Christian church won’t die, but it will change
By Lethbridge Herald on July 2, 2025.
Tadashi (Tad) Mitsui
For the Herald
Will the church die? I say “no.” But it will be much smaller with committed people.
On December 7th,1941, without declaration of war, the Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. Navy Base in Pearl Harbor and decimated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. As a countermeasure, in February 1942 the Canadian Parliament invoked the War Measures Act, and ordered the expulsion of all Canadians of Japanese ancestry and all Japanese nationals from the Pacific coast. All their possessions were confiscated, including cars, shortwave radios, homes, fishing boats, farmland, and greenhouses. Each person was allowed to carry one suitcase. Forfeited items were sold without consent. Token compensation was finally paid in 1988. By then two-thirds of eligible recipients were dead. I ask, why were German and Italian Canadians not treated in the same way?
Four Canadian organizations condemned the draconian manner in which the War Measures Act was enforced. They were the Labour Congress of Canada, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (which later became the NDP), and the United Church of Canada. Angus MacInnis, who was a CCF MP at the time, called this condemnation an act of “political suicide,” because the removal of Japanese Canadians was popular among the electorate.
The United Church subsequently took the initiative to provide schools in the internment camps and appointed a veteran Japanese Canadian school teacher, Hide Hyodo, to take charge of the operation. Former missionaries returned from Japan and conscientious objectors were recruited as teachers. I am proud of the United Church’s actions on behalf of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.
This year, the United Church of Canada is celebrating its centenary. I am proud to be a member of a broad-minded church which is known for its commitment to social justice and willingness to take risks as was demonstrated during WW 2. However, some of its members are discouraged by declining attendance and shrinking finance. I believe the apparent decline is the signal that the church is at a turning point: a time for change. My optimism comes from my life experience working in two countries. In both countries the native Christians took no part in the Western Colonial enterprise.
I grew up in Japan as a son of a Christian minister. Later, I taught at a university in the Southern African Kingdom of Lesotho. Christians in Japan are a tiny minority of less than one per cent of the population. Christians are so few that people see them as strange.Two dynasties of shoguns tried for three centuries to eliminate this small Christian presence. They crucified or drowned them by the thousands. During WWII, the Imperial military establishment accused Christians of being American spies. My father was frequently detained by the police. But Christians did not disappear; they remained, and their tiny minority persisted. To this day, most Christian churches in Japan cannot support full-time ministers, so many of them have second jobs. In Lesotho, most of the ministers are farmers and have to supplement their income as school managers since the Missionary Society withdrew support.
Another notable thing about these Christian communities is their political and social involvement. In Japan today, many Christians are active in peace movements and in various social actions. They are motivated by bitter past experiences of war and oppression. Devastation of cities by bombing, including nuclear bombs, is not forgotten; nor is the experience of near starvation during and after WWII. In Lesotho, the Black South Africans’ struggle against the racial policy of the white apartheid government has been a powerful influence. Many South African anti-racism activists lived in Lesotho. That was where I worked and became friends with South Africans like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Steve Biko, who was a student leader. Biko was beaten to death in jail in King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape in 1977. Their struggles in life and death still inspire me.
Moving on to another model of Christian piety, let me mention a pastor of the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of Germany: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His book “Letters and Papers from Prison” was a required reading of the course I taught in Lesotho. Bonhoeffer and a small group of brave Christians stood up against the anti-semitism and fascism of Adolf Hitler. They formed the “Bekenende Kirche” (“Confessing Church”) separated from the established state church, and opposed to the antisemitic and nationalist “Deutsche Christen” movement sponsored by the Nazis.
Adolf Hitler’s way of co-opting religion as an instrument of power was nothing new. “Missionaries are cheaper than the police.” said Cecil Rhode. Since as early as the fifth-century Roman Emperor Constantine, European churches had become an instrument of empires, participating actively in colonial enterprises. Land acquisition and construction of church buildings, along with influence among political elites, became the preoccupation of the Church for two millennia. That was how the number of people attending churches and enriching church coffers became a major preoccupation in many major Christian denominations. Size of church membership and attendance, and the number of new buildings constructed, were the measure of success.
By contrast, charity, the search for truth, and work for justice and peace were treated like an appendix. Monks and nuns, and other specialized church officers, were often assigned to such tasks, but they were also often kept at the margins of institutional Christianity. The ultimate goal for the established churches was to acquire power and influence, and a monopoly on certitude in doctrine. This was itself an empire-building project, and evangelical and fundamentalist churches, once underdogs in the Christian world, also adopted it as they grew in popularity. Salman Rushdie, a novelist who was the target of multiple assassination attempts by religious fanatics, argued that if power is the goal of religion, it becomes an agent of evil. In a 2005 Guardian article titled “In Bad Faith,” he wrote: “wherever religions get into society’s driving seat, tyranny results.”
One of the theologians who inspired me was Emil Brunner from Zurich, Switzerland. He characterized the past two millennia of church history as the result of “glorious misunderstanding.” Brunner was once a guest professor at a university in Japan known for its many scholars belonging to a group called “Mukyokai” — “No Church Christians.” Brunner was a big admirer of these Japanese progressive Christian thinkers who belong to many academic disciplines, from the fine arts and humanities to science. Their weekly gathering is simply called “Meeting,” in which they mostly engage in Bible study, often from the original Greek and Hebrew texts. They are active in charity, and in political and social actions.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in one of his letters from prison, “how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat.” As science advances, allowing humans more material self-sufficiency and loosening the cognitive grip of superstitions, this imaginary, defensive God will lose its position as a stop-gap.
Will the church then die? Its imperial incarnation probably will, but the church itself won’t. However, I predict that it will look very different; that it will continue on as a body of people repenting of two millennia of imperial misunderstandings and power-seeking, recommitting to justice and peace, and providing safe space for all.
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Though I do not share in your Christian beliefs, thank you for this timely thought provoking epistle.
We are in the end of the end of times mentioned in the Holy Bible as we watch the prophesies fulfilled. The clock started counting down after the United Nations officially gave back the land to Israel in 1948, and the rebirth of the nation manifested. This generation will not pass away until all these things have happened and Christ returns.
A generation, is 120 years in the Bible, but some say 80 years, but that was specific to those who refused to enter into the land of milk and honey, so God shortened their lifespan, and the next generation was allowed to enter.
The Church is not going to die completely . . . a revival is here right now, and is not only sweeping across Alberta, but also the world.
But, part of the one world government coming has its own version of worship and it will be one religion only, and Christ is not a part of that, but doctrines have being ‘watering down’ the word for the last 2 decades, in an effort to increase numbers, but in doing so, ignored the word of God, who states he is the same God, yesterday and today and tomorrow . . . so the word is God!
The UN 2030, along with World Economic Forum, is pushing hard to bring forth this one world government, and globalism is a big part of it. The UN promised that the 2030 agenda push would increase and you are going to see more movement of this.
Wars will continue to grow! Israel is very much the epi-center of this events and that is why you see the media, the UN and others focused on attacking Israel and in many cases falsely accusing them, while ignoring the war crimes in Sudan, where even by the UN’s admission, is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world . . . you don’t hear much about Sudan though. The war crimes, rapes, children forced to be soldiers, genocide and more far surpass what is in the Middle East, and that includes starvation . . . you don’t see that in the news . . . ever asked yourself why?
We will see the truth about Christ within next several years . . . we are in the season . . . could be 5 seconds or 5 years!