Editor’s Note: At ChinaSource, we are committed to fostering thoughtful, respectful dialogue on complex issues related to Chinese Christianity. When publishing book reviews, our hope is not only to introduce new scholarship to our readers, but also to encourage deeper engagement and ongoing conversation.
In the spirit of academic integrity and charitable exchange, we are publishing Dr. Jacob Chengwei Feng’s response to the recent review of his book. Dr. Feng has expressed appreciation for the reviewer’s careful reading while also seeking to clarify what he believes to be a misunderstanding of his primary methodology.
We recognize that scholarship advances not merely through agreement, but through careful listening, clarification, and constructive exchange. By making space for both review and response, we hope to model a posture of humility and intellectual honesty—one that reflects the broader vision of ChinaSource as a platform for informed dialogue and mutual learning.
We invite our readers to engage both the review and this response thoughtfully, with the same spirit of curiosity and respect.
A Rejoinder
Although I am writing this piece as a rejoinder, I want to sincerely thank my book reviewer, Eliannah Yeo, for taking the time to review my book, especially since hers was the first of many to come. I also want to express my gratitude to Andrea Lee and ChinaSource for their prompt support, which made the review possible.
Yeo’s concise chapter summaries are very helpful, and I especially appreciate her thought-provoking questions that encourage deeper scholarly discussion. Some of her queries are particularly interesting: for example, she wonders whether the Holy Spirit might still be active within Chinese intellectualism, even without charismatic gifts manifesting. This is truly a worthy topic for a book-length monograph. Additionally, she asks: “If a history of Chinese Pentecostal-like spirituality had truly persisted for millennia as an indigenous phenomenon, can Chinese Christians today look at Feng’s definitions and still consider themselves to be Pentecostals or charismatics in the Chinese sense?” Exploring this could be a fascinating area for further research, especially if she can demonstrate that the sources I discuss—those related to the Pentecost narrative and the Holy Spirit—can be understood as reflecting a “Pentecostal-like spirituality.” Although my book does not address these questions, as they are beyond its scope, I sincerely hope that her ongoing research will delve into this fascinating topic, which would be an amazing contribution to Chinese Christianity and global Pentecostalism.
Having said that, my most important rebuttal is that Yeo’s review has clearly misunderstood my main goal: she has made it a Pentecostal reading of the history of Chinese Christianity, which is not what the book is about; rather, I intended to use the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2 (as opposed to, say, Easter) as the major lens. In particular, I have named the methodology adopted in the book “Pentecost historiography” (pp. 4, 10, 11, etc.) rather than “Pentecostal historiography,” which refers to the one “that focuses on the study of the history of classical Pentecostalism connected to the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906–1909” (p. 14). Relevant to this misunderstanding is her mistaken view that “Feng believes that it is perhaps at this time [namely, Yelikewen] that the Holy Spirit had birthed a more mature Pentecostal tradition that is unique in the Chinese sense.” On the contrary, what I argue for in Chapter 3 is the lived experience of the Pentecost narrative among some Yelikewen believers. The nomenclature “Pentecostal movement” is a much later event, and if applied here, would have been a categorical mistake. Likewise, another misjudgment is her belief that “it is [with the Little Flock] that Feng shows how the most mature form of Chinese Pentecostalism could possibly be found.” In contrast, I agree with most scholars that the Little Flock is not a Pentecostal community.
At places where I have to use the “Pentecost” not as a noun, I have made careful annotations. Two examples suffice to make the point. First, “From a historical perspective, it traverses the 1400-year history of Chinese theology through the lens of Pentecostally informed historiography” (p. 13, note the italics). Second, “Second, ‘Pentecost,’ rooted in Scripture, … signifies the pentecostal nature of the book’s methodology and content (p. 13, note the lowercase “p” in “pentecostal”). Overall, this difference in methodological emphasis may also be reflected in the title of the Review: “Rethinking Chinese Christianity through a Pentecostal Lens” (emphasis added).
