In 1985, Bishop K. H. Ting (丁光训) introduced to students at Nanjing Seminary several foreign theologies that he felt could inspire Chinese Christians.1 Though he was particularly drawn to process theology and the theology of Teilhard de Chardin, his comments on Latin American liberation theology were quite curious. He believed that, rather than focusing on an otherworldly theology that asks whether ‘one goes to heaven or hell after death. The central theological problem should be the human world, how we enable people to live a life of human dignity once they are in the world.’2 Ultimately, however, Ting believed China did not need a liberation theology because China was already ‘liberated’ through the communist victory of 1949.3

Yet liberation theologies (e.g., Latin American, Black theology, Minjung theology, Dalit theology, etc.) often emphasise two reformulations of classic Christology: Christ as a liberation and Christ as a fellow-sufferer. While the more triumphalist understanding of Christ as liberator may not be prominent in post-Mao China, Christ who accompanies those who suffer has.

This has been seen in Chinese house churches which have developed a kind of ‘theology of the cross’. Jonathan Chao (赵天恩) believes that this has arisen through the persecution experienced by (house) churches.4 While I may agree that part of this is due to the persecution, it is also a theology expressed throughout all the churches in China. A message of suffering is heard in sermons and the indigenous hymnody5 of house churches and TSPM churches alike. Even Bishop Ting, who does not like the notion of ‘liberation’ theology, has borrowed language from Minjung and Latin American liberation theologies to describe the importance of a hamartiology that focuses on the ‘sinned against’.6 This reality is so poignantly captured by Zhuo Xinping (卓新平), a non-Christian scholar of Christianity, who writes:

The collapse of the relation between God and humankind is reflected in the individual’s feeling of being lost; it manifests itself in the abnormal existence of whole societies, the absence of absolute values and standards, where confusion, uncertainty and disorder reign. This is the state of ‘original sin’.7

Chinese society has had the collective experience of unrest, experienced through the struggles of the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square incident, and current pursuits of industrialisation. It is not a ‘liberation theology’ as we have seen in other parts of the world, but in Mainland China, Christianity has provided solace for the sufferer, with Christ as the ultimate fellow-sufferer.