National Christian Council of China
[1] During Nationalist China, the council undertook many projects to improve literacy, education of women, living conditions in the countryside, and disaster management, although the Great Depression hampered them.
The NCC convened its first national meeting after the war in October 1950, only to approve a pro-communist "Christian Manifesto" and support the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM).
The NCC ceased to exist and Chinese Protestantism would continue to operate under the government-controlled TSPM, but without foreign missionaries who had to leave China.
[20] The Continuation Committee was merged into the NCC and ceased to exist as an independent body, as did other organizations that had a similar fate, including China for Christ.
Cheng Jingyi, who had chaired the conference, became the general secretary of NCC and remained in that position until 1933,[1] while David Z. T. Yui was made the chairman of the organization from its inception until 1928.
[1] During the early years of the NCC, its inaugural chairman David Z. T. Yui sought to balance pressure from both nationalist and anti-nationalist groups, both inside and outside the Church, although he himself favored a synthesis of nationalism and Christianity.
[6] Even during the years of Nationalist China (1912–1949), the NCC suffered from lack of resources and "had no control over the larger economic, political, and security environment", a deficiency that it could not remedy, despite its active members.
[28] During that time, the NCC also took part in governmental relief efforts in the midst of many natural disasters that occurred in China in the early 1930s.
[35] In the midst of the transition period, the NCC spoke against corruption and social injustice, but considering the handover of all political affairs to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this was "too little too late".
Chinese Protestant churches were unable to attain a level of independence from foreign missionaries under the NCC, which would bring their loyalties under question.
Edwin Carlyle Lobenstine was honorary secretary, and T. T. Lew was head of the National Committee for Christian Religious Education in China.
[41] Historian Daniel Bays writes: "To me, it seems likely that the NCC sorely missed the leadership of Cheng Jingyi and Yu Rizhang [David Z. T. Yui]".
[38] When the first Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) convened in September 1949, the NCC was not invited because of its ties with Western missionaries.
Instead, five progressive Christians with pro-Communist Party tendencies represented Chinese Protestants there:[42] Y. T. Wu, T. C. Chao, Deng Yuzhi, Liu Liangmo, and Zhang Xueyan.
[43] The "Common Program" adopted by the CPPCC, the de facto interim constitution of the People's Republic of China, guaranteed freedom of religion.
[38] In November the Protestant delegates to the CPPCC sent out teams to Northern, Northwest, East, South, and Central China to see how the freedom of religion provision was being met in practice and to explain the United Front policy.
[48] NCC leaders decided, in a 26 January meeting, to convene a national congress on 19–27 August to consider how to respond to developments including those involving the CPPCC and the RAD.
[52] Proponents of "The Christian Manifesto," in order to further its prospects of success, pushed to postpone the meeting, which eventually was held 17–25 October 1950.
They were surprised by the ability of a relatively small number of activists to bypass the NCC, which at the time had massive resources and manpower behind it.
[55] Those most influential in promoting the Manifesto had been Protestants who were not affiliated with mainline churches, but with backgrounds in the YMCA and YWCA and whose role the missionaries consequentially failed to grasp.
[3] Because contacts and funding from foreign missionary boards was cut, the NCC had by the end of 1951 become "for all intents and purposes self-administering, self-supporting and self-propagating" – the Three-self principles of the TSPM.
The history of the NCC has been interpreted in various ways: as either an example of genuine Chinese ecumenism, as a precursor to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), or as a tool of Western missionary societies.
[60] According to Bays: In retrospect, it appears that the NCC was a prestigious but basically powerless body which, its supporters hoped, would be effective doing informal or semiformal brokering between various constituencies of the Chinese Protestant world.
