Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Also the author notes the obvious, that there was widespread sentiment on the ground, to be rid of Western control. Nee's church model fit desire this to a 't', and thus gained wide and fast acceptance. Not because it was intrinsically viable, or real, but because it met the needs on the ground, at the time. That it wasn't intrinsically real is also shown by how fast and drastically Nee modified it, opting for centralization versus autonomy.
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Concerning the anti-Western movement, the object of Nee's ire was of course, denominations and denominationalism. Perhaps Nee's concerns about denominations weren't entirely unwarranted, I will give him that much. The trap that Nee fell into, however, was thinking that he had the fix for everything.
Just by comparison, Nee wasn't the only one who spoke out against denominations. Charles Spurgeon, a Baptist, can be quoted saying the following: "
A plague upon denominationalism! There should be but one denomination: we should be denominated by the name of Christ, as the wife is named by her husbands name." What was the difference between Nee and Spurgeon? Nee reacted to denominations by prescribing the ground of locality. What did Spurgeon do? I don't know too much about him, but I do know that he didn't invent a new teaching as the solution to a problem that he saw. Why is this significant? Well, fast forward 100 years later, and guess what, denominationalism is less and less of a predominant force in Christianity. If it was ever a problem to begin with, then it appears that it has been fixing itself.
It seems to me that it is increasingly rare to see churches identified as Baptist, Methodist, etc. I wouldn't think that too many people care about denominational ties these days. Of course such ties still exist, but the difference is that it's not about party lines like it may have been in the past (though I'm not sure the problem was ever as bad as Nee/Lee made it out to be).
I am not out to determine whether or not Nee had valid criticism in the first place. I'm also not here to say whether denominationalism is a problem or not. What I want to say is that Christianity has changed over the last 100 years. This is a dynamic process that is happening right before our eyes. In the 60's and 70's non-denominational groups like Calvary Chapel came about. Such groups were essentially trying to distance themselves from the denominationalism of yesteryear, just like the LC. The existence of such groups didn't fit the LC paradigm, and even to this day I have heard some LCers insist on saying that such non-denominational groups are denominations. Tell me how that makes any sense.
Anyways, the true problem at hand is that Nee tried to prescribe a fix to a problem he saw. Today, those in the LC still want to prescribe that same 'fix' to a non-existent problem. This is not to say the problem was ever there in the first place, but
if the problem did exist then, it certainly doesn't exist in the same form as now. I would really have a hard time believing that most people these days would care about what denomination a church is associated with.