Spirit Church (灵灵教 Linglingjiao), also known as Efficacious Spirit Teachings, is a

new religious movement A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or th ...

from

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It was founded in the 1980s, in

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to ...

by Hua Xuehe (华雪和), a primary school teacher with high school education from

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, Postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an Eastern China, eastern coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is o ...

. Hua was a member of the

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...

who became a

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

in 1978 and joined the

True Jesus Church The True Jesus Church (TJC) is a non-denominational Christian Church that originated in Beijing, China, during the Pentecostal movement in the early twentieth century. The True Jesus Church is currently one of the largest Christian groups in Ch ...

in 1979. In 1982, he left the True Jesus Church and established his own movement. Its areas of presence include

Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

and

Shandong Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizati ...

. It has Pentecostal features and may be regarded as a break-away group from the Chinese Pentecostal group, the

. Hua claims to be the second incarnation of Christ and teaches that we live in a new era when Christians should pray in his name rather than in the name of Christ. His followers celebrate Hua's birth date, January 19, instead of Christmas. They regard as evidence of Hua's divine nature the fact that his name (华雪和 Hua Xuehe) differs by just one syllable from the Chinese word for Jehovah (耶和华 Yehehua). Spirit Church is illegal in

and labelled heretical. Hua was arrested in 1990, and sent to a labor camp. He has reportedly since been released. In 2015, scholar Emily Dunn reported that "his whereabouts and fate are unknown," while the movement reportedly had some 15,000 followers.

References

Christian new religious movements Christian denominations founded in China 1980s establishments in China Chinese cults {{China-stub

See also

References