China and the True Jesus

Abstract

This book examines the dynamic between charisma and organization in the history of the True Jesus Church, China’s first major native church, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The True Jesus Church is one of the earliest Chinese expressions of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, now the dominant mode of twenty-first-century Chinese Christianity. The book argues that the charismatic mode of Christianity is not merely a reflection of native religious traditions or conditions of socioeconomic deprivation, but a powerful tool for organizing and sustaining community. The book’s chapters explore the relationship between charismatic experience and collective action from a variety of different angles, including transnational communications and transportation technology, the context for charismatic religious experience, women’s agency in patriarchal religious traditions, Christian churches during the Maoist era, clandestine culture, civil society groups, and the relationship between religion and the state from imperial times to the present. Although existing scholarship on global influences within modern Chinese history has tended to focus on elites such as political leaders or well-known intellectuals, this history illuminates global networks of interaction and exchange at the grassroots. Throughout the turbulent modern era, women and men of the True Jesus Church faced situations and made choices that highlight shifts and tensions within Chinese society on a human scale. Their various collective responses to the concerns of their day highlight the significance of charismatic religious community as a resource for empowerment and agency.