Pentecostalism in China
Encyclopedia
The Pentecostal movement in China began when the first missionaries arrived in China in 1907. Almost immediately they put down roots in at least three places which later strongly influenced the development of Chinese Pentecostalism. These were Hong Kong, Hebei
province, and Shanghai.
and institutionalization of largely middle-class Protestant denominational churches. Not all of these forces or elements were unique to the United States, but they came together there in a dramatic way, so that early Pentecostalism can be seen as a product of U.S. Society.
These forces included:
All these elements coalesced in the particular conditions of the United States. Soon after 1900, the Apostolic Faith movement emerged, and then came the great watershed of the formation of the modern Pentecostal movement, the Azusa Street Revival
in Los Angeles, 1906-1908.
From Azusa Street came the people and forces to form the U.S. Assemblies of God
in 1914, and smaller American Pentecostal groups. but right from the beginning in 1906, there was a remarkable missionary thrust coming out from the Azusa Street phenomenon. Within weeks, Christians transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit were heading off to foreign lands, not a part of any mission society, but as "faith missionaries," certain that God would meet their needs . The destination of many of them was Asia.
The characteristics and messages that these early Pentecostal missionaries brought were:
began in 1906, was one of the first pastors to receive the baptism of the Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Within days he felt a call to go as a missionary to India
in 1907, then arrived with hiswife in hong Kong in October 1907, where he joined a handful of Pentecostal single women who had come to Hong Kong from Seattle in the late summer or early fall of 1907 . Garr had considerable impact in Hong Kong. A Congregational church
of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
(ABCFM) permitted him to hold meetings there, where he began to present Pentecostal doctrines.
One Mok Lai-Chi (Mò Lǐ-zhì/莫礼智), a forty year old school proprietor who was the Sunday School superintendent and a deacon in that ABCFM church, was Garr's interpreter. Soon Mok received the Holy Spirit baptism with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Within two months the ABCFM church committee banned the Pentecostals from the premises, and they had to move elsewhere. But mok let them use his school, and in January 1908, Mok as editor put out the first issue of a Chinese monthly paper, Pentecostal truths (五旬節真理報); Mok remained editor for many years. By 1909 six thousand copies were being printed nd mailed nationwide . This group and newspaper are important because the paper directly influenced the North China founders of the first major Chinese Pentecostal church, The True Jesus Church
.
There was also a very early Pentecostal base in North China, in Zhengding County, near Shijiazhuang
, Hebei
province. Like the Hong Kong base, it was a direct product of Azusa Street in Los Angeles. In about 1904, a certain Mr. Berntsen went to a south Hebei mission . Late in 1906 he got his hands on one of the first issues of the "official" Azusa Street publication, the Apostolic Faith, and was so excited by its description of events there that he immediately left China and sailed back to the United States, headed for Los Angeles. The rapid transmission of this early sectarian publication all the way from Southern California
all the way to Hebei is itself remarkable. At any rate, words of a 1907 issue of the Apostolic Faith, "Berntsen went to the altar at Azusa Mission. and soon fell under the power, and arose drunk on the new wine of the kingdom, magnifying God in a new tongue. As soon as he could speak English, he says, ‘This means much for China’."
Berntsen stayed around Los Angeles for a time, then helped form a group of about twelve Pentecostal missionaries who headed for China. They decided to open a new independent mission station in an area where famine
had been raging, and chose Zhengding
, on the rail line just north of Shijiazhuang
, Hebei, not far from Berntsen's earlier station. Berntsen kept in touch with the Azusa Street people, and letters from him are included in issues of the Apostolic Faith until the last issue in May 1908. The Zhengding mission had some permanence. Berntsen
and his wife were still listed as being there, along with a few other in 1915.
The group at Zhengding
began to put out a newspaper in 1912. This was called the Popular Gospel Truth (通傳福音真理報), and gives us some important information. First, it identifies the church name under which the church group operated, the Faith Union (信心會)..
Besides Hong Kong and Hebei, a third early Pentecostal group settled in at Shanghai. This group also was aproduct of the Azusa Street revival, although a slightly indirect one. As early as in the summer of 1906, Pastor M.L. Ryan of Salem, Oregon
, heard in detail of the inspiring events in Los Angeles, and was profoundly affected . Soon he moved to Spokane
, where he gathered a Pentecostal congregation which in the summer of 1907 sent a whole band of missionaries to Asia, led by Ryan himself . Interestingly, as they were leaving Seattle in late summer 1907, they met and overlapped a few days with Brother Berntsen from Hebei, who was landing there on his way to Los Angeles . The Ryan group encountered some confusion and scattering in East Asia, but by the fall of 1907 at least two of its single women members had gone on to Hong Kong, where they soon joined up with A.G. Garr arriving from India, and were in on the founding of the Pentecostal movement there which was described already. Others of Ryan's group went with some other missionaries in the Shanghai area who had abandoned their denominations and come over to join one or another Pentecostal band, or just operated independently.
After 1910, there was a rapid growth of Pentecostal missions all across China. These missionaries were not very visible among the general run of foreign missionaries . They preached where they could, held healing services, and expected miracles. Many if not most had no regular financial support, and they seem to have been more peripatetic
than most missionaries, perhaps because they generally did not build institutions like clinics and schools (although some did have orphanages).
The Pentecostals were not accorded much respect by the "missionary establishment." One British Baptist source referred disparagingly to "certain sects from America" which entered Shandong
after 1912 . The China Inland Mission
, by now the largest Protestant mission body in China with over one thousand members, found increasing tension within its ranks on the issue of Pentecostalism or the "tongues movement" after 1910. Some of its missionaries were attracted to it, a number were repelled by it, and the all-powerful CIM China Council at Shanghai spent much time debating the proper relationship with the movement during 1914-1915. After consultation with the home councils in Britain and North America, in April 1915 the China Council adopted a long statement condemning the Pentecostal movement, whose meetings were allegedly "characterized by disorder and by manifestations which in some cases have led to mental derangement and maniacal ravings ." And a Chinese-language church newspaper published by the American presbyterians in Shanghai specifically warned in 1915 that in quest of the "gift" of speaking in tongues, people had been known to go insane and kill themselves . The Pentecostals obviously had an uphill task in public relations, at least in the missionary community.
Despite their pariah status among fellow missionaries, these Pentecostal pioneers persevered. Buoyed by the immediacy of their spiritual experiences and by millenarian expectations, they lived on the precipice of history, having direct communication with Jesus and being filled with the awesome power of the Holy Spirit, all this confirmed for them by the tongues phenomenon. Their message, quixotic or heretical as it seemed to many other missionaries, did in fact find a Chinese audience.
One feature of the earliest Chinese participants in the Pentecostal movement was that they were nearly all already Christians, but searching for a deeper and more immediate religious experience that they did not find in their particular denominations. Early adherents came variously from Methodist, Presbyterian, China Inland Mission
, Congregational
, Seventh-day Adventist
, and other backgrounds. In Hong Kong the second, third and fourth Pentecostal converts were all members of the ABCFM church where A.G. Garr first preached . Later, the two most important founders of the True Jesus Church came from Presbyterian and London Missionary Society
churches, and the founder of the Jesus Family
had a Methodist background.
province . Zhang, who had been an elder in the Weixian Presbyterian church for several years, in 1909 was told by his son about an Apostolic Faith Mission (使徒信心會) in Shanghai where one could "receive the Holy Spirit." The elder Zhang set off on a quest that would take him far and wide. he went Shanghai, where the Pentecostal missionaries (very likely Mr. and Mrs. Lawler) laid hands on him, but he did not receive his Spirit baptism. He continued earnestly to seek it at home, and finally in December 1909 he received the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. In 1910 he went to Suzhou
and was rebaptized (by immersion in water), and sometime after that he went to the north, including Beijing, where he received instruction from two members of the Faith Union (信心會), one of them probably Brother Berntsen from Zhengding
Sometime before 1916 Zhang, who by now had renamed himself Zhang Lingsheng, claimed he had received a "revelation" (啟示) from God that only Sabbath day worship was acceptable. Zhang then formed a church or group based on this Seventh-Day Pentecostalism which had the name Jesus's True Church (耶穌真教會). Zhang spent at least some of his time between about 1912 and 1918, perhaps most of it back home in Shandong.
The other co-founder was Paul Wei
. The two of them later got together and use the name True Jesus Church.
The story of the True Jesus Church constitutes a fascinating case of "transnational relations" There was a crucial input by maverick individual foreign missionaries, which occurred outside the established channels of intellectual/religious transmission (Christian colleges and publications, denominational mission churches). Yet the resulting Chinese church paid scant acknowledgment, let alone deference, to its foreign progenitors Nevertheless the Chinese Pentecostal Christian community, the numerical majority of which was represented by the True Jesus Church for much of the first half of the twentieth century, must be reckoned as a legitimate part of the 20th century Pentecostal movement, an international transnational phenomenon of the first magnitude.
One cannot help but be struck by the remarkable eclecticism
of the church in establishing a Seventh-Day Unitarian Pentecostal Baptist church. This is seen in stark terms in the basic tenets of the church adopted in 1919. Several of these - Holy Spirit baptism, tongues, and healing - are classic Pentecostal doctrines. Even the "Jesus only" non-Trinitarian position probably came from Pentecostal sources; the "Jesus only" impulse was quite strong among early Pentecostal missionaries in the mid 1910s, especially in China The Saturday worship conviction likely came from early American Seventh-day Adventist
missionaries and their publications; they were increasingly active in China after 1902
, founded by Jing Dianying
. Although Jing had become a Methodist Christian since 1914, he felt that he had not been spiritually "reborn" . He believed that he did not receive the "gift of the spirit" or entered into personal communication with the Holy Spirit.
In 1923, he returned to Taian to teach in the middle school, where he became associated with the Assemblies of God
. Jing was spiritually enlightened by a particular Assemblies of God missionary
called Anglin
, who established a Home of Onesiphorus. He was gradually attracted by both its Pentecostal religious teaching and its combination of the sacred and secular life. In 1924, it was in the meeting hall of the Assemblies of God that Jing experienced the "strong shock" that convinced him he had been baptized by the Holy Spirit, for at least he could now speak in tongues. It seems that Jing highly appreciated the "strange and beautiful feeling" derived from this experience and found happiness in this encounter with the divine . The Reverend Perry Hanson , the principal of the Methodist Middle School in Taian, warned that what Jing believed in was "heresy." Jing was ousted from both the school and the Methodist church because he refused to retreat from Pentecostalism. After that, he worked in the Home of Onesiphorus in 1925. This Pentecostal institution was very prosperous at the time and enjoyed a high reputation in the locality. Its success would have left a deep impression on Jing, and the name he chose for his establishment, "the Jesus Home", was strongly influenced by the Home of Onesiphorus . Jing's Christian Trust and Saving Society was unsuccessful, and by 1924 he began to transfer his economic activity from business to agriculture. He hoped that silkworm breeding and silk reeling would support the Christian group, which was named the "Jesus Home" or the Jesus Family
in 1927.
missionaries. This effort had pretty much succeeded by the early 1920s. The Foreign Mission Division of the Assemblies of God now began the task of recruiting new missionaries
, supplying funds for their support, and providing direction over their efforts in the field .
By the early 1920s, there were already forty-seven missionaries who served the Assemblies of God. They included Victor Plymire, who explored the provinces of western China and Tibet
and whose son would serve in the Taiwan mission. The difficult years of the 1920s and 1930s, when the Protestant and Catholic mission establishments found themselves threatened by overt Chinese hostility, were even more dangerous for AG missionaries, many of whom worked in remote sections of the hinterland. Not all survived these treacherous times. W.E. Simpson was slain in a bandit ambush
in 1932, but the mission continued to grow.
By 1933, there were sixty-seven missionaries in China located at twenty-six stations. The missionaries had also recruited a number of local workers. That same year, 155 Chinese helped the Westerners as evangelists and Bible workers.
After the Sino-Japanese War
and the disruption it brought (in some cases Pentecostal missionaries were interned by the Japanese), the Foreign Mission Division began an extensive reassessment of their efforts. As a result of meetings held in Springfield, Missouri
in 1945, they committed themselves to an overall expansion of their enterprise in China. One hundred and forty eight churches had been planted.
In 1952, the Assemblies of God Mission Board committed its men and women from to the island in the hope of establishing Pentecostal churches in the militarily secure Republic of China They have been there ever since.
networks were influenced by the introduction into Henan
of Pentecostal patterns of worship and prayer starting in 1988 by Reverend Dennis Balcombe, an American pastor of an independent Hong Kong Pentecostal church, Revival Christian Church(基督教復興教會), in Kowloon
. Balcombe's Pentecostal teaching seemed to have influenced the majority of China's major house church movements
- particularly Tanghe fellowship and Fangcheng
, and two smaller movements that grew up in Anhui
province - which became Charismatic in their theology.
Balcombe was born in Los Angeles and converted to a zealous Christian faith at sixteen while still in high school.
He was attending an independent Pentecostal church in El Monte
, outside Los Angeles, when the wife of the main American preacher suddenly started speaking fluent Hebrew
. The pastor's wife had never heard Hebrew spoken in her life. She was "speaking in tongues," a Pentecostal or Charismatic phenomenon that was common in the early Christian church .
According to the Pentecostal understanding of tongues-speaking, a person receives from the Holy Spirit, the "interpretation" or translation of the message. Indeed, someone in the congregation received the "interpretation" in English and declaimed it aloud. An American Jew who knew Hebrew happened to be in the church at the time and confirmed the accuracy of the translation. The gist of it was that Dennis Balcombe was going to be used by God as a missionary
in China. Balcombe, evidently, did not argue with the message.
For a while, Balcombe attended Bible college
in California, but he was then drafted. He spent a year in Vietnam
in 1969 with the First Air Cavalry division . During a one-week R-and-R break in Hong Kong, he went into a Pentecostal church and heard another "prophecy" aimed at him, this time telling him that Hong Kong was the place he should go. Balcombe arrived there in 1969 and began to pioneer a new church. What was unusual about it was that, though he was a Westerner, the congregation was overwhelmingly Chinese and the main language was Cantonese, not English. Balcombe's fluency in the language and his passion for the country helped him to further his contacts in China when the country began to open up in the 1980s. Travelling to and from his English teaching sites in Guangzhou, Dennis Balcombe was able to bring scores of thousands of Bible
s. These would be stored in the home of a Chinese Christian in the city, then shipped by train to Henan province.
One of the earliest Fangcheng
leaders he met on these trips was sister Ding Hei. Ding Hei also learned about the new Pentecostal worship worships, including joyful praise tunes and dancing, that Balcombe had introduced into the Revival Christian Church in Hong Kong. This was introduced to other Fangcheng leaders, who were similarly impressed. They decided to invite Balcombe to visit Fangcheng. In 1988 he did so, and prepared for the journey with a twenty-day fast
. The hosts assumed that the visitor would be Hong Kong Chinese and were surprised to see an American visitor . Balcombe began to pray that the assembled Christians would receive the Pentecostal gift and that they, too, would begin to pray in tongues. That night, most of the Chinese gathered to hear Balcombe did receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
As Balcombe later recalled "Sometimes the leaders would draw back and stop what was happening. But slowly but surely, they began to open up to speaking in tongues. After about a year, the resistance was broken [in Henan province]."
Though some of the house church
networks would not accept Balcombe's Pentecostalism, notably the Born Again Movement (though their leader Xu Yongze has said he does not personally oppose it), the largest networks all did. Within a decade of Balcombe's first teaching, one half to two-thirds of China's house church Christians seemed to have joined the Charismatic fold .
Hebei
' is a province of the People's Republic of China in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "" , named after Ji Province, a Han Dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei...
province, and Shanghai.
Historical background
Pentecostalism, and the missionaries who were an integral part of it, were products of the convergence of several forces in Christianity at the turn of the century . Some of these forces were a reaction against the secularizationSecularization
Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions...
and institutionalization of largely middle-class Protestant denominational churches. Not all of these forces or elements were unique to the United States, but they came together there in a dramatic way, so that early Pentecostalism can be seen as a product of U.S. Society.
These forces included:
- The energies of the post-Civil War Holiness movementHoliness movementThe holiness movement refers to a set of beliefs and practices emerging from the Methodist Christian church in the mid 19th century. The movement is distinguished by its emphasis on John Wesley's doctrine of "Christian perfection" - the belief that it is possible to live free of voluntary sin - and...
, which by the 1890s had split into many groups, all looking for the power to achieve personal holinessHolinessHoliness is the state of being holy or sacred.Holiness is being clean or pure, to be holy is to be like God.Holiness may also refer to:* Holiness movement, a specific tradition within evangelicalism...
; some had begun fixing on the idea of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the secret. - An ardent and expectant millenarianismMillenarianismMillenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...
, vased theologically on a position of premillennialismPremillennialismPremillennialism in Christian end-times theology is the belief that Jesus will literally and physically be on the earth for his millennial reign, at his second coming. The doctrine is called premillennialism because it holds that Jesus’ physical return to earth will occur prior to the inauguration...
. - An urge for pristinization. This was manifested in a belief that in the present, which was a special new age leading up to the second coming of Christ, it was necessary to replicate the Apostolic ageApostolic AgeThe Apostolic Age of the history of Christianity is traditionally the period of the Twelve Apostles, dating from the Crucifixion of Jesus and the Great Commission in Jerusalem until the death of John the Apostle in Anatolia...
of the early church . - A search for a sign to signify one's appropriation of power of holiness, received through the baptism of the spirit; eventually this sign came to be considered speaking in tongues.
All these elements coalesced in the particular conditions of the United States. Soon after 1900, the Apostolic Faith movement emerged, and then came the great watershed of the formation of the modern Pentecostal movement, the Azusa Street Revival
Azusa Street Revival
The Azusa Street Revival was a historic Pentecostal revival meeting that took place in Los Angeles, California and is the origin of the Pentecostal movement. It was led by William J. Seymour, an African American preacher. It began with a meeting on April 14, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915...
in Los Angeles, 1906-1908.
From Azusa Street came the people and forces to form the U.S. Assemblies of God
Assemblies of God
The Assemblies of God , officially the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, is a group of over 140 autonomous but loosely-associated national groupings of churches which together form the world's largest Pentecostal denomination...
in 1914, and smaller American Pentecostal groups. but right from the beginning in 1906, there was a remarkable missionary thrust coming out from the Azusa Street phenomenon. Within weeks, Christians transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit were heading off to foreign lands, not a part of any mission society, but as "faith missionaries," certain that God would meet their needs . The destination of many of them was Asia.
The characteristics and messages that these early Pentecostal missionaries brought were:
- MillenarianismMillenarianismMillenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...
, bringing the excitement of the conviction that one was living in the last stage of history, where ChristChristChrist is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
could return literally at any moment. - A second theme was the tremendous power of the Holy Spirit, manifested in healings and miracles of all kinds, some quite spectacular.
- Another characteristic was going through ecstatic personal experiences such as prophecyProphecyProphecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...
, possession of one's faculties, or being transported to another realm or dimension. - The final theme was speaking in tongues as a sign of confirmation for the individual that he or she had received Holy Spirit baptism.
Early missionary progenitors
Alfred G. Garr, who was pastoring a Los Angeles church when the Azusa Street RevivalAzusa Street Revival
The Azusa Street Revival was a historic Pentecostal revival meeting that took place in Los Angeles, California and is the origin of the Pentecostal movement. It was led by William J. Seymour, an African American preacher. It began with a meeting on April 14, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915...
began in 1906, was one of the first pastors to receive the baptism of the Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Within days he felt a call to go as a missionary to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
in 1907, then arrived with hiswife in hong Kong in October 1907, where he joined a handful of Pentecostal single women who had come to Hong Kong from Seattle in the late summer or early fall of 1907 . Garr had considerable impact in Hong Kong. A Congregational church
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the first American Christian foreign mission agency. It was proposed in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College and officially chartered in 1812. In 1961 it merged with other societies to form the United Church Board for World...
(ABCFM) permitted him to hold meetings there, where he began to present Pentecostal doctrines.
One Mok Lai-Chi (Mò Lǐ-zhì/莫礼智), a forty year old school proprietor who was the Sunday School superintendent and a deacon in that ABCFM church, was Garr's interpreter. Soon Mok received the Holy Spirit baptism with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Within two months the ABCFM church committee banned the Pentecostals from the premises, and they had to move elsewhere. But mok let them use his school, and in January 1908, Mok as editor put out the first issue of a Chinese monthly paper, Pentecostal truths (五旬節真理報); Mok remained editor for many years. By 1909 six thousand copies were being printed nd mailed nationwide . This group and newspaper are important because the paper directly influenced the North China founders of the first major Chinese Pentecostal church, The True Jesus Church
True Jesus Church
The True Jesus Church is a non-denominational Christian church that originated in Beijing, China, in 1917. The current elected chairman of the TJC International Assembly is Preacher Yong-Ji Lin. Today, there are approximately 2.5 million members in fifty three countries and six continents...
.
There was also a very early Pentecostal base in North China, in Zhengding County, near Shijiazhuang
Shijiazhuang
Shijiazhuang is the capital and largest city of North China's Hebei province. Administratively a prefecture-level city, it is about south of Beijing...
, Hebei
Hebei
' is a province of the People's Republic of China in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "" , named after Ji Province, a Han Dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei...
province. Like the Hong Kong base, it was a direct product of Azusa Street in Los Angeles. In about 1904, a certain Mr. Berntsen went to a south Hebei mission . Late in 1906 he got his hands on one of the first issues of the "official" Azusa Street publication, the Apostolic Faith, and was so excited by its description of events there that he immediately left China and sailed back to the United States, headed for Los Angeles. The rapid transmission of this early sectarian publication all the way from Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
all the way to Hebei is itself remarkable. At any rate, words of a 1907 issue of the Apostolic Faith, "Berntsen went to the altar at Azusa Mission. and soon fell under the power, and arose drunk on the new wine of the kingdom, magnifying God in a new tongue. As soon as he could speak English, he says, ‘This means much for China’."
Berntsen stayed around Los Angeles for a time, then helped form a group of about twelve Pentecostal missionaries who headed for China. They decided to open a new independent mission station in an area where famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
had been raging, and chose Zhengding
Zhengding
Zhengding is a county in Hebei Province approximately 260 kilometers south of Beijing, China. It comes under the administration of nearby Shijiazhuang City and has a population of 594,000. Zhengding has been an important religious center for more than 1,000 years, from - at least - the times...
, on the rail line just north of Shijiazhuang
Shijiazhuang
Shijiazhuang is the capital and largest city of North China's Hebei province. Administratively a prefecture-level city, it is about south of Beijing...
, Hebei, not far from Berntsen's earlier station. Berntsen kept in touch with the Azusa Street people, and letters from him are included in issues of the Apostolic Faith until the last issue in May 1908. The Zhengding mission had some permanence. Berntsen
Bernt Berntsen
Bernt Berntsen , also known as Brother B. Berntsen, was a Norwegian-American Protestant Christian missionary to China. In 1904, Berntsen and his wife Magna was able to preach along with several other independent Norwegian missionaries in a mission station in Damingfu of Zhili Province...
and his wife were still listed as being there, along with a few other in 1915.
The group at Zhengding
Zhengding
Zhengding is a county in Hebei Province approximately 260 kilometers south of Beijing, China. It comes under the administration of nearby Shijiazhuang City and has a population of 594,000. Zhengding has been an important religious center for more than 1,000 years, from - at least - the times...
began to put out a newspaper in 1912. This was called the Popular Gospel Truth (通傳福音真理報), and gives us some important information. First, it identifies the church name under which the church group operated, the Faith Union (信心會)..
Besides Hong Kong and Hebei, a third early Pentecostal group settled in at Shanghai. This group also was aproduct of the Azusa Street revival, although a slightly indirect one. As early as in the summer of 1906, Pastor M.L. Ryan of Salem, Oregon
Salem, Oregon
Salem is the capital of the U.S. state of Oregon, and the county seat of Marion County. It is located in the center of the Willamette Valley alongside the Willamette River, which runs north through the city. The river forms the boundary between Marion and Polk counties, and the city neighborhood...
, heard in detail of the inspiring events in Los Angeles, and was profoundly affected . Soon he moved to Spokane
Spokane
Spokane is a city in the U.S. state of Washington.Spokane may also refer to:*Spokane *Spokane River*Spokane, Missouri*Spokane Valley, Washington*Spokane County, Washington*Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Paloos War*Spokane * USS Spokane...
, where he gathered a Pentecostal congregation which in the summer of 1907 sent a whole band of missionaries to Asia, led by Ryan himself . Interestingly, as they were leaving Seattle in late summer 1907, they met and overlapped a few days with Brother Berntsen from Hebei, who was landing there on his way to Los Angeles . The Ryan group encountered some confusion and scattering in East Asia, but by the fall of 1907 at least two of its single women members had gone on to Hong Kong, where they soon joined up with A.G. Garr arriving from India, and were in on the founding of the Pentecostal movement there which was described already. Others of Ryan's group went with some other missionaries in the Shanghai area who had abandoned their denominations and come over to join one or another Pentecostal band, or just operated independently.
After 1910, there was a rapid growth of Pentecostal missions all across China. These missionaries were not very visible among the general run of foreign missionaries . They preached where they could, held healing services, and expected miracles. Many if not most had no regular financial support, and they seem to have been more peripatetic
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...
than most missionaries, perhaps because they generally did not build institutions like clinics and schools (although some did have orphanages).
The Pentecostals were not accorded much respect by the "missionary establishment." One British Baptist source referred disparagingly to "certain sects from America" which entered Shandong
Shandong
' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...
after 1912 . The China Inland Mission
China Inland Mission
OMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:...
, by now the largest Protestant mission body in China with over one thousand members, found increasing tension within its ranks on the issue of Pentecostalism or the "tongues movement" after 1910. Some of its missionaries were attracted to it, a number were repelled by it, and the all-powerful CIM China Council at Shanghai spent much time debating the proper relationship with the movement during 1914-1915. After consultation with the home councils in Britain and North America, in April 1915 the China Council adopted a long statement condemning the Pentecostal movement, whose meetings were allegedly "characterized by disorder and by manifestations which in some cases have led to mental derangement and maniacal ravings ." And a Chinese-language church newspaper published by the American presbyterians in Shanghai specifically warned in 1915 that in quest of the "gift" of speaking in tongues, people had been known to go insane and kill themselves . The Pentecostals obviously had an uphill task in public relations, at least in the missionary community.
Despite their pariah status among fellow missionaries, these Pentecostal pioneers persevered. Buoyed by the immediacy of their spiritual experiences and by millenarian expectations, they lived on the precipice of history, having direct communication with Jesus and being filled with the awesome power of the Holy Spirit, all this confirmed for them by the tongues phenomenon. Their message, quixotic or heretical as it seemed to many other missionaries, did in fact find a Chinese audience.
One feature of the earliest Chinese participants in the Pentecostal movement was that they were nearly all already Christians, but searching for a deeper and more immediate religious experience that they did not find in their particular denominations. Early adherents came variously from Methodist, Presbyterian, China Inland Mission
China Inland Mission
OMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:...
, Congregational
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
, Seventh-day Adventist
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant Christian denomination distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, as the Sabbath, and by its emphasis on the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ...
, and other backgrounds. In Hong Kong the second, third and fourth Pentecostal converts were all members of the ABCFM church where A.G. Garr first preached . Later, the two most important founders of the True Jesus Church came from Presbyterian and London Missionary Society
London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society was a non-denominational missionary society formed in England in 1795 by evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists, largely Congregationalist in outlook, with missions in the islands of the South Pacific and Africa...
churches, and the founder of the Jesus Family
Jesus Family
The Jesus Family was a unique Pentecostal communitarian church first established in rural Shandong Province in a village called Mazhuang, in Taian County about 1927. In later years, other Jesus Family churches were established in North and Central China, many of them in Shandong but others as far...
had a Methodist background.
True Jesus Church
The True Jesus Church in effect had two co-founders. One was Mr. Zhang Bin of Weixian district in northeast ShandongShandong
' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...
province . Zhang, who had been an elder in the Weixian Presbyterian church for several years, in 1909 was told by his son about an Apostolic Faith Mission (使徒信心會) in Shanghai where one could "receive the Holy Spirit." The elder Zhang set off on a quest that would take him far and wide. he went Shanghai, where the Pentecostal missionaries (very likely Mr. and Mrs. Lawler) laid hands on him, but he did not receive his Spirit baptism. He continued earnestly to seek it at home, and finally in December 1909 he received the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. In 1910 he went to Suzhou
Suzhou
Suzhou , previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part...
and was rebaptized (by immersion in water), and sometime after that he went to the north, including Beijing, where he received instruction from two members of the Faith Union (信心會), one of them probably Brother Berntsen from Zhengding
Zhengding
Zhengding is a county in Hebei Province approximately 260 kilometers south of Beijing, China. It comes under the administration of nearby Shijiazhuang City and has a population of 594,000. Zhengding has been an important religious center for more than 1,000 years, from - at least - the times...
Sometime before 1916 Zhang, who by now had renamed himself Zhang Lingsheng, claimed he had received a "revelation" (啟示) from God that only Sabbath day worship was acceptable. Zhang then formed a church or group based on this Seventh-Day Pentecostalism which had the name Jesus's True Church (耶穌真教會). Zhang spent at least some of his time between about 1912 and 1918, perhaps most of it back home in Shandong.
The other co-founder was Paul Wei
Paul Wei
Paul Wei , previously known as Wèi Ēnbō , was born in Hebei province, China. He was a farmer from a poor family background and had very little education. In 1902 he migrated to Beijing where he later became a prosperous silk and merchandise dealer.By his own accounts, he was previously a...
. The two of them later got together and use the name True Jesus Church.
The story of the True Jesus Church constitutes a fascinating case of "transnational relations" There was a crucial input by maverick individual foreign missionaries, which occurred outside the established channels of intellectual/religious transmission (Christian colleges and publications, denominational mission churches). Yet the resulting Chinese church paid scant acknowledgment, let alone deference, to its foreign progenitors Nevertheless the Chinese Pentecostal Christian community, the numerical majority of which was represented by the True Jesus Church for much of the first half of the twentieth century, must be reckoned as a legitimate part of the 20th century Pentecostal movement, an international transnational phenomenon of the first magnitude.
One cannot help but be struck by the remarkable eclecticism
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
of the church in establishing a Seventh-Day Unitarian Pentecostal Baptist church. This is seen in stark terms in the basic tenets of the church adopted in 1919. Several of these - Holy Spirit baptism, tongues, and healing - are classic Pentecostal doctrines. Even the "Jesus only" non-Trinitarian position probably came from Pentecostal sources; the "Jesus only" impulse was quite strong among early Pentecostal missionaries in the mid 1910s, especially in China The Saturday worship conviction likely came from early American Seventh-day Adventist
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant Christian denomination distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, as the Sabbath, and by its emphasis on the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ...
missionaries and their publications; they were increasingly active in China after 1902
Jesus Family
The second prominent Chinese Pentecostal church is the Jesus FamilyJesus Family
The Jesus Family was a unique Pentecostal communitarian church first established in rural Shandong Province in a village called Mazhuang, in Taian County about 1927. In later years, other Jesus Family churches were established in North and Central China, many of them in Shandong but others as far...
, founded by Jing Dianying
Jing Dianying
Jing Dianying was the founder of the second largest Chinese Pentecostal church movement known as the Jesus Family. Jing was born in Mazhuang of China's Shandong province, the fifth child of an impoverished landlord named Jing Chuanji . His family possessed of fertile land and scores of...
. Although Jing had become a Methodist Christian since 1914, he felt that he had not been spiritually "reborn" . He believed that he did not receive the "gift of the spirit" or entered into personal communication with the Holy Spirit.
In 1923, he returned to Taian to teach in the middle school, where he became associated with the Assemblies of God
Assemblies of God
The Assemblies of God , officially the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, is a group of over 140 autonomous but loosely-associated national groupings of churches which together form the world's largest Pentecostal denomination...
. Jing was spiritually enlightened by a particular Assemblies of God missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
called Anglin
Anglin
The Anglin is a long river in the Creuse, Indre and Vienne départements in central France. Its source is near Azerables. It flows generally northwest...
, who established a Home of Onesiphorus. He was gradually attracted by both its Pentecostal religious teaching and its combination of the sacred and secular life. In 1924, it was in the meeting hall of the Assemblies of God that Jing experienced the "strong shock" that convinced him he had been baptized by the Holy Spirit, for at least he could now speak in tongues. It seems that Jing highly appreciated the "strange and beautiful feeling" derived from this experience and found happiness in this encounter with the divine . The Reverend Perry Hanson , the principal of the Methodist Middle School in Taian, warned that what Jing believed in was "heresy." Jing was ousted from both the school and the Methodist church because he refused to retreat from Pentecostalism. After that, he worked in the Home of Onesiphorus in 1925. This Pentecostal institution was very prosperous at the time and enjoyed a high reputation in the locality. Its success would have left a deep impression on Jing, and the name he chose for his establishment, "the Jesus Home", was strongly influenced by the Home of Onesiphorus . Jing's Christian Trust and Saving Society was unsuccessful, and by 1924 he began to transfer his economic activity from business to agriculture. He hoped that silkworm breeding and silk reeling would support the Christian group, which was named the "Jesus Home" or the Jesus Family
Jesus Family
The Jesus Family was a unique Pentecostal communitarian church first established in rural Shandong Province in a village called Mazhuang, in Taian County about 1927. In later years, other Jesus Family churches were established in North and Central China, many of them in Shandong but others as far...
in 1927.
Assemblies of God in China
In 1914, the leaders of the emerging Pentecostal movement founded the Assemblies of God in the United States. Its purpose, they asserted, was to preserve the harvest of newly won souls. In 1916, a Foreign Mission Division was established and its leaders then attempted to bring under its banner the independent Pentecostals and the missionaries of the theologically similar Christian and Missionary AllianceChristian and Missionary Alliance
The Christian and Missionary Alliance is an evangelical Protestant denomination within Christianity.Founded by Rev. Albert Benjamin Simpson in 1887, the Christian & Missionary Alliance did not start off as a denomination, but rather began as two distinct parachurch organizations: The Christian...
missionaries. This effort had pretty much succeeded by the early 1920s. The Foreign Mission Division of the Assemblies of God now began the task of recruiting new missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
, supplying funds for their support, and providing direction over their efforts in the field .
By the early 1920s, there were already forty-seven missionaries who served the Assemblies of God. They included Victor Plymire, who explored the provinces of western China and Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
and whose son would serve in the Taiwan mission. The difficult years of the 1920s and 1930s, when the Protestant and Catholic mission establishments found themselves threatened by overt Chinese hostility, were even more dangerous for AG missionaries, many of whom worked in remote sections of the hinterland. Not all survived these treacherous times. W.E. Simpson was slain in a bandit ambush
Ambush
An ambush is a long-established military tactic, in which the aggressors take advantage of concealment and the element of surprise to attack an unsuspecting enemy from concealed positions, such as among dense underbrush or behind hilltops...
in 1932, but the mission continued to grow.
By 1933, there were sixty-seven missionaries in China located at twenty-six stations. The missionaries had also recruited a number of local workers. That same year, 155 Chinese helped the Westerners as evangelists and Bible workers.
After the Sino-Japanese War
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
and the disruption it brought (in some cases Pentecostal missionaries were interned by the Japanese), the Foreign Mission Division began an extensive reassessment of their efforts. As a result of meetings held in Springfield, Missouri
Springfield, Missouri
Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. According to the 2010 census data, the population was 159,498, an increase of 5.2% since the 2000 census. The Springfield Metropolitan Area, population 436,712, includes the counties of...
in 1945, they committed themselves to an overall expansion of their enterprise in China. One hundred and forty eight churches had been planted.
In 1952, the Assemblies of God Mission Board committed its men and women from to the island in the hope of establishing Pentecostal churches in the militarily secure Republic of China They have been there ever since.
1949-present
In 1958, the two Chinese Pentecostal churches (along with all other Chinese Protestant churches) were compelled to join the Three Self Church. The Three Self Church took on the function of an ecclesiastical authority and all Protestant denominations officially ceased to exist in China. The abrupt unification meant the wholesale abandonment of ritual differences between the denominations and the curtailment of many activities. Unification on these terms was especially detrimental to the evangelical churches. In a sense, the government purposely took the opportunity of the unification to subjugate the evangelicals. Not surprisingly, the old "Three Self Churches" naturally resisted joining the government-recognized union of churches. This conflict eventually resulted in their being banned during the 1950s as promoters of 'American imperialism, feudalism and capitalism', the 'unlawful activities' of faith healing and exorcism, and the 'immoralities' of 'spiritual dance'. All church activities in China, including those of the Three Self Church were banned in 1966. Although church activity was allowed to recommence at the end of the 1970s, any attempts at openly evangelizing in public were officially restricted. The next major Pentecostal outreach did not occur until the late 1980s.Chinese house church networks
Since the late 1980s, several Chinese house churchChinese house church
Chinese house churches are a religious movement of unregistered assemblies of Christians in the People's Republic of China, which operate independently of the government-run Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council for Protestant groups and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic...
networks were influenced by the introduction into Henan
Henan
Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
of Pentecostal patterns of worship and prayer starting in 1988 by Reverend Dennis Balcombe, an American pastor of an independent Hong Kong Pentecostal church, Revival Christian Church(基督教復興教會), in Kowloon
Kowloon
Kowloon is an urban area in Hong Kong comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and New Kowloon. It is bordered by the Lei Yue Mun strait in the east, Mei Foo Sun Chuen and Stonecutter's Island in the west, Tate's Cairn and Lion Rock in the north, and Victoria Harbour in the south. It had a population of...
. Balcombe's Pentecostal teaching seemed to have influenced the majority of China's major house church movements
Chinese house church
Chinese house churches are a religious movement of unregistered assemblies of Christians in the People's Republic of China, which operate independently of the government-run Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council for Protestant groups and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic...
- particularly Tanghe fellowship and Fangcheng
Fangcheng Fellowship
The Fangcheng Fellowship of China is a Christian religious movement founded by Li Tianen in the early 1970s. The Fangcheng Fellowship is now considered one of the largest Henan-based house church networks now estimated to number in the millions throughout China...
, and two smaller movements that grew up in Anhui
Anhui
Anhui is a province in the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny...
province - which became Charismatic in their theology.
Balcombe was born in Los Angeles and converted to a zealous Christian faith at sixteen while still in high school.
He was attending an independent Pentecostal church in El Monte
El Monte, California
El Monte is a residential, industrial, and commercial city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city's slogan is "Welcome to Friendly El Monte," and historically is known as "The End of the Santa Fe Trail." As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 113,475,...
, outside Los Angeles, when the wife of the main American preacher suddenly started speaking fluent Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
. The pastor's wife had never heard Hebrew spoken in her life. She was "speaking in tongues," a Pentecostal or Charismatic phenomenon that was common in the early Christian church .
According to the Pentecostal understanding of tongues-speaking, a person receives from the Holy Spirit, the "interpretation" or translation of the message. Indeed, someone in the congregation received the "interpretation" in English and declaimed it aloud. An American Jew who knew Hebrew happened to be in the church at the time and confirmed the accuracy of the translation. The gist of it was that Dennis Balcombe was going to be used by God as a missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
in China. Balcombe, evidently, did not argue with the message.
For a while, Balcombe attended Bible college
Bible college
Bible colleges are institutions of higher education that specialize in biblical studies. Curriculum is Bible-based and differs from that of liberal arts colleges or research universities. Bible colleges generally exclude the study of philosophy, unlike seminaries and theological colleges...
in California, but he was then drafted. He spent a year in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
in 1969 with the First Air Cavalry division . During a one-week R-and-R break in Hong Kong, he went into a Pentecostal church and heard another "prophecy" aimed at him, this time telling him that Hong Kong was the place he should go. Balcombe arrived there in 1969 and began to pioneer a new church. What was unusual about it was that, though he was a Westerner, the congregation was overwhelmingly Chinese and the main language was Cantonese, not English. Balcombe's fluency in the language and his passion for the country helped him to further his contacts in China when the country began to open up in the 1980s. Travelling to and from his English teaching sites in Guangzhou, Dennis Balcombe was able to bring scores of thousands of Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
s. These would be stored in the home of a Chinese Christian in the city, then shipped by train to Henan province.
One of the earliest Fangcheng
Fangcheng Fellowship
The Fangcheng Fellowship of China is a Christian religious movement founded by Li Tianen in the early 1970s. The Fangcheng Fellowship is now considered one of the largest Henan-based house church networks now estimated to number in the millions throughout China...
leaders he met on these trips was sister Ding Hei. Ding Hei also learned about the new Pentecostal worship worships, including joyful praise tunes and dancing, that Balcombe had introduced into the Revival Christian Church in Hong Kong. This was introduced to other Fangcheng leaders, who were similarly impressed. They decided to invite Balcombe to visit Fangcheng. In 1988 he did so, and prepared for the journey with a twenty-day fast
Fasting
Fasting is primarily the act of willingly abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time. An absolute fast is normally defined as abstinence from all food and liquid for a defined period, usually a single day , or several days. Other fasts may be only partially restrictive,...
. The hosts assumed that the visitor would be Hong Kong Chinese and were surprised to see an American visitor . Balcombe began to pray that the assembled Christians would receive the Pentecostal gift and that they, too, would begin to pray in tongues. That night, most of the Chinese gathered to hear Balcombe did receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
As Balcombe later recalled "Sometimes the leaders would draw back and stop what was happening. But slowly but surely, they began to open up to speaking in tongues. After about a year, the resistance was broken [in Henan province]."
Though some of the house church
Chinese house church
Chinese house churches are a religious movement of unregistered assemblies of Christians in the People's Republic of China, which operate independently of the government-run Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council for Protestant groups and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic...
networks would not accept Balcombe's Pentecostalism, notably the Born Again Movement (though their leader Xu Yongze has said he does not personally oppose it), the largest networks all did. Within a decade of Balcombe's first teaching, one half to two-thirds of China's house church Christians seemed to have joined the Charismatic fold .