While my family and I lived in mainland China, we had the opportunity to visit Hangzhou. This city, along the famous West Lake, is known for many famous sights including ancient pagodas, Dreaming of the Tiger Spring, and the Church of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady which dates back the Ming dynasty.
A trail with hundreds of Buddha sculptures carved into the mountain side lies on the outskirts of this city. While visiting this tourist sight, I was surprised to see that many of these sculptures had been defaced. I learned that this was the work of the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong launched this revolution in 1966 and it lasted until his death 1976. During this time, much destruction ravaged China.
Several of my colleagues described to me what went on during this troubling time. The party reversed roles, often at gun point. College professors went to work in fields, while Red Guards went to teach in the universities.
Even writing fell victim to the cultural revolution. The revolution simplified Chinese writing. But it became difficult, if not impossible, to read old manuscripts and texts such as the Bible because of the simplification.
Red Guards tried to smash everything old and destroy everything bourgeoise. They desecrated countless historical artifacts during this time. The sculptures in Hangzhou were some of the casualties. Catholic Churches also fell victim to the Red Guard.
In such times, however, it is amazing how clever people can be. One Church we visited wrote sayings from Mao on the back side of each Station of the Cross. The red guards left them alone, fearing punishment if destroying anything with Mao’s words on them.
China is still feeling the repercussions of this Cultural Revolution. A generation of youths lost years to this chaos.
A Parallel Cultural Revolution
A somewhat similar revolution took place in the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council. On April 3, 1969, Pope St. Paul VI issued the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum. It promulgated the revised Roman-rite Missal, thereby making the Novus Ordo Mass the new official Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. With the implementation of the Novus Ordo, many parishes in the United States experienced their own cultural revolution.
Using the new mass as an excuse, many parishes tore out their beautiful ornate high altars, carved by skilled parishioners from generations earlier, to make way for modern designs. Statues, reliquaries, and artwork disappeared into basements. Some pieces went to auction, but, sadly, some got trashed.
Architects designed many church buildings in the 1970’s and 1980’s to be modern looking with little care for taste. These buildings today look dated, and not in the Gothic or Romanesque sense.
The artwork within these new buildings was also often nothing more than shapeless forms. One church I visited had a stylized crucifix that appeared to be a dismembered torso wrapped with barbed wire. The barbed wire was supposed to represent the crown of thorns, but frankly, I found this interpretation creepy. And this is through the eyes of an adult. I can just imagine how a toddler might have reacted to it. (Just as a note, someone put this so-called crucifix in storage after just a few years. Apparently, I am not the only one who found it unsettling.)
It seems that in an effort to be modern and hip, more focus was being placed on style than on reverence. A dismembered torso with barbed wire may be innovative from a modernist art standpoint, but was this done to be different and shocking or to give Glory to the God?
Reconstruction in China
With the death of Mao, China began rebuilding itself. Moreover, China rebuilt quickly.
Colleagues of mine who had no running water or electricity in 1976, when they were children, today enjoy a lifestyle much like my own. Their children cannot imagine a time without bright neon lights decorating the cities at night or life without a cell phone.
Ironically, efforts are still underway to restore and in some cases completely rebuild the monuments and buildings destroyed by the red guard during the cultural revolution.
Tourism dollars are one driver of this effort, however, in many cases preserving history is the ultimate goal.
Reconstruction in the Church
Fortunately, not all parishes fell victim to the post Vatican II cultural revolution.
Some parishes celebrating the Divine Liturgy seemed to outright reject the adoption of pop cultural styling and maintained their Byzantine heritage. Other parishes adopted the Novus Ordo Mass, but maintained their original architecture and reverences.
Today some parishes have ventured into their basements and storerooms to dust off and return statues and decorations to their former setting. But the preservation of traditional art does go beyond this. I have seen on several occasions, stained glass windows removed from derelict churches being reused and recycled in new construction. Statues and artwork are being restored with the same intention.
Learning from Past Mistakes
The loss of so many artistic treasures in the 1970’s and 1980’s was a tragedy. Would it not be better to respect the treasures gifted to our community by generations past? Could a modernized version of Michelangelo’s Pietà ever replace the original?
As good stewards, repairing and restoring our art and architecture for the Greater Glory of God, might be a wise undertaking. Simply put, newer does not always mean better.
I pray that our Church does not repeat these mistakes.
4 thoughts on “China’s Cultural Revolution and Its Parallel in the Church”
The writer veers too close to trivializing the suffering of the Cultural Revolution.
She also might be unaware of the cultural defacements done by the Church itself when it stamped out paganism in the Roman Empire. See, e.g., the defaced statue of Aphrodite in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_pagans_in_the_late_Roman_Empire
In fact, if the Church had gotten to be predominant in China, those Buddhist sculptures she admires would certainly have been destroyed, or defaced.
Also I lived through the Vatican II era and I don’t remember any deliberate destruction of old churches, statues, etc. In many cases an old church simply had gotten too decrepit and had to be replaced. There was no instruction from “above” (i.e., the Pope or the local bishop) to destroy anything. The only thing ordered was switching the altar around. Decisions about new, abstract designs were made locally and took a lot of courage. By scaling down the pomposity of the Church one could get closer to the original message of Jesus. Compare the Cenacle with the Sistine Chapel.
This reply is to CaptCrisis. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was not trivial.
Captcrisis, as far as “the cultural defacements done by the Church itself when it stamped out paganism in the Roman Empire,” historians disagree as to the extent of the “defacement” of pagan temples and idols and even if any such defacement was ordered by emperors or local magistrates. It was certainly not done by “the Church” because “the Church” had no such authority. The article at Wikipedia you link to even says as much. Here is another Wikipedia entry that says as much — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization. So, your contention that the Buddhist sculptures in China “would certainly have been destroyed, or defaced” is merely your opinion.
Also, studies have shown that memory is fairly reliable for “gist based” recollection but when it requires complete accuracy, such as in the event of reporting marks or giving eyewitness testimony, it is often unreliable.
[ https://theclassicjournal.uga.edu/index.php/2022/12/01/is-memory-reliable/#:~:text=While%20memory%20appears%20fairly%20reliable,testimony%2C%20memory%20is%20not%20reliable ] I, too, grew up during and after the Vatican II era and my memories of the changes that took place in parish churches are different than yours. But Genesius (who is a he, not a she) did not say old churches were destroyed. He merely said new churches that were built in the years following Vatican II were modern in appearance.
You are correct that new altars were installed in the vast majority of churches, but in many others, communion rails were in fact ripped out, Tabernacles were relocated, and statues and other pieces of sacred art were removed and put in storage. In some dioceses this was done on the orders of bishops, in others it was the pastor who ordered or approved the changes/renovations based on the recommendations of liberal parish worship directors/committees. In all cases, however, it was a kind of cultural revolution – out with the old, in with the new. It was all done to reflect the new form of worship – the Novus Ordo Mass – and liberal interpretations of the Vatican II documents. And the impact of all of this is still controversial today.
Newer does not always mean better also applies to doctrinal changes.