Lanterna Rally

Author: Richard Terrill Baker

Publisher:

Published: 1947

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

This authentic account of what happened to the Japanese Christians and their church during the black-out years of war is both lively and anecdotal in content and of permanent historic value as a source book. The less serious reader will find this record a thrilling story--with its details of how the government of wartime Japan, armed with its police guard, made life miserable and often perilous for any person or institution which challenged its own prescribed theology; and how Japan's Christian Church met the opposition of the state and of the war-drugged public. Those deeply concerned with the world-wide spread of Christianity will find this more than a story--an essential foundation for understanding the strategy of all future missionary efforts. This book minces no words and obscures no facts about the church's defections, the little compromises that were made repeatedly by Christians in order to keep themselves alive and their institutions intact. But it also points out that the church in Japan weathered the storm of the war years as an institutional entity and preserved sufficient purity of witness so that it is today one of the most promising movements in Japan. And it spotlights the heroic men and women who refused to swallow the propaganda and consent to the aggressions. Certain questions prompted the author of this volume to go to Japan soon after the American Occupation began. He wanted to know: What happened to Christianity in wartime Japan? Did the Japanese empire builders use the Christians in the propagation of their nationalistic ideology in the Orient? Was there freedom of religion in Japan? Were the churches being coerced and persecuted by the fanatical state? Was it true that Kagawa said the things he was reported to have said? Answers to these questions are important, because this was the first experience of a younger church completely on its own, cut off from fellowship, tutelage, and support by the older Christian communities of the West. All that happened in the clash of Christianity with the statist cult in wartime Japan was the test case of a church which was on its own in a hostile culture. This experience may be repeated in years to come as nationalism and statism tighten their grip on the world's thinking. Every student of politics and church history should read this book and know the story of the war years inside Japan.