China and the True Jesus

In 1917, the Beijing silk merchant Wei Enbo's vision of Jesus sparked a religious revival, characterized by healings, exorcisms, tongues-speaking, and, most provocatively, a call for a return to authentic Christianity that challenged the Western missionary establishment in China. This revival gave rise to the True Jesus Church, China's first major native denomination. The church was one of the earliest Chinese expressions of the twentieth century charismatic andPentecostal tradition which is now the dominant mode of twenty-first century Chinese Christianity. To understand the faith of millions of Chinese Christians today, we must understand how this particular form of Chinese community took root and flourished even throughout the wrenching changes anddislocations of the past century.The church's history links together key themes in modern Chinese social history, such as longstanding cultural exchange between China and the West, imperialism and globalization, game-changing advances in transport and communications technology, and the relationship between religious movements and the state in the late Qing (circa 1850-1911), Republican (1912-1949), and Communist (1950-present-day) eras. Vivid storytelling highlights shifts and tensions within Chinese society on a human scale. How did mounting foreign incursions and domestic crises pave the way for Wei Enbo, a rural farmhand, to become a wealthy merchant in the early 1900s? Why did women in the 1920s and 30s, such as an orphaned girl named Yang Zhendao, devote themselves so wholeheartedly to a patriarchal religious system? What kinds of pressures induced church leaders in a meeting in the 1950s to agree that "Comrade Stalin"had saved many more people than Jesus? This book tells the striking but also familiar tale of the promise and peril attending the collective pursuit of the extraordinary-how individuals within the True Jesus Church in China over the past century have sought to muster divine and human resources to transform their world.

The book fills an important niche in the field and will be helpful to scholars of indigenous Christianities, charismatic traditions, and new religious movements. It would also be an excellent book for a methods or theory class, as it moves easily between archival and ethnographic work., This book is suitable for scholars and readers interestedin charismatic movements, new religious movements,and Chinese Christian studies., Reading this book exposed me to another facet of how the gospel has impacted Chinese society and history. Some of the experiences recorded in this book are instructive for current challenges facing Christian churches, leaders, and believers in China. Any reader interested in Chinese church history of the last 100 years will find this book an interesting and enlightening addition to their understanding of the complexity and varied streams of God's work in China., Far from being a dry, institutional history, China and the True Jesus is a tour de force of scholarship. Inouye has resisted the unfortunate trend of quick summaries and instead offers a sprightly written, wide-ranging account. She surveys the academic debates, unearths and translates rare primary source materials, and captures the feel of the miraculous worlds of believers. While she takes dreams and visions seriously, she helps us understand their significance by carefully framing the supernatural within history. China and the True Jesus is recommended not only for those interested in China but for anyone looking for a compelling story of how religions are born and survive., Melissa Inouye has written a beautiful book: rich in historical particularity about Wei Enbo and the True Jesus Church, analytically sophisticated in conceptual framings, and handsomely woven into the tapestry of Chinese Christianity. In a work which has been skillfully transformed from a PhD dissertation into a monograph, Inouye offers junior and senior scholars alike an exemplar in the craft of writing, which is so lacking in the academic guild. This book is an important and groundbreaking read for those who wish to learn more about the twentieth- and twenty-first-century course of Chinese Christianity and, indeed, for students and scholars of new religious movements and world Christianity.

Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Auckland. Her areas of research interest include the social and cultural history of modern China, charismatic global Christianity, and women and religion. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2011.