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.
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