Wang Yi’s Prophetic Practice
In 2004 a human rights lawyer named Wang Yi made the list of 50 Most Influential Public Intellectuals of China. In 2005 he became a Christian and joined the persecuted church in China as an outspoken advocate not only for human rights, but for the cause of Christ. In 2006 he was invited to Washington D.C. to speak with President George W. Bush about the issue of religious freedom. And in 2008 this young, distinguished, legal scholar resigned his university position to pastor a church in Chengdu, China.[1]
As a pastor, Wang Yi drew attention from government officials for allegedly distributing Christian content, leading a school and seminary that were not sanctioned by the government, and criticizing authoritarian practices of Xi Jinping.[2] In 2015 his unregistered church published Reaffirming Our Stance on the House Churches: 95 Theses in order to “lift high the cross of Christ” and in May of 2018 Pastor Yi was detained by police for holding a prayer service. On December 9th, 2018, Wang Yi, his wife, and more than 100 Christians from Early Rain Covenant Church (ERCC) were arrested for inciting to subvert state power and illegal business operations. Previous to the arrest, he wrote My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience and instructed his local church to publish it if he was ever detained for more than 48 hours. So, 48 hours into his detainment and while arrests of other ERCC members were still being made the church released it.
As I’ve reflected on Pastor Yi, I’ve been reminded of what Walter Brueggemann expressed about Moses’ ministry in Egypt. In The Prophetic Imagination Brueggemann writes, “[Moses’] work is nothing less than an assault on the consciousness of the empire, aimed at nothing less than the dismantling of the empire both in its social practices and in its mythic pretensions.”[3] God used Moses to pronounce judgment on Egypt and God is using Pastor Wang to pronounce judgment on the government that is oppressing his people in China.
When people like Pastor Yi show up on the world scene, we need to pay attention. You see, God’s beauty is put on display in this world when his children choose to be faithful knowing it will bring pain. This was true of God’s Son as he chose to endure undeserved suffering and it continues to be true as Jesus carries on his ministry through his Father’s adopted children.
Self-sacrifice is one of the most God glorifying strategies that a Christian can use against God’s enemies. We forget about self-sacrifice because we don’t like it. Self-sacrifice hurts. It requires more from us than we want to give. Sometimes it even requires our lives. Yet, this is the strategy Jesus used and through his use of it he is both our Savior and our model.
Most of us instinctively and unconsciously seek to preserve our lives. We try to limit our suffering as much as possible. We want to find a more conservative and comfortable expression of Christ-likeness. We want to find a middle ground where we can live in a way that is both faithful and safe. Pastor Yi jettisoned safe, and, in this, he serves as an exhortation to faithful action. In this, he serves as a living example of Jesus Christ.
To choose faithfulness to God in the face of suffering is a declaration that God is greater than this world. Pastor Yi is leading a charge into suffering and in doing so he is calling attention to the suffering Servant. And in his display of faithfulness, he is energizing God’s oppressed children. God has raised up a prophet in China to stir up the imagination of his persecuted people so they may not forget that their current, worldly rulers will ultimately be taken down. Pastor Yi is proclaiming the imperishable quality of the Ruler of the universe. The one who created the heavens and the earth. The one who appoints political authority and declares them all temporary. Pastor Yi is pronouncing loudly that Jesus is the final Moses and no matter how a current circumstance feels, God’s people can have absolute confidence that he will ultimately deliver us from all worldly empires and will eternally place us in the Promised Land…his eternal Kingdom.
And the Chinese government doesn’t like that. They imprisoned Pastor Yi because they are frightened of him. They are scared he will stir up the Christian imagination. In Pastor Yi’s words, “[T]he Communist regime is filled with fear at a church that is no longer afraid of it.”[4] Oppressive systems of government do not like it when people’s thoughts stray to consider an alternative reality. Brueggemann writes, “[I]magination is a danger. Thus, every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of the imagination, to keep conjuring and proposing future alternatives to the single one the [regime] wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”[5] Just as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego would not bow down to their totalitarian regime and were thrown into a furnace.[6] Just as Daniel would not stop bowing down to the true King and was thrown into a lion’s den.[7] Pastor Yi has engaged in faithful disobedience and been thrown into prison. And I hope his faithful suffering has a similar effect. I hope the Chinese government is moved to declare that the God of Pastor Yi “is the living God, enduring forever, [whose] kingdom shall never be destroyed, and [whose] dominion shall be to the end.”[8]
*On December 30th, 2019, Pastor Yi was fined 50,000 RMB and is currently serving a 9-year prison sentence.
References
[1] Joe Carter, “5 facts about persecuted Chinese pastor Wang Yi,” The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC (December 21, 2018).
[2] Thomas Kidd, “China Sentences Pastor Wang Yi to Nine Years in Prison,” The Gospel Coalition (December 30, 2019).
[3] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, 2018), 9.
[4] Wang Yi, “My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience,” China Partnership (December 12, 2018).
[5] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, 2018), 40.
[6] Daniel 3.
[7] Daniel 6.
[8] Daniel 6:26.
© Brent Bouton, 2023.
This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Cover Image: “China on a glowing globe with political borders” by Christian Lue is licensed under the Unsplash License.
Brent Bouton is a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen where he is researching racial identity development among White Christians. You can learn more about Brent’s work at practicetheology.org.
