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HUGH WITT
Sverre Holth, a leading authority on Reichelt, wrote: “His vision of the cosmic Christ had opened his eyes to the need for a special type of missionary work in the Far East, namely to reach with the gospel those religious people whose hearts had already been prepared by God's logos. His experience had convinced him that Christ had been there before him and that his footprints were to be seen even in the non-Christian religious systems, or even specially there. He also believed that it had been one of the gravest blunders of modern missionary endeavour that these divinely prepared points of contact had been neglected.”
Did this belief in "preaching to the converted" conflict with the traditional approach of missionaries to preach to the Godless?
Dr. Lee commented: "Chinese are not really secular people. In Hong Kong today religion is there much more than it appears on the surface. Most Chinese people have some kind of religious influence. Reichelt's approach was not a denial of the truth of other religions but an affirmative statement that Christianity fulfils other religions."
After Reichelt's death his followers did not have the same outlook and there were inevitable changes of course. The Christian Mission to Buddhists became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Institute.
"That Reichelt's followers did not have the same outlook was partly due to his unique personality. There was also a gradual growth in resistance to Western influences during the years after his death," said Dr. Lee. Buddhists coming from China in the late 1940s found hospitality here but by the mid-1950s not so many people were coming out."
A transitional period followed, when in 1957 the institute became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture. Reichelt's son became its first director and the Right Reverend R. O. Hall, then Bishop of Hong Kong, who lived at Shatin and had been a friend of Reichelt, became its first chairman.