China is in the midst of one of the world’s great spiritual awakenings: some 300 million Chinese currently practice a faith, while tens of millions more follow personal gurus, populist masters and New Age sages.

This astonishing revival began in 1982 when the Communist Party pledged to allow what it thought would be a small-scale practice of religion under government supervision.

But the faithful have expanded far beyond the Party’s expectations: Today, China’s cities and villages are filled with new temples, churches, and mosques as well as cults, sects and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends.

Fueling this resurgence is a popular desire to rediscover a moral compass in a society driven by naked capitalism. For six years, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Ian Johnson lived for extended periods with three religious communities: the underground Early Rain Protestant congregation in Chengdu, the Ni family’s Buddhist pilgrimage association in Beijing, and yinyang Daoist priests in rural Shanxi.

Johnson distills these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle that reveals the hearts and minds of the Chinese people—a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world’s newest superpower.


中國正經歷一場世界上大規模的大覺醒運動：大約三億中國人開始信教，好幾千萬人則追隨自身修行的上師、民粹大師以及新時代的哲人。

此次驚人的復興運動始於 1982 年，當時共產黨承諾允許在政府的監督下，人民可以有限度地奉行宗教教義。

然而，信仰的發展速度遠超共產黨的預期：現今，中國的城市及鄉村充斥著新的廟宇、教堂還有清真寺，當然也有各種異教及派別，以及某些政治人物企圖利用宗教達到自身目的。

由於中國社會的資本主義日漸興盛，大多數人渴望宗教復興持續擴大，藉以恢復道德標準。六年來，普立茲獎作家張彥與三個宗教團體生活在一起：成都的秋雨之福龜正教會、北京倪莊佛教朝拜協會及山西農村的陰陽道傳承家庭。

張彥汲取六年來的經驗，並整理成一套循環，當中有慶典、出生、死亡、停滯及掙扎。這些都反應了中國人的內心與思維。一場信仰的大覺醒正在形塑世界新強權的靈魂。

IAN JOHNSON

IAN JOHNSON is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times, and his work has also appeared in The New Yorker and National Geographic.

He is an advising editor for the Journal of Asian Studies, and teaches a course on religion in Beijing.

He is the author of two other books that also focus on the intersection of politics and religion: Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in China, and A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. He lives in Beijing.