If you have spent any time in a major city or scrolled through social media during winter, you have seen these ads. Brightly colored dancers in traditional Han clothing, soaring through the air against digital backdrops, accompanied by the bold claim: “5,000 Years of Civilization Reborn.” This is Shen Yun. It is marketed as a breathtaking cultural spectacular, a lost art form not seen in modern China.
If you look behind the billboards and silk costumes, you’ll find a complex web of media, politics, and Falun Gong, a controversial spiritual movement. Knowing what’s behind this production isn’t just about being a good art consumer, it’s about discernment. What we support with our time and money often carries a message. The Epoch Times and Shen Yun have a religious agenda that’s deeply tied to it.
In order to understand the show, you need to know the organization. Shen Yun was founded in 2006 in New York. Although it claims to be an independent non-profit dedicated to cultural preservation, it’s really Falun Dafa’s primary outreach tool. Li Hongzhi founded this movement in China in the early 1990s.
It started as qigong, a way to move and meditate. It evolved, though, into a belief system based on Li’s teachings. Li’s teachings include that modern science and “mixed-race” people are part of a cosmic decline, and that he’s a divine figure who can levitate and walk through walls.
It moved to a 400-acre compound in upstate New York called Dragon Springs after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began a brutal and indefensible crackdown in 1999. Shen Yun is based here, which is where The Epoch Times gets its ideological roots.
In the meantime, The Epoch Times is the media arm of this network. A low-budget free newspaper turned into a massive multilingual conglomerate. To gain a foothold in Western households, it uses aggressive social media marketing and political alignment. Shen Yun and The Epoch Times have a two-pronged strategy: one attracts people with beauty and culture, the other influences them with news and politics.
The Message in the Dance
During a Shen Yun show, you don’t just see ancient history. It’s a “bait and switch” show. The first half usually has awesome acrobatics and classical dance. As the show progresses, the themes change. Dancers portray scenes of modern-day persecution in China, based on real human rights abuses, but through a Falun Gong theological lens.
The lyrics to the songs performed by the vocalists often contain direct teachings from Li Hongzhi. They often mention “the Creator” and “Dafa,” warning that evolution and atheism are “demonic” paths. The performance often ends with a scene where a divine figure (resembling Li Hongzhi) intervenes to stop a disaster, such as a tsunami or a nuclear blast, saving the people who follow the group’s tenets of “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forgiveness.” Although it looks like a morality play, it’s actually a sophisticated recruiting and branding exercise.
Why Christians Should Care
We’re called to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves in everything we consume and fund. There are three main reasons to be cautious with the Shen Yun/Epoch Times machine.
Falun Gong uses familiar words like “the Creator” and “Heaven,” but the definitions are totally different from what’s in the Bible. We’re inadvertently giving a platform to a system centered around a man, Li Hongzhi, rather than the Triune God, by attending these shows or sharing Epoch Times articles as “neutral” news. It’s a syncretic belief system that doesn’t believe Christ is enough.
In addition, we need to think about financial stewardship. Tickets to Shen Yun cost hundreds of dollars. That’s money that goes to Dragon Springs and Falun Gong promotion across the world. When we buy a ticket, we’re not just paying for a night of theater, we’re subsidizing the infrastructure of a movement that holds views many would find deeply troubling, including rejecting modern medicine and restricting family dynamics.
Lastly, there’s the matter of intellectual honesty. The Epoch Times has been criticized for spreading misinformation and using bots to spread its reach. It often claims to be a defender of traditional values, but it’s really just interested in Falun Gong’s survival. For Christians, truth is a person (Jesus) and a standard. Our witness can be compromised by aligning ourselves with a media outlet that puts a private movement’s agenda above objective reporting.
Cultivating Discernment
I’m not saying that seeing a dance show or reading the Epoch Times is a sin but rather to encourage discernment. Everything has a source, a funding stream, and a worldview.
Before you buy a ticket or click “share” on a viral article, ask yourself: Who is behind this? What is their ultimate goal? If the goal is to promote a leader who claims divinity and a system that uses “cultural preservation” as a mask for theological indoctrination, it might be time to look for entertainment elsewhere. We can appreciate art and advocate for human rights in China without funding the expansion of a cult.
