There have been many books about the introduction of Protestant Christianity to modern China, but most have been about the works of Western missionaries and their institutions. There have been journal articles and book chapters about indigenous forms of popular Christianity and indigenous preachers. But the impression one might get from reading the Western literature is that this form of Christianity was of secondary importance. Perhaps for Western scholars of Christianity, Chinese popular Christianity is a little embarrassing. Borrowing from early twentieth-century Pentecostal revivals, Chinese popular Christianity was emotional rather than rational. It attracted the lower classes rather than urban elites. It preached that the world was soon coming to an end, and therefore stressed personal conversion rather than patient, organized attempts to solve social problems. As the preacher Wang Mingdao put it, it taught “redemption, resurrection, miracles and prophesies” (p. 129). And it was strongly antiforeign. Wang Mingdao wrote...
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