Rethinking Chinese Christianity through a Pentecostal Lens

Spirit(s) and Chinese Religiosity: Retelling the History of Chinese Christianity from a Pentecost Perspective by Jacob Chengwei Feng. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. 307 pages. ISBN-10: 3032004756, ISBN-13: 978-3032004758. Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Pentecostalism, as we know it, is perhaps the fastest-growing movement in the global Protestant church today. It is commonly known to be a movement that originated from the West and associated with the Azusa Street Revival (1906–1909) in Los Angeles, California. Today, many ethnically Chinese Christians around the world seem to have charismatic practices in their traditions. Yet, are they embracing a foreign import or something far more indigenous to their own culture?

This is the question that Jacob Chengwei Feng, affiliate assistant professor of theology and leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary and an adjunct professor of Seaver College at Pepperdine University, is seeking to answer in his new monograph, Spirit(s) and Chinese Religiosity: Retelling the History of Chinese Christianity from a Pentecost Perspective.¹ More definitely, his book argues that the Holy Spirit was actively at work throughout the long history of China since Acts 2, even before the modern Western Pentecostal movement, in Pentecostal ways that are unique to the Chinese.²

In this book, Feng maps a Chinese Pentecost landscape through a close textual study of key chronological historical periods of Christianity in China, focusing on the religious notions and experiences of the Chinese:

1. The Perennial Religious Imagination: He first starts off with the perennial religious imagination of the Buddhist, Daoist, and folk religious landscape beginning from the earliest historical records in China, including concepts such as shen 神 (spirits or gods), ling 靈 (spirits), gui 鬼 (ghosts), and zuxian 祖先 (ancestors), totems including long 龍 (dragon) and feng 鳳 (phoenix), and qi 氣 which consists of yin 陰 and yang 陽. In Feng’s words, this is an “ideal dancing floor” for the Holy Spirit to make known his presence in China’s history.³ To Feng, this could be how the Holy Spirit started to penetrate the earliest religious understandings of the Chinese.
2. Jingjiao 景教 (the Luminous Teaching): Next, Feng goes on to introduce the earliest known presence of Christianity in China, the Church of the East, Jingjiao 景教 (the Luminous Teaching), during the Tang dynasty. He explains how Jingjiao had interwoven a domestic (Confucian, Daoist, and local) and imported (Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and Manichaean) network of spirits to conceive pneumatological beliefs of the Holy Spirit that were cosmological, ethical, and experiential. Feng thinks that at this point, the Holy Spirit began a work of weaving both the earliest religious understandings of the Chinese with other traditions that were then in China, to make a stronger mark among the Chinese.
3. Yelikewen 也裡可溫 (Church of the East): Feng then explores Yelikewen 也裡可溫 (Church of the East), the same Christian community with historical and theological ties to Jingjiao during the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. He delves deeper into Yelikewen’s doctrine of creation, Chinese cosmology, and their understanding of qi as lingyu 靈雨 (Spirit-rain) and the Christian God as Changsheng Tian 長生天 (Tengri), and argues that under the backdrop of Tibetan Buddhism and shamanism beliefs, this sets the stage for the Chinese Ling’en 靈恩 (Charismatic / Spiritual Gifts) Movement. Feng believes that it is perhaps at this time that the Holy Spirit had birthed a more mature Pentecostal tradition that is unique in the Chinese sense. 
4. Late Ming and Early Qing Jesuits: Thereafter, Feng discusses the arrival of the Jesuits during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, most notably with Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607), Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), and Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), and argues that their engagements with the Confucian literati created an anthropological articulation of the Holy Spirit that effectively accommodated Confucianism but negated other spiritual dimensions of the Holy Spirit, leading to an unintentional compromise and an incomplete pneumatology in China at that time. Here, Feng seems to imply that the Holy Spirit’s work was temporarily limited without any manifestations of spiritual gifts, given the stronger accommodation of Confucianism. But could the Holy Spirit still be at work, just not in charismatic gifts but in Chinese intellectualism?
5. Nineteenth-Century Missionaries to China: Feng then moves onto modern Chinese history to look into the arrival of Robert Morrison (1782–1834) and William Milne (1785–1822) into China during the nineteenth-century. Feng sees their Bible translations and evangelism efforts as a work that gave preeminence to the Christian God to counter any polytheistic beliefs and practices that the Qing Chinese embraced. He then mentions how their work influenced Liang Fa 梁發 (1789–1855), the first Chinese Protestant evangelist who wrote the Quanshi liangyan 勸世良言 (Good Words to Admonish the Age), which in turn influenced Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全 (1814–1864), the leader of the Taiping Tianguo 太平天國 (Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) or the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864). Feng points out that the Taiping’s superficial and compromised view of the Holy Spirit combined shamanistic influences with charismatic and eschatological characteristics. While the Holy Spirit seems to be working with charismatic gifts during this period, Feng argues that it is not without the compromise of individuals vying for political power—but were individuals such as Hong Xiuquan more influenced by the Holy Spirit or shamanism? 
6. Leslie Madison Anglin: Feng then turns to Western Pentecostal missionary events that spanned the southern and northern territories of China. He focuses on the work of Leslie Madison Anglin (1882–1942), founder of the Home of Onesiphorus for orphans and homeless elderly people in Tai’an, Shandong, and recounts how Anglin’s Pentecostal experiences came with many signs and wonders of God’s provisions, showing how the Holy Spirit could work through local spiritual traditions and affect the Chinese local people in their poverty and famine to accept the faith as indigenous. Here, Feng introduces a lesser-known figure in the history of Pentecostalism in China, where the Holy Spirit could have used such a Western Pentecostal missionary to revive his charismatic work in China. 
7. Yesu Jiating 耶穌家庭 (the Jesus Family): Reconstructing the Pentecostal theology of Jing Dianying 敬奠瀛, founder of Yesu Jiating 耶穌家庭 (the Jesus Family), a Chinese Pentecostal communitarian church in 1921, Feng then uses Jing’s hymns and letters to show how these movements blended Pentecostal fervor with traditional Chinese spiritual paradigms. He defends how their emotional weeping, prayers, and singing were not heretical but a religious experience unique to the Chinese Christian who experience physiological responses when being filled with the Spirit. Feng shows how in war-torn China, the Holy Spirit had developed a uniquely Chinese Pentecostal movement, where the experiences of the Chinese were not heretical but distinctly Chinese, as they could be sincere responses to the move of the Holy Spirit.  
8. Watchman Nee and the “Little Flock”: Another independent and influential church that concurrently developed was the “Little Flock,” also known as the “local churches,” founded by Watchman Nee 倪柝聲 (1903–1972). Feng shows how the theological and ecclesial practices of Nee and his protégé, Witness Lee 李常受 (1905–1997) were shaped by Pentecostalism and the Spiritual Gifts movement, while also incorporating personal experiences of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Feng defends that the controversies surrounding the duo, from political persecution to spiritual practices such as “calling on the Lord’s name,” were a matter of historiography. Here, Feng’s historiographical approach of pneumatological continuity has affirmed the continuity of the Chinese Christian faith that may be different from Western forms but not heretical. It is here that Feng shows how the most mature form of Chinese Pentecostalism could possibly be found in one of the most influential Chinese Christian communities today, the “Little Flock,” which could be carrying a long historical tradition of the Holy Spirit’s work in the Chinese for two millennia. However, since Feng’s historiography of the Pentecostal movement points to American events in the early twentieth-century, what would he make of Pentecostal predecessors like the Keswick and holiness movements that more directly influenced Watchman Nee?⁴

Feng has no doubt produced a meticulous and comprehensive work of a new perspective that he is capturing—an indigenous Chinese Pentecostalism that has existed throughout two millennia of China. His work has reoriented the entire history of Chinese pentecostals and charismatics from a primarily Western import of the twentieth-century to a two-millennia long history that traces the global mission of the Holy Spirit as displayed in Acts 2. By doing so, he has constructed a Chinese Pentecost historiography from the ground up and shown continuity in Chinese Pentecost theology throughout China’s millennia-long history. 

In his view, such a Chinese Pentecost historiography would have debunked two myths of Chinese Christianity that most of us may have always wondered: 1—The manifestation of Pentecostalism or spiritual gifts in China was not a reactive outcome of Western missions, and 2—Chinese Christianity may have indigenized characteristics, but it does not necessarily mean that such a form of Christianity is normatively deviant and therefore heretical—a view that has been of debate among academics and the broader global church alike.

Feng’s goal to construct a pneumatology that is both authentically Chinese and globally relevant across millennia may have been met, but there are a few questions that are left unanswered. 

Since Feng has written a history that attempts to capture nearly all major Chinese Christian communities throughout China’s millennia-long history, is it accurate to fully attribute Pentecostal and Charismatic characteristics to all these Chinese Christian communities? In other words, if a history of Chinese Pentecostal-like spirituality had truly persisted for millennia as an indigenous phenomenon, can Chinese Christians today look at Feng’s definitions and still consider themselves to be Pentecostals or charismatics in the Chinese sense? Or is Feng’s effort to indigenize pentecostal and charismatic characteristics simply a romanticized expression of a Chinese religious past?⁵

Another question is whether Feng’s Chinese Pentecost historiography seems to still take on a very similar lens of the Western Pentecostal movement. Granted, our understanding of any particular tradition would be bounded by certain traceable origins; in this sense, are we thinking of the Holy Spirit’s work in China as a similar parallel to the Western Pentecostal movement? If so, could this complicate our understanding of a truer work of the Holy Spirit in China that could be more diverse than we think? For example, perhaps the Holy Spirit had been actively at work in Chinese intellectualism throughout the millennia, and was not actually limited in his work during the arrival of the Jesuits during late Ming and early Qing dynasties who engaged Confucian literati. 

Feng is careful, though, to note that his work is not the only way to decipher God’s work in China. However, with these questions, we should reflect upon what this means to the Chinese church at large. For the academics, can we ever fully resolve the tension between indigenization and foreign imports and meaningfully capture pneumatology through historiography? For the Chinese Christians, how can we better understand the Holy Spirit’s work among the Chinese, and should it go beyond charismatic gifts and pentecostal understandings? Nonetheless, it is without a doubt that Feng’s work has given us a firm and crucial reminder that the Holy Spirit has always been at work throughout the world, from the time of common grace until his public outpouring in Acts 2.

1. Jacob Chengwei Feng, Spirit(s) and Chinese Religiosity: Retelling the History of Chinese Christianity from a Pentecost Perspective, ed. Amos Yong and Susanne Scholz, Christianity and Renewal: Interdisciplinary Studies (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).
2. Ibid., 8–9. Feng distinguishes among variations of the term, drawing on Amos Yong’s terminology. In this framework, “Pentecostal” and “Pentecostalism” (capitalized) refer to the classical Pentecostal movement associated with the Azusa Street Revival (1906–1909) in Los Angeles, while “pentecostal” and “pentecostalism” (uncapitalized) refer more broadly to the charismatic movement.
3. Ibid., 42. Feng uses Jong-Chun Park’s metaphor of “dancing” in the Spirit to explain the creative formulation of a Korean “third theology.” Feng also refers to the Holy Spirit using feminine pronouns; however, I will use the more traditional masculine form here.
4. Paul H. B. Chang, “The Spiritual Human Is Discerned by No One”: An Intellectual Biography of Watchman Nee(PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2017), 245.
5. Fenggang Yang and Joy K. C. Tong, eds., Global Chinese Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2017). The volume examines Pentecostal and charismatic expressions among Chinese Christians primarily from a modern and contemporary historical perspective.