Marie Monsen

Called to China

Marie Monsen was born in 1878 into a devout Lutheran family in Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. As a young girl she resolved to go to China as a missionary, and in 1901 she was sent out by the Norwegian Lutheran China Mission Association, beginning her work in the Nanyang area of Henan. At first she made evangelistic visits in the Henan countryside and studied Mandarin and the Henan dialect; from the 1910s itinerant preaching became her main form of ministry, and she travelled throughout the three provinces of Henan, Hubei and Shandong.

Preaching in Adversity

On 19 April 1929 the steamer she was travelling on from Shanghai to Yantai was seized by pirates, and she was held on board for twenty-three days. In the midst of this ordeal she spoke one by one with passengers and pirates about the Gospel, and the story of this experience was widely retold in the churches of Norway, Britain and America. This experience confirmed her in her method of evangelism: "going from house to house and person to person, asking face to face about their experience of salvation".

The Shandong Revival

Between 1927 and 1932 she promoted revival in churches across Shandong. She insisted that every baptised church member must be able to tell of a clear experience of repentance and new birth; that every household must be questioned person by person; and that pastors and mission co-workers must themselves repent first. The Shandong Revival that she led spread from the churches to Beiping (Beijing), the Northeast and East China; Wang Mingdao and Jing Dianying (founder of the Jesus Family), among others, are said to have been directly or indirectly influenced by it.

Return to Norway and Writing

In 1932 she returned to Norway to care for her elderly parents. From then on she wrote steadily, producing several memoirs and guides to the spiritual life, including A Present Help (Huannan zhong de Bangzhu) and Shengling de Gongzuo [The Work of the Holy Spirit]. She died of illness in Bergen in 1962. She is regarded as the most influential woman evangelist of the Norwegian missions in the early 20th century, and as a central figure who cannot be bypassed in the study of the history of the revival movement in North China.