doomsday cult

The Woman on the Floor of a McDonald’s: Wu Shuoyan and the Church of Almighty God

Street scene in Zhaoyuan, Shandong Province, China (2010) — the city where Wu Shuoyan was murdered on May 28, 2014.

On May 28, 2014, a thirty-seven-year-old woman named Wu Shuoyan was beaten to death on the floor of a McDonald’s restaurant in Zhaoyuan, Shandong, for refusing to give her phone number to strangers. Her killers claimed she was an evil spirit. Twelve years later, the Chinese state and a group of Western religion scholars still cannot agree on which faith the killers actually belonged to. This is what we know about the Church of Almighty God, and what we do not.

Lightning from the East: The Rise, Fall, and Impact of a Chinese Doomsday Cult

Lightning from the East: The Rise, Fall, and Impact of a Chinese Doomsday Cult

Origins and Beliefs Lightning from the East, also known as Eastern Lightning, originated in China in the early 1990s. It’s an offshoot of the Christian Church, but with a radical twist. The group venerates a woman they claim is the returned Christ, which sets them apart from mainstream Christianity. James D. Seymour, a scholar in … Read more