John Song
Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man
Published by: Baylor University Press
Series: Studies in World Christianity
Imprint: Baylor University Press
This book examines the powerful vortex of John Sung’srevivals in China and Southeast Asia, which directlyinfluenced ten percent of all Chinese Protestants bythe end of the 1930s.Particular attention is given to class, women, and divinehealing. Sung’s revivals appealed to the xiaoshimin, or China’s petty urbanites, who sought a modern spiritualitythat befit their urban lives, yet wanted a religious systemthat addressed their traditional concerns. Womenappeared at Sung’s revivals in disproportionate numbers,because in China and Southeast Asia revivalism andmodernity fueled one another, and women could use thatcombustible mix to cast new places for themselves inlocal societies--even if it meant challenging Sung’s ownperception of women. Sung’s practice of healing, derivedfrom the holiness movement, temporarily challengedChina’s medical pluralism, before eventually becomingpart of it.Analysis of Sung’s ministry suggests that revivalismwas a powerful tool for personal and social revitalization.Through it, Sung not only rebuilt his own life andministry, but he also used revivalism to recreatea distinctively Chinese spirituality, though nowChristianized and expressed in ways appropriate to Chinaand Southeast Asia’s modernizing cities.
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