China’s Quiet Revival, One Handwritten Bible Verse at a Time

Chinese calligrapher Lü Xiaokui spent decades transcribing Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist texts into elegant xiaokai script. When he came across a friend’s message about an initiative to copy the Bible by hand on the Chinese messaging app WeChat in 2019, he reached out to the organizer, Wang Wenfeng, to express his interest in participating.

“At first, we were pretty surprised, because he wasn’t a believer,” Wang said. “We weren’t sure if—or why—he’d actually go through with it.”

Several months later, Lü sent Wang, who now pastors SanQi church in Beijing, a beautifully penned copy of the Gospel of John. When they saw Lü’s submission, Wang and his fellow church members were stunned by Lü’s careful, detailed brushwork.