ABSTRACT
The son of a Methodist pastor from Fujian, Sung was pursuing religious studies at the Union Theological Seminary in New York in the 1920s when he was struck by a crisis of faith stemming from liberal theological explorations. A confused Sung translated the Daodejing into English and chanted Buddhist scriptures. He turned to solitudes of intense prayer and finally experienced a “born-again” epiphany. Transforming into a prophetic figure overnight, he denounced his teachers as devils and was detained in an asylum for seven months. Upon his release, the salvation of Chinese souls became Sung’s singular obsession. He joined the Bethel Mission in Shanghai, an independent Holiness mission formed by two women, a Chinese and an American, who had left the Methodist mission. After three years, Sung departed from Bethel in acrimonious circumstances.
