Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the immense spiritual achievement of WatchmanNee , a great pioneer of Christianity in China.
Christianity Today magazine recently honored WatchmanNee as one of the 100 most influential Christians of the twentieth century. WatchmanNee died over thirty years ago but his life and work continue to influence millions of Protestant Christians in China. Today more than three thousand churches outside of China, including several hundred in the United States, look to him as one of their religious and theological leaders.
WatchmanNee was an astonishingly devoted and energetic man, which I think can be seen from a capsule summary of his life. He became a Christian in 1922. In the 1930s, he traveled to Europe and North America, where he delivered sermons and speeches. Later his sermons were collected and published as books. By the late 1940s, Nee had become the most influential Chinese Christian writer, evangelist, and church builder. In 1952, the Chinese government imprisoned Nee and many other Christian leaders for their faith. Nee was never released, though during the 1960s and 1970s several of his books continued to grow in influence and popularity, particularly in the United States, and his best-known book, The Normal Christian Life, sold over one million copies world-wide and became a twentieth-century Christian classic. In 1972 he died at the age of 71 in a labor farm; his few surviving letters confirm that he remained faithful to God until the end.
Madam Speaker, it is estimated that China has more than one hundred million Christians, and millions of them consider themselves the spiritual heirs of WatchmanNee . Millions more are rightly proud of the contribution WatchmanNee made to global Christianity--he was the first Chinese Christian to exercise an influence on Western Christians--and indeed of his contribution to world spiritual culture. It is sad that the works of WatchmanNee are officially banned in China--even as they are being discovered afresh by a new generation of Western Christians. It is my hope that WatchmanNee's collected works can be freely published and distributed within China.
After WatchmanNee's death, when his niece came to collect his few possessions, she was given a scrap of paper that a guard had found by his bed. What was written on that scrap may serve as WatchmanNee's testament: ``Christ is the Son of God Who died for the redemption of sinners and was resurrected after three days. This is the greatest truth in the universe. I die because of my belief in Christ. WatchmanNee .''
