Abstract:
Whether in large cities or small villages, Chinese Protestant communities at the turn of the twentieth century participated in a vibrant Christian print culture. Protestant publications, at the forefront of China’s emerging modern print culture, embodied the age’s chaotic confluence of multiple authoritative paradigms for interpreting and ordering the world. In the pages of the Chinese Christian Intelligencer, a popular Presbyterian publication, charismatic accounts such as stories of faith healing and Spirit-filled worship services abutted reports of cutting-edge scientific developments and international newswires. This study shows the prevalence of charismatic modes within mainline Protestantism in the early twentieth century. Pluralistic discourse in the Intelligencer from 1905 to 1926 reveals the complex and multifaceted experience of modernity in China, especially at the grass roots.
