Mukyokai

The room in suburban Tokyo looked like any big classroom; on a dais at one end stood a desk and chair, behind them a blackboard. Some 250 people had checked their shoes at the door and filled the benches. Most of them were young; many wore the black, brass-buttoned uniform of the Japanese university student. Tadao Yanaihara, president of Tokyo University, entered, and the audience rose and bowed. They sang a hymn. Then Yanaihara sat down at the desk and lectured on the Bible for two hours and five minutes.

This was a typical Sunday meeting of Mukyokai, the "nonchurch" Christian movement that has become one of the most important forces in Japanese religion today. Its Japanese founder, Kanzo Uchimura, died only in 1930; today Mukyokai has between 50,000 and 100,000 adherents (there are no membership figures), a large proportion of the estimated 500,000 Christians in Japan. Mukyokai (meaning no church) claims that it is a return to the primitive Christianity of the Gospels. It has no clergy, no liturgy, no sacraments, no buildings, seems to have special appeal for intellectuals and students. Says Tadao Yanaihara, himself a Mukyokai leader: "To ignore it would be to make an incomplete description of Christianity in Japan. Indeed, upon them the importance of Japanese Christianity in the history of the world depends."

Ecclesiastics Are Politicians. Founder Uchimura, born to a samurai family in 1861, was introduced to Christianity at twelve, when a Tokyo schoolmate invited him "to a certain place in the foreigners' quarter, where we can hear pretty women sing and a tall, big man with a long beard shout and howl upon an elevated place, flinging his arms and twisting his body in all fantastic manners, to all of which admittance is entirely free." Later, at an American-founded agricultural school,

Uchimura prayed to his Shinto gods to protect him from becoming a Christian, but to no avail. He was converted, and with six friends he formed a congregation. They met in a dormitory room, preached from a flour barrel, and rotated the office of preacher among them.

After a marriage that soon ended in divorce, Uchimura went to the U.S. At the Quaker-run Elwyn Training School for feeble-minded children in Elwyn, Pa., he learned about the love-centered, noninstitutional Christianity for which he yearned. He graduated from Amherst in 1887 and spent a few months at Hartford Theological Seminary. But American seminary training, he decided, was not suitable for Christian work in Japan, and Uchimura went back home.

For most of the rest of his 69 years he lectured to followers, published a monthly magazine called Seisho-no-Kenkyu (Study of the Bible). "I dislike ecclesiastics more than anything else in this world." he wrote. "Believers believe in God; ecclesiastics try to control believers. Believers are men of faith; ecclesiastics are politicians . . . None surpass the prophets in serving God and disliking ecclesiastics." At his death in 1930, Uchimura had a huge and devoted following, but he stipulated in his will that neither his Bible class nor his magazine should be continued. Mukyokai, he insisted, had to avoid institutionalism of all kinds.

Uchimura's will has been defied, and his movement has gone on with giant strides. But so far, it has continued to avoid the institutionalizing he warned against. Mukyokai leaders, mostly in the schools and universities (including the last two presidents of Japan's leading university), acknowledge no church authority or structure. As individuals they publish more than 20 monthly magazines, mostly devoted to Bible studies, and hold informal meetings for small groups, usually consisting of prayer, hymn singing, and a lecture on a Biblical theme. Says U.S. Fulbright Scholar John Howes, who has made a special study of Mukyokai: "Uchimura and his followers have more than any other group made Christianity intellectually acceptable to the Japanese."

Sheep Without Shepherds. Such an eminent Christian as Swiss Theologian Emil Brunner, now teaching at Japan's International Christian University, has stated that if he were Japanese he would probably bypass denominational Christianity to join Mukyokai.

As described originally by Founder Uchimura, Mukyokai has a nationalistic bent. It is "the church for those who have no church. It is the dormitory for those who have no home, the orphanage or foundling home for the spirit . . . We believe there are many sheep without shepherds, many Christians without churches . . . [What is called] 'The Church' developed out of Roman influence, molded by European and American experience. There is no reason for us to learn from Westerners about this subject . . . We should return directly to Christ . . . and welcome Him into our midst."

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