Word: nonchurch
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Your April 23 piece on Mukyokai (the "nonchurch" movement) was the more interesting because it is a stepchild of New England influence which owes much to Amherst College. Recently I have discovered that Kanzo Uchimura, the founder of Mukyokai, was sent to Amherst on the introduction and strong urging of Joseph Hardy Nee-sima (1843-1890), the first Japanese graduate of a Western institution of higher learning (Amherst 1870), after he had escaped from "closed" Japan six years previously. Neesima came back to found Doshisha University where there have been Amherst men on the faculty ever since except...
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...
...fully realize what following his teaching and leadership really involves. The average Christian is both in the world and out of it. He is generally as much interested in outside matters as any one else, so that there is often no external difference between a church member and a nonchurch member. This fact does not necessarily lower the church, but it shows churchmen that if they wish to live as such they must thoroughly understand Christ's teachings. His commandments deal primarily with man's conduct both toward God and toward man. Christ has given to the world examples...
THREE years ago a committee of prominent clergymen of Boston established a winter series of services at the Boston Theatre. These services were open to all and were intended to bring some of the benefits of church attendance to the large class of persons who are habitually nonchurch-goers, who cannot be induced to enter a church, though they will attend religious services if held in a place with which they are familiar. The services have been very successful. The test of their success has been necessarily one of numbers, for, as the limits of the work preclude parish relations...
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