I got the impression from reading last week’s readings that the churches described in Guest’s book were very much sanctuaries for their congregants. The fact that services were given in Fuzhounese at the churches mentioned on page 155 helped create a familiar atmosphere for the congregants, since most Fuzhounese weren’t fluent in English, Mandarin, or Cantonese. I personally have experience with language barriers and how foreign, or even intimidating, they can make the most harmless situations. I would imagine that the 1988 establishment of the Fujian Agape Fellowship’s Fuzhou-dialect-speaking congregation in Chinatown brought a lot of comfort to the involved practicing Fuzhounese Christians.
According to Guest, the split between the Church of Grace and what would later become the New York House Church happened as a result of a lack of a successor for Reverend Liu (lack of new, strong leader), differing opinions about how often communion should take place (religious disagreement), and regional and class tensions (social divide). This sounds like a classic “a house divided cannot stand” scenario. Despite the differences between the Church of Grace and the New York House Church, Guest still says that the two churches are very, very similar to churches in Fuzhou, China. I thought that was kind of cool that even churches whose congregants had differences to the point where they split off from each other were similar enough to their congregants’ place of origin. The differences outlined in this chapter between the two churches made me think about Judaism, and how the littlest differences between these churches that sound rather insignificant to me as a non-Christian, but are most likely similar to the differences between the synagogues in my community that also caused splits.
I also found responses of the leader of the Sisters Fellowship, who was also a church deacon (page 176,) to be curious. “No matter in the house, the family or the church, women should respect men because G-d first created men and men are created from G-d’s image and glory. Women are helpers of men.” I don’t like the idea that the essential role of women in this world is to help men, but it is far from the first time that I have heard this idea expressed. In comparison to other nationalities, the Chinese have been in the United States for not that long. Although Guest’s analysis states that men are still very much at the forefront of leadership positions in both the Church of Grace and the New York House Church (page 176), living in the United States over a certain period of time tends to influence immigrants to drop some of their previous cultural values. It might take a very long time, maybe even 50 years from now, but I would posit that eventually, women will take on more leadership roles in these churches the longer that the Fuzhounese community is here.
