Hello all, this is my first post.
I have a friend from college (his upbringing is Protestant) staying with me this week and he has been exposed to an on-campus ministry affiliated with the so-called Local Church or Recovery Movement (“recovering God’s church”) which was founded by Watchman Nee.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_churches
I believe it’s a relatively new group that’s growing in the States and it originated in China.
It’s several decades old in the States. Watchman Nee was last heard from in the 60s, I think (he died in prison if I remember correctly). I believe Witness Lee (the person who really organized the “Local Churches” in the West) is still alive, but I could be wrong.
I can’t find any direct response online from Catholic sources to this denomination. What little information I have garnered from my research has been that the movement is largely anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, and broadly anti-denominational.
Hence, I’ve found many non-Catholic Christain websites denouncing the local church as a cult, misleading and deceptive alltogether. These websites obviously don’t help me since they compromise at most some objectivity in their bias.
In my opinion, evangelicals are freaked out by the “Local Church” because they claim in some sense to be the True Church. Many evangelicals label any such group as a “cult,” which is of course nonsense. Evangelicals have made peace with Christian division and can’t stand it when they encounter people who really believe in unity.
- From Catholic theology, what are the main criticisms of this denomination?
I would think that the main criticism would be that they are reinventing the wheel–trying to start a “local church” that will be based only on Christ (i.e., the “fullness of the Faith”) rather than some denominational tradition. This is admirable, but from a Catholic point of view such a Church already exists!
I think there may be some merit to the evangelical criticism that these churches are too totalitarian and controlling in their leadership style. I’m pretty sure that they control people’s lives far more than the Catholic Church ever would. But I’m not sure how much of a criticism that is, really.
- What are the differences and similarities of belief?
I was exposed to a lot of Watchman Nee’s writings growing up, and it’s certainly an interesting twist on the Protestant tradition. For one thing, he taught that baptism was salvific, though he distinguished between salvation (which if I remember rightly was being taken out of the world and delivered from the power of Satan) and regeneration (inner rebirth, not linked to baptism), which of course would be heretical from the Catholic point of view (I also don’t think he acknowledged infant baptism). My memory is that he emphasized sanctification, which is very Catholic, although I think he took over some of the deeply problematic “positional” language from the Plymouth Brethren.
He taught a trichotomous view of the human person–body, soul, spirit. I don’t think this is necessarily heretical from the Catholic point of view, but the way Nee used it may be problematic. He argued that the spirit, and not the soul (still less the body) is the point of contact between human beings and God. Thus, people influenced by Nee (such as my family) will typically speak of something being very “soulish” if it appeals to the intellect or the emotions. Catholicism typically comes in for a lot of criticism on these grounds! One could argue that this teaching fits with the Catholic notion that nature is always incomplete without grace (and was so even before the Fall). But in my experience it typically leads to anti-intellectualism and general anti-humanism, which is hardly compatible with the Catholic tradition as a whole (someone following Nee would be unlikely to see real spiritual value in the Sistine Chapel ceiling, for instance).
- Is the local church a cult or type of fundamentalism?
As I said, the term “cult” is not helpful in my opinion. It’s probably fair to call the movement a form of fundamentalism, but again, the term may not be really helpful. Certainly they are unusual and are attacked by many evangelicals and fundamentalists.
I hope some of this is helpful. This is one of the more fascinating Protestant movements of the 20th century, in my opinion.
In Christ,
Edwin
