This book is the latest release in Paul Hattaway’s “China Chronicles” series. Each book is published not only in English but also in Chinese, the author’s intent in writing them is “primarily to bless and encourage the persecuted church in China” (page xii). Thousands of copies of these books are distributed for free in the house church networks in China (xii). Those of us in the West reap the benefit of being able to read this important Chinese Christian history.

As the title indicates, this present volume focuses on the province of Fujian. Fujian Province is located along the southeastern coast of China (pages v, 1). As of 2020 it had a population of 41,540,086 (page vi). Fujian has over 2,200 islands and has the greatest forests of any Chinese province, 63% of the land is forests (page 2).

While different ethnic groups live in the province the majority of the population are Han Chinese, making up 98.3% of the population (page vi). The people in Fujian speak a number of different Chinese dialects and languages that are very different from Mandarin, which is the national language (page vii). Some people from Fujian Province have moved to other Asian countries including Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines (page vii). The residents of Fujian are more religious than the people of many provinces in China (page 9), they honor a number of different deities (page 10).

Chuxi Tulou cluster in Fujian Province.
Image: via WikiMedia Commons.

The gospel was introduced in Fujian Province over 1,000 years ago by the Nestorians (page 11). The Catholic Church established itself in the province in the 1300s and about 500 years later Evangelicals came into Fujian (page 11). The gospel message had to overcome significant challenges, securing a foothold in the province in the 19^th century (page 11). However, the province was home to two well-known Christian ministers: John Sung and Watchman Nee (page 11). Although from the 1980s until the present day the province has not had the powerful revival accounts of other parts of China, it does have some notable statistics. There are about 5.8 million Christians (Catholics and Evangelicals) in the province (page 12). This is 14.7 % of the people who live there, this places it 5^th among all the Chinese provinces (page 12). The church in Fujian has had to deal with a lack of Bibles and the challenge of cults (page 12).

The book is comprised of chapters devoted to different decades, key events, and important individuals (pages ix, x). Catholics and Evangelicals are included in the book. Like the other books in the “China Chronicles” series, this present volume also contains pictures throughout the text and appendixes at the end of the book. The appendixes include important facts and figures about the people of Fujian, what may be of particular interest to readers is the attention given to the Christian population in the province.

Misty Morning in Xiamen, China
Image: Jay Huang

In the book the author writes about various missionaries who labored in Fujian. As we begin to consider some of them, I will start by mentioning two men and two women who are among the lesser-known missionaries. These missionaries are: John Wolfe, Amy Oxley-Wilkinson, Margaret Barber, and Leland Wang. There are also others that I did not mention who are included in the book. Those that I did mention each have a chapter devoted to them.

John Wolfe was an Irishman who served in Fujian for 53 years (pages 67-68). He was highly respected by the Chinese believers who referred to him as “The Fujian Moses,” because of their respect for him and his long beard (page 68). In time three of Wolfe’s daughters served in Fujian as missionaries (pages 68-69).

Amy Oxley-Wilkinson, came from a well-to-do family, she left that to serve the physical and spiritual needs of the Chinese, and she had a particular burden for blind children (pages 127, 129). She received the highest honor a foreigner could then receive in China, The Order of the Golden Grain, awarded by the Republic of China’s president (page 132).

Margaret Barber was born in England (page 146), a good part of her ministry was hidden because she gave herself to intercession, but she was highly regarded by some of the most well-known Christian leaders of the time (pages 145-146). She began her ministry as an Anglican missionary but later became an independent missionary (pages 146, 148). She had an impact on a well-known Christian leader mentioned in the book, that person was Watchman Nee (page 152).

Leland Wang was a Chinese national who emerged as a leader in the church in Fujian Province (page 155). He evangelized on the streets and founded the “Chinese Foreign Missionary Union” (page 158). He preached in a number of places around the world and established churches in: “the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East” (page 158).

Two names that many western readers may know that are mentioned in Fujian: The Blessed Province are John Sung and Watchman Nee. They each have two chapters devoted to them in the book (page 11).

John Sung was the son of a Methodist preacher and participated with his father in ministry (page 167). The 1909 Putian (Hinghwa) Revival had a big impact on him (page 167). His ministry was relatively brief. Hattaway, citing a quote of Paul Kauffman, calls our attention to the fact that Sung’s public ministry was only 15 years long (page 166), yet his impact was significant. He ministered not only in Fujian Province but in many other Chinese provinces as well (page 167).

Fujian: The Blessed Province, like the other books in the “China Chronicles” series, is rich in information. It demonstrates to us that God’s work is carried forward by well-known Christians and little-known Christians. As each one faithfully does their part this contributes to the overall growth of the gospel. The lives of the Chinese believers offer us both inspiration and challenge. And they show us what God can do with yielded and obedient servants.

Reviewed by John Lathrop

From the Asia Harvest website: https://www.asiaharvest.org/bookstore/Fujian-The-Blessed-Province-The-China-Chronicles-N%C2%BA9-p752236177

Further Reading

Li Shiguang, “Marking Rev. John Sung’s 120th Birthday, Pastor Edwin Su Wenfeng Urges Chinese Christians to Carry on the Fire of Revival” China Christian Daily (November 9, 2021).

“1909 Hinghwa Revival” Romans1015.com

• Global ministry celebrates 70 years: In 1955, Brother Andrew began a work that this year celebrates its 70^th anniversary, as the organization Open Doors.
• The hidden scale of the need: 380 million Christians face persecution worldwide—1 in 7 believers.
• What Open Doors does today: Open Doors strengthens persecuted Christians worldwide through comprehensive support programs including Bible distribution, discipleship training, pastoral development, and presence ministry in the most restricted and dangerous places.

ORANGE, Calif., July 29, 2025 — In the summer of 1955, a young Dutch missionary named Andrew van der Bijl loaded a suitcase with Bibles and drove toward the Iron Curtain. What he found behind those borders changed everything: Christians who thought the world had forgotten them.

That first journey of “God’s Smuggler” launched what would become Open Doors—and revealed a truth that still drives the ministry as it celebrates its 70^th anniversary. Persecuted Christians need more than just Bibles. They need everything.

When governments or fringe groups restrict religious freedom, they don’t just ban Bibles—they block Christians from jobs, education, and community life. Open Doors’ response has grown to match. What began with Bible smuggling has evolved into a sophisticated global network addressing every aspect of persecution, providing everything from medical care and trauma healing to discipleship training, legal advocacy to economic development.

Beyond Smuggling: Meeting Every Need

Image: Vladimir Zuhovitsky

Brother Andrew, as he became known, began with Scripture. But as his ministry grew across Europe and beyond, other needs emerged that were just as critical. Isolated church leaders needed training. Families driven from their homes needed food and shelter. Children faced with discrimination needed educational support. Believers under surveillance needed safe spaces to gather.

Brother Andrew and his growing network of friends didn’t have anything like the skills and resources for this scale of a challenge. So they started praying, and sought to keep being faithful to the next thing.

This past year alone, the organization they began has achieved things that are a true “loaves and fishes” story when one thinks back to Andrew’s little suitcase full of Bibles. In 2024, Open Doors reached 9.5 million persecuted Christians in 70+ countries. The statistics tell a remarkable story of expansion: 5.7 million people received biblical training and discipleship. 2.5 million received Bibles and Christian literature. More than 535,000 received socio-economic support. Another 542,000 received advocacy support.

“Brother Andrew’s mission has undoubtedly changed the world,” said Open Doors US CEO Ryan Brown. “One man, through Christ alone, made an irreversible impact wherever he went. That’s how Open Doors started—and it’s how it continues today.”

When Faith Costs Everything

The need has never been greater. Today, 380 million Christians—1 in 7 believers worldwide—face persecution for their faith. In some countries, owning a Bible can mean execution or life in a concentration camp. Yet believers still risk everything to read Bibles buried under trees, awakening in the dead of night to gather in secret.

And when people have this kind of courage, Open Doors is there to make sure they aren’t alone — with an approach mirroring the comprehensive nature of persecution itself.

The Legacy Continues

In the biblical verse that launched Brother Andrew’s mission—“Strengthen what remains and is about to die” (Revelation 3:2)—persecuted Christians found hope. In Open Doors’ comprehensive response, they find practical support that helps them not just survive, but thrive as witnesses in their communities.

As Open Doors marks its 70th anniversary, the mission that began with one man’s courage continues through thousands of supporters who understand a simple truth: when someone comes alongside you in your darkest moments, everything changes.

Today, that “someone” continues coming for 380 million persecuted Christians worldwide.

About Open Doors

Open Doors works in the world’s most oppressive regions, strengthening Christians to stand strong in the face of persecution and equipping them to share the gospel in their communities. Since Brother Andrew started the work in 1955, the ministry has mobilized prayer, support and advocacy for Christians living in places where faith in Jesus can be costly. Now working in more than 70 countries around the world, Open Doors is committed to standing with persecuted Christians through Bible distribution, training and socio-economic aid. Learn more at opendoorsus.org.

The Italian Pentecostal Movement has had a profound impact worldwide, with the International Fellowship of Christian Assemblies serving as its primary exponent in the English-speaking world. Related movements flourish in Argentina, Italy, Brazil, and over 80 other countries. The archives also house materials pertaining to co-sister Scandinavian-related movements, such as the Assembleias de Deus.

The Itamar Coutinho Archives boast a rich collection, including original documents and copies, letters from pioneers, historical sources, and secondary literature. Researchers and enthusiasts will also find a diverse collection of Bibles in various languages and one of Brazil’s largest publicly available hymnbook collections. The archives are open for visitation and research by contacting the host institution, Instituto Meditafé.

Itamar Coutinho, a long-time enthusiast of this history and a leading minister at the Brazilian Christian Assemblies, has been instrumental in the creation of this archive. He is also a published author, with biographies on influential figures Louis Francescon and Rosina Balzano Francescon. Furthermore, Coutinho was responsible for the Brazilian edition for the classic textbook history of the Italian-American Pentecostal movement, Our Heritage (Nossa Herança, in Portuguese), by Louis de Caro.

This project is a partnership with Círculo de Cultura Bíblica, another initiative focused on disseminating the theology and history of the worldwide Pentecostal movement, which has roots in the Chicago revival of 1907. The archives aim to serve both the worldwide church and academic scholars.

Volunteers at the Instituto Meditafé, a church-supporting ministry in Londrina, are working to catalogue the entire archives.

The opening ceremony featured notable speakers, including Pastor Juliano Francisco, minister of Instituto Meditafé, and Isael Araújo, a historian from the Assemblies of God in Brazil and the organizer of another leading archive in the country, the Centro de Estudos do Movimento Pentecostal (CEMP) in Rio de Janeiro.

The Itamar Coutinho Archives are located at Instituto Meditafé, AvenidaMario José Romagnolli, 735 Jarddim São Paulo, Londrina, PR, Brazil. For more information, please visit https://meditafe.org.br/.

Depending on what Christian tradition one finds oneself in, the question of Christian art is a difficult and delicate topic. Are we permitted to have Christian art? Can we represent Jesus? What disposition should we have towards artistic representations of Jesus, the apostles, or Christian saints? Does any of this break the Second Commandment? How and why did the Christian church eventually permit the use, and sometimes veneration, of Christian art? This book, From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Images in Late Antiquity by Robin M. Jensen seeks to answer that last question. Jensen is a seasoned and respected scholar of early Christian art and one could not find a more able guide.

Christians, Jensen shows in chapter four, most likely had artistic representations of some kind even as far back as the first century, only avoiding depictions of the Greco-Roman gods. When Christians began developing their own “material culture” by the third century, the artwork they commissioned was primarily narratival–depicting scenes from biblical stories–or symbolic. It was in the late fourth and early fifth centuries that the shift from narrative and symbol to portraits began to take place. With this shift also came, as explored in chapter five, debates about how to relate to such portraits of Christ or the saints. Were they vehicles facilitating a “face-to-face” encounters with the subject portrayed? By the fifth and sixth centuries, Christians felt they could honor such holy portraits while simultaneously distinguishing them from the person they represented. These debates naturally led to questions of how such connections between the subject and the portrait were possible (chapter six). Did it depend on the likeness between the subject and the portrait? Ultimately, the early Christians answered in the negative. As an aside, this chapter was the most interesting to me as she discusses and illustrates both the continuity and polymorphic representations of Christ in Christian art. Chapter seven rounds out the historical narrative of Jensen’s book by looking at the reported miracles associated with “holy portraits.”

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this book is its brevity (excluding endnotes, the book is only 169 pages). Profound brevity is the mark of a true expert, and Jensen shows herself as such. The book is filled with many fascinating examples of early Christian art that Jensen expertly weaves into her narrative. Coming in at a list price is $65 (USD), which may be cost-prohibitive for some, one hopes a cheaper paperback volume will make this excellent work more widely available.

Reviewed by Ryan Clevenger

Publisher’s page: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/from-idols-to-icons/hardcover

The uncertainty in defining Anna Bartleman’s role as a minister, comes with the lack of a definite image. With preserved photos of early Pentecostal women like Phoebe Palmer, Lucy Farrow, William Seymour’s wife and even Agnes Ozman, it would be plausible that a photo of Anna Ladd-Bartleman would also be readily available. Especially when just a quick search returns photos of her husband Frank as young adult, mid-life preacher, missionary to Russia with a typical winter hat and even a portrait drawing.  The astonishment grows even further as Frank’s lament of the early death of their first-born child in his 1909 book My Story “The Latter Rain” is accompanied with a photo of daughter Esther, obviously cut out from a larger family photo. But once again no photo of wife Anna.

With this quick observation in mind, a Pentecostal researcher now turns into the appropriate archives at Flower, Dixon, ORU only to find out that a photo of Anna Ladd-Bartleman is not to be found in any known Pentecostal library yet. Quite surprised, I then turned to several secondary sources and publishers. Among many worth mentioning were: Azusa Books that has encapsulated in many publication’s insights of ethnic and cultural struggles among early Pentecostals and the Zion Christian Ministry that has presented a chronological parallel of all Bartleman’s writings in one homogenous story of his life and ministry. They too had never seen a picture of Anna.

In my naïve persistence in the weeks following, I even reached out via friends to noted Pentecostal theologians and historians like De Arteaga (Lucy F. Farrow: The Forgotten Apostle), Faupel (The Everlasting Gospel), Ruthven, Macchia, Lathrop, Bundy, and many more. None of them has seen a picture of Frank Bartleman’s wife, but I was given a helpful hint to contact Dr. Robeck at Fuller being thoughtfully forewarned, “If he hasn’t seen her photo, no one has!”

I persisted on my own terms and contacted friends in Bulgaria with whom we have done research before – all serious scholars with serious intentions. Among them were the son of a Rousse Methodist pastor sentenced in the Pastor’s Trials staged by the communists in 1948-49, who had made it the purpose in life to uncover secret police archives in Bulgaria. With his diligent research back in the day, we found the books of minutes of the Rousse Methodist church and the Rousse Assemblies of God with all attached correspondence, which were all thought destroyed by the communists. Anna’s adopted family oversaw all Methodist missions in Bulgaria up until 1890 and it was plausible that at least their family photo would be in the archives.

Next was another friend, a Harvard graduate, whose dissertation on the Ottoman Empire helped me some two decades ago to discover the personal translation notes of a Bulgarian priest who rendered the first modern Bulgarian New Testament in 1840. While everyone else was searching for the diary notes at Bulgaria’s National Library, we discovered it stored with virtually no public access in the office of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchy just a block down the street.

Finally, to my aid came a colleague who, at the dawn of democracy in Bulgaria, created the Decommunization web-portal dedicated to revealing lost archival records of communist crimes. Around 2007-2008, together we unveiled the secret dossiers of 17 communist agents infiltrated as pastors in various evangelical churches during the Regime to effectively control the life and work of Bulgaria’s evangelical movement in the years to come.

All our combined attempts to find anything on Anna-Ladd Bartleman were in vain. The Methodist archives in Bulgaria contained no pictures from that early period. Bulgaria’s National Library and Archives hardly existed during the times when the Ladds ministered in the country. And as to the National Archives, Bulgaria had virtually no pre-1900s adoption legislation or records. As a last attempt in Bulgaria, I consulted the little remaining museum collections of the primary school in Svishtov (Sistof) and the school for girls in Lovetch (Lofcha) both of which the Ladds oversaw as part of their missionary assignment in Bulgaria. As it was not clear if Anna attended any of those missionary schools, except primary, being only eight years old when adopted and 12 upon leaving Bulgaria never to return there again. And with having no record of Anna, the missionary schools did not have her photo either.

During the Christmas break of 2020, I finally worked out enough courage to email Dr. Robeck with my Brill Encyclopedia article on Anna and a request for help. To my surprise, he emailed me back the next day with tons of information and continued to do so in the days that followed assisting my search in every way possible to the point of even providing every address where the Bartlemans lived. Unfortunately, no picture of Anna was found in his personal archive either. He was told by Bartleman’s son John that all family photos remained with daughter Ruth Bulloti never to be seen again. At this point as even Dr. Robeck “hasn’t seen” a photo of Anna Ladd-Bartleman, my search was to be over. At least on the higher academia side…

I did succeed in following the connection with Barlteman’s daughter, Ruth Margaret Bulloti, and discovered a masterfully created Bush family website managed by a Ph.D. researcher and librarian from the University of Wisconsin. Though his family tree compiled an enormous amount of information, as to uncle Frank Bush who married Ruth Margaret, it only had the family names and an old address from the census. All the Bulloti and Bush children were now deceased, and finding their grandchildren was a task of its own.

This new challenge led me to a wider search through Ancestry, Family Search and various other family tree databases. There were hundreds of searches already created on Frank’s side, but when it came down to his wife, she was only mentioned by name, birth and marriage. Anna’s side of the family had been researched just a few times more recently between 2017-2019. I managed to contact all names listed, assuming some were family members or close relatives. Only a few responded back and none of them had ever seen a picture of Anna. On the plus side, I did notice several of the family trees on the list updating within days using the information I sent out. This encouraged me to contact them again asking for information on family members that were still living, but no answer followed. With this, the family part of my search for Anna’s photo seemed to be over as well.

I woke up around 4 a.m. the following morning in the snow-covered Smokey Mountains, fired up my computer by the fireplace, pulled out all of Frank Bartleman’s books and the available Methodist archives and began mapping Anna’s journey around the globe. Still well before the crack of dawn, I had discovered J. S. Ladd’s obituary with Anna mentioned by her Bulgarian-birth name, Slavka Tanasova (misspelled by the printer due to Ladd’s handwriting as Slarka Lanasova), her listing as Annie Ladd in the ship’s manifest upon their arrival as family to the United States in 1890 and the address where they first resided in Brooklyn, New York. Not only did I not find the long-searched photo, but now I had managed to lose track of Anna for almost a decade between 1890 and 1899 when she became the matron of Christian home for girls in Pittsburgh, PA.

For the rest of the day, in hope to find a picture of Anna, I emailed various historical societies and proceeded to examined the census records of the Ladd family. This attempt followed the path of the churches pastored by J. S. Ladd, at Dover Plaines (1893), Ancram, NY (1894-98), East Chatham (1899-1903), Putnam Valley (1904-08), Patterson (1909-11) and Johnsville, NY (1912) up to his death in 1922. The Putnam Valley, Patterson, Ancram and the rest of the historical societies all the way to Correy, PA where Frank and Anna Bartleman were married and first pastored, had no photo of the Bartlemans or the Ladds. This was quite a surprise given the significance of their ministry, and in the case Rev. J. S. Ladd’s notorious business entrepreneurship in each community where they resided to the point of designing a trolley line in upstate New York. But Anna was once again nowhere to be found except in one single reference given by the town historian of Ancram via the Old Fulton New York archive. The local Columbian Republican posted on September 19, 1922 that,

Mrs. Clara Porter received a card from Mrs. Annie Ladd Bartleman, of Los Angeles, Cal., saying her mother, Mrs Ladd passed away in June at her home in Spring Arbor, (Michigan). Mr. Ladd her husband, was a former pastor in the M. E. here [Ancram, NY].

No census records showed Anna living with the Ladds after arriving to America. They did show, however, that upon his passing in 1922 Rev. J. S. Ladd left to his wife Rosa-Celia quite a large realty inheritance. It was obvious from all census and newspaper articles covering local properties, however, that as the only, though adopted child, Anna was not listed among the beneficiaries of any of the family properties. With this information, it was becoming clearer why a photo from her early years may have not been preserved.

Meanwhile, the general Methodist Archive at Drew University also responded to one of my requests. Though limited to some 50 pages in all, their records on J. S. Ladd contained his handwritten correspondence with the Methodist Mission Board in America. The letters were primarily regarding financial support of the mission station and adjunct schools, but they did contain an interesting reference written by Rev. Ladd in 1889 while requesting to return to America after seven years in the field. All expenses for the leave were to be paid by the undersigned on behalf of his “Wife & little girl.” Though the name of the “little girl” was not explicitly mentioned and neither was of his wife, it was well understood this to be their only (adopted) child Anna.

Indeed, Anna arrived with the Ladds to America in 1890, but even my most persistent attempt could not discover anything about her following upbringing or education in America until 1899 when Frank Bartleman met her as a Christian worker at the Hope Mission in Pittsburgh, PA. Their following assignment to the mission’s branch in McKees Rocks, PA where Frank proposed in marriage, was not coincidental. The growing Russian immigrant community at McKees Rocks was well established with vibrant spiritual life and an Eastern Orthodox church of their own. Anna’s Slavic origin would have given her advantage in communicating and ministering in such immigrant community. Unfortunately, in all numerous archives from the time period, the McKees Rocks historical society had no record of Anna, Frank or even a local branch of the Hope Mission.

Following the next step in Anna’s journey led to Corry, PA proposing an important starting point for the young Bartleman family. Frank’s own record of the story included marriage, pastorship, family ties amid his experience with the early holiness movement, the exact location of the wedding, name of the local Methodist conference superintendent who met Frank at the train station and later performed the wedding and signed their marriage license. It also contained the peculiar detail that Frank travelled to Corry alone to receive the pastoral appointment and apply for marriage license until Anna arrived a few days later. But apart from the marriage license docket in the city archive, nothing in the records of Corry Area Historical Society, First Methodist Church or the United Methodist Church in town pointed to Bartleman’s year-long ministry there or the much sought after family photo with Anna. It was only by the process of elimination that became clear, which was the church they pastored and where they were married.

The following stops in Bartleman’s journey West toward California did not reveal a family photo, though at least one was in existence with firstborn daughter Esther in it. All known group pictures from the Alma White’s Pillar of Fire, Pasadena’s Peniel Mission and early Azusa meetings had no photo identifying Anna Ladd-Bartleman either. Same was the result from my inquiry to B. Martin who extensively researched one of Frank’s close coworkers and travel companions, Edward J. Boehmer. With the same success, I consecutively followed the stops in their multiple home-mission journeys until 1912.

Finally, the examination of early Pentecostal sources through Europe was to be consulted. I focused predominantly on the places where Anna and the children stayed for a longer period of time while Frank travelled and preached. Among them Halifax in England, Bremen and Bunde in Germany, Orebro in Sweden, Gaufiin in Finland and several more all the way to Sister Carnell’s Pentecostal Home in London and Glad Tidings in New York, which were the two final stops of Bartlemans’ world missions’ journey before returning home. A picture of Anna-Ladd Bartleman was nowhere to be found.

With months of research under my belt, I had managed to compile sufficient information on Anna Ladd-Bartleman not just for this current paper, but also for another one on early Pentecostal women in Bulgaria for SPS, encyclopedia article for Brill and a chapter in my upcoming book on the first centennial anniversary of Bulgarian Pentecostalism, Unforgotten. But with all this, I was still missing her photo, which inspired the following appeal in place of an epilogue:

If you are reading this and you have a photo of Anna Ladd-Bartleman, please feel free to contact me directly [Editor’s note: we are glad to connect readers with authors when we can]. Do the same if you would like to inquire if I have already found one past the completion of this paper. I will be more than happy to send you a copy. For if we really want to rediscover the vision, redefine the role and hear again the voice of our women of Pentecost in this digital era, we can start by finding a picture…

The Unforgotten: Historical and Theological Roots of Pentecostalism in Bulgaria 

Hardcover – May 10, 2021

This book tells the story of four early Pentecostal families who brought the message of Azusa to Bulgaria, Eastern Europe and Russia. The research has taken over a decade to complete. It started with a brief article on the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in Bulgaria, where unfortunately many church archives were destroyed during Communism. Consecutively, the research led my wife and I on a long journey from the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, to the Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, Pusey Library at Harvard, the British and Foreign Bible Society in Cambridge, and countless Bulgarian churches. We are grateful to the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center for making readily available their denominational archives. Dr. Albert Wardin graciously opened the door for research in Nashville and Berkeley, where most documentation of Voronaev’s early ministry are preserved. Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. of Fuller provided tremendous guidance to the life and ministry of Frank and Anna Bartleman through virtually every step of their journey and every address they occupied. We are also thankful to Dr. Oleg Bornovolokov of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kiev, who helped with various KGB/FSB documents and the NKVD dossiers from Gulag. The papers included in this book were presented at Society for Pentecostal Studies meetings between 2010 and 2021. The first part of the book appeared in vol. 30 (2010) of Assemblies of God Heritage magazine and their December, 2010 editorial. The Bulgarian Pentecostal Union published our translation and commentary of Voronaev’s correspondence in their monthly Evangel. In 2011, Dr. Vladimir Franchuk, translated our Voronaev’s papers in Russian and included them in his book Revival: from the center of Odessa to the ends of Russia just in time for the 90th anniversary of Pentecostalism in Russia. Most of the historiographical data presented in this book is being published openly for the first time.

This introduction to revival and his personal testimony, from atheist to revivalist, is an excerpt from Ian Hall’s book, Times of Renewal: A History and Theology of Revival and Spiritual Awakenings (Encourage Publishing, 2024).

Revival is a major topic of interest in the Christian world today. Newspaper and magazine articles, both religious and secular, sporadically feature reports from every inhabited continent bringing news of a revitalization of the spiritual life of the church. For some three years in the mid-nineties, an obscure Toronto Charismatic Church became the surprising venue for hundreds of thousands of visitors from virtually every country around the world, because Revival, or at least “a refreshing”, was reported to be occurring there. As interest waned a northwest Florida Pentecostal Church claimed the spotlight for some two years. Then in 2008 a central Florida church briefly seized the Christian world’s attention. Most recently in February 2023, has come the news of a fresh awakening at several Christian Colleges and Universities in the USA and in other countries. In 1996 the American Assemblies of God renamed its “Signs and Wonders” Conference in Springfield, Missouri, “Revival Now”. What does it all mean?

The Significance of Revival. For some, Revival is an arcane topic of interest only to religious zealots longing for the good old days of the Nineteenth Century. When our world is about to self-destruct in sociological and economic chaos, the study of Revival seems as helpful as meditating during an earthquake would be. Nevertheless, from very different theological perspectives William G. McLoughlin (1922–1992) and Timothy L. Smith (1924–1997) rooted historical revitalizations of society in religious revivals.¹

The Definition of Revival. In North America in particular, revival is used in two different ways. Webster’s Dictionary defines revival as “an awakening, in a church or community, of interest in and care for matters relating to personal religion; (and) a service or a series of services for the purpose of effecting a religious awakening.”⁴ We may therefore speak of a revival in the older and more widely used sense of a spiritual awakening affecting a whole community. We may also speak of a revival in the peculiarly American sense of a type of evangelistic crusade that is intended hopefully to revitalize the believers and to awaken the surrounding community.

This American usage of revival is usually traced back to the teaching of Charles G. Finney (1792–1875), the renowned nineteenth century revivalist. He asserted that:

“A revival is the result of the right use of the appropriate means. The means which God has enjoined for the production of a revival, doubtless have a natural tendency to produce a revival. … A revival is as naturally a result of the appropriate means as a crop is of the use of its appropriate means.”⁵

By linking revival to “the right use of the appropriate means” Finney taught that revival is the result of something that we do. He did, however, acknowledge that, of themselves “means will not produce a revival, we all know, without the blessing of God.”⁶ Nevertheless amongst his followers, revival came to be used for the means themselves, not solely for the intended result of those means.

If these variant usages are not clearly distinguished, we may encounter such confusing comments as: “We had a revival, but nobody was revived,” or, “We had a revival in our church, and, in the middle of it, God sent us a revival.” If our terms are not clear, our language confuses rather than communicates our meaning. Dr. J. Edwin Orr (1912–1987), the renowned revival scholar, told of passing a church in southern California that advertised: “Revival – every night except Monday.” At the same time a neighboring church was advertising: “Revival – every night except Friday.” Orr wondered why one could not have revival on a Monday and the other could not have revival on a Friday. Could the Lord be too busy to be present every night? Or, were the believers too busy with other things to be revived every night?

Although the term Revival may suggest a scheduled Revival Crusade to the American mind, our use is in the sense of a quickening or renewing by the Holy Spirit of the spiritual life of the believers, individually and as the Body of  Christ in a given community, which prompts a return to New Testament Christianity. Thus, Orr defined an Evangelical Awakening, his preferred term for an authentic revival, as:

“An Evangelical Awakening is a movement of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the Church of Christ and its related community. Such an awakening may change in a significant way an individual only; or it may affect a larger group of believers; or it may move a congregation, or the churches of a city or a district, or the whole body of believers throughout a country or a continent; or indeed the larger body of believers throughout the world.”⁷

Orr’s definition most precisely describes what has happened in the historical revivals of Christianity, and corresponds with my personal experience of the work of God.

A Personal Journey in Revival. I became a Christian believer through a life-transforming spiritual encounter with God in the city of Kingston-upon-Hull in England on Wednesday, November 27, 1957. A young man, David King, had been witnessing to me, a young atheist, about his Christian faith. In an attempt to demonstrate the falsity of his belief in the existence of God, I agreed to pray a simple prayer: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”⁸ Although at first nothing happened, which is precisely what I expected, on the third time of repeating that prayer I suddenly became conscious of an unseen presence, whose overwhelming holiness exposed the sinfulness of my heart. The intensity of that experience humbled me in repentance and awakened me to the reality of God.

Shortly afterwards David recommended to me a book by a Scots revivalist, Duncan Campbell (1898–1972),⁹ which gave me a clearer perspective on my own experience, and also aroused in me a lifelong interest in Revival. In the summer of 1959, I read in a Christian paper an advertisement for a preaching convention in the nearby city of Sheffield, at which the main speaker would be the same Duncan Campbell. Although the convention was only a week away, I resolved to go and the pastor of the host church offered to accommodate me in his home. To my delight I discovered that Campbell was also staying in the same home. To sit across the kitchen table from this venerable Man of God after church each night until the early hours of the morning and to hear him describe the revivals in the Hebrides Islands in 1949 and 1957 was like heaven to me.

Although I entered the Christian ministry the next year with the full expectation that God would surely send another revival, it was not until August 4, 1974, that that expectation was realized in my experience. For the previous five years I, together with my wife, Sheila, had been pastoring a struggling Elim Pentecostal Church in Ryde, Isle of Wight, with modest success. Unexpectedly in the morning service a very refined older lady in the congregation spontaneously began to sing in the Spirit. Quickly the singing spread until the whole congregation had joined in this “song without words.” That marked the beginning of a remarkable thirteen months of spiritual awakening, which by the time it ended, had transformed virtually every congregation on the island, resulting in, among others, the proliferating of interdenominational prayer groups in every parish on the island and the doubling of church attendance.¹⁰

News of what had occurred on the Isle of Wight began to spread and as a result Edwin Orr invited me to teach in the “Oxford Reading and Research Conference on Revival” at Regents Park College, Oxford in July, 1977, so beginning an association that lasted until Orr’s death almost ten years later. Orr’s encouragement prompted me to turn my interest in Revival into an intense study and careful analysis of the whole subject, resulting in a series of lectures delivered each year at North Central Bible College (now North Central University), Minneapolis, Minnesota, throughout the 1980s, and in many churches, conferences, seminars, and other Bible Colleges in the U.S.A. and Europe. This present volume on the History and Theology of Revival and Spiritual Awakenings is based upon those lectures, augmented by additional research and further experiences of Revival, which occurred during my pastoral ministry in the London borough of Ilford, and in my ministry as a missionary-evangelist in Germany and Romania.

Although I have tried to be as accurate and comprehensive as possible, so much new material has recently been brought to my attention by the many friends who have provided encouragement and advice that I am increasingly aware that “the half has not been told.” My appreciation for all who have contributed news and views on this topic cannot be adequately expressed, especially to my wife, Sheila, and to our son, Jonathan. All errors and omissions are solely my own.

As the church enters its third millennium, there is apparent not only an increasing sense of apprehension and anticipation, but also a great hunger for personal and corporate revival in the Body of Christ worldwide. I pray that this volume in some small way will help inspire faith and expectancy for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our day.

PR

This is an excerpt from Ian Hall, Times of Renewal: A History and Theology of Revival and Spiritual Awakenings (Encourage Publishing, 2024). Used with permission.

PneumaReview.com interview with Dr. Ian Hall about Times of Renewal

For the Table of Contents from Ian Hall, Times of Renewal, see this link.

Notes

1 W.G. McLoughlin: Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607 – 1977 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1978); T.L. Smith: Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York, NY: Harper, 1957).

2 Matthew 28:19, 20; Mark 16:15.

3 K.S. Latourette: A History of the Expansion of Christianity (Exeter, U.K.: Paternoster, 1971 edn.) 7 volumes.

4 New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (New York, NY: Delair Publishing, 1981), 822.

5 C.G. Finney: Revivals of Religion (London, U.K.: Morgan and Scott, 1913, second edition), 5 (emphasis original).

6 Ibid.

7 J.E. Orr: The Eager Feet: Evangelical Awakenings, 1790 – 1830 (Chicago, IL: Moody, 1975), vii.

8 Luke 18:13.

9 D. Campbell: The Price and Power of Revival (London, UK: Parry Jackman, 1957).

10 Minutes of the Ryde Ministerial Fraternal, July 17, 1975.

This book is part of Paul Hattaway’s “China Chronicles” series. The series is devoted to preserving the history of Christianity in China, each volume focuses on one particular province in the country. The author plans to have these books made available in Chinese as well, so that believers in China can be made aware of their Christian history and be ‘strengthened, edified, and challenged” by what they read (page xiii). In addition, the author desires to have “a record of God’s mighty acts in China” (page xiii).

Hainan means “South of the Sea,” it is the largest island of China (except for Taiwan) and has a population of over 10 million people (page 1). That being said, it is among the smallest and least populated provinces in China (page 19). Hainan actually is made up of over 200 islands, but most people only know about the main island (page 2). The weather for the majority of the year is both warm and humid (page 2). Powerful typhoons are common for a number of months during the year, and there are potential hazards for people that can be found on the land, these include quicksand and bubbling sulfur springs (page 2). The nickname for Hainan used to be “The gateway to hell,” but later it came to known as “Isle of Palms” (page 3).

Hainan Province, China.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The original inhabitants of Hainan were the Li people, who “arrived from the mainland at least 2,000 to 2,500 years ago” (page 5). About 80% of the population of Hainan are Han Chinese, though the group is made up of people from different linguistic groups (page 6). The Hainanese, who have their own unique language, are the major group of the Han (pages 7). Also, “more than 30,000 people from Vietnam and Indonesia have been repatriated to Hainan since the 1950s” (page 8). Currently two industries that are major sources of income for Hainan are agriculture and tourism/hospitality (page 14).

The religious beliefs found among the people are diverse, the goddesses Mazu and Guanyin are honored, and their statues can be found along the coast (page 19). They have been worshipped for hundreds of years and are believed to protect fishermen (page 19). In addition to them, many other gods and goddesses are revered in Hainan (page 19). Animism and the influence of shamans can be found in certain areas, and ancestor worship is part of the religious tradition in Hainan (page 19).

Sanya Nanshan Dongtian Park in 2015.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The Christian message entered into and made an impact in the above-mentioned idolatrous context. Catholics were the first to expose the residents of Hainan to the Christian faith, they did this about 250 years before Evangelical missionaries arrived (page 22). The very first Catholic missionary was Baltasar Gago in the 16^th century, he was accompanied by two Franciscans, whose names we do not know (page 22). Matteo Ricci, an Italian missionary, also had an impact on the island though he never visited it himself, his influence reached Hainan through a family contact he made in Beijing (pages 22, 23). Other Catholics who ministered in Hainan include Pierre Marquez and Benoit de Mattos (pages 23-25). A second wave of Catholic missions was begun in 1849 by French missionaries (page 26).

Lingshui, Hainan in 2013.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The chapters that follow focus on Christianity in Hainan during a particular time period, or on a particular topic. There are chapters on: the 1890s (pages 46-51), 1900s and 1910s (pages 52-64), 1920s (pages 65-77), 1930s (pages 78-87), 1940s and 1950s (pages 102-114), 1960s and 1970s (pages 115-123), 1980s (pages 130-136), 1990s (pages 137-152), 2000s (pages 197-212), and 2010s and 2020s (pages 213-219). In addition to these there are chapters given to people groups. The Kim Mun people have a chapter devoted to them (pages 88-101), as do the the Indonesians (pages 124-129) and the Li people (pages 181-196). Other chapters in the book are: “When Heaven Came to Hainan” (pages 153-163), “Stories from the Frontlines” (pages 164-180), and “The Future of the Church in Hainan” (pages 220-222).

Below is some significant information from a number of the chapters in the book.

• 1890s: Hattaway says that Presbyterian missionaries regularly served in Hainan, in fact, they were the only missionary society that had workers on the island for decades (page 46). The missionary force during this time period included a steady stream of women (page 47).
• 1900s and 1910s: One interesting piece of information about this time period is that when churches in other provinces in China endured terrible persecution from the Boxer rebels, the small number of Christians in Hainan were, for the most part, untouched (page 53). Citing Brown, Hattaway tells us that between the years of 1909 and 1917 Evangelical church members grew from 375 to 1,642 (page 54). In 1915 the Presbyterians expanded their work into different areas of the province (page 56). They taught the new believers to be generous in giving both their time and money to God (and others), they also taught them to be self-supporting and not rely on foreign funds (pages 56. 57). A prominent missionary during this time period was Frank Gilman who served in Hainan for 32 years (page 60). He, along with his first wife, Marion, were very involved in planting mission stations in various places in Hainan (page 60).
• 1920s: During this decade medical missions remained the main way that people were made aware of the teachings of Christ, the Presbyterians continued to run the sole hospital on the island (page 66).
• 1930s: A key missionary couple served in this decade, Henry and Louise Bucher (pages 83-87). They served in Hainan (page 83) and also in Thailand (page 86).
• Kim Mun People: Hattaway tells us that after more than a century since the first members of this people group (who can be found in China, Vietnam, and Laos) became believers in Jesus they still do not have even one page of the Bible translated into their language, though they do have some audio and video gospel materials (page 101).
• 1940s and 1950s: This chapter tells us that persecution caused the church in Hainan to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit rather than on foreign help (page 103).

Rice fields near Xinlong, Hainan in 2015.
Image: Anna Frodesiak / Wikimedia Commons

• The Indonesians: The author tells us that there are about 6000 Indonesians in Hainan, who live in the county of Qionghai (page 124), “approximately half of the Indonesians who settled in Hainan were Christians” (page 125). Today, most of the Indonesians in Hainan are committed Christians (page 129).
• 1980s: The author labels these years as “a decade of harvest” (page 130). The churches throughout Hainan were overflowing by 1987 (page 131).
• 1990s: When the 1990s began less than 1% of the population of Hainan claimed to be followers of Jesus Christ (page 137). During the 1990s the church experienced remarkable growth. Part of this was due to the implementation of a house church ministry strategy of a Baptist missionary and his family (pages 141-144). Hattaway, citing an unpublished missionary report, informs us that in one network between April 1993 and April 1998 the number of believers grew from less than 100 to 55,000 (page 144). And the number of churches during this time grew from 3 to about 550 (page 144). The intentional focus on evangelism and discipleship in the house churches contributed to their tremendous growth rate (page 147). At the peak of the revival at this time the number of Christians in Hainan doubled every 7 months (page 147)!
• Stories from the Frontlines: This chapter informs us that the revival in Hainan over the last 30 years has witnessed miracles, signs, and wonders which have helped spread the gospel (page 177).
• 2010s and 2020s: The text dealing with these decades tells us that the revival in the house churches in Hainan eventually spilled over into the Three-Self Registered Churches (page 216).
• The Future of the Church in Hainan: The closing chapter of the book informs readers that the church in Hainan is currently experiencing the worst persecution in its history (except for the persecution that occurred during the Cultural Revolution), nonetheless there is hope that the church will endure, indeed flourish, in the midst of this hostility because of its foundations and strong history (page 222).

This current volume, like the others in the “China Chronicles” series, contains photos throughout the text, it also has an appendix at the back of the book that contains tables and maps.

Hainan: Pearl of the South China Sea continues in the tradition of the earlier titles in the “China Chronicles” series, it shares a part of Christian history that has largely been hidden from view. This book helps pull back the curtain so we can see what God has been doing in a country that in recent decades has a reputation for hostility to the message of Jesus Christ. God is at work in the world, and Hainan is one of the places where He is working, and we can have confidence that He will continue the work that He has begun (Phil. 1:6).

Reviewed by John Lathrop

Emily Gardiner Neal in 1975.
Source: Wheaton Archives & Special Collections

Emily Gardiner Neal was born in 1911 to a well-to-do family and reared in New York City. She was educated at a private high school for girls in New York City and the David Mannes College of Music, also in New York. She intended to become a concert violinist. Emily’s parents were openly atheistic, and what Emily knew of Christianity was from hearsay. In 1930, Emily married a Naval Academy graduate, Alvin Neal. He too was an atheist. Emily later related that during their courtship they spent many hours talking about the possibility of God’ existence – a sign of their religious longings.

After his required time in the peace-time Navy of the 1930’s, Alvin became a businessman and moved his family to Argentina and later the Netherlands West Indies. But before the beginning of World War II, the family returned to the United States and settled in Pittsburgh. At the outbreak of the War, Alvin reentered the Navy and served as an officer aboard the aircraft Carrier USS Ranger.

How she became a Christian and an anointed minister of healing prayer is an amazing story of God’s providential choreography. In 1954, her neighbor asked her to drive her to an Episcopal church for a healing service, as her own car was in repair. Emily did the favor and stayed for the service. What she saw utterly amazed her, there seemed to be several instant healings, including a large goiter disappearing. Despite what she had seen, Emily suspected some sort of fraud in the healing service and determined to carefully examine the issue of spiritual healing with all of the reporting and critical skills she had developed. Her objective was to expose as fraudulent the healing claims being made by Christian healing ministers of the era.

The diagnosis had been based on an extensive series of X rays, bronchoscopy, and sputum tests – all positive. As a result, the patient scheduled for resection of five ribs and removal of the affected lung.

Shortly before the operation was to be performed, the patient attended a healing service and claimed a cure. When returned to the hospital for final examination prior to surgery, a repetition of the previously conducted tests revealed no evidence of lung cancer. He was dismissed from the hospital, and is today in robust health. The medical explanation was, again, mistaken diagnosis.[5]

On one occasion Alvin accompanied Emily to an interview of a patient cured of cancer. Emily related what happened in the car after the interview: “I heard Alvin clear his throat and say: ‘You know, there may be something to this work you’re doing, after all. Did You notice the radiance – the strange luminosity of that man’s face? I don’t know how to explain what I felt in him. All I’m sure of is that that man been touched by something I don’t know anything about.’”[6]

Alvin came to fully support her healing ministry.

Mrs. Neal’s book, A Reporter Finds God should be considered among the top dozen works in the literature of Christian healing. Her concern for the skeptically minded of her day was manifested in her careful attention to the data of documented healings and her methodical procedures. Her story of leaving skepticism behind would be an eye opener to today’s generation of skeptics.[7] (Hint: it would make an excellent gift to a skeptical/agnostic relative or friend – readily available at used book sites).

A Reporter Finds God was immensely successful, it was reprinted at least 15 times by 1965. After its launch Emily decided to learn more about Christianity, not just the healing ministry. She entered seminary and completed a degree in theology. Mrs. Neal then attended the Pittsburgh Pastoral Institute and was permitted to take courses open only to clergy, such as pastoral counseling. In fact, she became an effective and active Christian counselor for the rest of her life.

Shortly afterward, Mrs. Neal was invited to her first healing mission in Wisconsin. There she was asked to participate in the laying on of hands. It was the first time for her. Her respect for the Church’s authority prompted her to phone Bishop Pardue, her bishop in Philadelphia, to ask what to do – he gave her permission to do so, and this began her personal healing ministry.

In 1957 the editor of Prentice Hall asked her to write her second book, and the result was God Can Heal You Now, which came out in 1958.[9] Mrs. Neal’s orthodoxy and healing anointing was widely recognized and requests to speak and to lead healing missions poured in. This served to distance her from her career as a successful magazine writer. She tried to resist the pull away from being a reporter which she enjoyed doing and had done so well. But the love of the Lord drew her to His work. The Lord Is Our Healer [10] was published in 1961 and her recognition as an outstanding author and speaker of the healing ministry continued to grow.

Along with three bishops, three priests, and two physicians she served on the Joint Commission on the Ministry of Healing appointed at the 1961 General Convention of the Episcopal Church to study the Church’s ministry of healing. The Commission’s report, which strongly affirmed the reality and need of the Church’s healing mission, was submitted to the General Convention of 1964, was unanimously approved by both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies. This proved to be a boost to the prestige and acceptability of the healing ministry among Episcopal clergymen. Of course, the report was no guarantee that the liberal-Sadducaical clergymen, of which there were many in the Episcopal Church, would accept or act upon the report. As it turned out, the Episcopal Church continued to be a denomination where many of its churches had no healing ministry at all and mostly continued their journey to destructive liberal theologies.

In 1966, she was asked by The Rev. Dr. John Baiz to lead weekly healing services and counsel at Calvary Church in Pittsburgh. This she did for ten years, along with traveling widely on missions throughout the United States and abroad and continuing to write books about healing prayer. Mrs. Neal’s theology has many parallels with the that of Mrs. Agnes Sanford, and much influenced by her work. For instance, Emily practiced inner healing prayer in her counseling ministry. Mrs. Neal also followed Mrs. Sanford in appreciating the value of sacramental confession in healing. Also, like Mrs. Sanford, Mrs. Neal welcomed the charismatic renewal and its boost to the healing ministry, but like her mentor expressed reservations about its sometimes over-exuberant manifestations.[11]

The works of these two women overlapped and might be classed among the first generation of orthodox Christian works on healing that were readily available to the public. True, the whole generation Anglican/Episcopal clergymen and women such as Pearcy Dearmer and Ethel Banks had done great work, as did the multiple Pentecostal healers from the 1900s on. But they published in the era before WWII, when most American cities did not have even a single bookstore, and books had to be ordered by mail, thus their works were limited in circulation. But in the post-War era, bookstores and the paperback industry exploded and the book of Mrs. Neal and Mrs. Sanford were able to reach mass audiences.[12]

Mrs. Neal moved in 1976 to Cincinnati, where she lived on the grounds of the Convent of the Transfiguration, an Episcopal community of nuns. She was ordained a deacon in January 1978. In Cincinnati, she served on the staff of St. Thomas Episcopal Church as Deacon, leading weekly healing services and counseling. At the Convent she also functioned as deacon and led a monthly healing service and counseled weekly. In 1987, the Episcopal Healing Ministry Foundation was formed. This allowed Mrs. Neal and several of her Episcopal friends to specifically carry out the work of training and equipping Episcopalians in the healing ministry. She served as its president until her death on September 23, 1989.

PR

This chapter is an excerpt from William De Arteaga, Anglican Healing Awakenings: Saints, Heroes, and Villains (Christos Publishing, 2024). Used with permission.

Notes

[1] Emily Gardiner Neal, A Reporter Finds God Through Spiritual Healing (New York Morehouse-Barlow,1956). To date there has been no book length biography of Mrs. Gardiner Neal. I have depended for biographical information on two sources, Anne Cassel’s brief article in Sharing, “Emily Gardiner Neal’s Story,” (Dec. 1989) 18-22, and the biographical fact sheet found at the archives of Wheaton College, “Emily Gardiner Neal.” https://archives.wheaton.edu/repositories/5/resources/1019 Sourced 1/10/2024.

[2] Mrs. Neal’s numerous books are readily available on Amazon and on online used book sites such as abebooks.com. A very useful anthology of her Christian writings is Emily Gardiner Neal, Anne Cassel, ed. The Reluctant Healer: One Woman’s Journey of Faith (Colorado Springs: Shaw, 1992).

[3] William James, Varieties of Religious Experiences (New York: Modern Library, 1902).

[4] See my discussion of this in my work, Agnes Sanford and Her Companions, Chapter 23.

[5] Neal, A Reporter, 37.

[6] Emily Gardiner Neal, In the Midst of Life (New York: Hawthorn, 1963). 23.

[7] See for instance “Forward to a skeptic,” in: Emily Gadiner Neal, Where There is Smoke; The Mystery of Christian Healing (NY: Morehouse-Barlow, 1967) 5-14.

[8] I have written extensively on the pivotal importance of Mrs. Sanford and her writings. See The Pneuma Review articles which summarize my work on her. “Agnes Sanford, Apostle of Healing,” The Pneuma Review, Posted June 15, 2016. http://pneumareview.com/agnes-sanford-apostle-of-healing-and-first-theologian-of-the-charismatic-renewal/

[9] Emily Gardiner Neal, God Can Heal You Now (Englewood-Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1958).

[10] Emily Gardiner Neal, The Lord is Our Healer (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1961).

[11] Neal, Our Healer, 39.

[12] WWII changed that through the massive publication of quality books as cheap paperbacks for the GI’s and created a large reading public. Applebaum, Yoni. “Publishers Gave Away 122,951,031 Books During World War II” The Atlantic, September 10, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/publishers-gave-away-122951031-books-during-world-war-ii/379893/

The newly released movie, Cabrini, is the story of St. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. She was an Italian nun who immigrated to New York in 1888 to serve the destitute Italian immigrants streaming into America. Their social and economic position was even lower than the Irish immigrants who were beginning to move up in society.

Orphaned Italian children lived in unspeakable squalor in the cellars of rundown apartment buildings, and Cabrini’s first task if to establish an orphanage for such children. After success in that project, she moved on to found one of the great hospitals of New York City to specifically serve the poor immigrants of the city. She accomplished all of this despite tremendous opposition from secular and religious sources. The Catholic Archbishop of New York wished to banish Mother Cabrini back to Italy because she was upsetting his delicate balance of power (and accommodations) with the WASP [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant] establishment of New York. All of this is presented with marvelous cinematography and wonderful acting. Mother Cabrini is played wonderfully by an experienced Italian TV star, Cristiana Dell’Anna, whose steely eyes and iron determination face down every obstacle, and opponent—including the powerful mayor of New York.

Cabrini is a great film, but spiritually flawed. Mother Cabrini is pictured as woman who accomplished magnificent things through strength of character, intelligence, and unwavering determination. All of that is correct, but it excludes the element of prayer from her life and that of her nuns. Behind every major obstacle overcome, for instance, the arson of her hospital, there were her prayers and those of her nuns that were not shown. The sisters had a rule of life that mixed works, as in aiding teaching and nursing the poor, with prayer. The former was shown in detail, but the latter ignored. The name of Jesus is not mentioned in the film even though her religious order was called “The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” and they had great devotion to Him. Mother Cabrini becomes then a model feminist of the modern, secular sort. This is a distortion of her life. Her determination and intelligence and actions were empowered by a prayer life that made miracles of timing, political influence and favor shown in the movie.

I recommend that all Christian see this movie, but keep in mind there are other aspects of the story that have not here been told.

Reviewed by William De Arteaga

Official website: https://www.angel.com/movies/cabrini

The paper is over 40 pages long with another dozen pages in bibliography, so therefore not really suitable as something to post online. However, here is an introduction to a related book:

The Unforgotten: Historical and Theological Roots of Pentecostalism in Bulgaria
This book tells the story of four early Pentecostal families who brought the message of Azusa to Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The research has taken over a decade to complete. It started with a brief article on the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in Bulgaria, where unfortunately many church archives were destroyed during Communism. Consecutively, the research led my wife and I on a long journey from the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, to the Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, Pusey Library at Harvard, the British and Foreign Bible Society in Cambridge, and countless Bulgarian churches. We are grateful to the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center for making readily available their denominational archives. Dr. Albert Wardin graciously opened the door for research in Nashville and Berkeley, where most documentation of Voronaev’s early ministry are preserved. Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. of Fuller provided tremendous guidance to the life and ministry of Frank and Anna Bartleman through virtually every step of their journey and every address they occupied. We are also thankful to Dr. Oleg Bornovolokov of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kiev, who helped with various KGB/FSB documents and the NKVD dossiers from Gulag. The papers included in this book were presented at Society for Pentecostal Studies meetings between 2010 and 2021. The first part of the book appeared in vol. 30 (2010) of Assemblies of God Heritage magazine and their December, 2010 editorial. The Bulgarian Pentecostal Union published our translation and commentary of Voronaev’s correspondence in their monthly Evangel. In 2011, Dr. Vladimir Franchuk, translated our Voronaev’s papers in Russian and included them in his book Revival: from the center of Odessa to the ends of Russia just in time for the 90th anniversary of Pentecostalism in Russia. Most of the historiographical data presented in this book is being published openly for the first time.

PR

For more about the Society for Pentecostal Studies, visit their website: sps-usa.org/