1957 - Jing Dianying

August 31, 1957

Xi’an, Shaanxi

Jing Dianying.

Jing Dianyiang was born in Shandong Province in 1890. He grew up in a family that believed in Confucius. It was not until he entered middle school at Tai’an in 1911 (when he was aged 20) that he heard the gospel for the first time. Although he made a commitment to Christ around 1913, it appears Jing was not serious in his faith until he came into contact with Pentecostal Christianity in the early-1920s.

After he was born-again, Jing read the following words in the Bible: “Husbands, love your wives.”[1] This command immediately placed him into a dilemma, as he had divorced his wife and sent her back to her mother’s home several years previously. He later said, “She had bound feet, and was not my equal, so I thought; and I didn’t love her.”[2] A few days later, out of obedience to the Scriptures, he walked to his wife’s village and brought her home. Because his wife couldn’t easily walk because of her feet, he borrowed a wheelbarrow and pushed her the 15 miles (24 km) back to his home. A missionary friend and author of a best-selling book on the Jesus Family, Dr. Vaughan Rees, wrote:

“As soon as they entered the door of his home together the Holy Spirit descended on them both. This was in 1920. In 1940 I received a broken-hearted letter from him. His beloved wife was dead. She had proved his equal and beloved companion for 20 years. Contrary to his former opinion, she was the backbone of the work which had started in 1921.”[3]

Jing Dianying and his wife knelt together and dedicated themselves to obey the teachings of the Bible. One of the first things they did was sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor. In 1927 Jing founded The Jesus Family in Shandong Province. Following Jing’s example, the members believed they should sell all their possessions and distribute their wealth among the other family members. The group’s five-word slogan encapsulated their commitment to Christ and their pattern of frugal living: ‘Sacrifice, abandonment, poverty, suffering, death.’

The Jesus Family targeted towns and villages, preaching the gospel as they walked from one place to another. Their example of communal living and their deep Christian love. It attracted those searching for answers to life as well as those who were homeless, destitute and despised. Many blind people and beggars joined the Jesus Family and found eternal life in Christ. As they grew, the Jesus Family suffered terrible hardships. Often when they entered a new town the entire population would come out to beat, scorn and humiliate them.

The Jesus Family was the first to have a vision to carry the gospel, by foot, from China all the way back to Jerusalem. Their workers carried baskets of food and essentials as they walked across China. By the late 1940s there were some 20,000 Chinese believers enlisted in more than 100 different Jesus Family groups throughout China, enabling them to reach many different regions with the gospel. Some believers went to Manchuria, some to Inner Mongolia, others to southern China.

It seems that after a time the Jesus Family lost their direction. The movement became headquartered in one large compound in Mazhuang, Shandong Province, where more than 500 believers lived in the late 1940s. Every morning the members rose for prayer together until 5:30. They would then hear a sermon before commencing their daily work. What started out as a wholesome ideal of communal living ended up going too far and the movement seemed to be on the verge of becoming a cult in their practices. One account said:

“Except for the youngest married couples, men and women lived in separate buildings. Engagements and weddings were arranged by Jing, the Family head. It happened that young teenagers were made to marry old men, the pretty were matched with the crippled and educated ones with the illiterate, Husbands and wives seldom had a chance to live together, for there were just a few rooms allotted to married couples which had to be shared by them in turn. Nurseries took care of the young children. Quite often, children of three to four years old did not know who their parents were.”[4]

To begin with, the government seemed to view the Jesus Family both with admiration as well as fear. They knew this group was markedly different from all other Christian groups in China and practiced many of the ideals that Communism promoted. On the other hand, they feared the Jesus Family because they could not control them. The Jesus Family was a completely indigenous movement, receiving no money from overseas and having little contact with foreign Christians. On one occasion Jing told a friend: “Little did I think…how the Lord would lead, or what He had in store for me. How foolish and ignorant I was. Now I see what He had done. He has raised us up for this purpose, that the Communists might see what Christianity is.”[5]

Even the official Three-Self Church magazine, Tianfeng, published complimentary articles about the Jesus Family in 1951. One visiting reporter was moved to write:

“It is really touching to see their earnest and down-to-earth spirit of life, solid and hard-working: from childhood they are taught to bear hardships for the Lord…. I have seen the most holy and beautiful faces in the world, these elders, brothers and sisters in the Family. They love the Lord, love people, love poverty, love production, love labour.”[6]

The government finally decided they could not tolerate the Jesus Family any longer. In 1952 the headquarters at Mazhuang were taken over and the buildings were torn down. The 500 Christians were forced to disseminate back into society. Other Families throughout China continued to meet in secret but were heavily persecuted. Just two years after the glowing report in Tianfeng, the same publication printed a new article with a completely different tone. Starting in February 1953, the magazine launched a series of diatribes against the Jesus Family, led by Jing’s nephew, Jing Zhendong. These increasingly aggressive denunciations included:

“In the past few decades, the Jesus Family has insulted the holy name of Jesus and endangered the Chinese people. From now on, this shameful name should not be heard again in New China.”[7]

“Jing Dianying colluded with Japanese invaders and the reactionary officers and officials of the puppet regime in the past 30 years; he also collaborated with the British and American imperialists, collecting information and engaging in anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda.”[8]

Part of the Jesus Family compound at Mazhuang, demolished by the Communists in 1952.

Jing Dianying was arrested and imprisoned in 1953, while his second wife Chen Bixi was assigned to work in a government hospital at Xi’an. Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote that “by 1955 their communities had been liquidated, and their members scattered or killed.”[9] No information was forthcoming about the fate of Jing Dianying for the next several years. Then, in the spring of 1957, the imprisoned Christian leader contracted liver cancer, brought about by the filthy, unhygienic conditions. Knowing that he would soon die, the prison authorities allowed Jing to leave the prison on medical parole and to seek treatment. He travelled to Xi’an, where his wife worked, and immediately started receiving visits from Jesus Family leaders. He once again helped strategize church work. According to some who visited him, “Jing’s faith was still strong and his voice clear.”[10] His condition worsened and he passed away on August 31, 1957. Four days before his death, Jing wrote: “I am going home to see my Father, you wait here for the return of the Lord.”[11] Jing Dianying’s body was wrapped in a white cloth and buried in a cemetery in the suburbs of Xi’an. His body was not even placed inside a coffin, and no tombstone was erected.

Many China-watchers believed the Jesus Family had not survived the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, but in the early 1980s they re-emerged. The strong faith of the family members had not deserted them during the decades of persecution. Dozens of the movement’s leaders had been imprisoned for years, and more than a few had died as martyrs. Although they are not allowed to form into Christian communes like they did before 1952, there are still hundreds of Jesus Family congregations today in provinces like Shandong, Hebei, Shaanxi, Henan and Fujian. Some of the Jesus Family churches have joined the registered Three-Self Patriotic Movement, while others remain as independent house churches.

1. Ephesians 5:25.
2. D. Vaughan Rees, The ‘Jesus Family’ in Communist China: A Modern Miracle of New Testament Christianity (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1959), 37.
3. Rees, The ‘Jesus Family’ in Communist China, 39.
4. “Introducing the Jesus Family,” Bridge (July-August 1992), 11.
5. Paul E. Kauffman, Confucius, Mao and Christ (Hong Kong: Asian Outreach, 1975), 95.
6. Jiang Yizhen, “The Taste of the Jesus Family,” Tianfeng (No.260, April 21, 1951).
7. Cheng Buyun in Tianfeng (No.357, March 23, 1953).
8. Zeng Guangxie in Tianfeng (No.357, March 23, 1953).
9. Cited in Cliff, A History of the Protestant Movement in Shandong Province, 70.
10. “More About the Jesus Family,” Bridge (July-August 1993), 11.
11. “More About the Jesus Family,” 11.