Church of Almighty God (Quánnéngshén Jiàohuì 全能神教会)

The Church of Almighty God (CAG, Quannengshen jiaohui 全能神教会), also known as Eastern Lightning (Dongfang shandian 东方闪电), is a Protestant-inspired new religious movement that emerged in mainland China in the early 1990s. It developed within the heterogeneous world of post-Mao Protestant house churches and independent Christian movements, particularly in central and northern China. Its early history remains difficult to reconstruct with precision, not least because accounts produced by the movement itself, Chinese state institutions, former members, and outside observers frequently diverge. Available scholarship nevertheless places its emergence around 1993, when a Chinese woman, generally identified in external sources as Yang Xiangbin 杨向斌 (b. 1973), began producing revelations that came to be recognised by a community of believers as the words of the returned Christ, or "Almighty God." Around the same period, Zhao Weishan 赵维山 (b. 1951), who had previously participated in Protestant-derived networks including the Shouters, emerged as the movement's principal organisational and administrative leader. The precise relationship between Yang and Zhao remains difficult to establish. Chinese official sources have described them as married, a claim denied by the CAG. More clearly observable is a shift in the movement's public presentation. Yang's individual identity has never been prominent in CAG publications, and over time the human figure of the female Christ has become still less visible, while "Almighty God" as the divine speaker and source of revelation has increasingly occupied the foreground. Zhao, by contrast, has remained associated with the organisation and administration of the church. This asymmetry has led some outside observers to regard him as the movement's de facto leader. CAG theology centres on the claim that God has again become incarnate in the last days and has inaugurated a new stage of divine activity. For the movement, sacred history unfolds according to a three-stage scheme: the Age of Law (Lüfa shidai 律法时代), associated with Jehovah and the laws of the Old Testament; the Age of Grace (Endian shidai 恩典时代), inaugurated by Jesus and his work of redemption; and the present Age of Kingdom (Guodu shidai 国度时代), inaugurated by the appearance of the Almighty God. The principal corpus of these revelations is The Word Appears in the Flesh (Hua zai roushen xianxian 话在肉身显现), first published in 1997 and subsequently expanded and reorganised in later editions, incorporating utterances dating back to 1991. CAG theology assigns the Old and New Testaments to earlier stages of God's work, while The Word Appears in the Flesh, understood as the words of Almighty God in the Age of Kingdom, supersedes the Bible as the movement's primary source of authoritative revelation. Although little known, it is believed that CAG worship is comparatively informal and does not reproduce many conventional Protestant liturgical practices. Meetings generally centre on reading and discussing the words attributed to Almighty God, sermons, collective discussion, hymns, and the sharing of personal testimonies. Testimonial writing and other forms of religious media production have also become prominent elements of the movement's public religious culture. The movement is illegal in China. In 1995, Chinese authorities included CAG among organisations classified as xiejiao 邪教, a category rendered here as "criminal(ized) religious movements." Activity associated with organisations so classified may be prosecuted under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Law, and CAG members have received substantial prison sentences for organisational and proselytising activity; possession and distribution of CAG literature have also figured in prosecutions and convictions. Proselytisation has historically developed in close interaction and competition with Chinese Protestant house-church networks, and the movement has subsequently expanded its missionary activity beyond Chinese-speaking communities. It maintains an extensive multilingual digital presence through websites, social-media platforms, mobile applications, films, music, sermons, and other audiovisual material. The internet has become particularly important to its transnational expansion outside mainland China. Recent investigations have also documented the use of AI-generated religious images and videos in some social-media outreach campaigns. Reliable membership figures are unavailable. Chinese authorities estimated the movement at approximately four million members in 2014, but this figure has been regarded by scholars as probably inflated. State repression has contributed to the formation of substantial CAG communities outside mainland China, particularly in South Korea, the United States, the Philippines, and several European countries, where sizeable refugee communities have emerged.