| Revival is a hallmark of Christianity.Historically,when Christianity ebbs and Christians lack religious spirit,a religious revival typically emerges.The Shandong Revival from 1927 to 1937,which was an important movement in the history of Christianity in the Republic of China,has attracted the interest of scholars in both China and abroad.The term Shandong Revival,which gained wide recognition from Mary Crawford’s book Shandong Revival in 1933,narrowly refers only to the revival movement in the North China Mission of the Southern Baptist Convention.More broadly,however,this term also includes revivals anticipated by several Pentecostal churches in Shandong Province,such as the True Jesus Church,the Jesus Family,and the Church of God.Originating in Chefoo,Shandong Province,this movement quickly spread to other parts of the province as well as to other provinces in China,and even to neighboring countries such as Korea and Japan.Deeply influenced by the International Classic Pentecostal Movement,the Shandong Revival,which focused on being filled with the Holy Spirit,emphasized the experience of rebirth,and lauded miracles and wonders,launched a ten-year revival in China.It had a profound impact on the sinicization of Christianity,changed the power structure of missions in China,and brought new teachings and religious practices to indigenous churches,thereby shaping the presence of Christianity in modern China.A combination of factors,both international and domestic,contributed to the birth of the Shandong Revival Movement during the 1920s and 1930s.Internationally,with the acceleration of secularization and modernization marked by rationalism and scientism at the end of the nineteenth century,evangelical forces in Europe and North America counterattacked liberalists by advocating new theological doctrines including the Full Gospel,Pre-millennialism,Sabbath,and Justification,which resulted in the formation of a number of evangelical branches including Pentecostalism,Fundamentalism,Pietism,and Keswickian belief.Bearing a sense of mission and urgency to save souls,fundamentalists constantly launched revival movements,the most notable being the Pentecostal Revival Movement,which emphasized miracles and religious experiences like speaking in tongues,seeing visions,dreaming,prophecy,divine healing,and casting out devils.Warmly welcomed by marginalized and vulnerable groups,this led to the first wave of the Pentecostal Revival Movement,also known as the Classic Pentecostal Movement.Although this movement surfaced at virtually the same time in different countries and regions,making it difficult to trace its origin,the most influential and well recognized outbreak center was undoubtedly the one located on Azusa Street in California,USA.Attracted by Pentecostal doctrines,people gathered from around the world to visit Azusa Street,bringing the revival of fire to all corners.Among them were the first Pentecostal missionaries to China who introduced the New Gospel of Pentecostalism to South China(Hong Kong,Macao,and Guangdong),East China(Shanghai and Zhejiang),Southwest China(Yunnan and Sichuan),and North China(Beijing,Tianjin,Zhili,and Shandong).Soon,sporadic revivals were evidenced throughout China.Domestically,Shandong possessed an excellent location and abundant natural resources,although it had to withstand disasters caused by frequent breaks of the Yellow River,known as China’s Sorrow.Despite a good economic foundation and solid political traditions,it suffered from warlord fights and economic withering.Moreover,Shandong was not only the birthplace of Confucian culture which represented the core of Chinese traditional culture,it was also a province where folklore and secret religions flourished.Social suffering is often positively related to religious beliefs in that profound suffering facilitates the acceptance of religion.Christianity began early in Shandong and was preached by many denominations.By the 1920s,there were tens of thousands of Christians,which provided a good basis for a Christian revival movement.Pentecostal Christians in Shandong eagerly awaited a revival making it one of the earliest provinces to accept Pentecostalism.Influenced by the constant dawning of revivals such as the Manchuria Revival,Xinghua Revival,Fuzhou Revival,and Shanghai Revival,the Shandong Revival was like an arrow on the bowstring.The Southern Baptist Convention,the first Protestant mission to successfully establish itself in Shandong,marked the inception of the Shandong Revival which began in 1927 when Marie Monsen,a female Lutheran missionary from Norway who had taken refuge in Yantai following the Nanjing Incident,led a series of revival meetings among the Southern Baptist missionaries.She ignited the revival by preaching doctrines like confession,repentance,rebirth,salvation,and being filled with the Spirit.Subsequently,the revival gradually expanded from the eastern coastal areas of Shandong to the central and western regions,reaching a climax between 1931 and 1933.Although the Southern Baptist missionaries denied being Pentecostals,that the revival possessed Pentecostal characteristics was undeniable.Both American missionaries and Chinese Christians were recorded having religious experiences such as speaking in tongues,seeing visions,dreaming,and divine healing.The tolerance of Pentecostalism by the Southern Baptist missionaries circumvented church division.Extensive and significant changes were generated,the most notable of which was the elevation of the status and role of Chinese evangelists,culminating in the recognition of self-reliance,self-propagation,and self-support.Participants in the Shandong Revival included not only the Southern Baptist Convention from afar,but also a number of the indigenous churches.The driving force for the revival was syncretism between Western Christian customs,traditional Chinese culture,and folk religions.On the one hand,the Southern Baptist missionaries adhered to the core doctrines of fundamentalism in addition to absorbing some teachings from the Holiness Movement,the Keswick Movement,and the Pentecostal Movement.On the other hand,they expressed understanding and tolerance towards Chinese Christians’excessive pursuit of spiritual gifts and pursued being filled with the Holy Spirit together with Chinese Christians.The True Jesus Church and the Jesus Family were the typical representatives of the syncretism,which realized the organic combination of Christianity and indigenous folk religions to varying degrees.Whereas they inherited the basic teachings and rituals of Western Christianity,especially the Pentecostal religious ideas,and were a part of the worldwide Christian revival and global expansion,they also drew sustenance from Chinese folk religions and traditional culture by choosing elements of doctrines and practice that were easily understood and accepted by the general public in an effort to enrich Western Christianity with Chinese attributes.Folk intellectuals,such as Wei Enbo,Zhang Lingsheng,and Jing Dianying,who had been influenced by the two cultures of the East and the West,stepped onto the historical stage as native Christian leaders,and completed the inheritance and innovation of the two religious cultural elements through syncretism.The most important base when the revival spread to local churches,the True Jesus Church was the largest indigenous Pentecostal church at the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.The history of the True Jesus Church,which may be the first indigenous Pentecostal church in Shandong Province to be documented,can be traced back to the nascence of the Jesus True Church by Zhang Lingsheng,a Weixian native,in 1910.Wei Enbo,from Hebei,who founded the True Jesus Church in Beijing in 1917,was invited to preach in Shandong in early 1919.At that time,the Jesus True Church was incorporated into the True Jesus Church.As a typical Pentecostal church,the True Jesus Church not only believed that speaking in tongues was the only evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit,but it attached great importance to spiritual gifts(divine healing,visions,dreams,holy songs,and holy dances)and the worship of supernatural powers demonstrated in miracles,using these to attract people from the middle and lower classes.In terms of organizational characteristics,the True Jesus Church held high the banners of patriotism and nationalism,adopted a very aggressive way of preaching,placed special emphasis on personal religious experience,and thus achieved rapid development.Simultaneously,the True Jesus Church was plagued by church divisions and frequent heresies.During its first thirty years,there were at least 15 divisions,all of which were identified as heresy by the True Jesus Church.An important feature of the True Jesus Church is that it was the outcome of separations from the mainstream denominations,and kept separating at the same time.This was a situation commonly faced by other Pentecostal organizations.The Jesus Family was another active indigenous Pentecostal church in the historical drama of the Shandong Revival.Its founder was Jing Dianying,a native of Tai’an,Shandong.Initiated in Mazhuang Village in Tai’an,the Jesus Family eventually deserted Shandong,established organizations all over the country,and declared it would preach the gospel back to Jerusalem.The Jesus Family was an example of a native church with outstanding characteristics and a distinctive personality that adhered to spiritualism in belief,detachmentalism in politics,egalitarianism in production,minimalism in life,asceticism in marriage and family,authoritarianism in government,and conservatism in education.Under circumstances of continuous warfare,rampant banditry,and frequent natural disasters in the first half of the twentieth century,the Jesus Family enabled ordinary people,primarily from the lower and middle classes,to endure hardships.Imitating the old family in Tai’an through migrating to preach,it established 127 smaller families in more than ten provinces across the country.Through the expansion of the Jesus Family,the Pentecostal doctrines were widespread both in and out of Shandong Province,thereby Shandong Revival eventually evolved into China Revival. |
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