Converting the Taiwanese Working Class to Christianity

Christianity Today offers an interesting article on class and cultural issues in Christian missionary work in Taiwan.

Although working-class Taiwanese are not necessarily poor, they are typically less educated—and education here is a crucial symbol of status and success. Some have dysfunctional family backgrounds, and many don't think much of themselves, Gibson says. Traditional and less open to the Western world, working-class Taiwanese tend to be steeped in generations of ancestor and idol worship. Few know the gospel.

"Some white-collar people in Taiwan hear the gospel five times when working-class people don't even hear it once. It's embarrassing," says Lincy Tu, a local evangelist who has planted five working-class churches in the past ten years. "Our society does not have compassion for the working class, and our churches are the same."

In the mid-1800s, early missionaries to Taiwan focused largely on starting Christian schools and hospitals, enabling converts to climb the socioeconomic ladder. They were especially active among aboriginal peoples, who proved far more receptive to the gospel than Han Chinese. The Chinese immigrants, who would eventually compose the vast majority of Taiwan's population, brought from the mainland a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism that would form traditional Taiwanese folk religion. While these beliefs remain popular among working-class Taiwanese, Christianity remains largely inaccessible to them.

Yet Taiwanese seminary professors and pastors, many of whom have studied abroad, continue to endorse Western, academic methods of reaching out to communities, Tu says. For example, worship services usually involve intellectually demanding sermons and text-heavy worship bulletins.

"[Working-class] people are open to the gospel if it's presented to them in a way that they can understand," says Gibson, who is taking part in a renewed effort by Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) to reach Taiwan's working class. "But if church services are conducted like school—the one thing they failed at—it won't work."

Another reason of course is that many educated Taiwanese have lived overseas, where they encounter Christianity as part of the community religious function, which they then adopt. Whereas working class Taiwanese cannot travel.

One problem is that Christianity, as a text-based religion which requires mastery of a particular body of doctrine and texts is that it does require some interest in and ability in reading. Because of this "text bias" the non-text basis of Chinese traditional religious practice often fools westerners into thinking that Chinese religious belief must be non-existent or shallow, when in fact it simply emphasises "doing" rather than "knowing." The result is that text-based proselytization founders:

Missionaries are also experimenting with new methods of explaining the gospel to the working class. IMB's Hokkien Harvest has spent years developing a library of audiocassettes and cds in Taiwanese, the "heart language" of the working class.

"Although the problem of illiteracy isn't as prevalent as I had once expected, we have found out that you always need to have the right evangelistic tools in your tool belt that don't necessarily involve writing and reading," says Mike Miller, current strategy coordinator for Hokkien Harvest. "Otherwise, you'll miss reaching some people."

IMB missionaries in Kaohsiung have found that grassroots audiences particularly enjoy testimonies on tape. Even though one such tape is that of a doctor, "he talks like a taxi driver—kind of down home," Miller says.

When it comes to printed materials, several mission groups have started to use colorful books to tell Bible stories and link them to salvation—a method based on materials developed by New Tribes Mission for use with tribal people groups.

OMF has also started to publish booklets containing simple stories from Scripture. Once, when A-chong picked up a normal Bible, he was overwhelmed by the volume of text. When missionary Tim McCracken handed him an OMF booklet instead, A-chong breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, I can read that!" he exclaimed.

It is interesting to compare how poorly Christianity has done in Taiwan, to its current growth in China. Indeed, with the exception of Korea, Christianity has made little progress in most of the Confucian societies around China. If the Communists really wanted to stop Christianity, perhaps they should introduce real religious freedom....

[Taiwan] [Christianity]