This book is the best scholarly treatment available of John Sung, the greatest Chinese revivalist of the twentieth century. In this provocative study, Ireland has separated fact from fiction. He shows both the vulnerabilities and the brilliance of China’s most famous evangelist. Sung the man comes alive amidst Sung the legend. I recommend this book very highly for all who wish to understand the history of Chinese Christianity and the tantalizing interweaving of twentieth-century global revivalism with modernization.
~Dana L. Robert, Truman Collins Professor of World Christianity and History of Mission, Boston University
Daryl Ireland has thoroughly researched sources in Chinese as well as English in preparing this outstanding contribution to ‘the puzzle of Christianity in China.’ The puzzle is how indigenous forms of Christian faith have flourished in an often fiercely hostile environment. Ireland’s convincing answer shows that the life of (John) Song Shangjie is part of the answer. In a remarkable, complex, and sometimes troubling life, Song made a real difference by promoting, in Ireland’s phrase, ‘the furnaces of revival.’ This is a very important book on a very important person.
~Mark A. Noll, McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame
This engaging volume offers a new evaluation of revivalist Christianity in twentieth-century China through a biography of its inimitable exemplar, John Sung (Song Shangjie). Ireland’s authoritative study draws on previously unavailable resources to offer a balanced-yet-intriguing portrait of a complex figure of modern evangelism. Through a range of lenses from gender to somatic forces in the body politic and faith healings, Sung’s methods, itinerations, and theology are set against broader trends in the social history of Christianity in China and Southeast Asia.
~Chloe Starr, Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology, Yale Divinity School
A deeply researched and insightful book. Daryl Ireland has given us a definitive account of the life of the greatest revivalist in modern China.
~Xi Lian, Professor of World Christianity, Duke Divinity School
Ireland advances a theory about Song's reinvention as part of a larger story of Chinese Christianity's 20th-century development. Even more, he teases out how Song and Chinese Christianity offered an alternative to the path of exchanging a feudal past for a modern future. This new man and this new religion profoundly influenced the making of a new China.
~Alexander Chow, Christianity Today
Overall, the author makes pioneering and thought-provoking contributions to our understanding of Song Shangjie by both drawing on previously little or never used source materials and offering an illuminating analytical framework of becoming new in China’s modernization. John Song’s findings will appeal to scholars in the studies of Chinese Christianity, Chinese modernity, and global fundamentalist and revivalist movements.
~ZHIXI WANG, Journal of Religious History
…Daryl Ireland’s John Song should be on the shelves of anyone interested in the transformation of Chinese Christianity. His clear, engaging, and lively style makes it a joyful read, and instructors can adopt this outstanding book in courses on Chinese church history, world Christianity, Asian theology, and religious sociology.
~Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, Review of Religion and Chinese Society
Overall, Daryl Ireland provides a vivid story of John Song, one of the most famous Chinese Christian revivalists of the period, that presents many important insights into this period of China’s history. Scholars will gain insight into the way the mind and methods of this famous evangelist were linked with the political and social struggles of the period.
~John R. Stanley, Church History
Ireland succeeds in situating Song within the world of Republican China and foregrounds his voice as a central participant in debates over the shape of Chinese modernity in the early twentieth-century. For Ireland, Song’s transformation into a "new man" is a central trope that connects various stages in his life. Ireland’s argument is persuasive on this account, and his engagement with multiple bodies of literature in individual chapters—on gender, religion, science, and medicine—is impressive.
~Joshua Tan, Reading Religion
Ireland’s book is full of documentary, archival evidence to support his findings, evidence that has not been published before. This is the strength of this publication; but for anyone interested in Chinese Christianity, it has wider relevance and is essential reading. As Ireland reminds us again in the very last sentence of this book: ‘To know the story of John Song and how he became a New Man is to understand the formation of modern Chinese Christianity’ (p. 207).
~Allan H. Anderson, PentecoStudies
…Ireland’s book is a must-read for any serious student of Chinese Christianity. As Ireland provides rich social and historical context in each chapter, the book is accessible not only to academics but also to interested laypeople. The book is also well written, accessible, and enjoyable to read. Ireland’s extensive use of archival materials and primary sources to correct the story of John Song is a triumphal achievement.
~Eric Beach, Themelios
