Prophet or Judas? Son of China’s Church Founder Tackles Thorny Legacy
The Washington Post‘s William Wan discusses the legacy of Y.T. Wu, founder of an organization used by the communist party to control churches in China. While unregistered churches vilify Wu, government congregations revere him for creating the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. “Some call my father a prophet; others say a betrayer. But the truth is he was just a man, a very complicated one,” his son, Wu Zongsu, said. At 84, Wu Zongsu is attempting to rehabilitate his late father’s image. He is suing the government in order to obtain a 40-volume collection of his father’s diaries. “Wu thinks that if church scholars could access his father’s early writings, they would understand his original vision for China’s churches—a vision he says the Communist Party later twisted to suit its own purposes,” Wan writes.