Japanese Independent Churches

As latecomers to Japan's religious scene, both Catholic and Protestant churches have experienced considerable difficulty in shedding their reputation as "foreign religions." While at times the "Westernness" of Christianity has contributed to its appeal among Japanese, for the most part it has been viewed as a problem. Many early Japanese converts to Christianity felt that Christianity was unnecessarily bound to Western organizational forms, denominational politics, and missionary control. Although the statistics indicate that most Japanese have rejected the evangelistic appeals and demands of Western missionaries, the development of independent Christian movements suggests an alternative to transplanted Christianity. The first Japanese independent 'church' movement began in 1901, when Uchimura Kanzo formed the Mukyokai, of which his main message was the need for complete and ultimate independence from all human forces and entire reliance on God. Nevertheless, religion without "human wrappings," of course is not really an option. The choice is between imported or indigenous forms. The attempts to establish a Japanese type of Christianity independent of its western origins runs through much of Japanese Christianity.

As the outbreak of the Pacific War was imminent, the Japanese wartime regime planned to sever the Japanese church from its Western connections. The United Church of Christ in Japan is a collection of diverse Protestant religious bodies forcibly united by the Japanese wartime government in 1941. In accordance with the 1939 Religious Organizations Law, Christian churches were required to comply with conditions set by the Ministry of Education in order to receive official recognition or legal status. Indicating that it would only recognize one Protestant denomination, the Ministry directed the various churches to form one organization.

In 1941, as a government-directed union of thirty four denominations, the UCCJ absorbed all transplanted Protestant mission church (with the exception of a section of the Anglican Church, the Seventh-day Adventists, and few small evangelical churches who refused to cooperate) Needless to say, for many of the participating churches this was a less than happy union that resembled a forced or arranged marriage. From the beginning, as David Reid points out, the "UCCJ rested on an uneasy combination of 'sacred' and 'secular' motivation." At least for its first four years of existence, the 'secular' demands of the state proved to be the most dominating influence.

Until the end of the war, the UCCJ was largely guided and controlled by numerous government demands.

With the establishment of religious freedom by the Allied Occupation Forces in 1946, many groups left the Kyōdan to reestablish their prewar denominational identities. The most significant departures were the Anglican Episcopal Church of Japan, the Japan Lutheran Church, Japan Baptist Convention, Japan Holiness Church, Japan Assemblies of God plus numerous smaller Evangelical churches. In addition to these reestablished prewar denominations, numerous other evangelical churches from North America and Europe responded to General MacArthur's call for missionary reinforcements to join in building a new Japan, and the churches began to show signs of recovery. During this early postwar period Christian churches made considerable progress.

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Wikipedia