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<h3 style="margin-top:0;"><a style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 21px;line-height: 30px; margin-top:25px; margin-bottom: 10px;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/2017/07/28/eastern-lightning-cult-back-in-news/" target="_blank">Eastern Lightning cult back in news</a></h3>
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<p>Source: <a href="http://supchina.com/">Sup China</a> (7/28/17)<br />
Eastern Lightning cult back in the news<br />
By Jeremy Goldkorn</p>
<p>On May 28, 2014, <a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=b56fe453d9&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">five people attacked and killed a woman</a> in a McDonald’s restaurant in a small city in Shandong Province. A bystander filmed the murder on a mobile phone and the footage spread rapidly on the internet.</p>
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<li>The killers turned out to be members of the Church of Almighty God (全能神 quánnéng shén), also known as Eastern Lightning (东方闪电 dōngfāng shǎndiàn). The organisation is a <strong>doomsday cult founded in 1990 by a physics teacher named Zhao Weishan</strong> 赵维山 who claimed to have found the female Christ in the form of young woman from northwestern Shaanxi province.</li>
<li>The <strong>Chinese government banned the church as a cult in 1995</strong>; Zhao and his female Chinese Jesus are apparently in exile in the U.S.</li>
<li>During the trial of the five McDonald’s murderers, one of the accused said that his group had wanted to convert the victim but they killed her after she refused to tell them her phone number.</li>
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<p>Eastern Lightning are in the news again: <em>Chinanews.com</em> <a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=f5e250875e&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reports</a> (in Chinese) on the <strong>detention of 18 members of the group</strong> in eastern Zhejiang Province, the shutdown of two of their “lairs” (窝点 wōdiǎn), and confiscation of computers and propaganda pamphlets. <em>Sixth Tone</em> has a good <a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=51f385a568&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">summary of the news</a> in English. The cult’s own website is <a href="http://supchina.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05fc7fc9529b01bb9bd1abfa7&id=e9e8e32bb7&e=b3d625469d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>.</p>
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by <a href="mailto:denton.2@osu.edu">denton.2@osu.edu</a> on July 28, 2017 </div>
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