Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: s John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man to be a "very important book" and Song a "very important person" (book cover endorsement).Ireland's revisionist text should be valuable reading for Pentecostal scholars.Pentecostals have had something in common with Song Shangjie's Chinese Christian world: revival.Revival, which creates new men and women, has been a building block of Christianity in China and Southeast Asia.Although Song Shangjie had a short life, his influence as the "archetype and exemplar" of Chinese revivalism must not be forgotten or relegated to a devotional vignette (207).Song's continuing influence on modern Christianity needed academic attention, and Daryl Ireland, whose academic interests are in revitalization movements in Southeast Asia and China and who serves as Research Associate Professor of Mission at Boston University School of Theology, has offered a brilliant analysis of Song's contribution to modern Christianity.Song's world of dynamic revival created new men and new women for a new and transforming China.His revivalist method employed preparatory advertising, evangelical conversion narratives, visual illustrations, popular stories, and less academic rhetoric.He kept people mesmerized by illustrated sermons.Song was the greatest revivalist in China.Some from the West have even proclaimed Song to be a Methodist-like icon of the independent-minded Presbyterian, Billy Sunday.Song was a thorn for Western missionaries.His independent streak rankled denominational and mission agency officials.Yet, his three-step revival method produced results: 1) recognizing and repenting from sin, 2) choosing to follow Jesus, and 3) reconfiguring one's life around the present, not the past.For Song, this third point meant that men and women embraced the mission of reaching others for Christ by focusing on reaching out to and converting others.Ireland sees this as one of the reasons for the exponential growth of Chinese Christianity.Ireland argues that Song transformed Chinese Protestantism into a "revival" movement.However, Ireland does not view Song's revivalist focus as particularly relevant for the masses of China because the masses remained largely untouched.Ireland suggests instead that the work of Song transformed elites, those who had connections with missionaries and Western ways.Given that limitation, Song still influenced Protestantism profoundly with his revivalist message.book reviews Pneuma 47 (2025) 129-168 Sung (Song Shangjie).Song is perhaps the greatest Chinese evangelist of the last century.For Pentecostals, his story is valuable, because he believed and practiced many of the things that Pentecostals embrace today.
Source: Pneuma
Author: Don Kammer
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4408006510