sphere, and
Christian faith will never be completely at home in any culture, and therefore it must always humbly and boldly find positive and creative ways to respond to local religions, ideologies, and “realities.”
Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:14–16).
Since a dynamic religion that seriously engages both church and culture calls for humility, resistance, study, patience, creativity, self-criticism, suffering, and, yes, sometimes martyrdom, it is little surprise that we are tempted by the easier paths of separation or accommodation.
In closing, please consider how you and your community of faith might respond to the poignant rhetorical question posed this painting, entitled “Is This Our Table, Too?” by Nalini Jayasuriya, OMSC’s first artist in residence from 2001–2003.
Thomas John Hastings