China
John Sung [Song Shangjie] is widely regarded as the foremost Chinese evangelist of the 20th century. Despite his relatively short life, Sung was credited with over 100,000 conversions in his 12-year ministry, roughly a tenth of all Chinese Protestants at the time. Reflecting on his ministry in the global context, Rev. William E. Schubert hailed him as “the greatest preacher of this century.”
Sung was born on September 27, 1901, in Putian [Hinghwa], Fujian, China. He was born to Mrs. Chen Roulan and Rev. Song Xuelian, a prominent pastor in the Xing-hua Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). While Sung later characterized his youthful faith as spurious, his deep-felt faith and ardent service to the mission earned him the nickname “Little Pastor.” That faith was no doubt spurred on by Sung’s youthful witness to a large, spontaneous revival that broke out in Putian in 1909.
Educated within the Methodist Mission system, Sung was finishing high school just as the May 4th Movement began churning China’s political imagination. Sung dedicated himself to his studies “to save the nation.” With top grades and connections in the global Methodist network, he was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to Ohio Wesleyan University, with the intention of studying for ministry. By the time he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1923 (a year early), he had widened his goal to include a medical degree and graduate theological work. He ultimately enrolled in Ohio State University (OSU), where he was awarded several advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. in chemistry.
During this time, he served as a licensed preacher in the MEC and led the International Student Forum at OSU, a joint venture of the YMCA and MEC. As president of the Forum, Sung devoted a great deal of his efforts to interracial understanding. Ever the evangelist, he was deposed by his peers in 1925 for turning the organization's events into “church propaganda.” Undaunted, Sung set his sights on his final goal of a seminary degree. Once in hand, he could return to China with the highest of pedigrees, ready to save the nation as a modern, scientific, religious leader within the Sino-Protestant Missionary Establishment. A different path was ahead.
In 1926, Sung enrolled in one of the most prestigious theological institutions in the United States: Union Theological Seminary. As a bastion of the emerging modernist movement, Union’s faculty included the leading liberal lights, such as Harry Emerson Fosdick, Harry F. Ward, and Henry Sloane Coffin. Sung was very much enthralled by the emerging modernist movement, promising in his application that he would utilize “scientific knowledge” to discover the “fundamental truths underlying both religion and science” and to burn away the systems of “materialism and imperialism.”
That Fall, he threw himself into a heavy school load and worked with the Church of All Nations in the Bowery. At the same time, he began to explore Buddhist scriptures, peruse theosophical literature, and question his theological commitments. At the same time, he became enraptured by the messages of a female preacher, Uldine Utley, who was visiting the city. Amid the pressures of his ever-increasing workload, theological searching, and evangelical piety, Sung’s mind began to unravel. In February 1927, he began acting erratically, writing about incoherent visions, and receiving premonitions of his death. With students and faculty alarmed, Union’s president intervened and helped convince Sung to self-admit to a mental asylum. Union would eventually pay Sung’s bills of over $1,000 dollars (an astronomical sum at the time).
While at the asylum, Sung’s mental condition deteriorated into a full psychotic break, as he found schematics for a divine radio in the Gospels, recorded spiritual visions with “sky writing,” and sealed his marriage to the divine “Mother” one night in his room. After a gradual improvement, Sung was released in August 1927 and immediately returned to China. In later retellings of Sung’s institutionalization, these more troubling details were left out, and the dilemma was re-narrated into a divine drama between the hope of fundamentalist faith and the emptiness—even insanity—of modernism. His journals make it clear that it was not as clean cut at the time. What is clear, however, is that his institutionalization marked a major turning point in his ministerial life. By the fall of 1928, he had been hired as a full-time evangelist for the Xinghua Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Sung had found his calling, and his work to “save China” would take a decisively evangelistic turn.
From 1928 to 1930, Sung itinerated in his home province of Fujian. As his Putian dialect was incomprehensible in most of Fujian, Sung was forced to preach in English with translation (he could speak Mandarin by 1933). At this time, his sermons tended toward the enigmatic, with biblical interpretations based on allegorical readings and dubious textual connections. For example, his sermons on Genesis 1 argued that the chapter contained coded references to the patriarchs, an outline of John’s Gospel, and foretold all of church history. While exegetically suspect, Sung nevertheless enraptured audiences with his energetic style and his ability to communicate the spiritually significant role of the Bible in the Christian life. Nevertheless, Sung considered this time as having “no effect” as few people were spurred to repent.
Despite this assessment, by 1931, his preaching had caught the attention of Mary Stone [Shi Meiyu] and Jennie Hughes, co-directors of Bethel Mission. Hoping to expand their ministry, Stone and Hughes started forming evangelistic groups called “Bethel Bands.” Of these, the most famous was the Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band, initially formed by Andrew Gih [Ji Zhiwen], Lincoln Nieh [Nie Zhiying], Li Daorong, and Lin Jingkang. The group quickly added Sung and was recognized as its leader by 1932. In the Bethel Band, Sung’s emerging style found its complement in the practices of Holiness revivalism. Moving away from his esoteric exegesis, Sung found the central message of the remainder of his career: “Jesus and him crucified on the cross.”
Sung quickly became a standout of the group, enrapturing audiences with exuberant style, humor, dramatic props, mime, and singing, all hallmarks of traditional forms of Chinese storytelling. Likewise, Sung rejected the Western suit and ties of other evangelists and embraced the traditional Chinese changpao [long robe]. His sermons were crafted to guide the audience to sorrow and travail over their sins and to denounce the temptations and evils of the times. Perhaps his most famous sermon involved bringing a large casket—a ritually taboo object—onto the stage. He would then pull dozens of rags from the casket. Written on each was a different sin of which audience members could be guilty. From pride and greed to attending movies and reading novels, Sung would detail how each sin defiled a person before God and ultimately led to death. Convinced of the danger, men, women, and children flooded to the altar. After they dedicated themselves to God, Sung urged them to share the message, arguing that “witnessing is the necessary evidence of being baptized by the Holy Spirit.”
It was also during his time with Bethel that Sung began his ministry of divine healing. Sung proclaimed God “called me to preach, heal, and drive out spirits everywhere.” His ministry bore this out as countless people attested to God’s work through him. Opium addicts were delivered from cravings, the demon-possessed were delivered from torment, the blind received sight, the lame rose and walked, and lepers were instantly healed. In all of this, Sung adhered to a strictly holiness interpretation of divine healing, in which freedom from sin entailed freedom from bodily sickness. As such, sickness was the product of spiritual realities, namely sin and demonic forces—an idea that held resonance in Chinese popular medicine.
Overall, Bethel functioned as a catalyst for Sung to perfect a Gospel presentation that was contextualized to China’s growing urban population: a potent blend of energetic storytelling and a willingness to address the spiritual causes of people’s problems. By November 1933, however, Sung was forced out of the Bethel Band due to tensions over funds, leadership, and pastoral responsibilities. While a source of frustration, the split ultimately led to Sung’s explosion into the wider Asian world. From 1934 to 1939, Sung itinerated throughout major cities of China and Southeast Asia. Eventually, he led major revivals in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
In 1940, Sung’s irrepressible energy finally flagged. Beset by anal fistulas since his time in the United States, the illness incapacitated Sung on his final tour of Southeast Asia, forcing him to preach while lying down in a cot. Though Sung sought healing through prayer and multiple surgeries, he never recovered. Confined largely to his bed, Sung spent the remaining years of his life with family and offering pastoral counsel to those who visited and sent letters. He died on August 18, 1944, at the age of 42.
Though short-lived, Sung’s helped lay the groundwork for a vibrant, Spirit-filled Christianity that is predominant in China today.