In the early 1920s, the first commercial four-color offset lithograph machines came to China. While Chinese Christian posters, tracts, and books had circulated from various presses for a century, these machines allowed for quick, inexpensive, and large-scale print production. Christian mission organizations like the Religious Tract Society and Christian Witness Press quickly capitalized on the new technology. In 1929 alone, the Religious Tract Society printed 150,000 posters in China. Joining and in some ways anticipating China’s vibrant political and commercial print culture, these colorful posters became a prevalent tool for Christian evangelization in China through the 1930s and 1940s.
Wheaton Archives & Special Collections holds more than fifty of these posters throughout several collections, including Collection 215: Records of Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Collection 231: Papers of Ian and Helen Anderson and Collection 706: Evangelism Posters Ephemera.
Rich visual texts in their own right, Christian posters were often purchased as decorations for homes, schools, and businesses, as well as displayed on public walls and in community spaces. Missionaries and local evangelists also used these posters alongside traditional preaching and hymns. Across small churches, village evangelism meetings, and busy street corners, these posters provided a visual demonstration of the spoken message of salvation, Christian discipleship, and sanctification.
In one recording from Wheaton Archives’ collection for Overseas Missionary Fellowship (China Inland Mission), CIM missionary Ian Anderson recounts the songs and stories that he and his Chinese Bible students used with the posters during village evangelism outreach. Arriving separately in China around 1934, Ian and his wife, Helen, served mainly in central China, including the CIM stations in Sheqi, Henan, Chenggu, Shaanxi, and Baoji, Shaanxi, before China Inland Mission withdrew from China in 1951.
Explore select text and music from the 1979 recording (CN215, T5) below, along with examples of Chinese gospel posters from Wheaton Archives’ collections:
Mother Helen and I had the privilege of teaching in Bible schools in China for more than 10 years. We tried to make the course of training as practical as possible. And village evangelism was compulsory for all students at least once a week. An indispensable part of our equipment was a roll of colored posters. And of course, it was a great help to have a musical instrument. The trumpet maybe or a concertina or a piano accordion. Even castanets or a drum or a pair of cymbals have been used. And a dinner gong is better than nothing.
Arriving in a village, we found a convenient mud wall of somebody’s house on which we hang up our colored posters. After that, we sing a few songs – making as much noise as possible, both vocal and instrumental. It doesn’t matter too much if nobody understands the words we sing. The Chinese love noise and it soon attracts a crowd, first children and then adults. First of all, there’s a song of welcome. A welcome to everybody – men and women, boys and girls, to come and hear the good news.
The second song is entitled “Don’t Lose your Temper.” The thing you have to realize is that our audience has never seen the Bible and knows nothing about Christianity. But they do know the man has a tiger in his heart. Sometimes he gets very angry. If he loses his temper, he becomes the laughingstock of the whole village. And the one he harms most is himself. The song I’m going to sing goes like this. “You don’t want to get mad, but you do. Because there’s a little demon of bad temper takes hold of you. You tell people what to do, but they won’t obey you. And suddenly everything goes wrong. You will feel as if a ton of weight pressing down on you. So you’d better just shake it off or you’ll die a living death of frustration.”
The fourth song is entitled “Meekness Comes First of All.” It’s wrong to put all the blame on the Devil when we lose our tempers. That called “ego” inside us is the culprit, symbolized by the peacock on the “Heart” poster. We ought to learn how to be more humble. But in the ancient world, humility was a vice and not a virtue, linked with weakness and compromise. Even today, the world despises humility, and there is still need for the Chinese song about the narrow gate that leads to meekness. And that’s on the way to Heaven too.
The gospel is so simple a child can understand enough to be saved. The problem is not with a man’s intelligence. It depends on his willingness to get rid of his sin burden. Like the camel, laden with 200 lbs. of baggage. When it reaches the city gate, which is low and narrow, he must kneel down and let his master unload him. So, we have the Chinese song “Straight is the gate leading up to heaven. With sin’s burden you cannot get in. Why not wake up and repent for when Jesus comes back from heaven, then it will be too late. You would best be in time.”
Some religious folk seemed to think the cross was the end of Jesus. Emphatically that is not true. On the third day, that Great Shepherd of the sheep was raised from the dead. Alive today, he is well able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by him. As the Chinese chorus expresses it, “Shepherd, good and true is He. Cares for all His sheep, gave His life for me. Tigers, wolves, wind and snow did not frighten thee. If in Him you trust. Follow Him you must. Uphill to the top. There the sun shines bright. Heaven and Earth proclaim his mercy. Set your mind at rest.”
New life has begun. Since you trusted him, love has filled your heart, love for God and love for men. But faith and love are not the only virtues. Hope like a beacon shines across the path, even in dark hours. Again, the Chinese chorus tells us “Lift up your heads for your redemption draws nigh. Look beyond the blue sky, where fleecy clouds are floating. Think of the day when Jesus returns and the trumpet sounds. In a moment you’ll be transformed, and he will be waiting to meet you in the air. Then you will ascend. Leading the dust of the earth low beneath your feet, you see the great globe and beyond it, myriads of stars. Angels will come out in heavenly array to meet you, their faces wreathed in smiles and clapping their hands. And the Lord himself will take us to His bosom, and we shall be forever with Him, no more separations.”
Read the complete transcript of Ian Anderson’s audio tour through Chinese evangelism songs, or explore a collection of all the musical selections from the recording here.
For more historical background on the development and use of Chinese Christian posters, see Visions of Salvation: Chinese Christian Posters in an Age of Revolution, edited by Daryl R. Ireland.
Many of the Chinese evangelism posters in our collections have been digitized and transcribed through the Chinese Christian Posters Project from Boston University’s Center for Global Christianity and Mission. Browse hundreds of posters, as well as digital exhibits, articles, and other scholarship, at Chinese Christian Posters.
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