The Rt. Rev. K.H.Ting, China’s visionary bishop has died at age 97 according to Episcopal News Service:
K. H. Ting, an Anglican bishop prior to China’s Cultural Revolution and a pioneer in the country’s post-denominational era, died on Nov. 22 in Nanjing aged 97.
Ting has been described as “an outstanding patriotic religious leader” and “a well-known social activist.”
The Rev. Canon Winfred B. Vergara, the Episcopal Church’s missioner for Asiamerica Ministries, described Ting as “larger than life in the history of contemporary Christianity in Asia.”
Vergara said that Ting, who he’d met on two trips to China, “will be greatly missed not only by China but by Asia-America and the entire ecumenical world … May he rest in peace and rise in glory.”
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Describing Ting as a “great visionary,” the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, secretary general of the World Council of Churches expressed admiration for his commitment to reconciliation between church and society, Christians and non-Christians in China.
Ting worked closely with the leadership of the WCC in its formative years and was a staff member of the World Student Christian Federation in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ting’s contribution to the re-emergence of church life and opening of the church to the outside world in the 1980s and 1990s is widely recognized, a WCC press release said.