5
When the Cultural Revolution broke out in the summer of 1966, Christians were once again caught up in a political storm. Christianity, though never officially prohibited, was ubiquitously denounced as “superstition” or “religious superstition” (zongjiao mixin). The Red Guards ransacked church buildings and Christian homes. Shouting the slogan, “Clear the Four Olds,” they destroyed church facilities and burned anything they objected to, from Bibles and hymn books to church magazines and crosses. Preacher Shu Chengqian and other religious leaders were taken to struggle meetings and parades. Their bodies pressed together, they were forced to wear plaques hanging from their necks with labels like “counterrevolutionary,” “leader of superstition,” or “special agent of imperialism.” To humiliate him as a Christian, Preacher Shu was made to wear the gown of a local deity that militias had looted from a village temple, and had his face scribbled in ink. Late one night, several young people abruptly marched him off to the Mayu theatre, where they attacked him with kicks and blows, nearly beating him to death.1
When it broke out, the high pitch of the Cultural Revolution inflicted a new level of misery on Christians and indeed adherents of all religions. The Great Leap in 1958 mainly targeted religious leaders,2 but at the start of the Cultural Revolution, anyone with a Christian background could become a target of the Red Guards, regardless of his or her status in the church. Ni Guangdao of Lower Village, Xincheng, who was then a lay Protestant in his mid-twenties, recalled that in July 1967 he was hung from the beam of a farm tool shed in a nearby brigade and tortured for thirteen days.3 Even people who had renounced their faith in 1958 could not avoid being attacked. Lin Youdi of Changqiao, Tangxia, said she was ashamed of renouncing Christianity in 1958, but after being paraded through the streets in 1966, she felt that God had not abandoned her and believed again.4
The Red Guard movement in 1966 brought house gatherings to a halt throughout Rui’an County, silencing local churches for a second time after the Great Leap of 1958–1960. As local Christians described it, churches in Rui’an entered the “three nos” period: no church, no clergy, and no Bible.5
Yet the attacks that started in the summer of 1966, as one Christian interviewee commented, were just “a gust of wind” (yizhenfeng).6 They were intensely violent but also short-lived. Unlike the attacks on religion in 1958, which were “policy-driven” (zhengcexingde) and directly carried out by the government,7 the frantic attacks on religious followers in 1966–1967 soon died down as the Red Guard movement lost momentum. In retrospect, local Christians even celebrated these years as a time of solidarity. A history of Christians in Rui’an explains, “During the ‘exterminating religion’ period of 1958, shepherds were assaulted and sheep were, without question, dispersed. Yet [home] searches and struggles during the Cultural Revolution pushed every adherent into the same corner. We all shared the feeling of being on the same boat.”8
This chapter picks up the story where Chapter 4 left off and follows the evolution of Protestant churches in Rui’an and Wenzhou during the Cultural Revolution. During this period, religious repression dramatically empowered the territorial expansion, institutionalization, and unification of Protestant organizations, which added to the importance and availability of Protestantism both as part of a “cultural toolkit” and as a set of organizational resources for local society, paving the way for the subsequent boom and nationwide expansion of Christianity after the Cultural Revolution.9
Factional Politics and Loosening Social Control
The Red Guard movement quickly turned into countywide factional battles beginning in the summer of 1967. Armed fights broke out between two major mass organizations: the so-called loyalist group (United Headquarters) and the rebel group (General Headquarters). The conflict would last two years. Between July and September 1967, battles for control of the county seat left dozens, if not hundreds, of dead bodies floating in the nearby Feiyun River.10 The apparatus of state, including the county government, party committee, public security bureau, and the court system, ground to a halt. The large-scale conflict ended in September 1969 when the loyalist group, United Headquarters, officially disbanded.11
Factional politics continued to dominate social and political life in Rui’an and Zhejiang for the remainder of the Cultural Revolution.12 There were recurrent clashes between military-appointed officials who had no former ties to Wenzhou, rebels who had been incorporated into the local leadership, and rehabilitated “old cadres.” The reshuffling of local leadership in Zhejiang and Wenzhou after the anti-Confucius, anti-Lin campaign further destabilized the political and social order. State structures were in disarray, with constant conflicts between opposing groups and organizations.13
In spite of the massive disruption of religious life at the start of the Cultural Revolution, factional conflicts and the ensuing factional politics ironically created a space for religious activities, as they loosened the government’s ideological grip on religion. When county authorities were overthrown in 1968, they turned to rural residents for help. Many young villagers joined the loyalist United Headquarters and were mobilized to participate in battles in the county seat and its surroundings. The major armed fights took place in urban areas, while rural areas were relatively quiet. The period of factional politics that followed did not focus on rural areas either.14
It was difficult for local authorities to oversee and control everyday life, especially in the vast rural areas, to the same extent as before the Cultural Revolution, because the upheaval of factional conflicts seriously weakened the governmental apparatus at the county level. The Rui’an Party Committee was restored in July 1971, five years after the start of the Red Guard movement, and lower level party committees were restored around the same time. The county public security bureau and the county court were not restored until April and March of 1973, respectively.15
Factional conflicts pulled many young people into political campaigns in the county seat, making it difficult for the communes to organize collective agricultural production. Though conflicts ended after a few years, a significant number of the youths who had left the countryside ended up moving elsewhere to make a living, an experience shared by many of my interviewees. Zou Zeiyi, of Tangkou Brigade, Tangxia, left the cooperative around 1969 and spent a few years as a beekeeper in several distant provinces, including Yunnan.16 Deng Benkuo of Lower Brigade, Xincheng, became an itinerant salesman. He traveled the mountains of Rui’an and neighboring counties exchanging malted candy for junk wares throughout the 1970s.17 Some residents of Yantou and the nearby villages of Mayu secretly started lumber businesses in the early 1970s, buying lumber in the mountains of neighboring Taishun and Wencheng and selling it on the black market of Yantou Brigade.18
For Christians, as for everyone else, the lax collective order meant that brigade and commune leaders were much less motivated to push villagers to follow a rigid schedule of collective production, which had previously caused friction between Christians and cadres. For the remaining years of the Cultural Revolution, Protestant churches and other religious traditions in Rui’an and Wenzhou re-emerged and even thrived, much like the private economy.19
In the villages with the most Protestant gatherings, Christians continued to encounter interference from grassroots cadres, who had a greater say in commune and brigade affairs now that county authorities were consumed by factional politics. The tense political environment made grassroots cadres lean toward suppressive approaches to religious activities. According to my interviews with local Christians and numerous other accounts, grassroots cadres dispersed their gatherings, beat them, sent them to study classes, and sometimes reported them to county authorities.
Nevertheless, there were still times when cadres protected or deliberately ignored Christian activities, or even directly participated in church activities. A report of the Zhejiang Party Committee in 1973 shows that in brigades across nine different counties with historically strong Christian presence, nineteen brigade party secretaries and heads of the Youth League converted to Christianity. In the well-known Christian village of Pingyang in Wenzhou that had been put forward as a model for the elimination of Protestantism in 1958,20 the party secretary of Huli Brigade even turned his home into a gathering spot for church activities.21 The authorities accused Christian churches of attempting to infiltrate the government’s grassroots organizations to usurp their leadership.
Though allegations like these were couched in loaded language, accounts from local Christians confirm that the church did at times benefit from the involvement of local cadres. For instance, Zhushan Brigade in Huling District, Rui’an, had only twenty-some Christians in the early 1970s. The constant harassment of local cadres prevented local Christians from finding a stable meeting place. However, the brigade eventually became a new center of church activities in the district, in part because, as Christians described it, the wife of a town cadre who had been possessed for years converted to Christianity in 1974. She became an activist for the church and on one occasion even housed a Christian family gathering in her home.22
Church Diversification and the Convergence of Denominations
When massive factional conflicts died down, some Protestants started congregating again, while others were too intimidated to do so. Those who resumed gatherings had to adapt to new circumstances. After 1958, worship meetings were entirely held in private homes in areas near former churches or meeting places, but political campaigns in the first few years of the Cultural Revolution meant that many of these gathering spots were no longer viable. Though factional conflicts were concentrated in urban areas, rural Protestants periodically had to face “Red Typhoons” (hongse taifeng)—local campaigns targeting class enemies and social issues.
For Christians, the political atmosphere had changed, with the effective criminalization of religious activities. Before the Cultural Revolution, Christians could cite the principle of “religious freedom” in the 1954 constitution to shield church activities from interference, and they were sometimes successful. In the early 1960s, Christians assembled in front of the county government of Rui’an to ask for a church building to be returned. As late as 1965, when the Xincheng Commune Party Committee attempted to put down the re-emergence of church activities, the cadres had to engage Protestants in public debates about the Bible.
However, the Cultural Revolution consigned the principle of “religious freedom” to irrelevance. Christianity was stigmatized in political slogans and the rhetoric of class struggle. Derogatory terms like “underdogs of imperialism” came to permeate the discourse about Christianity, fostering a pervasive hostility toward Christian followers.
To evade unwanted attention, Protestants further spread out their gathering spots. Fengtagang Brigade was a so-called Adventist gospel village (fuyincun) where villagers were predominantly Adventists. Church leaders decided to distribute gatherings to eight locations in surrounding villages to ensure that worship could continue during the Cultural Revolution. Their affairs were “centrally arranged and regulated,”23 and preachers took turns leading services in each of the eight locations. Even so, they “had to constantly change bases” to navigate the hostile environment.24
During one of the most militant anti-religion periods of the Mao era, this cautious, flexible approach allowed some Christian communities to grow, like Zhuyuan Brigade in the mountainous Huling District, which had been a Protestant stronghold since the early 1950s. When deacons Du Zhulai and Du Chongchang re-established Adventist home gatherings in Zhuyuan in 1958, only three people attended the meetings. Nevertheless, the group reportedly expanded to more than a hundred members in the winter of 1961.25 To avoid the interference of local cadres after the start of the Cultural Revolution, the gatherings were relocated to an Adventist family home in the hills bordering the townships of Jinchuan and Fangzhuang. Adventists from surrounding villages who used to attend meetings in Zhuyuan started to organize congregations in their own villages. Adventists in nearby Dongkeng Brigade formed their own house gathering, which eventually developed into an independent Church.26
Many of the new house gatherings that formed in this period were offshoots of old gatherings that started out as prayer meetings (daogaohui).27 Most of the people who led and organized meetings were church elders or deacons, but a few were simply ardent Christians without a formal role in the church. Meeting leaders did not always have the expertise needed to preach or discuss the Bible. It would have been difficult for groups to hold rituals of various kinds, as church elders or deacons were not supposed to perform rituals such as baptism or ordination. The increase in gatherings was beyond the capacity of existing preachers, who typically had two or more gatherings to oversee. Many of the young preachers who emerged during this period were either self-appointed or appointed by church elders, and lacked formal ordination.28
There was a great deal of variation in the number of preachers, teachers, and pastors in different rural churches. Before 1958, the Methodist Church’s county headquarters in the town of Tangxia had seven preachers, but most of its other twenty churches had only one to three preachers. Several churches even had deacons serving as preachers.29 Though many local preachers remained active, their geographical distribution was uneven, due in part to the varying impact of political campaigns in different areas, and more importantly, the differing histories of various Protestant communities.
Under these circumstances, “ardent adherents communicated with neighboring gathering places, [and participated in their] Sunday prayer meetings and hymn singing. They also exchanged preachers with neighboring gathering places.”30 Ordained church leaders joined different communities, sometimes bridging the gap between denominations. For instance, Huang Xinrong first served as a pastor in Dongtou, Yuhuan County, Zhejiang, in 1958, then returned to his home area of Hekoutang Brigade in the town of Xianyan. In the winter of 1966, he agreed to serve as a pastor for four Methodist gathering places in the town of Tangxia. He then managed to connect with two other Methodist gatherings and two China Inland Mission (CIM) gatherings in Tangxia District, and subsequently extended his network to several gatherings in Xincheng and in the county seat of Rui’an in 1967. By 1970, similar collaborative systems had likely been established in the county’s five other districts.31
Given the political circumstances, these collaborative efforts linking congregations and denominations seem to have formed on an ad hoc basis, without a coordinated plan. Nevertheless, they marked a critical change in Wenzhou Christianity. Western missionaries had not only brought Protestantism to Wenzhou, they had also brought with them the denominational traditions dividing Protestantism into splintered groups. Now, different denominations were pushed to work together. It was a critical shift which had been unsuccessfully promoted by the Communist state itself through the Three-Self Church.
In the winter of 1971, a meeting was held in Nanchen Brigade, Xincheng, with representatives from all eight districts and from every Protestant denomination barring the Seventh Day Adventists and the Assembly (for reasons described below). Participants in the meeting agreed to found a countywide general council of communication, electing Du Zhixin as general manager (zongfuze) and Huang Longcong, Miao Zhitong and several others as council representatives.
According to a history of Christianity in Rui’an,
The county general council insisted on not distinguishing between denominations but stressed the unification (heyi) of the church. In particular, the Methodist church, the China Inland Mission, and the China Jesus Independent Church no longer differentiated themselves by denomination but instead only established churches on the basis of their location. While each denomination still followed its own form of baptism, all other matters were unified.32
Denominations began to collaborate on a range of initiatives. “After the creation of the county general council, there were seasonal co-worker (tonggong) communication meetings and annual meetings [held to] properly arrange administrative work, co-worker training, evangelism, the cultivation of spirituality as well as Sunday worship for churches throughout the county.”33 From 1972 onward, the county general council of communication established connections with the Protestant Churches in other counties of Wenzhou as well as in several counties of Taizhou and Lishui (such as Yuhuan, Huangyan, and Qingtian). In 1974, the Rui’an county council decided to join the general council of the Wenzhou region (Wenzhou diqu zonghui).
The council did not seem to have any great power over local churches. It was not a centralized structure resembling pre-1949 Protestant denominations, but rather an unconsolidated alliance formed to help members survive adverse times. Yet with the formation of the council, scattered rural Protestant communities, which were otherwise relatively isolated, formed a network to share resources and preachers across locations and denominational groups. Eventually, a unique system for arranging preacher assignments took shape: paidan, literally meaning “tract distribution.” It became the most important method of managing Protestant churches in contemporary Wenzhou.34
The paidan system was not entirely new. According to one church leader’s account,35 it originated as early as the mid-1960s. Protestant communities in the Oubei area of Yongjia started a coordinated “preacher assignment” system in 1965, but it was interrupted for three years by the start of the Cultural Revolution.
Before 1949, Protestant churches in Wenzhou had systems in place to share preachers between congregations, but these systems were different from paidan in several ways. First, they were centralized, with each regional (not county) congregation headquarters planning and controlling the dispatch of preachers. Second, each denomination had its own system. Preachers were not sent to each other’s denominations.
In the paidan system, on the other hand, loosely organized upper-level church organizations were in charge of dispatching preachers. These organizations were coalitions of Protestant gatherings in a certain area, roughly the equivalent of an administrative district or several districts, regardless of their former denominational affiliation. Upper-level church organizations that had established contacts with each other coordinated the dispatch of co-workers to each other’s gatherings for Sunday worship or other meetings.36
The system greatly facilitated the work of local preachers, opening up new territories for their work and providing a liaison system for Protestant communities all over the Wenzhou region (even parts of Taizhou, Lishui, and northern Fujian). There were frequent exchanges of pastoral visits. Yu Dubing of Yueqing, who later became the president of Yueqing Three-Self Patriotic Association, was invited to preach in Xincheng, Tangxia, and the Rui’an county seat. He also visited the suburban areas of Wenzhou municipality. Miao Zhitong and Ni Guangdao of Rui’an were invited to host services and co-worker training camps in Yueqing and Pingyang.37 Many preachers expanded the scope of their work across the region. Yang Duojia (Dorcas) initially preached only in areas near her home base of Oubei, Yongjia, but when the paidan system appeared in the early 1970s, she started to travel beyond Yongjia, and in subsequent years, rarely stayed at home longer than a single night. On preaching duty, she visited all eight counties of the Wenzhou region as well as Yuhuang County in Taizhou. She was once even stationed in Rui’an for more than two years.38
With the paidan system allowing preachers to reach a much broader audience, a group of young preachers who emerged after 1958 found an opportunity to build up their influence and reputations in the church. Many later became leading figures in the explosive growth of the Protestant Church in Wenzhou and in some cases nationwide.
Miao Zhitong was one of these self-styled traveling preachers who later became one of the most prominent leaders of house churches in China. Miao was born in Tongxi Village, Taoshan, in Rui’an. His mother’s family had a Protestant background for generations. His parents both passed way when he was still young. After graduating from middle school, he worked briefly in a state-owned dairy factory and as a middle school teacher before returning to his home village. In 1966, the first year of the Cultural Revolution, his friend Jiang’s wife was allegedly possessed by demons. The family sought help from numerous local deities, to no avail. This was when Jiang went to Miao for help. Miao, his uncle, and another Christian sung hymns before Jiang’s wife. According to Miao, this unexpectedly drove the demons away. And only a few days later, Miao witnessed another miracle when he prayed to God to cure his daughter’s acute pneumonia. His daughter recovered, and Miao considered these events as signs that God was calling him to service. Along with Jiang and several others, he established a gathering in his village.39
Miao was one of those elected to the Rui’an Protestant council in the 1971 meeting, which he helped to convene. According to his account, he traveled extensively in the Wenzhou region in the 1970s, especially in Rui’an, Yueqing, and Pingyang, and probably traveled to other areas of eastern Zhejiang. Though he was still based in Rui’an, his charismatic preaching and theological messages earned him a large following over the years. The county council split in 1982 because of disagreement over whether they should participate in the Three-Self organization, but by then Miao had already established his own church group. In the mid-1980s, Miao permanently moved from his remote home village in the mountainous Huling District to Li’ao Village in Tangxia, where his followers were concentrated. By 1990, his church group was reported to have a total of eleven churches and fifty-two gathering places.40
Church Competition and the Adventist Church’s Lone Quest for Survival and Revival
The adversity of the Cultural Revolution did not just lead to greater unification among different Protestant communities. Unsurprisingly, it also generated competition between Protestant groups in Rui’an, but this competition led to the multiplication of Protestant house gatherings, ultimately contributing to the church’s growth.
For different reasons, neither the Adventist Church nor a number of groups belonging to the Assembly took part in the general council. Assembly churches insisted on maintaining their distinctive practice of “head-covering” (mengtou), requiring female attendees to cover their heads with a black hat or kerchief during meetings.41 Conversely, the Adventist Church clung to its practice of holding worship on Saturdays, not Sundays. However, during the later stage of the Cultural Revolution, both Adventists and members of the Assembly did make efforts to establish connections and integrate their respective communities across the region. They also tried to win over adherents from churches affiliated with other denominations.
Adventist preacher Shu Chengqian, whose story is told in Chapter 4, moved back from Rui’an to Wenzhou in 1968 to ensure better care for his sick wife, and probably also to distance himself from heated factional conflicts within the church. By that time, the Adventists had set up several groups in Wenzhou municipality. When Shu’s wife passed away the following year, he devoted himself to visiting Adventist communities throughout southern Zhejiang.
As the smallest Protestant denomination and one of the last to be established in Wenzhou, the Adventist Church likely faced the most severe scarcity of preachers. The southern Zhejiang mission of the Adventist Church was divided into seven independent units in the early 1950s. This system became unviable when the Cultural Revolution came, as many gatherings needed preachers and other meeting groups were waiting for a preacher before they could establish a regular congregation. Shu, along with other preachers and church members, visited almost every Adventist community belonging to the former southern Zhejiang mission, including Adventist churches in Taizhou and Lishui.
The borders of Zhejiang and Fujian being close to Taiwan, the political atmosphere was tense, but in the early 1970s Shu and other Adventists traveled to Adventist communities there at least two to three times a year. Hu Yuming, Shu’s brother-in-law, visited Jinhua in central Zhejiang, Ningbo in eastern Zhejiang, and even Fuzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian during the later years of the Cultural Revolution. They were not welcome everywhere. Besides risking arrest, they sometimes found that local Adventists resisted their presence. Adventist gatherings in the Rui’an county seat had a little more than twenty participants at most during the entire period of the Cultural Revolution. Moreover, Shu and his colleagues were never able to reach Adventists in most parts of Lishui region and Taishun County in Wenzhou, despite their attempts to do so. In other areas, though, they successfully persuaded Adventists to start gathering for worship again. In some villages where Adventist gatherings had already been re-established, they acted as guest preachers, helped with Bible studies, or led prayer meetings.42
Shu recalled that they were also invited on visits to villages that only had adherents or gathering spots affiliated with other denominations. Their visits sometimes resulted in villages switching their affiliation to the Adventists. For instance, in Wenzhou municipality, Adventists established several gathering places amid the political chaos of 1967–1968. After being contacted by the Adventist Church, some adherents of the CJIC chose to join Adventist meetings, as their own churches remained in a state of disarray.43
The Adventists’ contact with churches belonging to other denominations also led to the formation of new gatherings. Such was the case with the establishment of Adventist gatherings in Taoshan. The CIM church in the town of Taoshan (capital of Taoshan District) was established in the early Republican era. It was one of only a few CIM bases in the mountainous areas of Rui’an. Adventists historically did not have a presence there. Huang Longcong and his family had managed the church closely since the early 1950s, but after Huang’s younger brother, Huang Longbiao, and some other members of the Taoshan Church came into contact with Shu Chengqian in the late 1960s, they adopted Seventh-Day Adventism. They decided to turn their gathering into an Adventist group that would adhere to Adventist practices and receive only Adventist preachers, but they met with vehement opposition from Longcong, who tried to prevent his brother from holding Adventist gatherings in any house belonging to a member of their family.
This led to a split in the Taoshan Church. Huang Longbiao began organizing his own Adventist gatherings in Pichaitan outside of the town of Taoshan.44 After three to four years, attendees of the Pichaitan gathering from Jinggu Township in Mayu set up a new meeting spot in Shamenshan Brigade, Jinggu, in 1975. A year later, converts from Chen’ao and Shibu villages, Jinggu, which had seen a rapid growth in Adventist church membership, formed another gathering near Chen’ao Brigade.45
The Landscape of Protestant Gatherings by the End of the Cultural Revolution
The dissemination and increase of Protestant house gatherings had the same effects as “seeder” (bozhongji) and “propaganda team” (xuanchuandui)—two terms that Mao Zedong used to evaluate the historical significance of the Long March—though there is no direct evidence to suggest that Protestants deliberately modeled their operations on the Communists before 1949. In any case, the political environment during the Cultural Revolution left them with little choice if they wished to pursue religious work.
After 1958, there were two clear trends in the development of Protestant home gatherings. First, they went from being concentrated to being dispersed. Second, they moved out of densely populated areas and into less populated ones, such as remote villages and mountain areas. Both tendencies, as a comparison of Maps 5.1 and 5.2 clearly shows, intensified as Protestants struggled to adapt to the Cultural Revolution.46
Map 5.1. Protestant churches and gathering places in 1957.
Map 5.2. Protestant gathering places in 1978.
Figure 5.1. The distribution of Protestant congregations in 1957 and 1978.
Figure 5.2. The regional distribution of churches and gathering places in 1957 and 1978.
For instance, in 1957, over 13 percent of Rui’an’s Protestant population was located in Xincheng District. The Xincheng Protestant community had only four churches and gathering spots, three of which were located in the district capital, Xincheng Town itself. From autumn 1961 onward, Protestants established underground gatherings in several locations in the townships of Dongtian and Shangwang, with a few meetings in the county seat.47 After being briefly interrupted by the Red Guard movement and its armed factional conflicts, gatherings continued to expand. By 1978, forty-four Protestant meeting spots had been established in all eleven towns and townships in Xincheng District. Similarly, in Huling District, the number of Protestant house gatherings grew from twenty-eight in 1957 to ninety-four in 1978.48
Protestantism began to reach new territories, many of which did not historically have a Protestant community, or in some cases had only a small number of Protestant adherents who had to participate in congregations elsewhere. For instance, according to one interviewee, Dadianxia Township had only a few families with Christian members up to the 1960s.49 By the end of the Cultural Revolution, however, Protestants had set up two gathering places in the township. In 1991, the community had grown into Dadianxia church with 550 members.50
Throughout the county, the Protestant Church operated ninety-eight churches and gathering places before 1958 (see Map 5.1). By 1978, 276 gathering places had been created, three times their 1957 numbers (see Map 5.2). At the prefectural level, according to estimates by church members, 1,954 gathering places were established in the entire Wenzhou region between 1971 and 1980.51
The vast majority of the growth in Rui’an came from rural areas. Excluding the county seat, Protestant congregations covered forty of a total of sixty-one towns and townships in 1957. By 1978, however, they had expanded to seventy-one of a total of seventy-three towns and townships. Villages experienced an even stronger growth: in 1957, eighty-four villages had Protestant churches or gathering places, but by 1978, there were Protestant gathering places in 227 villages (see Figure 5.1). Conversely, Protestant congregations in the county seat only grew from five to seven in the two decades after 1957 (see Figure 5.2).
The disparity between rural and urban areas could be related to political control, as the county seat tended to be more tightly regulated than other areas. But a lack of leadership could also have slowed down growth. There were further disparities between the plains (Xincheng, Tangxia, Xianjiang, and most parts of Mayu) and the mountainous areas (Taoshan, Huling, and Gaolou), as well as between different districts. Generally speaking, the number of Protestant house gatherings tended to increase faster in mountainous areas than in the plains. However, within mountainous areas and even in the entire county, the growth rate in Huling was exceptionally high and the growth rate in Mayu was relatively low. These differences invite further study.
The proliferation of house gatherings in Rui’an and the rest of Wenzhou during the Cultural Revolution is a strong indication that the Protestant population experienced a corresponding growth. However, there are no formal statistics for the changes to the Protestant population during this period. An investigation by the Zhejiang provincial government in 1981 suggested that “Protestants in Rui’an and Pingyang grew by a factor of four during the Cultural Revolution, and in Wenzhou municipality, by a factor of twenty.”52 Statistics from the Rui’an County Government show that there were a total of 60,185 Protestants around 1982, more than four times the number in 1956.53 These figures are close to the growth rate indicated in data from local Protestant churches. Local church history calculated that six Protestant denominations had a total of 9,370 converts around 1949. By the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1978, the Protestant population in Rui’an County had grown to 44,125, about 4.7 times greater. For reference, the population as a whole grew about 2.2 times in Rui’an over the same period.54
In the preceding data, neither the government nor local churches specified their method for calculating the number of churches or their definition of “Protestant,” such as whether this includes “inquirers” or baptized church members only. Nevertheless, based on both data sets, it is clear that in 1958–1978, the number of Protestants grew much faster than the population as a whole. Further parameters, such as the regional, age, and gender distribution of Christianity during this period, invite further study.
Paths to Conversion and Cultural Revolution Eschatology
Since Wenzhou was opened to foreign missionaries in the late nineteenth century, two main paths to conversion sustained the growth of the Protestant Church. The first was conversion along family and lineage lines; the second, conversion after illness (of oneself or a family member). These are not clear-cut categories, as conversion was sometimes provoked by multiple causes, but they recur in numerous conversion accounts by Wenzhou Christians.
The first category consists of people who were descendants of Christians or joined the church through family or matrimonial ties. Christian faith was commonly passed from generation to generation. Among Protestants in Rui’an, family-led conversions clearly grew after 1949, though further study would be needed to reveal the extent of this phenomenon.
The case of Preacher Shu Chengqian’s family illustrates the transmission of Christianity along family lines. Shu and his father-in-law were both first-generation Adventists. His father-in-law had been the doorman of a church school in Wenzhou for many years. Shu’s daughter, Xiaorong, was baptized at a young age, and later married Adventist preacher Zhao Dianren in the mid-1960s. Preacher Shu’s brother-in-law Hu Yuming had been known as a rebellious man, but under family influence, he also became an Adventist in the late 1960s. Hu Yuming’s wife was not a Christian when they got married, but she converted to Christianity after an episode where she was believed to be possessed by demons, and was cured through an exorcism using prayer. Hu and his wife’s children all grew up Protestant, and their son Hu Fulin became a well-known Protestant entrepreneur in Wenzhou.
These conversions through parents, siblings, husbands, wives, and in-laws were common in Christian communities. The Adventist church leaders whom Shu Chengqian knew shared a similar transmission of Christian faith. Most church leaders in non-Adventist communities, like Miao Zhitong, Yu Dubin, and Yang Duojia, likewise came from Protestant family backgrounds.
A study in the town of Tangxia in 1981 showed similar results. “The [total] Christian population naturally increased with the growth of Christian family members and Christian household numbers. . . . Some converted to Christianity due to the influence of family members and relatives.”55 The investigation also discovered that Christians tended to marry other Christians, and when they did marry someone who did not belong to the church, the union might take place only on the condition that the non-Christian would convert.
One of the church members I interviewed fell into this category. Pou Zuilen of Shang’anchi Village, Xincheng Town, belonged to a family who practiced Buddhism and territorial religion. However, when he got married in 1968, his family could not find a marriage partner from a xinfode family (literally, believers of Buddhism and local deities, broadly referencing all non-Christians in local dialect) whose bazi (four pillars of destiny in Chinese astrology) matched Zuilen’s. Eventually they found Wu Kuoli, a third-generation Protestant, but a condition of the marriage was that Zuilen had to convert to Christianity. Thus after they got married, Zuilen started to attend local Protestant gatherings on and off.56
The second major path to conversion occurred through faith healing. These converts joined the church after Christians healed a physical or mental illness in themselves or in a relative. In such cases, Christian prayers and exorcism were typically the last resort after they had tried other unsuccessful treatments. Once they or their relatives had recovered, they converted to obtain permanent blessings and protection.
Recoveries through faith and exorcism had been the most common motive for conversion in Rui’an since the early Republican era.57 Most of the charismatic preachers active during the Cultural Revolution, like Miao Zhitong and Yang Duojia, claimed to have gifts of healing and exorcism, which they believed were given to them to help spread the gospel and glorify God. Many of them first developed their reputations as preachers by performing exorcisms and miracles.58 Local residents, especially the families of sick people, got to know these preachers first as exorcists and Christianity as a healing method before becoming familiar with their spiritual or ideological dimension. Preachers first approached sick people and their families offering to provide free healing rituals for illnesses that the families had no other means to treat. There are no available statistics that would allow us to track the evolution of spiritual healing and exorcism during the Cultural Revolution, but the use of these techniques is widely reported in both state and church records of the period, just as it had been in the earlier history of the church.
Next to family and faith healing, the spiritual message of Christianity was likely a powerful means of attracting interest from new and potential converts. The Cultural Revolution did not “subdue the eschatological fire” of the church.59 This period of conflict and upheaval saw charismatic preachers, many of whom lacked formal ordination, emerging in communities where the old leadership had fallen for various reasons. They often claimed to have witnessed miracles or to be directly inspired by God. A history of Christianity in Wenzhou recounts, “God often personally summoned preachers either through intense emotions [triggered] during prayers or through marvelous dreams and visions. Someone called upon by God would directly devote [himself] to service upon receiving God’s affirmation. He did not need to receive the approval of any organization or take a vow to anyone. The only subject he needed to be loyal to was God. . . . This was a period when God ruled directly.”60
Traveling to spread the gospel, preachers also carried with them messages of imminent salvation. While Rui’an was consumed by armed conflicts between Red Guard factions, Methodist preacher Zhang Shidan of Xihu Brigade, Shilong Commune, Gaolou, together with a devout follower, Zhang Zhengcha, went around the county, preaching and performing faith healing to attract new members to the church. Within a few years, Zhang Shidan is said to have attracted 114 new converts in three communes, including cadres and Youth League members. These evangelical activities brought him to the attention of state authorities. In a letter to the Wenzhou Regional Revolutionary Committee dated July 15, 1970, the Rui’an Revolutionary Committee asked for his arrest and described some of his eschatological messages. The letter referred to him as an “imperialist spy” and accused him of several crimes, the first of which was “fabricating rumors to mislead people.” He was charged with “speaking nonsense, such as ‘if you want to be saved, you should come to believe in God.’ ” He was also quoted as saying that “Chairman Mao rules the body; God rules the soul. The body is temporary, the soul is eternal . . . [now] the people (min) are fighting the people; soldiers (bing) are fighting soldiers; countries are fighting countries . . . if war breaks out, the world is going to end.”61 In addition to asking for his arrest, the letter recommended a twenty-year jail sentence as punishment for his crimes. Yet the church’s records show that he remained active throughout the Cultural Revolution. It appears that his arrest never took place, perhaps because of the chaotic situation at the time.
On July 15, 1970, the same day as the letter concerning Zhang Shidan, the Rui’an Revolutionary Committee wrote another letter to the Wenzhou Regional Revolutionary Committee asking for the arrest of “counterrevolutionary” Zhang Liquan, a Methodist preacher from Tangxia. This letter described similar eschatological messages:
Criminal Zhang took advantage of the social wave of anarchism in 1967 and returned to preaching in family gatherings. [He] zealously visited [the town of] Tangxia, Tangkou, Zhaozhai, Qianzhuang, Shangjin, etc. to mobilize and propagandize, vociferously spreading rumors to slander [our government] and speaking nonsense: “The current situation matches the situation [which will occur in] the end times.” “Now one country (guo) is fighting another and the people are fighting the people. Many have been killed.” “The end of the world is nigh! You should make haste and believe in Jesus. Faith in Jesus will save your soul. Life in this world is short but salvation of the soul is eternal.”62
The eschatological messages of Protestant preachers during this period are different from those common in the 1950s and early 1960s. They make unambiguous references to the social chaos of the Cultural Revolution in phrases like “the people fighting the people,” “soldiers fighting soldiers” and “countries fighting countries,” apparently referring to armed fights and other political conflicts between individuals and factions. What these messages attempt to convey is a total collapse of order and morality. The chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution are reinterpreted according to Christian eschatology as a symptom of end times, where the only salvation lies in God.
Messages like these were not only heard among Methodist preachers in Rui’an, but circulated broadly across denominational lines. For instance, Jin Chengzhou of Shankeng Brigade, a leader of the CJIC in Huling, was officially accused of “publicly spread[ing] poisonous information, speak[ing] nonsense [such as saying] that it has been almost two millennia since Jesus descended into the world. The world is going to end. Those who believe in Jesus will not be affected. Their souls will ascend to heaven. Once the trumpet of Jesus sounds, those who follow [his] way will be reborn after death.”63
Similarly in Wenling, a county bordering Wenzhou in the south, local authorities reported “rumors” manufactured by Protestant Ye Entu in 1972: “The world right now is in chaos. Countries are fighting countries. Armies are fighting civilians. The people are fighting the people. Everything under Heaven [tianxia, referring to the realm of ordinary existence in Chinese cosmology] will be pacified. Our patriarch [jiaozhu] hopes to rule all under heaven [zuo tianxia]. ” “Countries are fighting countries. The people are fighting the people. There will be hunger and earthquakes. All humans in the world will die. Those who believe in Jesus will be saved. [By then] Jesus [himself] will preach. All things will become dung and earth and [will] be useless. You should get closer to Christ, who will bring you to Heaven.”64 In 1972, when the government delivered and implemented central guidelines to expose the Lin Biao anti-party clique, there were rumors in Rui’an and Lanxi (a county in central Zhejiang) that the church was going to revive, Jesus was going to descend, and there would be a “change of dynasty.”65
These eschatological messages are curiously absent in the memoirs of church leaders describing the Mao era. Instead, they celebrate the piousness and religious passion of those who attended church meetings at the time:
[We] often convened spirit cultivation gatherings that would continue for three days and nights. [No one] felt tired or was afraid of the winds or snow or cold weather. [People] were so thirsty to hear the preaching that they would not leave at midnight and [instead] asked to continue. Those who had no bench to sit on would sit on the floor. Even the stairs and woodsheds were full of people . . . they described prayer meetings at the time as being so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Everyone was filled with the holy spirit. No one waved fans in spite of [enduring] the stench of sweat and mosquito bites. No one tried to swat mosquitoes with their palms. Nothing could deter the sisters’ and brothers’ passion or reduce their eagerness to participate in prayer meetings. The spirit of God seized people’s minds!66
Official reports documented the same religious passion in an entirely different tone: “Criminal activities such as revival meetings (fenxinhui) and spirit dances (tiao lingwu) to repel demons and cure illness are gaining pace, which damage public morality, destroy social customs and end lives, and have long been prohibited. Lianzhong Brigade of Yongjia County went to the riverside, dancing spirit dances like lunatics without sleeping for three days and nights. They also spoke nonsense [saying] that they would go to heaven.”67
The religious passion described in both Christian memoirs and official reports can easily be compared with the feverish cult of Mao in the same period, though Christian worship had none of the violence of the Red Guard movement. But what was the source of this religious enthusiasm? If we turn back to the eschatological messages of Christian preachers, the picture becomes much clearer. What was driving them was a deep insecurity and anxiety about the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, pushing them to seek redemption in Christ.
Conclusion
During the early Cultural Revolution, Christian churches ran into a second wave of repression, more violent than the Great Leap, yet with less severe consequences for the church. Indeed, the political chaos of the time, particularly the factional conflicts crippling the management of and oversight by the state, dramatically increased the space for religious activities.
Faced with the state’s intense hostility toward religion, Christian preachers adopted tactics to evade the attention of the state. They implanted new Protestant communities in numerous villages in the form of small house gatherings and used these as a base to spread the gospel further to yet more (new) communities. These tactics ensured not just the survival of the church, but its rapid and dramatic expansion, with a massive growth of Christian communities documented from 1958 to 1978.
The Cultural Revolution saw both diversification and unification in the church. There was competition between different churches, even as new collaborative networks started to reduce the importance of denominational lines. The territorial expansion of the church led to a fundamental transformation in the institutions of Protestant Christianity in Wenzhou, with the establishment of regional networks and the extensive paidan system for sharing pastoral resources.
These new collaborative efforts allowed the church to spread its message far and wide across Wenzhou. Yet the growing number of converts and inquirers likely also had to do with the violent upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. The church’s millenarian messages tapped into a spiritual crisis, offering redemption in the midst of chaos. Protestant preachers, similar to leaders of salvationist groups, heavily resorted to eschatological messages in order to appeal to villagers and therefore broaden their bases. As they came from different theological traditions, their depictions of the end of the world were different in many respects. But they all interpreted the social disorders and political chaos of the Mao years as signs of the end of the world and predicted various scenes of the last day. They similarly warned people of the need to join their religion in order to be saved in the trial of doomsday and find ultimate redemption.
Some scholars believed that contemporary religious revitalization is a collective response to spiritual crisis of the post-Mao era.68 Yet the Rui’an case suggests that such a crisis had existed all along throughout the twentieth century. The Cultural Revolution saw an overt display of such a crisis when Protestantism offered an alternative to frantic Maoist ideology. Viewed from this perspective, if Wenzhou is China’s Jerusalem, then this Jerusalem has its roots in the Cultural Revolution.
The phenomenon of rapid growth and expansion in Protestant communities was not limited to Rui’an or Wenzhou, but was also evident in some other regions across China. In Wenling County in the Taizhou region of Zhejiang, church records show that four of the 116 churches in the county in 2006 originated in 1960–1963, and eighteen were formed during the Cultural Revolution.69
As Figure 5.3 shows, Xinyang and Nanyang regions of Henan Province, Fuyang region of Anhui Province, and Ningde and Quanzhou regions of Fujian Province show significant increases in the number of Christians and of house meetings during and after the Cultural Revolution.70
Figure 5.3. The trend of Protestant populations in certain other regions since 1949.
A comparison with other religious traditions of the same county sheds further light on the development of Protestant churches in Rui’an during the Cultural Revolution. As discussed in Chapter 3, local communities continued communal religious traditions during the Cultural Revolution, but only at a minimal level. The restoration of temples slowly picked up only in the later years of the Cultural Revolution. The Catholic Church and redemptive societies suffered the most before the 1960s. Catholics were accused of having “imperialist” ties with the Vatican, while salvationist religious groups were charged with having links to Nationalist residual forces.
The massive arrests that occurred in 1955 and their aftermath go some way toward explaining why Catholics, unlike Protestants, appear not to have seen a revival in collective activities in the early 1960s. Two jailed priests never returned. Catholics seem to have established some house gatherings toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, but these were largely concentrated in Mayu under the leadership of Chen Nailiang,71 a former student of Ningbo Saint Vincent Seminary who was released from prison in 1965, and catechist Jiang Lianghui. These Catholic house gatherings were never as diversified as the Protestant ones, and by 1981, there were only twenty-three gathering places in Rui’an.72 Similarly, Catholics in Jinbao Mountain of Wenzhou suburb, and Yishan Town and Linjiayuan Village of Pingyang County set up bases from around the late 1960s when some jailed clergymen were released.73 Chen Nailiang organized gatherings to observe holy dates in Pingyang and Wenzhou, but a networked Catholic community never developed during the Cultural Revolution, at least partly due to the lack of leadership and local preachers. Most clergymen remained in prison for almost the entire duration of the Cultural Revolution.
Protestants in Rui’an remember the Cultural Revolution as an ordeal, but also as a time of renaissance in the church. The church, as it stood in 1978, sought to consolidate its expansion during the Cultural Revolution rather than starting from scratch. Yet the Cultural Revolution also left wounds and rifts, and local churches had to face these as well when they dealt with the aftermath of the years of conflict, asking whether or not they should move meetings from private homes to churches.
1Shu Chengqian, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi (Memoirs of fifty years’ life in the church), internal reference materials (“neibu cankao ziliao”), 2002, Chapter 4. Note that during the Cultural Revolution, activists often used theatres as sites to imprison and torture “counterrevolutionaries” and other enemies of the state.
2Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi (A history of Rui’an church), internal document, 1998, 16.
3Ni Guangdao, “1978 nian qianhou de jiaohui shenghuo” (Church life before and after 1978), Tianfeng 11 (2008): 8–9, and Ni’s testimony, http://www.jidujiao.com/shuku/files/article/html/0/505/12332.html (accessed on May 4, 2018). Ni later became the president of Zhejiang Three-Self Patriotic Association in the reform period.
4Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 16.
5Ibid.
6Ou Fachen, interview by author. Rui’an, May 7, 2013.
7Ibid.
8Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 16.
9Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (1986): 273–286.
10“Rui’an Xian Lianzhan he Lianzong” (United Headquarters and General Headquarters in Rui’an), September 25, 1967, Rui’an City Archives 4-28-13: 92–107; “Rui’an Xian wuchanjieji wenhua dageming dashi jiyao 66 nian 6 yue zhi 67 nian 12 yue” (Summary chronicle of major events during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in Rui’an, June 1966–December 1967), 1967, Rui’an City Archives 4-28-13: 56–91.
11Zhonggong Rui’an shiwei dangwei yanjiushi, ed., Zhongguo Gongchandang Rui’an lishi dashiji 1949–1999 (A chronicle of the Chinese Communist Party in Rui’an 1949–1999) (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2001), 78–83.
12Miao Zhitong, Wenzhou qu jiaohui shi (Church history in Wenzhou), internal document, 2005–2006(?), 137–139.
13Keith Forster, Rebellion and Factionalism in a Chinese Province: Zhejiang, 1966–1976 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), Chapters 5–8.
14In Shanxi of north China, Henrietta Harrison (Harrison, The Missionary’s Curse, 167) similarly observed that the Cultural Revolution was not focused on the Catholic villages, whereas the Socialist Education Movement in the early 1960s hit these villages the most.
15Zhonggong Rui’an shiwei dangwei yanjiushi, Zhongguo Gongchandang Rui’an lishi dashiji, 91.
16Interview by author. Tangkou Village, May 12, 2013.
17Interview by author, Lower Village, May 12, 2013.
18Ou Zhanwu, interview by author. Mayan Village, July 23, 2012.
19Wang Ping, “Fengwozhuang jingji zhong de huise shichang—1978 nian yiqian de Wenzhou minying jingji mengya” (Gray market in cellular economy—the sprouts of private economy in Wenzhou before 1978), Zhongguo Yanjiu 13 (2011): 170–184.
20Chen Cunfu, “Zhejiang diqu Tianzhujiao he Xinjiao diaocha yanjiu,” Ding/Tripod 131 (2004): 13–20; “Wenzhou diwei guanyu quanqu zongjiao gongzuo xianchanghui qingkuang baogao he Pingyang Huqian Xiang dui zongjiao douzheng shidian zongjie baogao” (Wenzhou Party Committee’s report on the regional on-the-spot religious affairs meeting and summary of the experiment on the struggle against religion at Huqian Township, Pingyang County), November 1, 1958, Longquan City Archives, 1-5-172: 76–89.
21Rui’an City Archives, 1-21-60: 15.
22Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 16.
23Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 14.
24Ibid.
25Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 172.
26Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 15.
27Qingquan, “Huishou yiwang de Wenzhou tese xiaozu—daogaohui” (A retrospect of prayer meetings—groups with Wenzhou church characteristics), Maizhong, September issue, 2007, http://www.wheatseeds.org/wheatseeds/2007-07.09/wz/25.html (accessed on May 4, 2018).
28The late Miao Zhitong, for instance, was a self-styled preacher. Yang Duojia (Dorcas) of Oubei, Yongjia, never went through any formal training but claimed to be suddenly enlightened in one day. At the age of twenty, she was asked by her uncle, who was in charge of a Protestant gathering spot in her village, to preach in Protestant meetings. See Yang Duojia, “Benzou rongyao de tianlu” (Running on the heavenly road of glory), ca.2000. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_52dfd841010152ng.html (accessed on May 4, 2018).
29“Zhonghua Jidujiao Xundao gonghui Wenzhou jiaoqu Rui’an lianqu ge zhihui fuzeren ji xintu mingce” (List of division leaders and followers in the Rui’an affiliated district of the Wenzhou ecclesiastical district of the Chinese Christian Methodist Church), 1958, Rui’an City Archives 4-10-75: 29–40.
30“Yongjia Xian Jidujiao shiliao” (Historical materials of Christianity in Yongjia), unpublished. Cited by Chen Fengsheng, “Wenzhou jiaohui yigong fazhan lichen” (The development course of volunteers in Wenzhou church), Jinling shengxue zhi 3 (2010): 34.
31Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 20–21.
32Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 21. Similar processes took place in other counties of the Wenzhou region as well. The integration of churches in Wenzhou municipality, it was said, occurred even earlier. Local preachers had built up a relatively developed network by the end of the 1960s. In 1970, a unified church had been grounded in Wenzhou municipality. For the unification of churches in Cangnan and Yongjia, see Chen, “Wenzhou jiaohui yigong fazhan lichen,” 33–34.
33Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 21.
34Materials are lacking on the origins of the paidan system. It is possible that it originated from the preacher system in the local Protestant church in the pre-1949 period, where preachers were sent by their denominations to different places to preach.
35Chen Fengsheng, “Daonian zhu de zhongpu Yang Baoli zhanglao” (In memory of the Lord’s loyal servant, church elderly Yang Baoli), http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4e7519ed0102e59o.html (accessed on May 4, 2018).
36For the paidan system, see Shehe, “Wenzhou jiaohui guanli moshi qiantan” (A preliminary research of management patterns in Wenzhou church), Shengming jikan, June issue, 2011, http://www.cclife.org/View/Article/2566 (accessed on May 4, 2018), and Zhang Zhongcheng, “Cong Wenzhou jiaohui de muqu xianxiang kan jiaohui de muyang guanli” (Pasturage and administration of church through the phenomenon of pastoral district in Wenzhou church), Jingling shengxue zhi 1 (2011): 53–85.
37Miao, Wenzhou qu jiaohui shi, 153–163.
38Yang Duojia, “Benzou rongyao de tianlu.”
39Zhang Xiaomin, “Ta zaishi de rizi—jinian zhupu Miao Zhitong” (When he was in the world—in memory of God’s servant Miao Zhitong), http://wzbxcc.blogspot.de/2013/08/blog-post.html (accessed on May 4, 2018). See also David Aikman’s portrayal of Miao, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006), 184–186.
40“Guanyu Rui’an Shi zongjiao wenti diaocha qingkuang de huibao” (Comprehensive report on the investigation of religious situation in Rui’an City), December 22, 1990, Rui’an City Archives 1-38-6: 34–35.
41The underground “Wenzhou regional church” (Wenzhou diqu jiaohui) ruled “head-covering” as a heresy in 1974. See Qingquan, “Wenzhou jiaohui dashi niandaibiao xia.”
42Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapters 7–9, 13–21, 22–24.
43Ibid., Chapter 6 (section 3).
44Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 18–19.
45Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 9.
Roughly speaking, Chengguan (the county seat), Xincheng, Tangxia, Xianjiang, and the main part of Mayu belong to the plains. Taoshan, Huling, Gaolou, and other parts of Mayu are mountainous areas.
46Roughly speaking, Chengguan (the county seat), Xincheng, Tangxia, Xianjiang, and the main part of Mayu belong to the plains. Taoshan, Huling, Gaolou, and other parts of Mayu are mountainous areas.
47Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 180.
48Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 18–19.
49Yu Jixiang, interview by author. Dadianxia, Xincheng, July 25, 2012.
50“Xincheng Qu zongjiao qingkuang diaocha tongjibiao” (Investigational chart of religious situation in Xincheng District), 1991, Rui’an City Archives 72-24-10: 56–57.
51Qingquan, “Wenzhou jiaohui dashi niandaibiao xia” (Chronicle of events in Wenzhou church). Maizhong, April issue, 2007. http://www.wheatseeds.org/wheatseeds/2007-04.08/wz/08.html (accessed on May 4, 2018).
52“Guanyu Wenzhou zongjiao wenti huibao tigang” (Outline report on religious questions in Wenzhou), May 15, 1981, Rui’an City Archives 7-29-46: 31.
53“Guanyu Rui’an Shi zongjiao wenti diaocha qingkuang de huibao” (Comprehensive report on the investigation of religious situation in Rui’an City), December 22, 1990, Rui’an City Archives 1-38-6: 32.
54Population in Rui’an increased from 456,900 of 1949 to 1,007,393 of 1982. “Zhejiang Sheng renkou pucha bangongshi et al., eds., Zhejiang Sheng renkou tongji ziliao huibian 1949–1985” (Census data collection in Zhejiang province, 1949–1985) (Zhejiang Sheng renkou pucha bangongshi, 1986), 457–458.
55Rui’an City Archives 49-33-18: 10.
56Pou Zuilen, interview by author. Xianqiao, Xincheng, May 7, 2013.
57Kao Chen-yang specifically suggests the connection between the popularity and transformation of Pentecostal practices and the rise of Protestantism in Fujian during the Cultural Revolution. But the Rui’an case shows neither a rise in nor a significant transformation of evangelization techniques in the county during the Cultural Revolution. See Chen-yang Kao, “The Cultural Revolution and the Emergence of Pentecostal-style Protestantism in China,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 24, no. 2 (2009): 171–188.
58According to Shu Chengqian, many Adventist preachers also had the gift of healing; see Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 6 (section 7).
59Xi Lian, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 203.
60Shehe, “Wenzhou jiaohui guanli moshi qiantan.”
61“Dui diguozhuyi tewu Zhang Shidan pizhe zongjiao waiyi jinxing pohuai huodong de diaocha he chuli yijian” (Report on the investigation of imperialist spy Zhang Shidan conducting destructive activities in the guise of religion and handling opinions), July 15, 1970, Rui’an City Archives 4-21-27: 118.
62“Guanyu dui fangemin Zhang Liquan de shencha he chuli yijian de baogao” (Report on the investigation of counterrevolutionary Zhang Liquan and handling opinions), July 15, 1970, Rui’an City Archives 4-21-27: 110.
63“Qingkuang jiaoliu jianbao (di qi qi)” (Bulletin on the current situation, volume 7), January 28, 1970, Rui’an City Archives 4-21-88: 105–106.
64“Guanyu dangqian zongjiao huodong de qingkuang yu jinhou yijian de baogao” (Report on current religious activities and opinions for the future), September 20, 1972, Wenling City Archives J1-1-1120: 29–30.
65“Guanyu daji liyong zongjiao jinxing pohuai huodong de fangeming fenzi de qingshi baogao” (Report and request about a crackdown on counterrevolutionaries exploiting religion to conduct destructive activities), February 2, 1973, Rui’an City Archives 1-21-60: 14–15.
66Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 6 (section 3).
67Rui’an City Archives 1-21-60: 15.
Nanyang Diqu difangshizhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, ed., Nanyang Diqu zhi (Nanyang Region gazetteer) (Zhengzhou Shi: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1994), 457–458; Xinyang Diqu difangshizhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, ed., Xinyang Diquzhi (Xinyang Region gazetteer) (Beijing: Sanlianshudian, 1992), 915–917; Zhang Benle, ed., Hui huang shi wu nian—Xinyang Diqu juan (Glorious fifteen years—Xinyang Region volume) (Beijing: Guangming ribao chubanshe, 1995), 322; Fuyang Shi difangzhi bangongshi, ed., Fuyang Diqu zhi (Fuyang Region gazetteer) (Beijing: Fangzhi chubanshe, 1996), 1055–1045; Tang Jinhua et al., eds., Ningde Diqu zhi (Ningde Region gazetteer) (Beijing: Fangzhi chubanshe, 1998), 1667; Quanzhou Shi difangzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, ed., Quanzhou shizhi (Quanzhou City gazetteer) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 2000), 3558.
68Alan Hunter and Chan Kim-Kwong, eds., Protestantism in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 170; Richard Madsen, China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 8–9; David Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 4–5.
69See historical records of local church website “Wenling fuyin zhijia” (Wenling Home of Gospel): http://www.wlfyzj.com/content.asp?parent=root3%40%D0%D6%B5%DC%BD%CC%BB%E1%40 (accessed on April 29, 2015). The Protestant population in Wenling also saw significant growth under Mao. In 1949, there were 16,079 Protestants in Wenling, but according to government estimates there may have been as many as 50,000 by the end of the Cultural Revolution (Wenling Xian zhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Wenling Xian zhi, 831–832).
70Nanyang Diqu difangshizhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, ed., Nanyang Diqu zhi (Nanyang Region gazetteer) (Zhengzhou Shi: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1994), 457–458; Xinyang Diqu difangshizhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, ed., Xinyang Diquzhi (Xinyang Region gazetteer) (Beijing: Sanlianshudian, 1992), 915–917; Zhang Benle, ed., Hui huang shi wu nian— Xinyang Diqu juan (Glorious fifteen years—Xinyang Region volume) (Beijing: Guangming ribao chubanshe, 1995), 322; Fuyang Shi difangzhi bangongshi, ed., Fuyang Diqu zhi (Fuyang Region gazetteer) (Beijing: Fangzhi chubanshe, 1996), 1055–1045; Tang Jinhua et al., eds., Ningde Diqu zhi (Ningde Region gazetteer) (Beijing: Fangzhi chubanshe, 1998), 1667; Quanzhou Shi difangzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, ed., Quanzhou shizhi (Quanzhou City gazetteer) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe, 2000), 3558.
71“Chengong jinduo sanshi zhounian shiji jianjie” (A brief introduction to the deeds of priest Chen at the thirtieth anniversary of his ordination), http://www.tianren.org/life/show.asp?id=15836 (accessed on May 4, 2018).
72“Yijiubaer nian zongjiao gongzuo qingkuang he jinhou yijian” (Religious work in 1982 and opinions for the future), January 27, 1983, Rui’an City Archives 1-31-45: 147.
73Rui’an City Archives 7-29-46: 31; Wang Jingmin, “Jinbao Shan huiyilu” (A memoir on Jinbao Mountain), Wenzhou tangqu bao, http://www.tianren.org/life/show.asp?id=17689 (accessed on May 4, 2018).