The Holy Spirit and the Ecclesia Among Chinese Migrants in Moscow: An Ethnographic Study of the True Jesus Church

Abstract

The everyday faith practices of Chinese migrants in Moscow and community life of the True Jesus Church (Zhen Yesu Jiaohui 真耶稣教会)—a transnational non-denominational church founded in 1917 in China—where the Pentecostal tradition of “speaking in tongues” meets Chinese culture, are being addressed for the first time. The core of the local ecclesia, whose missionaries arrived in Russia in 1995, is comprised of Chinese entrepreneurs, students, and second-generation migrants. We contextualize the formation of a small local migrant-based church using the personal faith journeys of Chinese believers in an alien sociolinguistic environment that is neither Western nor anglophone. Such localized migrant churches remain understudied in the scholarship on the internationalization of Chinese Christianity, which is dominated by studies of North America, Western Europe, and Southeast Asia. Russia, with substantial Chinese migration and religious organizations that are constrained by a legal order that classifies small congregations as “religious groups” rather than officially registered organizations, has attracted little attention. Hence, our “migrant church ethnography” presents a unique contribution to the study of Christianity formed in a non-Anglophone, post-Soviet setting. Fieldwork and participation in this migrant-based ecclesia between October 2023 and June 2026 are evaluated with reference to the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of John, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul, and the doctrine of the True Jesus Church. Some informants had been members of the True Jesus Church in mainland China before moving to Moscow; others joined the church after their arrival. Church members experience marginalization and insecurity due to complex immigration policies, police corruption, and language barriers. They overcome these hurdles through both a personal and community-founded union with the Holy Spirit. The complex identities of migrants who intertwine their ontology as both Christians and Chinese illustrate that the Holy Spirit can be present in a family, wholesale market, or university dormitory and fulfill an entire church community. Our study exemplifies how such a congregation sustains a culturally familiar ecclesia while opening unevenly to Russian believers, and argues that its “Ephesian Moment” remains incipient.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Religions, 2026 · DOI ↗