Nature of Early Christian Community
Different groups of laymen supported Christian life in Japanese mission, e.g.; dōjuku, kanbō and jihiyakusha helped the clergymen in activities like the celebration of Sunday liturgy in the absence of ordained clergy, religious education, preparation of confessions, and spiritual support of the sick. By the end of the 16th century kanbō and jihiyakusha had similar responsibilities and also organized funerals and baptized children with permission to baptize from Rome. The kanbō were those who had left secular life but not taken formal vows, while the jihiyakusha were married and had a profession.
These groups were fundamental to the mission, and themselves depended on both the ecclesiastical hierarchy as well as the warlords who controlled the lands where they lived. Therefore, the success of the Japanese mission cannot be explained only as the result of the action of a brilliant group of missionaries, or of the commercial and political interests of a few daimyo and traders.
At the same time the missionaries faced the hostility of many other daimyo. Christianity challenged Japanese civilization. A militant lay community, the main reason for missionary success in Japan, was also the main reason for the anti-Christian policy of the Tokugawa's bakufu.
Read more about this topic: Kirishitan
Famous quotes containing the words nature, early, christian and/or community:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“For with this desire of physical beauty mingled itself early the fear of death—the fear of death intensified by the desire of beauty.”
—Walter Pater 1839–1894, British writer, educator. originally published in Macmillan’s Magazine (Aug. 1878)
“Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times—Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“He thought that, because the community represents millions of people, therefore it must be millions of times more important than the individual, forgetting that the community is an abstraction from the many, and is not the many themselves.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)