mukyokai: a brief appraisal of the ‘no church’ movement in japan

7/26/2019 Mukyokai: A brief appraisal of the No Church Movement in Japan

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John W. Kennedy Mukyokai 1

MukyokaiA b r i e f a p p r a i s a l o f t h e N o Ch u r c h M o v em e n t i n J ap a n

by John W. Kennedy

Introduction

This word ... signifies the removing of those things that are shaken as of things thathave been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain (Heb. 12:27 R.V.)

The results of the past century of missionary expansion are being put to the test. Thenations of the East have come into their own, and the Christian community, maintainedby a benevolent missionary patronage, has become an anomaly. The stay upon which thechurch has grown and leaned is being removed, and it must now stand or fall according toits own inherent strength or weakness. The lack of spiritual stamina which has beenrevealed over the past decade has been the cause of much heart-searching on the part ofmissionaries in many lands, and has also stimulated a new spirit of enquiry into thenature of the missionary commission. There must be few indeed who would deny orcondone the mistakes of the past, or who do not now concede that the church, as it hasdeveloped, has left much to be desired, both in solidity and spiritual character.

What lies at the root of this failure on the part of missions to see the church solidlyestablished? Is it simply a weakness in method, a faulty understanding of the technique ofchurch-building, or is it perhaps a failure to understand the very nature of the church itselfand its vital role in the purposes of God?

The commission, Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel, has been the greatincentive of modern missions, and, Bible in hand, the Gospel of redeeming grace has beenfaithfully proclaimed. Yet when the question of establishing the church has arisen, howoften the Bible has been discreetly placed to one side (albeit still open for reference!)

the denominational handbook or the book of mission rules has been taken up, and thework of organizing the church has begun, a church based, with little question, on a tradi-tional pattern. In the case of the institutional mission, the church has often become simplyan appendage to a social programme. It is the old story of the good being the greatestenemy of the best. An occupation with the desire to bring people to a profession of faithin Christ and personal committal to Him, a vital and necessary objective, or, on the otherhand, an engrossment with social service, laudable in itself, has obscured the importanceof the church as the place where all personal spiritual experience must find its con-summation, and as Gods spiritual power-house, the source of every advance for thekingdom of heaven. Instead, it has become little more than a depository for the results,good and bad, of missionary efforts.

While the fact of the churchs lack of power has come to be generally recognised, the

reason for this state of affairs has not been so clearly seen. The common impressionseems to be that it is simply a matter of organization and control, and that the mainmistake of the past has been in the slowness of missions to foster the qualities ofleadership and responsibility within the church itself, or, to use the jargon of the presentday, the failure to build upon an indigenous foundation. Indigenize has become thewatchword of missions and the subject of endless discussion. Every new work must beindigenous, and every established work must be indigenized. To this end countlesscommittees meet in countless sessions, schemes are drawn up and resolutions passed,every mind is organized to set down clearly the outworking of this infallible indigenousprinciple in every conceivable situation.

It is significant that in all the weighty deliberations centred on the indigenous church,the whole pressure of emphasis is not on the word church but on the word indigenous.

The historical development of denominationalism is accepted as the perfectly validexpression of the church which, if it contains little evidence of spiritual life, can bevitalized by the technique of indigenization. To doubt this fact, of course, would be to


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question the spiritual authenticity of the bulk of what goes to make up the churchvisible, and to pose the question, is the sum of this church visible really the church ofJesus Christ against which He said the gates of hell should not prevail? It would also, tothe majority, appear to be the most unthinkable impertinence. Actually this basic and

most important question of all, concerning the nature of the church, has been set aside,and the current fervour for indigenization has simply reduced the establishing of thechurch once again to a matter of mechanics. The only difference from the policy of thepast is the system of organization.

But the failure of the past is not that the church has been organized wrongly, it is thatanyone should have thought the church could be organized into being at all. The church isnot a machine; it is a body. The church is not organized; the church is born.

The work of the Spirit of God goes on today as it has done down through the centuries,and from amidst the confusion of superficial religion and lifeless orthodoxy there can bediscerned, for those who have eyes to see, companies of them that feared the Lord, andthat thought upon His name, beset no doubt with the frailties that are common to all thisfallen race, but living out their spiritual life together in a freshness and vitality that is notof man. Wherever we see such, we need to take notice and to learn.

Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel, wrote the apostle Paul. Woe is unto us ifwe obey not the Word of God, is the imperative that must bring the church into being.The church is born in a spirit of divine compulsion to obey the Word, in a divine urge towalk in light received. There are in many countries today groups of Christians who haveexperienced the resistless power of that divine constraint. They are not new. Movementssuch as Mukyokai in Japan are not a phenomenon peculiar to the past hundred years.They are in the direct line of the generation of the church which God has brought to birthin succeeding ages from the times of the apostles. It may be argued that they areimperfect, but so also were the assemblies to which Paul wrote. It is complained that theyare often in disfavour with the organized church, but our Lord found little sympathy in theorthodox Judaism of His day. It is objected that they are divisive, but Pauls associationwith the synagogue at Ephesus was short-lived when it became evident that the airless

atmosphere would mean death to the Word of life. We would not be found to argue thatwhat is separate from the general stream of organized Christianity must be right, butneither is it true that it must be wrong. On the contrary, history is adequate testimony tothe fact that the light of the glory of God has often shone most brightly in smallcompanies of devoted men and women who have had to suffer the ostracism of anominal Christian self-sufficiency, but who have been willing to go forth unto Himwithout the camp, bearing His reproach.

Mention of Mukyokai is not altogether lacking in writings on the Christian situation inJapan, but not infrequently it is ill-informed and biased. The following pages, however, arenot a defence of Mukyokai. A work of God must be its own defence, and what is not ofGod need not be mourned if it falls. In many ways, Mukyokai mirrors the enigma that isJapan, yet it reflects also that irresistible constraint to follow the Lord which is the mark of

the church. If through the reading of this short appraisal, some should experience thatsame divine constraint and God bring to birth His church where at present it is not, untoHim be the glory.

Madras, 1962, John Kennedy


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The Mukyokai Movement

In 1852 the doors of Japan, long closed to the Western world, were forcibly opened.Years of strife and confusion followed, but finally, in 1867, in the Meiju restoration,

Mutsuhito ascended the throne; the capital was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, and a newday dawned for the country. The collapse of the age-long feudal system, and theemergence of Japan from centuries of isolation, have paved the way for the building upof a modern nation through the incredible industry and efficiency of the Japanese people.Yet Japan has not lost her national character; in fact, the industry and other qualitieswhich have made her what she is today are themselves the product of the feudalism andisolation abandoned a century ago. Japans geographical position, her size, her uniqueculture have together exercised a powerful unifying influence, and have encouraged hertraditional belief that she is a nation set apart, different from others, a nation with aspecial destiny. At the same time, the religio-political system of State Shinto with itsfeudalistic concepts, and postulating the Emperor as the divine leader of the nation, hasfostered a spirit both of unquestioning loyalty to proven leadership and intense

patriotism. The individualistic West will always find it difficult to understand that tie ofdevotion by which every Japanese identifies himself with the destiny of his country.Japan may take advantage to the full of Western technical and material progress, butonly to build upon the foundation already laid a structure which is still essentiallyJapanese, not to build some pale imitation of occidental progress. Some of us in the Westmay lightly regard our national loyalty; devotion to Christ easily and naturally transcendsother allegiances; we are Christians first and British second. But not so in Japan; Japanmay not come before Christ to the devoted Japanese Christian, but he is both a Christianand a Japanese at one and the same time. A grasp of these few, simple facts, is basic toany understanding of the man Kanzo Uchimura and the movement, known as Mukyokai(literally Non-Church) which he founded.

Uchimura was born in 1861 the son of a Samurai scholar, in the city of Tokyo. At least

two short accounts of his life are easily available in English, so there is no need here totouch on aspects of his life other than those which had a direct bearing on his Christianexperience and subsequent Christian outlook. It was at the age of sixteen, as a student inthe Sapporo Agricultural School, Hokkaido, that Uchimura had his first touch withChristianity. An American, William S. Clark, had been appointed by the Japanesegovernment to assist establish this school, and was given permission to use the Bible asa text book for a course on Ethics. This eventually led to the establishment of a band ofstudents who had signed a Covenant of believers in Jesus drawn up by Clark himself.The Sapporo band, as it has been called, became a vital evangelical witness in the college,and Uchimura, from being one most opposed to Christianity, eventually signed theCovenant. That this marked an important stage in his experience cannot be doubted, yeton the other hand, it does not appear that this was the time when he entered into a vitalexperience of a relationship with Christ. In his testimony How I became a Christian hewrote:

The public opinion of the college was too strong against me ... They forced me to signthe Covenant.Nevertheless, he regarded himself committed to the cause of Christ to the extent of hisunderstanding, was baptized by a Methodist missionary on June 2nd, 1878, and becamea diligent worker with the Christian group in the college. Soon after his baptism, he joinedwith seven others who had signed the Covenant in establishing a little church along whatthey felt were New Testament lines. All went smoothly for a time, till this little groupbecame the object of denominational rivalry, but they stoutly maintained their inde-pendence from sectarian affiliations. At great personal sacrifice, within a comparativelyshort time, they returned an amount of money which had been given to them for theerection of a meeting place, and felt that they were really free at last. Uchimura learned

two valuable lessons from this experience which were to become keynotes of his teachingin later years, firstly, the impoverishment of sectarianism, and secondly, the need of com-


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plete financial independence from the West.Following graduation, Uchimura went to work for the Japanese government as a

specialist in ichtheology, but the few years which followed were fraught with personaltragedy. It was partly for this reason that he decided on a trip to America. Not yet had he

found spiritual peace and rest; he was still a seeking soul.During Uchimuras time in U.S.A. he was brought into contact with various people whohad a substantial effect on his subsequent Christian outlook. The first of these contactswas with members of the Society of Friends or Quakers in an institution where he wasemployed near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The lack of emphasis in Mukyokai groups onbaptism and the Lords supper, for example, may well be traced back to this period. Anapparently inconsequential meeting with a Minneapolis banker, David Bell, also had far-reaching results. They met only for a short period in a Washington tramcar, but theirconversation turned to Christian things, and they corresponded for years. Thecorrespondence with this godly man, along with selected pieces of helpful Christianliterature which David Bell continuously sent, had a considerable influence on Uchimurasthinking and the development of his spiritual life. The greatest and most basic influencefor good, however, was that of Julius H. Seelye, of whom Uchimura said: He is my fatherin the faith. Seelye was president of Amherst College, Massachusetts, and it was throughhim, in 1884, that God finally led Uchimura to a place of saving faith in Christ. Writing ofthat experience Uchimura said:Very important day in my life. Never was the atoning power of Christ more clearlyrevealed to me than it is today. In the crucifixion of the Son of God lies the solution of allthe difficulties that buffeted my mind thus far. Christ paying all my debts can bring meback to the purity and innocence of the first man before the fall. Now I am Gods child,and my duty is to believe Jesus for His sake. God will give me all I want. He will use mefor His glory, and will save me in heaven at last.

It was through the influence of Mr. Seelye that Uchimura went to Hartford TheologicalSeminary in 1887, but his time there was short-lived. The professional ministry did notattract him, nor did the callous attitude of professors and students to the truth to which

they were supposed to be devoted. Theology, to Uchimura, had to be both practical andliving, and the particular brand which he found at Hartford seemed to be neither. This,along with other considerations, turned his thoughts homewards, and, leaving hisstudies, he returned to Japan.

It is against the background of these formative years of Uchimaras life that one mustconsider the work to which he was to give himself in years to come. His visit to the Westhad brought a good measure of disillusionment. A man of great intensity of character, hereacted strongly against the religious superficiality of a so-called Christian country. Hisspiritual experience of Christ had affected the very fibre of his being, and anything whichat one and the same time outwardly assented to the work of Christ and in practice deniedit, was abhorrent to him. Uchimura was no hypocrite, nor could he give himself half-heartedly to any cause. He was a Japanese and a Christian; his country needed Christ,

but he recognised that the West, along with its knowledge of Christian truth, containedmany other things less desirable, and many of these latter were being transferred tocountries throughout the world along with the word of the Gospel. It was against thisadmixture of Christ and elements completely foreign to the truth that he so stronglyrebelled, and whether this was a predominantly American or Japanese mixture, he spokeout against it with equal force.

It was not till some years after his return from America that Uchimura settled down tohis lifes work. First he sought his sphere in teaching, but was completely unable to fit intothe featureless mould required by mission school authorities, with the result that, in thecourse of eight years, he had taught and resigned from his positions in five differentschools. Thus it was that he was criticized by the English-speaking community as a manwho would not work with them and anti-foreign. But he fared little better with his own

countrymen. In January 1891 the Imperial Rescript on Education was issued requiring allteachers and students to bow before a portrait of the Emperor. Uchimura, scorning theeasy way out of not putting in an appearance, refused to bow at an assemblage of sixty


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professors and over a thousand students. The whole thing was made a political issue,and he was denounced as a traitor to his country.

In 1897 Uchimura turned seriously to writing, and soon was the chief English writer ofthe Yorodzu Choho. As one who felt it a patriotic duty to bring the truth of Christ to

Japan, he began to clear the ground through his articles by attacking the evils of Japanand urging social reforms. His conscience, however, was not satisfied with this basicallynegative approach, and he soon turned to Christian journalism.

From now on my pen will talk of the world to come, not of the present. It will tell ofHeaven, not of Japan.Uchimura contributed to or edited a number of magazines, at the same time carrying onhis Bible study meetings at which expression was given to the principles he developed.His Bible Study Magazine was his greatest, and for a couple of years shortly before hisdeath he edited and published, in English, a magazine called the Japan ChristianIntelligencer. From the pages of these various publications we gain a remarkably clearinsight into the thought and character of Uchimura, and, to a great extent, Mukyokaitoday reflects the character of the man himself. Uchimura knew no half measures. Whathe did he did with his whole heart, and his heart ruled his head. He tended to speak orwrite first and think afterwards, with the result that he sometimes wrote unwisely. It is notsurprising that he should have been misunderstood. Maybe it was a little unfortunate thathe committed so many of his thoughts to paper. There must be very few people whosethoughts have never exceeded the bounds of the strictly orthodox, but with most, thesethoughts remain unexpressed. Uchimura, however, wrote them down, and they are stillused in evidence against him, often ignoring the repudiation which he recorded in lateryears of his earlier foolishness.

Uchimuras deep spiritual experience and devotion to Christ form the subject of someof his most passionate utterances. In 1912 he wrote,If my Christianity is not evangelical, it is nothing. If the cross saves me not, I am notsaved. I know not how it is with others; but with me the Cross is everything. Myrighteousness is in it, my sanctification and salvation as well. I know I am not a member

of any orthodox church, but orthodox or heterodox, I cannot let go from the cross ofJesus Christ. I have a deep ethical need for it, and peace I have not without it.Nearer the end of his life, in the Japan Christian Intelligencer of September 1927 hewrote, What is Christian life but life lived by God in me? Life that is lived by me, be it everso perfect, is not Christian life ... No better definition was given to it than by St. Paul in hisEpistle to the Galatians, not indeed in form of definition, but as a statement of hisexperience, he wrote, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, butChrist lives in me and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in (by) faith, the faithwhich is in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20). I amalready dead; no longer I live; in my place lives Christ the God-life.

Uchimura was no blind follower of sectarian beliefs, and he had little time for anywhose prime concern was that people should fit into a particular mould of Christian

experience rather than that they should know the Lord. Of an experience in 1923 atKaruizawa the hill station and missionary conference centre in Central Japan, he wrote,An American missionary asked me, Have you received baptism of Holy Spirit? To whichI answered, I do not know. I have been a Christian for forty-six years, and for thirtyyears I have been engaged in distinctly Christian works. For all these years I have notreceived any help whatever from churches and missions; I earned my living and workingexpenses, and that you know, in this unchristian country. Do you think I was able to do allthese without baptism of Holy Spirit in some form? The missionary was not pleased withmy answer; my idea of baptism of Holy Spirit was not exactly like his. Christianity is amatter of life and death question with me. I have no pet doctrine to preach.

The spirit of sectarianism was, in fact, one of the chief causes of Uchimuras reaction tomuch of the work of Western missions. As has already been seen, he encountered this

spirit at the very outset of his contact with Christianity, and it never ceased to be a greatburden upon his heart. In the Japan Christian Intelligencer of November 1927 he wrote,

Surely sectarianism is opposed to the very spirit of Christianity. Christ is not divided,


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and even if division is unavoidable under the present circumstances, the divided membersshould love and respect one another. Someone has called Christianity the religion ofhumility; and so it is, I sincerely believe. But sectarianism is the opposite of humility.

Uchimuras consuming desire, and that for which he lived out his life, was to see a

return to the simplicity that is in Christ, those who were truly the children of God throughfaith in His Son living out their lives in the natural warmth and communion of that intimaterelationship with the Father and with one another, unhampered by the concern ofmultitudinous traditions, forms, divisions, racial patterns and pseudo-cultural accretionswhich, over the centuries, have submerged the reality of fellowship in the Spirit. Maybe, insome respects, Uchimura went too far, but surely his object was God-owned, and manytoday would do well likewise to ponder the burden of superfluous organization underwhich the church is labouring, and seek a return to the Spirit-controlled spontaneity of lifein Christ which was the mark, in apostolic times, of them that believed.

It was this desire that brought Uchimura so often into serious conflict withmissionaries. He recognised both the strengths and weaknesses of foreign missions, andspoke out against the latter in his own forthright manner. From his own experience heknew the impoverishment of Westernization and the lack of dynamic in the messagewhich so many missionaries brought to Japan. His criticism, too, was amply justified,especially when one remembers that Japan had become a centre of Christian liberalism.But this does not mean that Uchimura was either anti-West or anti-missionary, althoughhe has often been misrepresented as such. He fully recognized the God-honoured natureof a genuine missionary commission, but he looked for the Lord Himself as the basis ofChristian service, and was willing to accept nothing less.

I am often asked of my opinions on this question, Should we missionaries stay inJapan or leave it? To which I instantly answer as follows, If you are in any doubt aboutthat matter, leave at once; for, I understand, Christian mission is a matter of convictionsand not of opinions. We stay when God tells us to stay; and leave when God tells us toleave. We do not stay or leave according to mens opinions.

If there are to be foreign missionaries in Japan, they should know that God has put

them there. This was Uchimuras view, and a view no different from that of any true childof God. In writing advice in the pages of the Japan Christian Intelligencer to youngmissionaries in the country, Uchimura urges,

Oh, teach them in Christianity, in the simple Gospel, in the fundamental truths of Chris-tianity, like the following: Except a man be born anew (as from above), he cannot seethe Kingdom of God. God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, thatwhosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. God was in Christreconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and havingcommitted unto us (all true believers) the word of reconciliation. Preach these simpletruths, and their effects will be far-reaching ... Japan and the whole world need the pure,simple Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And remarkable to say, so little is taught byChristian missionaries in the Gospel. As I see it, Japanese Christians are already suffering

from the dearth of the Gospel, while they were given Christian civilisation more than theycan very well manage.

The last sentence is indicative of the measure to which missionary work in Japanconsisted of Christianization which was entirely void of the life of the Spirit. Uchimuraopposed this with all the fervour of his being. To him Christianity was Christ, and not apale imitation of Western civilization with all its evils as well as its benefits.Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel, said the apostle Paul. Yes, woe is unto us ifwe preach instead, international relations, social reforms, and the Western Civilization.Yet, alas to see so many preachers who would preach the latter, and not the former,the unpopular yet indispensable Gospel of Christ and Him crucified!

Thus he wrote in March 1915. Writing again for The Taiyo in October 1920 onChristianity and Japanese Culture, he says,

Preaching which conveys European thoughts under the name of Christianity is notwelcomed, but the preaching of the real Christianity of the Bible, whoever the preachermay be, is very earnestly listened to. Since the year before last, I have been preaching in


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the centre of Tokyo, leaving my suburban seclusion, and I have never found my audiencetoo small.

Uchimuras experience was based squarely on the Word of God; he believed the Bible;he taught the Bible. He was no theologian in the formal sense, but he knew on what

ground he stood. As would anyone engaged in Christian ministry in Japan, he came upagainst modernism in many forms, but he was under no illusions as to its powerlessnessto meet mans needs. In January 1930 a few months before his death, he wrote,

What is modernism in all its forms but the Christianity of the unconverted? It is anattempt of the modern man to understand Christianity without the terrible experience ofconversion. But it is still true in this twentieth century as it was in the first, that, Except onebe born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. (John 3:3).

Kanzo Uchimura recognised the need of a reformation within Protestantism itself, andhis insight penetrated into a problem that is coming more and more to the fore today,that of a lifeless evangelicalism. The blatant infidelity of the Christian Higher Critic is notthe only bulwark against the faith; more subtle, and more dangerous, is the orthodoxywhich has reduced the experience of faith in Christ to a mechanical formula.

Protestantism, says Uchimura, is above Catholicism, as faith is above works. ButProtestantism is mostly faith in a formula, a noble and grand formula though it undoubtedlyis. The new Protestantism must be faith in the living Saviour, and so be raised above theold Protestantism. It is not the Bible that saves us, but the living, personal Saviour. Iftherefore, the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:36).

A lover of Japan and a patriot, Uchimuras patriotism, nevertheless, did not blind hiseyes to the defects in his own country. Never did he use more scathing sarcasm than todenounce rampant evils in his own beloved land, but these denunciations are almostentirely confined to the period prior to his entry upon the field of purely Christianjournalism. The following two rather extreme quotations illustrate the depth of feelingand poignancy with which he expressed himself, and the biting sarcasm which, in his lessmellow days, he employed in his no quarter war against cant and hypocrisy.

I am told upon patriotic ground that I must not write any bad thing about Japan and

Japanese when I write in English or any other European language, for thereby I exposethe countrys defects to beyond the seas. That is to say, when I write for this column, Imust (according to this patriotic advice) call Marquise Ito a saint, Count Okuma a learnedphilosopher, Baron Iwasaki a great philanthropist, etc., etc. As if to imagine thatforeigners can get no news from vernacular accounts of these and other gentlemen frommultitudinous papers published in this country! But then, I confess, that it is not verypleasant to call devils even by their true names. So from this day on, I will join thecompany of prophets of sweet things, and be no more D but Jove or some other jollyfellow(The Yorodzu Choho. June 12th, 1899.)

Japan has been advertised to the world as The Land of the Virtuous, of Serene Artand Profound Rest. The whole land has been pointed out as a habitation of Artists andSaints. Sacredness was attached to every hill, and poetry to every stream. No impurity

lived here, but all was decency, chastity and love. The land of God it has been called,and its inhabitants were the sons of gods. Such wonderful land! and vulgarity should bethe last feature to be expected from such a land as ours. But recently, notwithstandingall the proud assertions of our patriots, sanctity and art are rapidly disappearing from theland, and in their places, vulgarity, powerful and invincible, is rapidly taking possession ofthese beauteous isles. No spot where a fashionable god has a shrine, but vulgarity in themost glaring form has strongly established itself there. The holy precinct of Ise has verynear it a most licentious town of Yamada. The antique shrine of Atsuta is in one of the mostunholy places in the country. Kyoto with its five thousand temples is sanctified by thepresence of as many messengers from the infernal world. It has been said that prostitutesand Hongwanji priests are the two most effectual pioneers of Japanese civilisations; thatin Wokkaido and Rinkiu (and possibly now in Formosa also) where these two classes have

established themselves, their active colonies are sure to follow! Surely very consolingfacts to think about, those!

Certain isolated quotations from Uchimuras writings are sometimes given in order to


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substantiate a charge of heresy against him. Probably the most outrageous of these waswritten in November 1915, maybe at a time of loneliness, beset, as Uchimura was, bycriticism from Christian and heathen alike, or maybe just to shock the staid and indolent,which he was not averse to doing. At its worst evaluation, it is heretical, at its best, highly

ambiguous, and it was certainly unwise.As an independent Christian I thought I stood alone in this country. But now I thinkotherwise. Thirteen millions of my countrymen who profess the Jode form of Buddhismare my brothers and sisters in faith. They take the same attitude towards their AmidaBuddha that I take towards my Jesus the Christ. Change but the object of faith, and theyare like me, and I am like them. And faith being the human side of religion, by faith weare united in religion, and not by the object of faith. My own Christ said, Not everyonethat saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeththe will of my Father which is in heaven. And that will is no other than faith.That this statement accurately reflects Uchimuras outlook is borne out neither by theconsistency of his life nor by his subsequent writings, and it hardly seems sound judgmentthat the unwise word of a moment should be held for ever and a day, despite allsubsequent confessions to the contrary, as establishing a serious departure from the wayof truth. Uchimuras position could not be put more clearly than it was by himself, later, inthe following words:

Does faith save? Of course it does, says the popular Protestantism. Only faith doessave and nothing else. But it is evident that faith by itself does not save. It is the object offaith that saves. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who saves and not our faith. Therefore, faithneed not be great if rightly placed. To the request, Increase our faith, the Lord replied,If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed etc (Luke 17:5-6). Even a slender faith isenough if placed in the right object. The ban of Protestantism is in its overestimate of faith.Much of so-called faith is not faith but works.

On March 28th 1930 Kanzo Uchimura passed quietly from this world into the next. Onthe previous Sunday he had been too weak to deliver his customary Bible talk, andsomeone had to read it for him. Immediately afterwards he was confined to bed, and a

couple of days later he entered the presence of the One whom it had been his lifes workto proclaim. Thus passed from this earthly scene one of the most controversial Christianfigures in the history of Japan, a man with many of a mans human failings; an earthenvessel, but a vessel, nevertheless, meet for the Masters use, and every inch a warrior.

The spirit of Kanzo Uchimura is still very much alive in Japan, and the controversy whichsurrounded his life now surrounds those groups of people who have followed in his train.Whatever ones opinion of these groups may be, it is an incontrovertible fact that theyhave probably a greater impact upon the country than any other single Christiancommunion, and the movement itself continues to expand.

What is the nature of Mukyokai as it exists today? Why does controversy continue tosurround it? What of the criticisms which are currently heard against it?

The one point in Uchimuras teaching which aroused antagonism most bitter was his

view of the Church. Otherwise, in outlook, he was conservative, and was never drawn intothe slough of Higher Criticism which has been the fate of so many Japanese Christianleaders, even of those who were at one time known as outstanding evangelicals. Theterm Mukyokai can itself be misleading. Literally it means Non-Church but this shouldnot be taken to mean that Uchimura denied the validity of any concept of the Church; onthe contrary, he had very decisive views on the nature of the Church; what he did notaccept was the highly traditionalized and organized church. This historical church, hebelieved, was so completely overgrown with the extraneous that it no longer conveyedany accurate ideas as to what the Church was really meant to be. Uchimuras basicemphasis was on the Word of God, which he accepted as the supreme authority, in allmatters of faith, and through which men are brought into a living, vital relationship withChrist.

This then is Christianity, it is at least so to me. Deliverance from sin by the atoninggrace of the Son of God. It may be more, but it cannot be less ... Christianity is not aninstitution, a church, or churches; neither is it a creed, nor dogma, nor theology; neither is


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it a book, the Bible, nor even the words of Christ. Christianity is a person, a living person,Lord Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever. If Christianity is not this, theever-present, living HE, it is nothing. I go directly to Him, and not through churches andpopes and bishops and other useful and useless officers. I in them and they in Me. So

says He of his disciples.This dynamic faith could not be confined within denominational barriers, and it produced abond that united Gods people together in the unity of the divine family. To Uchimura, thisfamily relationship, the witnessing unity of the Lords people with Christ and with oneanother, was the Church. Thus Mukyokai is an organization in the sense that any family isan organization, but not otherwise. Mukyokai was but a continuation of the basicChristian principle, and the great divines of the past, Uchimura maintained, were alsoMukyokai Shugi (on the Non-church Principle).

In its public manifestation, Mukyokai consists of weekly gatherings, each led by ateacher. These take the general form of a Western nonconformist meeting, with thesinging of hymns, prayer, and the exposition of the Word, the greater proportion of thetime being devoted to the latter. Many of the teachers have a knowledge of Hebrew andGreek, and seek a fuller understanding of the Scriptures by turning to the originalsources. Not a few of todays Mukyokai leaders were themselves disciples of Uchimuraand, in fact, the teacher-disciple concept plays a very important part in the continuation ofthe whole movement. This concept has parallels in countries throughout the East, and isfamiliar to the Bible scholar in the relationship between our Lord and the twelve, andbetween Paul and Timothy. Its strength, as ever against the unscriptural pastoralsystem of present-day Christianity, is that disciples learn with the specific intent that theyshould become teachers. This is the way in which Mukyokai has spread. As younger men,developing under the ministry of those more mature in the faith, themselves becomeproficient in the exposition of the Word, they commence other groups for the study of theScriptures where none exist, maybe in a home, or in a rented hall. These groups arecompletely independent one of another, and are generally known by the name of theleader. The leaders are usually professional men, often holding positions in universities or

colleges. Throughout the whole of the movement, at the present time, as far as can beascertained, there are only two men whose full time is given over to the ministry, andwho are supported by it. It is thus obvious that the extension of Mukyokai has not beendue to the employment of a professional clergy, but to the devotion and zeal of ordinaryindividuals within the groups.

The appeal of Mukyokai is twofold, first its independence and originality to Japan;second, its supreme concern for the development of the faith of the individual. Thehistory of Christianity in Japan is a sorry mixture of intrigue and political affiliations, withthe result that the general impression given by the churches is that they are animportation. With Mukyokai this is not so; it is a distinctively Japanese expression ofChristianity and, apart from its legitimate debt to Christian scholarship of the West, iscompletely independent of outside support. In Mukyokai we find the exact antithesis of

the modern mass-evangelism technique, in fact there is a conspicuous lack of evangelismaltogether according to many Western standards. Instead, the art of personal contact iscultivated and the quiet, consistent presentation of the Scriptures is allowed to do itswork. In this way, an appeal is made to the remarkable Japanese thirst for knowledge inthose who have a sincere desire to seek the truth, and the Spirit brings life through theWord. Exposition ranges over the whole body of Biblical truth and is not confined to whatis usually considered to be the basic facts of the Gospel. The only movement in the Westwith a similar approach which comes immediately to mind is the young peoples CrusaderUnion. This union of Bible classes aims to present the Gospel through the simple andconsecutive teaching of the Scriptures, and has been the means of bringing innumerableyoung people into a vital and enduring experience of Christ. It is also interesting to notethat many missionaries in Japan feel that, in these post-war days, the most lasting results

have come about through personal contact rather than through the spectacularcampaigns which were a chief feature of evangelism.

What of the criticism to which Mukyokai is constantly subjected? Is it justified? In this


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respect it is almost impossible to generalize. The ordinary Christian in the West with hisdenominationally directed outlook finds it most difficult to understand any movementwhich has not crystallized to the point of sectarianism, yet this is most decidedly trueabout Mukyokai. Uchimura feared more than anything else that the movement should

become just another denomination, and sought to guard against this himself by makingthe rather strange provision that the Bible Study meeting which he had held for years inTokyo should be discontinued after his death. Whatever may be said for or againstMukyokai, it is altogether remarkable that a movement so old should have maintained itsoriginal position. Each meeting is truly independent, and many of the leaders producetheir own Bible study magazines. One of the main features of Mukyokai. In fact, is theliterature it has produced, a literature which has a generally wide circulation. But theindependence of the groups make it possible, theoretically, for Mukyokai to contain anyshade of teaching. At least one Mukyokai leader has accepted strongly Pentecostal viewsand holds demonstrations of fire-walking as proof of his being filled with the Spirit. This,of course, is an extreme case, but although leaders of other groups may not agree withhim, he has not been put out for the simple reason that, since he is not a member of anyorganization, there is no means of excluding him from it. This may also be true of others,and Mukyokai has been unfairly stigmatized through the extreme views of one or twowhose association with the movement is very remote, and whose unorthodox views are inno way representative of those of the general run of Mukyokai leaders. The accusation ofneo-orthodoxy has stemmed mainly from the association with the movement of ProfessorEmil Brunner during his period at the International Christian University, Tokyo, 1953-55.Professor Brunner, while denying some of the fundamentals of the faith, has also aremarkable insight into some basic Christian problems and, never bound to the orthodoxapproach, was greatly attracted by some aspects of Mukyokai of which he found manyadherents in university circles. Recognising the impact of the movement on the countryand the static condition of the National Church, he felt that both would be strengthenedby a closer relationship, and sought to act as a bridge between the two. The attemptmet with very little success, and Dr. Brunner stirred up a certain amount of antagonism in

the National Church as a result. In his contact with Mukyokai, controversial theologicalquestions were not brought to the fore, and his theological position is little known in themovement, much less influenced by it.

Is Mukyokai Japanese to the extent of compromise with Japanese Shinto ideology?There is hardly a Christian group in Japan which has not been guilty of compromise at onetime or another, and the question of separation from complicity in a false religion is onethat still looms large. To such an extent is Shinto a part of the very fabric of Japanese life,that it is almost impossible to distinguish between the cultural and the religious; theproblem of whether or not some superficially simple act is of religious significance and,therefore, a compromise to the Christian faith, is fraught with complexities. Amongstevangelicals alone there are wide and strong divergences of opinion. In a country wheretradition is life itself, the very thought of violating it and thus bringing insult, the greatest

of all sins, upon society, is looked upon as the wildest incredulity. Compromise, therefore,has dogged the history of the Japanese Church, and few indeed are those who are freefrom its stain.

The experience of Mukyokai during the years of the last war is interesting in thisrespect. While other groups were forced into a controlled National Union of Churcheswhere they were obliged to take part in certain Shinto, Nationalistic practices, Mukyokairemained free. They everywhere pleaded that they were not an organization and had nomeans, therefore, of determining the direction of the movement as a whole. It is indicativeof the truth of this stand that the government had to deal with each known Mukyokaimeeting entirely on a local level. Literature was confiscated and banned; some leaderswere persecuted and others were imprisoned. This clearly demonstrates an allegiance tothe truth which has not been subject to any allegiance to tradition or native land.

Uchimura, particularly in his earlier years, sometimes spoke out very strongly on politicalquestions, and often found himself at variance with the powers that be. He was also anardent pacifist, a sure sign of independent thought in militaristic Japan, and an objection


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to taking up arms has always been and still is widely held among Mukyokai people. Someleaders still feel it right to express an opinion on national and social questions. On theother hand, probably the most outstanding teacher in Mukyokai circles today isvehemently opposed to taking any part whatsoever in political matters.

A rather inept criticism of Mukyokai is that its influence is confined largely to theeducated, and it draws to a great extent from the universities of the country. While this istrue in the main, it is not to be deduced that the movement has no appeal whatsoeveroutside the ranks of the intelligentsia; there are many meetings in country areas,although most of them are led by school teachers and such like professional people. Butthe majority of the Christians of Japan are drawn from the educated class, and theproportion of those in Mukyokai is probably no greater than in any of the denominations. It isalso not completely inappropriate to remember that Japan has the highest literacy rate inthe world, and in a country where it is almost a crime to be uneducated, a ministry whichreaches the student population reaches the country at large. Yet it is true that Japanspeasant class, where the bonds of traditional Shintoism are strongest, remains largelyuntouched by the truth of the Gospel.

What are the weaknesses of Mukyokai? There is something rather incongruous inspeaking about the weaknesses of a movement which, in some respects, has been sucha success. There are dangers implicit in any movement, even when it is most obviously ofthe Spirit of God, dangers that some hidden fault will expand through the stress andwear of years till the whole disintegrates. Yet it would be wrong to condemn a movementfor what it may become. God expects us to be witnesses to our own generation, not thenext, and it is easy to fall prey to the snare of being engaged in preparations for thesurvival of a work after us, at the same time neglecting the witness of the present.Mukyokai is essentially a movement of the present. Uchimuras refusal, alreadyinstanced, to allow his meeting in Tokyo to be continued after his death is but one pointerto this fact.

How does Mukyokai stand when viewed in the light of the New Testament standard ofthe church? This is not an altogether easy question to answer. Mukyokai is certainly

militant and expanding, indicative of the zeal of its adherents in general, somethingconspicuously lacking in the vast majority of churches. If its conception of the church ismystical, it is by no means impractical. It is precisely here that one of the most enigmaticfeatures of Mukyokai lies. On the one hand, it is living, vital, functioning; on the otherhand, the church, as such, seems to have been disembodied altogether. It is not theweekly gatherings of Christians that are considered to be the local church, but thewitnessing relationship of believers in any place with one another and with the Lord. Thusno place is given to the local church as a definite company of believers working and actingas a visible fellowship in a discipline imposed by the Lord who dwells in their midst. There isa lack of any adequate vehicle for any adequate expression of the Lords glory. It may bethis which has given rise to the mistaken idea that the occupation of Mukyokai with thestudy of the Scriptures never rises above a purely intellectual level. Superficially, this

may well appear to be the case, but any meagre association with the movement willserve to dispel that idea as completely without foundation.

There being an insufficient recognition of the place of the local church, there is noconcept of corporate worship. This is an undoubted weakness in any Christian community,yet the lack is no greater in Mukyokai than in the church in general where the spontaneity ofcorporate worship is largely a lost art, something which badly needs to find its place againamong the people of the Lord. On the other hand, adherents of Mukyokai lay stress onfamily worship, and daily the Lord is recognized in the family circle in the reading of theWord and prayer. Another lack is in the public witness afforded through baptism and theobservance of the Lords table, the stress being-laid only on the practical realisation oftheir spiritual meaning. It may also be observed that Mukyokai meetings, being simply forindividual edification through the study of the Word, are open to all seekers after the

truth, and may consist, therefore, of believers and unbelievers alike, (although theformer will be in the majority) so they do not purport to constitute a witness of a unitedcompany of regenerate people. Yet these are generalizations, and as has already been


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said, generalizations regarding Mukyokai are almost certain to be inaccurate. There areinstances where baptism and the Lords supper have been observed, and there may wellbe groups which approximate very closely to a simple, New Testament pattern ofmeeting.

Having reviewed briefly the life of Kanzo Uchimura himself, it is plain that, with all hisremarkable qualities, he was somewhat of a reactionary. This same reactionary qualitycharacterizes Mukyokai today. Maybe it is necessary to its life and vitality inasmuch as inany vital Christian life there is an element of reaction to the godlessness of the world andthe hypocrisy of professing Christendom. Yet in Mukyokai this spirit may not be quitesufficiently covered by its occupation with positive Christian truth. The reason for itsexistence, however, may well be the indomitable pride of denominationalism which mustcontinue to foster such a reaction so long as it remains, and its cure, if a lone one, may atleast partly be in a deeper and more sympathetic understanding on the part of those whotruly love the Lord.

Finally, what can we learn from Mukyokai? There are a few simple but fundamentalpoints of which we would do well to take note.

1. The emphasis on the straightforward teachings of the Scriptures.

In these days of perfected techniques there is a sad lack of faith in the power of theliving Word of God. All the mechanical aids to evangelism in current use and the technicalknow-how cannot take the place of the Bible. They no doubt have their place, but theymust ever be subservient to Gods Word. The most lastingly effective method ofspreading the Gospel is still the plain declaration of Gods truth unadorned with otherdistracting embellishments. There is ample proof of this in the mission fields of the world.The Word has not lost its ancient power. The church in Japan, or anywhere else for thatmatter will not be built up overnight, and the experience of the post-war years hasproved the inadequacy of the spectacular approach to accomplish the purposes of God. Itis God, not man, who builds His Church, and not till the foundation of His Word is patiently

and firmly laid can it be expected that God will add the living stones to the building up ofa spiritual house. Japan requires spiritual craftsmen, not mass production methods.

2. Freedom from denominationalism.

One of the blights of the mission field is the denominational system which has beenimported from the West. Even interdenominational missions have succeeded in buildingup separate denominations around their own particular emphases. All this is notinevitable, although the complexities of the situation make it by no means easy to main-tain a free stand, there always being the danger of groups which do not uphold asectarian position being forced into it through being excluded from fellowship witheveryone else. Mukyokai has evolved no theology on the basis of which the various

groups meet; they meet purely on the ground of their concern for the understanding ofthe Word of God. In this can be discerned, if only in a rudimentary form, one of the basicelements of the local church. The denominations of today meet on the ground of acommon adherence to a closed doctrinal system, which system the church then teaches.Not so in the Scriptures; local churches met only on the ground of their relationship withChrist, and the church, as such, never taught, but was itself taught by the Spirit throughthe various gifts of ministry entrusted to individuals. Here, then, is the essence ofdenominational-ism; it has ceased to learn, has limited the infinite to a finite system, andmust, therefore, decay and disappear as a witness to the living God. Wherever a groupadopts a precise and inflexible doctrinal outlook as a standard of fellowship beyond arelationship with the risen Christ, there the seeds of denominationalism have been sown,and the inevitable process of death and decay will follow. It is not wrong that systems of

theology should have been developed, but the great divines of the past who developedthem were generally much greater than the church systems which have been builtaround them, and none of these theologies were ever meant to be a complete definition


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of divine truth. John Robinson, the great Puritan, addressing the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620said:

I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the Reformed churches, who are come toa period in religion, and will go at present no further than the instruments of their

reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther says: whateverpart of His will our good God has revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it.And the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God,who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to be lamented.How applicable are these words to the general Christian situation in our own time. Aperson born and brought up in completely sterile conditions falls an easy prey to maladiesprevalent in less hygienic surroundings since his restricted circumstances have made itimpossible for him to develop the capacity to combat exigencies which do not exist in hissterilized world. How hard-pressed is a restricted, denominational outlook, be the mould inwhich it is cast national or foreign, to meet the trials and temptations of the arch-enemy ina subtly changing world. The Church alone dependent entirely upon the Spirit of God forgrace to help in time of need, for the application of His Word to the confusingcircumstances of earthly intrigue, for leadership through the maze of creation whichspurns the truth, is the Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Uchimurawas right. Japan needs Christ and not the trappings of Western Christianity with all itsattendant traditional disputations. The world needs Christ, and Him alone. If Mukyokaisattempt to return to that basic essential inspires us to do likewise, its existence isabundantly justified.

3. The basic pattern of the Church is a spiritual one, life in Christ.

These days in certain circles there is much concern over the New Testament pattern of thechurch. Much of that concern is well founded, but there is also an unhealthy tendency toreduce the question simply to a matter of mechanics. Where there is no spiritual life thereis no church, but where that life exists and there is complete freedom to draw from the

divine source that the life be maintained healthy and vigorous, there is the Church ofChrist. The mechanics of scriptural order certainly has its place, but that order alone doesnot bring the church into being. The basic essential, the ground of the church, is life in theSpirit and nothing else. Mukyokai, again in its search for essentials, has almost entirelyignored the aspect of scriptural order, but the recognition of the spiritual order as thesource of a living and vital witness (not an impractical mystical concept such as ourchurch invisible), is one of the greatest needs of the age if the church militant andinvincible is to be a continuing reality throughout the world.

Whither Mukyokai? We cannot tell, but in the years since its inception it has weatheredmany storms of criticism and distrust, and is still bearing a witness to the Christ who is ourlife. Opinions may differ as to the extent of the contribution the movement has made tothe furtherance of the Gospel in Japan, but the Christian testimony in the country is

certainly stronger for the fact that Kanzo Uchimura followed his Lord and has been themeans of others doing the same. Expressed, however, imperfectly, in Mukyokai, are threecharacteristics conspicuously lacking in Japans anaemic church; a spirit free from bond-age to tradition; a simple stand upon the Word of God; a witnessing faith. Believers in thegroups known as Mukyokai are pressing towards the mark, stumblingly it may be, but letothers who name the name of the Lord press forward with equal tenacity of purpose towin Christ. Then will Japan know more of the power of a risen Christ dwelling in the midstof His people, and the testimony of a Church against which the gates of hell shall notprevail.

mukyokai: a brief appraisal of the ‘no church’ movement in japan

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