SHANGHAI — K.H. Ting, an Anglican bishop prior to China’s Cultural Revolution who led a “post-denominational” re-emergence of Chinese Christianity in the 1970s and 1980s, died Nov. 22 after several years of poor health. Hailed by some as a patriot and visionary and criticized by others for being too cozy with China’s Communist leaders, Ting, 97, worked through 60 often difficult years of change in the world’s most populous nation.
Ting was ordained as China’s last Anglican bishop in 1942, a position he never renounced and technically held until death, even though his church was effectively dissolved and merged with other Protestant denominations into an umbrella organization called the China Christian Council. Ting served as chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the liaison between church and state in China, and president of the China Christian Council, the official Protestant denomination. He became president of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary in 1953.
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) representatives in China work in full cooperation with the China Christian Council. “The life and ministry of Bishop Ting has had profound influence on the Christian church in China as well as on the global Church, and it has had profound influence on me personally,” said Daniel Vestal, recently retired executive coordinator of the Atlanta-based CBF.
Critics like the China Aid Association, honored by the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in 2007, portray Ting as an apologist for the government’s crackdown on “house” churches, which for various reasons do not register with China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs.
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