True Jesus Church
Ling-Sheng Zhang, and Barnabas Zhang (mortal founders) | |
| Founded at | Beijing, China |
|---|---|
| Type | Christian Church |
| Headquarters | Lakewood, CA |
Area served | 70+ countries |
Membership | 1,500,000–3,000,000[1] |
Official language | English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese |
Main organ | International Assembly |
| Affiliations | Nondenominational Christianity |
| Website | tjc |
| True Jesus Church | |
|---|---|
Hanyu Pinyin | Zhēn Yēsū Jiàohuì |
| Part of a series on |
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The True Jesus Church (TJC) is a
History
The TJC emerged independently alongside other indigenous
Established in 1917, the church’s early adherents in
Paul Wei (Wei Enbo, 1877–1919) was one of the early workers in 1917.[8] A former member of the Beijing branch of the London Missionary Society led by British missionary Samuel Evans Meech (1845–1937), Wei became a Pentecostal under the influence of Norwegian missionary to China, Bernt Berntsen. In 1917, he left Berntsen’s group as the Holy Spirit had moved him. He died of tuberculosis on September 10, 1919, and the pause of his prophecy did not prevent the further growth of the TJC.[9]
TJC’s other early workers included Zhang Lingsheng (1863–?), who convinced Wei that the church should maintain a seventh-day Sabbath, and Barnabas Zhang (1882–1961), who eventually left the group in 1929 and established a rival movement in Hong Kong.[10]
In mainland China, Wei’s son, Wei Wenxiang (魏文祥, Isaac Wei, 魏以撒, ca. 1900–?), emerged as the worker of the TJC. He also presided over TJC’s international expansion to various countries and the establishment of an effective bureaucracy.[11]
By 1949, the membership grew to around 120,000 in seven hundred churches.[12] However, as a result of the Chinese Civil war and following regime change, True Jesus Church lost contact with the churches inside China.[13] In 1951, Isaac Wei was arrested and “disappeared.” How and when he died is unknown. Li Zhengcheng (李正誠, ca. 1920–1990) replaced Isaac Wei as the main leader of the TJC and led it into joining the Three-Self Patriotic Movement as the government had requested. Persecution, however, came both before and during the Cultural Revolution, and Li Zhengcheng spent more than twenty years in jail. Because of the developments in China, the TJC abroad proclaimed its autonomy, with headquarters first in Taiwan and from 1985 in the U.S. The Chinese branch was however reconstituted, as part of the Three-Self Church, after the Cultural Revolution and the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and still has a substantial following in China.[14]
Today there are TJC members in more than seventy countries across six continents. According to scholars, the possible total number of members is up to 3 millions.[1]
Current organization
Mainland China
In
Taiwan and the United States
Outside China, member churches of the TJC look to the central synod of the TJC in California.[17] In 1967, church leaders from outside mainland China met for the first World Delegates Conference in Taiwan, and an international headquarters was established in Taichung, Taiwan, where a seminary was opened. The headquarters was subsequently moved to California in 1985.[10]
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, True Jesus Church congregations were established as a result of immigration patterns in the 1960s and 1970s, coming largely from
Beliefs
|
Practices
The church practices
The church believes that the sacraments must fulfill three requirements according to the
References
- ^ a b Anderson 2013, pp. 133–134.
- ^ ISBN 978-0816069835.
- ISBN 978-0739155424.
- ISBN 978-1107033993.. p. 50.
- ISBN 978-9004225756.
- ISBN 978-0804736510.
- ISBN 978-0802846808.
- ^ Lambert, Tony (2006). China's Christian Millions. Oxford. pp. 59–60. quoted in Refugee Review Tribunal
- ^ Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye, China and the True Jesus: Charisma and Organization in a Chinese Christian Church, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, 86–118.
- ^ ISBN 978-1598842043.
- ^ Inouye (2018), 157–185.
- ISBN 978-0815796466.
- ^ "History - USGA". True Jesus Church US General Assembly. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
- ^ Inouye (2018), 187–259.
- ^ ISBN 978-0521538237.
- ^ Kupfer, Kristin (2013). "Saints, Secrets, and Salvation". In Lim, Francis Khek Gee (ed.). Christianity in Contemporary China Socio-cultural Perspectives. New York: Routledge. p. 186.
- ISBN 978-0873326582.
- ISBN 978-962-209-446-8.
- ISBN 978-1-85359-241-6.
- ^ a b True Jesus Church International Assembly. "Statement of Faith". True Jesus Church. Archived from the original on June 2, 2014. Retrieved June 1, 2014.
- ISBN 978-1598842043.
Further reading
- Bays, Daniel H. (1995). "Indigenous Protestant Churches in China, 1900–1937: A Pentecostal Case Study". In Kaplan, Steven (ed.). Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity. New York: New York University Press. pp. 124–143. ISBN 978-0-8147-4649-3.
- Inouye, Melissa Wei-Tsing (2018). China and the True Jesus: Charisma and Organization in a Chinese Christian Church, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-092346-4.
- Lian Xi (2008). "A Messianic Deliverance for Post-Dynastic China: The Launch of the True Jesus Church in the Early Twentieth Century". Modern China. 34 (4): 407–441. S2CID 220736173.
External links
| International | |
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| National | |
