(ABP) — K.H. Ting, an Anglican bishop prior to China’s Cultural Revolution who led a “post-denominational” re-emergence of Chinese Christianity in the 1970s and 1980s, died Nov. 22 after several years of poor health.
Ting is credited with opening up the Chinese church to the outside world, including Amity’s Teachers Program, which recruits people from around the world sponsored by church agencies — including many Baptists in the Mid-Atlantic — to teach English, Japanese or German in Chinese universities.
K. H. Ting
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“I think it would not be too much to say that without his leadership after the Cultural Revolution, it’s hard to know whether the Chinese church would have been able to recover and flourish,” said Lynn Yarbrough, who retired this year as an English teacher supported by the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. “His influence probably saved the Chinese church during and after the Cultural Revolution. He was probably the only one who had credibility with both the government and Christians.”
Hailed by some as a patriot and visionary and criticized by others for being too cozy with China’s Communist leaders, Ting, 97, worked through 60 often difficult years of change in the world’s most populous nation.
Ting was ordained as China’s last Anglican bishop in 1942, a position he never renounced and technically held until death, even though his church was effectively dissolved and merged with other Protestant denominations into an umbrella organization called the China Christian Council.
Ting served as chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the liaison between church and state in China, and president of the China Christian Council, the official Protestant denomination. He became president of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary in 1953.
He lost his positions during the Cultural Revolution — a crackdown launched in 1966 to strengthen Mao’s position in the Communist Party and ensure continuation of the revolution that formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949 — but returned to prominence in the wake of liberalizations following Mao’s death in 1976.
In 1985, Ting and others set up the Amity Foundation, a Christian faith-based organization that promotes education, social services, health and rural development across China. Its work includes Nanjing Amity Printing Company, Ltd., a joint venture with the United Bible Societies launched in 1988 that recently celebrated the printing of its 100 millionth Bible.
“The life and ministry of Bishop Ting has had profound influence on the Christian church in China as well as on the global Church, and it has had profound influence on me personally,” said Daniel Vestal, the recently retired executive coordinator of the Atlanta-based Fellowship.
Vestal, director of the Baugh Center for Baptist Leadership and distinguished university professor of Baptist leadership at Mercer University, described the Chinese leader as a prophet, pastor, evangelist and teacher. “But most of all he was a bold follower of Christ who showed us that God is love,” Vestal said.
Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, described Bishop Ting as “an extraordinary leader in the Church.”
“Under his careful guidance, the Church in China flourished and experienced its richest period of growth and service as a truly indigenous expression of the gospel,” Medley said. “He will be greatly missed, not only in China but in the church ecumenical.”
A theologian influenced by French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ting envisioned an indigenous Christianity devoid of foreign influences and sensitive to the Chinese context. (The Three-Self Patriotic Movement stands for self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating.)
Bob Allen ([email protected]) is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.