Shandong: The Revival Province - Book Review

Paul Hattaway. Shandong: The Revival Province. Volume One of The China Chronicles: Inside the Greatest Christian Revival in History. London: SPCK, 2018. 291 pages, including Appendix: A Survey of Christians in China; Notes; Selected Bibliography.

Paul Hattaway became famous with the publication of The Heavenly Man, but he has also authored other widely read books, including An Asian Harvest, his autobiography Operation China, and China’s Christian Martyrs. (Read our Global China Center review.) His heavily referenced book on the history of Christianity in Henan was meant to be the initial volume in a series, but the publisher went out of business. (See our Global China Center review.) This volume on Shandong inaugurates a second series, The China Chronicles, which is projected to cover the history of Christianity in each of China’s provinces. As of this date, three other books in the series have appeared, treating Guizhou, Zhejiang, and Tibet. A revised version of his history of Christianity in Henan will be next.

Be careful before starting to read any of Hattaway’s works: You may not be able to put the book down! His energetic, vivid, and fast-moving narratives carry you along. Backed by careful research and supported by notes when necessary, his telling of God’s mighty acts among the Chinese never fails to grip the reader with its drama, pathos, and sheer magnitude, reflecting both the long history and great diversity of this nation and its peoples.

Shandong: The Revival Province

Each volume in the China Chronicles has a subtitle that highlights a particular feature of the province being discussed. As in the other books, the author introduces Shandong Province’s history, geography, and special characteristics. He calls Shandong “The Revival Province,” because it has witnessed so many massive turnings to God, often spilling over into other parts of China. “Through many hardship and persecutions, the body of Christ rose from the ashes and grew greatly in size throughout the twentieth century, boosted at regular intervals by sovereign outpourings of the Holy Spirit” (9). Other provinces have more Christians and a greater percentage of Christians, but none has witnessed revivals as Shandong has.

Sowing Seeds of Revival: The Missionaries

These great movements of God’s Spirit, though sovereignly timed and orchestrated, did not come out of nowhere. Decade by decade, Hattaway traces the progress of the gospel from the arrival of Charles Gutzlaff in 1832, the slowly growing trickle of Protestant missionaries, and the even slower response. A number of missionaries died of illness and some by violence, but more took their places, including some who became well known, like Hunter Corbett and Calvin Mateer. In 1907, at the end of more than forty years of service in China, Mateer issued a challenge to Christians at home. After describing the inroads of “agnosticism, skepticism, and rationalism from the West,” he appealed to the young men in America: “Who will champion the truth? Who will administer the antidote? Who will uphold the cross? Who will testify for Christ?” (22-23). Earlier, Isabelle Williamson of Scotland issued a similar appeal to women to come and share the gospel with women in China.

Timothy Richard set sail for China from England in 1870. Very early, he became convinced that missionaries should focus their efforts on the educated elite, especially those who were “members of secret societies who were seekers after the truth” (31). He developed a strategy of visiting these men “in the privacy of their own homes” and spending long hours with them, getting to know them and conversing with them about Christ. When the terrible famine of 1876-1878 struck, he helped to organize famine relief from both foreigners and the Chinese government. People were much more open to the gospel after the famine, and the church grew exponentially.

Richard later received criticism for opposing the practice of open evangelism, concentrating upon secular education rather than gospel presentation, and espousing ideas that raised questions about the orthodoxy of his Christian faith. Nevertheless, he is still highly regarded by educated Chinese as one who learned their language and culture and fully entered into the life of the nation. (For more on Richard, read his entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.)

Missionary Strategies and Tactics

In the 1870s, there were some remarkable instances of rapid church growth. “One of the most prominent features of this movement is regular family worship and the use of the Lord’s Prayer, even in homes where the members may not be baptized... The missionaries sought out those who were interested in the gospel, and didn’t waste their time trying to convince those who were hostile to their message” (34).

“Not a few who received copies of the Gospels and Christian books…studied them, so that they are now able to give a clear outline of the life and work of Christ. A number desire baptism. Little groups in different places meet regularly on the Sabbath for worship and the study of God’s word” (35).

One female missionary’s loving care for a boy with a disease in his knees showed the immense value of practical help, prayer, and persistence (38-39).

The great famine of 1876-1879, and the missionaries’ sacrificial efforts to care for the victims, opened the hearts of many to the gospel.

The value of Christian literature became increasingly evident: “They [the Chinese] are a reading people, and there is every reason for operating through books on the Chinese mind… In the course of missionary journeys in Shandong I have found that the practice of reading aloud exists in families, and the women of the family sit and listen with interest” (44).

Missionary labors bore fruit: “As the good news of Jesus Christ continued to spread throughout the towns and villages of Shandong, an increasing number of people put away their idols and dedicated their lives to the living God. The missionaries were careful to teach that the local believers must finance their own church buildings, schools and workers, lest they fall into the pit of dependency on foreign funds” (44).

Problems for Churches

In the 1880s and 1890s, Christians struggled with three major difficulties: The province swarmed with bands of bandits, while warlords exercised power in different regions. Internally, the refusal of believers to participate in rites of veneration to ancestors brought down upon them the wrath of family and community. Many were ostracized, beaten, and even killed for their insistence that these ceremonies constituted idolatry; this was especially true in rural areas. Finally, the Roman Catholics began aggressively to steal Christians away from Protestant churches by offering them a variety of tangible rewards.

At the end of the century, the Boxer Rebellion erupted in Shandong. The “Boxers” were a secret society that practiced martial arts – hence their name – and burned with anger against foreigners, including missionaries. Supported by the Qing government, they slaughtered dozens of missionaries and hundreds of Christian Chinese, both Protestants and Roman Catholics. Thousands of believers had their houses burned down and suffered cruel beatings. Hattaway tells the stories of both missionary and Chinese martyrs with vivid detail.

Indeed, his ability to use particular people as examples of larger events and trends marks the entire series of histories.

Sowing Seeds of Revival: Chinese Christians

From the outset, missionaries knew that Chinese Christians would evangelize their own people much more effectively than a foreigner could. Progress was slow at first, but the number of vibrant Chinese witnesses for Christ eventually grew into a veritable “cloud” of uncounted believers.

One of the first in Shandong was Wang Baogui, a teacher of the Confucian classics, who was born in 1826. Reading the New Testament given to him by a friend, he realized that to follow Christ would entail being cut off from his family and community. “As he continued his study, however, he began to believe that he was a wretched sinner, and there was no hope for him but to accept free salvation through Jesus Christ. As soon as he was persuaded of this, he yielded his whole heart to Jesus, made a public profession of faith, and received baptism. From that day onward his faith never wavered, and he loyally and faithfully strove to follow in his Saviour’s footsteps, and to win others to Christ” (24). “Elder” Wang, as he came to be called, went into the surrounding villages, living among the people and conversing with all who wanted to hear about his Lord. Though poor, he funded the construction of a school to help poor children come to know Christ as well as learn to read and write.

In 1909, Ding Limei, a Shandong preacher, was used to set off a revival among students. “Ding’s personality was low-key and self-effacing, and the revivals God brought about through his ministry often shared the same characteristics,” as “God spoke through the still, small voice, in the quietness of men’s hearts, producing very deep but well-controlled conviction” of sin” (72). (Read his story in the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.)

During the 1920s, when the church witnessed some small revivals that were a foretaste of the great movements of the Spirit in the 1930s and later, God miraculously changed the lives of many Chinese, like an elderly Buddhist couple whose marriage was transformed, and “Simeon the storyteller,” who became a powerful evangelist: “When he recites the Scriptures, each word stands out as a living Word, under the power and anointing of the Spirit, for it is the living Word to him” (110).

Throughout his narrative, Hattaway provides quotations from eyewitnesses like the one above; these alone are “worth the price of the book,” as the saying goes.

1930s

Early in the decade, God’s Spirit moved powerfully in the churches of Shandong, truly reviving spiritually “dead” individuals and congregations. This movement was not planned, but took place as people recognized their sins, repented, committed themselves to Christ, and then experienced a wide variety of “signs and wonders” as God confirmed his message in tangible demonstrations of his power to transform lives, heal bodies, deliver people from demons, and restore relationships.

No one escaped this refining and renewing: missionaries, Chinese pastors and elders, young and old, educated and illiterate, men and women, “sinners” and “saints” - all fell down before a holy God and were raised up to a new life of love, joy, and hope. Prayer meetings went on for hours, often into the night, as people poured out their hearts in confession, praise, and intercession for the lost.

Some of the revival meetings were extremely emotional, leading both Chinese and missionary Christians to worry that emotional excesses would not necessarily produce lasting spiritual fruit. They addressed this concern by inviting noted Chinese Bible teachers to come and instruct the new believers.

The most famous of these revival teachers and preachers were Wang Mingdao, Marcus Cheng, Leland Wang, Andrew Gih (Ji Zhiwen), John Sung (Song Shangjie), and Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng). Stories on most of these men can be found in the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity. Again, Hattaway uses eyewitness accounts to enliven his narrative telling how these men preached the simple gospel, without calls for emotional response, and taught the basic truths of the Bible. Most of them also encouraged the formation of evangelistic bands, which spearheaded advance into places where there were few or no Christians. Composed of “normal,” ordinary Christians, these small groups brought gospel literature and moving testimonies of how it had changed their lives. This involvement of “lay” Christians greatly expanded the outreach of the church, and freed it from relying on ordained ministers to proclaim the Word of God to unbelievers.

“For the most part, the gospel was spread by faith-filled Chinese evangelists who were propelled forward by the Spirit of God throughout the thousands of unreached villages in the interior of the province,” sometimes accompanied by missionaries whose “hearts were made to rejoice as [they] saw multitudes of heathen gather about us with their hearts eager for the gospel message, to hear of Him who died for the whole world…” (145).

Hattaway notes that these bands were the forerunners of the teams of zealous evangelists who went out from house churches several decades later.

1940s

The invasion of China by Japan wrought havoc and devastation, as bombs rained down on towns and cities and soldiers pillaged and looted, murdered innocent civilians, and raped countless women. Missionaries found it nearly impossible to go out into the country between 1938 and December 1941, before Pearl Harbor resulted in their expulsion, retreat, or internment. During these chaotic years, faithful Chinese pastors and believers carried on with the work of the gospel, sometimes suffering terribly as a result.

Eric Liddell was perhaps the most famous missionary in Shandong until he too was interned in 1943. Hattaway tells of his Olympic triumphs and his even more heroic efforts to tend to the sick and wounded and to proclaim the love of Christ while he could. (See his entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity). A Korean missionary named Pang Zhiyi, unknown in the West, receives due attention as a courageous messenger of Christ during the war and in the early 1950s, until his opposition to the Communists led to his expulsion. Returning to Korea, he carried on a fruitful ministry for many decades until his death in 1915.

One of Paul Hattaway’s strengths as an historian is his willingness to tell the stories of controversial people and movements, and to describe them with respect and balance. He traces the rise, fall, and resurrection of the Jesus Family, a communal movement that sought to demonstrate the love of Christ in tangible ways. Though not without faults, this organization did try to be faithful to Christ, despite intense persecution by the Japanese and then the Communists. The chapter about them, with photographs and powerful testimonies and letters, forms a bridge to the rest of the book, which deals with the new era of life under Communist rule.

1950s

After the Communists took over, they moved to bring all expressions of religious faith under their control. They formed new organizations for Protestants and Roman Catholics to regulate public worship, pastors, and the content of teaching. Working gradually, they eventually removed those church leaders who would not cooperate with them. Church members who resisted this campaign also received severe treatment. Hattaway illustrates this story with several vivid accounts of pastors, ordinary Christians, and missionaries who suffered for their faith. To show his power and love in extreme circumstances, God worked many miracles of healing and deliverance.

When one missionary was about to leave, having been expelled by the government, an elder in a Chinese church somehow visited her at night and gave her this message for Christians in the West: “One, tell the people in America not to be discouraged about the Chinese Church. Two, tell them their gifts and offerings have been accepted by God. Three, the Church in China will go through great persecution and a time of winnowing the chaff from the wheat. Four, the Church will come back in great revival.” Hattaway adds: “Rarely have more accurate words been prophesied in China” (183).

During the Great Leap Forward, which began in 1958 and ended in a disastrous famine, “Christians throughout Shandong went into survival mode… Most church leaders were arrested and received long prison sentences, often of 20 years or more. Hundreds of pastors were killed or perished in the harsh prison labor camps. Although the shepherds had been removed by the government, many Christians continued to meet discreetly in small groups of three or four… The Church throughout Shandong survived, however, as the Holy Spirit had already done a deep work in the hearts of countless thousands of disciples before the excesses of the 1950s and 1960s” (184-185).

1960s

Stung by criticism of his disastrous “Great Leap forward,” Mao launched the Great Cultural Revolution to purge the Party and bring the nation into a purer form of Communism. From 1966 to 1976, Chinese people suffered greatly, including Christians. The author provides gripping examples of how they stood faithfully for Christ: Pastor Tian, who was beaten to death in the presence of his son; Sister Zhang Jiakun, who survived twelve years of solitary confinement, during which she continued to write devotional materials; an engineer who had to work as a common laborer but who possessed “full joy in Christ.”

During these dark years, bands of young people would go out preaching the gospel, despite the great danger they faced.

1970s

The author uses the remarkable story of the Chang family in eastern Shandong to summarize the kinds of courageous testimony and evident miracles that took place in Shandong during the 1970s, when Christian churches were shut down and Christian witness met with official rejection and retribution.

1980s

By 1980, China was beginning to reopen to the West, and churches were also being given more freedom. Because of thirty years of repression, however, when preachers were imprisoned and Bibles were destroyed, the believers were spiritually starving. They simply did not know the Word of God. Hattaway, whose ministry to China began with smuggling Bibles from Hong Kong, first describes the intense spiritual hunger of Chinese Christians, and then the “turning point,” when an American named Brother David managed to deliver one million Bibles to church representatives gathered on a beach in southern China. After these Scriptures found their way to house churches throughout much of China, revival took place.

One pastor said later, “The delivery was the spark that set many house churches alight, as believers gained strength and faith from God’s word” (205).

Another force for renewal and growth among house churches was the introduction of Pentecostal teaching about the baptism and filling of the Holy Spirit by preachers from Zhejiang in 1989. Faithful ministers had laid a foundation of solid biblical teaching, but many churches and Christians felt dry. Hattaway, who in this chapter seems to identify himself with Pentecostal beliefs, tells how the Spirit moved with great power as Christians were transformed into energetic followers of Christ and then shared the gospel with their neighbors. One does have to agree with Pentecostal doctrine to appreciate the new vitality that swept the churches during that time.

1990s

The same doctrinal conservatism that preserved the church during persecution made leaders reluctant to receive teaching from the outside, either from foreigners or Chinese from other provinces. Still, radio broadcasts from Hong Kong penetrated this barrier and led to conversions and spiritual maturity. Persecution often followed, but could not quench the fires of revival. Numbers of Christians attending the official Three-Self churches increased dramatically, while house churches experienced even greater growth. By the end of the decade, however, the lack of trained preachers and persistent shortage of Bibles led to a superficial knowledge of the truth among multitudes of churchgoers. Leaders feared that the revival was now “a mile wide but only an inch deep.”

Beginning with this chapter, Hattaway includes excerpts from letters written by mostly house church Christians to gospel radio broadcasting stations and other China ministries. These candidly express both the indomitable faith of Chinese believers and the temptations and weaknesses with which they struggled. It is hard to read them with dry eyes. I want to read them over and over again; they are so heartfelt. Their presence in this and following volumes in the China Chronicles makes these books priceless for students of Chinese Christianity.

2000s: “Revival Fire Continues to Burn”

“Despite being persecuted and deprived of Bibles, the legal right to assemble and the ability to train leaders, Shandong’s house churches began the new millennium in revival, and the first of the Holy Spirit continued to burn brightly throughout the province well into the decade” (230). One mark of revival was “the unquenchable thirst for the Lord” shown by young believers. “They were so zealous for God’s word that they set out to memorize chapter after chapter of the Scriptures. They were filled with the Spirit and began to weep” (231).

During this period, hundreds then thousands of people turned to the Lord in profound repentance and vibrant faith.

Such a movement of God will inevitably meet with opposition from Satan. The Christian church there has had to battle fierce persecution, the seductive “prosperity gospel” brought in from the West, and the violent Eastern Lightning cult, which tortures and kills in order to compel Christians to convert to their heresy. As always, Hattaway enlivens his history with powerful vignettes of individuals and churches experiencing both revival and opposition. He ends the chapter with another collection of moving excerpts from letters by believers and seekers of all ages, stages in their spiritual journey, and situations.

2010s: “A Time of Consolidation”

After such an intense period of rapid growth, the number of new believers slowed to “only” tens of thousands each year. Pastors and elders realized that these converts must receive biblical teaching in order for them to grow into maturity and resist the various sorts of temptations they faced, especially, now, the consumerism that gripped the entire nation, Christians included.

Bibles were still in short supply, greatly hindering efforts to ground church members in the Word of God. Though Amity Foundation prints Bibles, these are only available in the bookstores of Three-Self churches, mostly in urban centers. Believers in rural house churches had little access to them. To meet this need, Hattaway’s Asian Harvest ministry continues to find ways to get the Scriptures into the hands of these spiritually-starved people. Letters from grateful recipients prove just how valuable this risky ministry is to them.

The vexed question of whether house churches should register with the government and join the TSPM met with various responses, but most pastors decided to remain independent, despite the dangers of such a stand. Sure enough, in 2016 the central government announced new regulations designed to curb the growth of Christianity and other religions. Church leaders began to “disappear” into unnamed locations where criminals received harsh punishment. Meetings were closed down. Believers once again dispersed to homes for small group gatherings.

Hattaway relays a report from one church leader that the police are now using a new method to deal with those whom they have detained: “Instead of beating them, they are drugging them with a mid-altering chemical that diminishes the person’s mental capacity.” He added, “Ministry is still possible, but we need to move with extreme caution” (257). This situation has continued to the present time.

Conclusion

The last chapter surveys the history of Christianity in China. At the time of writing, there were 5.3 million Christians of all creeds in the province. “Of these, about 2.9 million belong to unregistered house churches; 1.5 million attend government-approved Three-Self churches; while Catholics presently number around 800,000, distributed among both registered and unregistered congregations” (260). As in all the volumes in this series, Hattaway offers a detailed survey of the Christian population of the province, by county and city, using meticulous research based on printed documents and hundreds of interviews with church leaders.

The massive migration from the countryside to the cities all over China has affected the churches also. Almost half of the rural believers now live in urban centers. Some have fared well spiritually, but too many have fallen prey to the dislocation, isolation, and temptations of city life, and have stopped attending church meetings.

Hattaway ends the book with these words: “Today [Christians] are battling materialism and cults, and have struggles exacerbated by the lack of Bibles and a dire shortage of church leaders who are able to teach the word of God in a balanced and effective manner. The Church in Shandong today, despite its long history of revival and amazing testimonies, is in need of continual pruning and awakening if the fruit of the harvest is to remain useful for God’s kingdom. May Shandong long continue to deserve its reputation as ‘China’s Revival Province’” (262).

Amen!

G. Wright DoyleDecember 9, 2020