In the Soviet Union, Christians and other dissidents were frequently committed to mental hospitals diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia.” But decades before Christians in the Soviet Union were being locked up for believing that Jesus rose from the dead, a Chinese Christian, John Sung Shang Chieh, was judged mentally ill for holding too enthusiastically to that same belief. Sung, who would be regarded as China’s greatest evangelist and preach throughout mainland China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia in the 1920’s and 1930’s, was committed to an insane asylum . . . in the United States of America!
The “John Wesley of China” was born to Methodist pastor Sung Hsueh Lien and his wife in Hinghwa (now known as Putian), in southeast China’s Fujian Province in September 1901. In February 1920, Methodist friends provided him with funds to travel to the United States. In spite of his unfamiliarity with English, Sung, a brilliant student, obtained a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics at Ohio Wesleyan University in three years. He graduated in the top four of a class of three hundred. Newspapers across America and in China reported on the “whiz kid from China” and named him “Ohio’s most famous student.” Sung then received a M.Sc. in June 1924, after just nine months of study, and a Ph.D. in chemistry in March 1926, both at Ohio State University.
Although he was offered a post at Peking University and a research fellowship in Germany, Sung’s “soul was restless and often depressed” according to the Rev. Dr. Timothy Tow in John Sung, My Teacher. The head of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at Ohio State persuaded Sung to enroll at Union Theological Seminary in the fall of 1926.
Sung had been exposed to liberal theology and the social gospel through campus ministries. But Union Theological Seminary, under the leadership of president, Henry Sloane Coffin, uncle of anti-war activist and pastor of Riverside Church, William Sloane Coffin, and Professor Harry Emerson Fosdick, also a pastor of Riverside Church, was something else. Every tenet of Christianity was rationalized or dismissed, including Scriptural authority, the Virgin Birth, the bodily Resurrection of Christ, the existence of miracles, the existence of heaven and hell, and the reality of prayer. Sung would later say that he went to a seminary that taught ‘God-is-dead’ theology with a principal whose name was Coffin, writes Tow.“This seminary became a cemetery to my troubled soul,” he would explain.
Solvent through six years of rigorous scientific scholarship, “Dr. Sung’s faith in God was whittled away,” in a few months at seminary Tow reports. Sung reasoned that if Christ had not risen from the dead, Christianity “was no better than Buddhism or Taoism,” according to Tow. He explored Taoism, Buddhism, and Islam, but “concluded neither science nor religion could satisfy the quest of his soul.” Sung wrote in his journal that his soul, “was lost in a desert country. I could not eat or sleep. My faith was like a storm-tossed ship without captain or compass. My heart was filled with misery and sadness.”
In December 1926, God began to arrange Sung’s escape from Union Theological Seminary. Shortly before Christmas, Sung and some other seminary students decided to attend an evangelistic campaign at Calvary Baptist Church. The speaker that evening was a 15 year-old girl, whose “impassioned utterances in prayer and articulate reading of Holy Scripture made an immediate impact on the audience,” says Tow. Although the other seminarians scoffed, “Sung could sense a power not ordinarily present in Church services, much less at the Seminary’s chapel hour.” Sung returned to the church again and again, and recorded in his journal, “As for the girl evangelist, she alone would qualify to be president or professor of a theological seminary. Our president should humble himself to learn the Truth from her.”
Throughout the winter break, Sung was “locked in a prolonged spiritual battle,” says Tow. Finally on February 10, 1927, Leslie T. Lyall, in A Biography of John Sung, says that Sung recorded, “This was my spiritual birthday! Although I already believed in Jesus since my early childhood days, this new experience is a life changing one for me ” Sung said that “The Holy Spirit poured onto me, just like water, on top of my head. The Holy Spirit continuously poured onto me wave after wave.” Sung revealed that the Lord had given him a new name, John, and appointed him to call people to repentance and prepare the way of the Lord, as John the Baptist had done.
Filled with joy for the restoration of his faith, Sung began preaching the Gospel on the seminary campus and throughout the city. “Wherever he went, whoever he met, his talk was Christ and His cleansing Blood,” says Tow. Sung told his former favorite professor, Dr. Fosdick, “You are of the devil. You made me lose my faith, and you are causing other young men to lose their faith.” Already alarmed by the new emotional and spiritual state of the young seminarian, Fosdick and Coffin became convinced that Sung was mentally ill. They told Sung that he had been working too hard, and that they would find him a place to rest.
The resting place turned out to be the Bloomingdale Mental Asylum of New York Hospital. Sung was confined for 193 days. At times he was placed in the ward for violent patients where day and night, Tow quotes him as saying, he was “bombarded by a tirade of jangling sounds — from self-scolding to strident singing, from jumping to clapping, from striking to cursing.” Sung wrote, ” Unless you were there you could never comprehend what I am trying to tell you. My mind could hardly snatch a moment of peace under these circumstances – what a mental torture!” In spite of the unpleasant circumstances, Sung believed that God used the experience to help prepare him. He wrote that he read the Bible 40 times while at Bloomingdale. The mental hospital was his seminary, he later declared.
Sung was released when his American missionary friend Dr. Rollin Walker returned from Europe and discovered what had happened to him. Walker demanded his release. At the same time, the asylum received an inquiry about Sung from the U.S. government inspired by a letter that Sung had written to the Chinese ambassador. Sung was released into Dr. Walker’s care and spent a month in Cincinnati with the missionary and his family before returning to China.
Sung went on to preach not only in mainland China and Taiwan, but in Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines until his death in August 1944 at the young age of 42. Over 100,000 came to Christ in China under his preaching in just three years. And the revival that took place had many similarities to the East African revival. Dr. Paul Lee Tan says that Sung “took sin seriously.” He would call on his listeners to repent of specific sins. “It was said that the income tax department always knew when John Sung was in town,” Tan writes.
Dr. John Sung was released from a mental hospital, but he escaped from Union Theological Seminary. He escaped from the spiritual deadness of liberal Protestant intellectualism and from the emptiness and despair that would have prevented his ministry, the preaching that led to spiritual revival across Asia.
Comment by Sara on February 17, 2014 at 6:20 pm
Wow – powerful article! Added the biography to my list!
Comment by Faith McDonnell on February 17, 2014 at 8:13 pm
Thanks, Sara! I know! I can’t believe that I had never heard of John Sung before now. I’ll bet that his journal is an amazing read, too.
Comment by Jeff Winter on February 18, 2014 at 6:00 am
So glad to read this article about John Sung. What inspiration for my soul.
Comment by Faith McDonnell on February 18, 2014 at 5:08 pm
I agree, Jeff. I did not know much about the Church in China in pre-Communist days. And to know how far in Southeast Asia John Sung traveled. He was like St. Paul!
Comment by Joe on February 18, 2014 at 3:07 pm
Was he committed to the asylum forcefully? Quite the startlingly prescient piece of history. Highlights well the ideology, not the inevitable factual reality, that is the unbelief of the higher criticisms and the oft referenced ironic intolerance of those who claim the word tolerant.
Comment by Faith McDonnell on February 18, 2014 at 5:12 pm
Hi Joe: He was committed to the asylum almost by trickery, I would say. They told him that he needed rest. In his journal he says he thinks they were sending him out to the country to a farm or something for a week, and then he finds himself in the asylum. I don’t know if he was KEPT by force, but there is one passage about his trying to “escape” and their catching him and putting him in the ward for the violent patients. He had no communication with the outside world for quite a while, either, until the nurse in charge started to help him getting letters out. That is how he reached the Chinese Ambassador. You ain’t kiddin’ it’s prescient!
Comment by Mary Chowenhill on February 19, 2014 at 1:17 pm
How often we take religious liberty as something that cannot be taken away. I pray that we will have the courage to share God’s amazing grace in a world that is often filled with skeptics. Thank you Faith for this reminder of our duty as Christians.
Comment by Faith McDonnell on February 19, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Thanks so much for writing, Mary, and for your heart for our brothers and sisters in the worldwide Body of Christ. God bless you!
Comment by Stephanie on February 21, 2014 at 3:56 pm
Wow, great to see an article spreading the word about John Sung – definitely a massively influential figure and fascinating to learn more about!
I know there has been a lot of debate about his representation of his time at Union. He certainly had a bad time with the liberal theology there, and saw it as a real turning point in his journey – but it’s not clear what were the exact circumstances of his time in the asylum and his request to return to Union, given that his diaries and the Union archives differ. The BDCC tends to be pretty reliable: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/s/song-shangjie.php
At any rate, I think what Doyle concludes there is right: “The discrepancies between his narrative of what happened at Union Seminary and historical fact, seem to accord with his dramatic personality. They do not discredit his later ministry, but cast light upon a complex figure whose lasting legacy remains immense.”
John Sung remains an inspiring figure for his boldness in proclaiming the Gospel in a very difficult time in China.
Comment by Faith McDonnell on February 21, 2014 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for writing, Stephanie. I agree he is a very inspiring figure, and I was very happy to learn about him.
I can understand someone of his boldness and having just had an encounter with Christ of the sort he describes seeming psychotic to secular psychiatrists, though. For instance, what would they have said about some of the things happening at places like Bethel Church in Redding today? Or would they think that my young North Kenyan friend, Wario, was having a psychotic break because Jesus appeared to him and that is how he became a Christian in a totally Muslim environment with no Christian influence at all?
But as you say, Doyle’s conclusion is right, regardless of whether there was some psychotic episode or just emotional/physical exhaustion thrown in with the spiritual revelation.
Comment by Stephanie on February 22, 2014 at 11:02 am
Hi Faith!!!!
Yeah, interesting questions… I think your examples show the risk of society ‘writing off’ someone’s religious experience just because it’s different, unfamiliar and therefore threatening. I think those situations, unfortunately, happen all too often: someone has a real mystical or conversion experience, but they are written off as ‘crazy’ instead of being taken seriously.
What I really struggle to understand, nonetheless, is what to make of people who really do have psychiatric conditions and also express religious experiences. When I worked as a hospital chaplain, I had quite a few psychiatric patients… For example, I remember one man who used to talk about Jesus appearing to him and telling him to do things; but he’d also talk about an airplane crash (which, the nurses, verified, had not in fact taken place) and a squirrel that would come talk to him on the end of the bed when I wasn’t there. Pastorally, of course, I supported him as best I could, offering companionship and encouraging him in his faith. But in my own reflection, I wondered what to make of it…. He was equally adamant about Jesus, the airplane crash, and the squirrel. What do I make of that? As a Christian, do I take him at his word about all of it, concluding that God is giving him visions of a squirrel? Or do I take the Jesus-talk as ‘more real’ than the other stuff, because I believe that Jesus is in fact real but the airplane and squirrel are not – such that the Jesus visions are ‘of God’ but the other visions are just psychiatric static? Or do I conclude that, though some people have real experiences of Jesus, this man’s psychological condition was just making him hallucinate it all? I believe God speaks to and through everybody, including people who have psychiatric conditions…. But it raises interesting questions.
I don’t know what John Sung’s actual situation was…. Maybe he was just a fervent Christian, utterly ‘normal’ but horribly treated and misunderstood by those at Union. Maybe he was truly suffering from a psychiatric breakdown, and later tried to make sense of it in his memoirs by narrating it as a pivotal theological moment in his spiritual journey. Or maybe he was suffering from a psychiatric breakdown AND God was actually in that. I don’t know!
At any rate, it makes me marvel at the way God loves all of us, with all the quirks of our personalities and biochemistries and whatnot!
Comment by Faith McDonnell on February 24, 2014 at 11:26 am
Hi Stephanie, Thanks for writing again. It is truly a fascinating topic that you have brought up — not just about John Sung, but in general, and makes me think of many other people and their struggles.
My first thoughts were about the mistreatment and lack of understanding at Union — based on the long experience of Christians in the Soviet Union who were institutionalized for their faith or for being political dissidents. But, wow, your experience of the man talking to Jesus and a squirrel and the airplane crash! (Personally, I’d love to have a squirrel chat with me).
How to make sense of it all? You lay out the possibilities very well. The plane crash thing reminds me of a homeless guy that I met when I was doing Grate Patrol, though. It was a matter of his interpreting his actual experience with words that sounded crazy. In this case, the man told me he had come to DC because his son had been killed when part of an alien spaceship hit him. Crazy, no? The truth was that this man’s son had been out fishing, and had been killed when a piece of a space shuttle returning to the earth hit his boat! Luckily, he had a (very grimy) newspaper clipping about what really happened, or we would have just written him off as rambling incoherently.
The other scenario — the person IS suffering from a psychiatric breakdown AND having an experience of God. I can think of many writers, poets to whom that would seem to apply. Poor Christopher Smart for one. Also, William Cowper. I wrote my Master’s thesis on Cowper, who as part of his mental illness believed that he had been condemned to eternal damnation by God, in spite of writing dozens of hymns extolling salvation available to all (but him!).
I was cheered by the description of Cowper’s death by his nephew, who said that a look of “amazement and delight” came on his face in death. God’s love won out in the end!
Comment by Stephanie on February 27, 2014 at 4:16 pm
Hey Faith – thanks for writing! Wow, that Cowper story is really striking. I like how you put it – ‘God’s love won out in the end.’
Comment by Grant LeMarquand on February 28, 2014 at 4:53 am
I haven ‘t had much chance to read your stuff recently (too much refugee crisis where I am…) but I’m so encouraged to read this piece about John Sung – I was familiar with the name, but didn’t know the story. Actually Joe beat me to the punch – the take away for me is the lack of tolerance of those who claim the term. I have have more than my share of radical theology over the years and have often been on the receiving end of ridicule from so-called liberals. I have a quiver full of stories, but let me share one. A long time ago now my wife and I were involved in an episode in Kenya during which a young woman was delivered from evil spirits which had apparently come her way as a result of being cursed by her parents. Through some wonderful ministry she was freed. Upon hearing what had happened a long time (liberal) missionary in the staff of the theological college where this had taken place took me aside threatened to have me thrown out of the country, saying that I (as a westerner) should have known that her problem was psychological and that she should have been taken to Matare Hospital – a psychiatric institution not much different from a prison. HE should have known better – she would never have gotten out and her life would have been hell. Instead she learned about the saving love of Jesus, and became a strong Christian. For this missionary, however, her deliverance did not fit his worldview and he was fighting mad that she had had this experience of freedom. Thankfully the principal of the college had also heard of the incident and backed up those of us (students and staff) who were involved.
Blessings
+Grant
Comment by Faith McDonnell on February 28, 2014 at 7:52 pm
Hi Bishop Grant!
So good to hear from you. I can imagine that you have been very busy. We are praying for all of you.
Thanks for sharing your experience in Kenya. Wow. How wonderful to see the power of God, and how sad for the missionary who could NOT see it.
Glad you are keeping up with us, Bishop Grant. I will be in touch soon. I have some questions about the situation in Ethiopia.
Take care, and love to Dr. Wendy,
Faith
Comment by Grant LeMarquand on March 5, 2014 at 8:04 am
Contact me any time Faith – it just may take me a few days to respond…
+Grant
Comment by Faith McDonnell on March 5, 2014 at 12:46 pm
Thanks so much, Bishop Grant. God bless you and your precious people.
Comment by Essie on October 6, 2017 at 6:09 pm
Ya know all this just remains me that if all Western Christians had accepted liberal theology the church would still be mainly a Western white man’s religion, the fruits of missions from dedicated Christians in the 19th and 20th century is showing as a testimony to those people who kept the faith and gave it to others.Today Koreans are the second largest missionary group. As a black woman, its a blessing to see Christianity back to its racial and cultural diverse form like in the days of the early church.
As to liberal/progressive theology, because of its nature it rejections the very things that have most inspired and moved the Church throughout the centuries to grow, mature and preserve. It’s sad that these men where so far gone they couldn’t even understand someone like John Sung, imagine how the divide is even worse today. This just illustrates why this, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross”, reworking of Christianity won’t grow or out pace the classical gospel.
Its seems this confirms what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said about people like Harry Emerson Fosdick , “”In New York they preach about virtually everything except the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” I guess that’s too passe.