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It is difficult to imagine by looking at him that Presbyter Ji Jianhong gets flustered by much. Even when his mouth is turned down in thought, his calm, round face exudes a steady smile. His diplomatic demeanor—as chairman of the national committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant churches in China (TSPM)—can't mask a joy that radiates quietly about him. That's why any flash of irritation is noticed immediately.

Like when I asked him to explain how, exactly, Western Christians were intruding into Chinese Christianity. That momentary flash of anger revealed a tension he lives with as chairman of the TSPM, one of many tensions at the heart of emerging Chinese Christianity.

Presbyter Ji has only been in his position a couple of years, and he has not given many interviews to Western journalists. My opportunity to interview him came unexpectedly, and not in the best circumstances. I was on a small Christian Heritage Tour with Living Stream Ministry, and we had arranged to greet Presbyter Ji while in Shanghai. After touring TSPM's new headquarters on a humid September morning, we were escorted into a reception room and took seats around the perimeter. A translator sat next to Ji, and two or three other TSPM officials were there as well.

I expected the conversation to be formal and brief—official greetings, exchange of gifts, goodbye. But after opening remarks, Ji invited me to ask him questions. We talked for more than an hour. Given the circumstances, the conversation proved more revealing about Ji and the official Protestant church than I had originally hoped for.

It is an understatement to say that the Protestant Chinese church is complex. (Catholics in China are equally complex but are not the focus here.) Still, it can be divided broadly into two groups—the registered church and the unregistered (or so-called underground) church. The unregistered church gets the bulk of the attention among conservative Christians in the West, and for good reason—it is a group that endures more than its fair share of human-rights abuses.

The registered church is represented by two entities, the TSPM and the China Christian Council (CCC). These two work together closely, have many overlapping duties, and many individuals have responsibilities in both organizations—so much so that often people speak of them together as the TSPM/CCC. Still, broadly speaking, the CCC works to build up the life of the registered churches as such, and the TSPM is the intermediary between these churches and the government.

Many underground Christians remain suspicious of the TSPM/CCC enterprise. They remember that in the 1950s, the TSPM colluded with the government in arresting thousands of believers. They also know that registered churches have legal restrictions that can severely limit evangelism. But as to the suspicions that TSPM/CCC leaders have submitted to another head besides Jesus Christ—that doesn't seem tenable.

Take Presbyter Ji, for example ("Presbyter," or "Elder," is an honorific title). "I was born [in 1932] into a Christian family," he said. "My father was an evangelist. He was originally a member of a Presbyterian church, but he left that church because he no longer believed in the Presbyterian system. My father worked with Watchman Nee, who created the Little Flock movement. I was nurtured by the Little Flock as a child."

This is quite a revelation for a Christian leader in China. To acknowledge that one has been influenced by Nee's teaching and followers—well, it would be like someone in the United States saying he was deeply influenced by the infamous American traitor, Benedict Arnold. Watchman Nee (1903-1972) was no traitor. He was a dynamic Christian teacher and founder of one of the first indigenous Chinese church movements, the Little Flock (or Local Church). He was deeply influenced by the Plymouth Brethren and the Keswick holiness movement (among others). But after the 1949 Communist takeover, he adamantly refused to register his churches with the government, and as such has been considered a traitor by that government since. (He died in prison after suffering 20 years there.) Publication of his name is still banned. At the September Beijing Book Fair, Global Publishers Alliance (a group that promotes American Christian books to Chinese publishers) included some Nee books in its catalog. But before the catalog was distributed, a government official marked out Nee's name wherever it appeared.

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November 2004, Vol. 48, No. 11