Shincheonji Church of Jesus

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Shincheonji
신천지
Shincheonji Headquarters located in Gwacheon
Classification	Christian new religious movement
Leader	Lee Man-hee
Associations	Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light(HWPL) International Women’s Peace Group(IWPG) Priend International Peace Youth Group(IPYG) Cheonji Ilbo Eduzion [1][2][3]
Region	South Korea and abroad
Founder	Lee Man-hee
Origin	14 March 1984 South Korea Tabernacle Temple
Members	317,320 (According to the Health Ministry of South Korea) 245,605[4]
Other name(s)	Shincheonji (accepted common name)
Official website	shincheonji.org
Korean name
Hangul	신천지
Hanja	新天地
Revised Romanization	Sincheonji
McCune–Reischauer	Sinch'ŏnji

Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (SCJ), commonly known as Shincheonji Church of Jesus or simply Shincheonji (Korean: 신천지; Hanja: 新天地; lit. New Heaven and New Earth; IPA: [ɕintɕʰʌndʑi]), is a new religious movement established in South Korea by Lee Man-hee. It is considered a pseudoreligion or cult by mainstream churches.^[5][6]

Shincheonji's teaching claims that their founder, Lee, is the pastor promised in the New Testament,^[6] and that the Book of Revelation is written in secret metaphors (parables), which only Lee is capable of deciphering.^[5] Before founding his own religious movement, Lee was a member of a controversial group called the Olive Tree, a new religious movement which spawned the first countercult movement in post-war Korea,^[7] although this connection is not present in Shincheonji's biography of Lee.^[8]

Shincheonji teaches that it is the true faith with its members receiving salvation at the time of final judgment. Everyone not in the group will be denied forgiveness and destroyed.^[9]

In 2020, the group became the center of intense scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea. The outbreak of COVID-19 cases in Korea was initially centered in the city of Daegu after a 61-year-old Shincheonji member known as Patient 31 infected other church members causing the pandemic to surge in Daegu. As the disease spread among Shincheonji's members and thousands of others, there was a national outcry against the group and by 22 February 2020, over 1.3 million South Korean citizens signed an online petition to the Blue House requesting the government to disband Shincheonji entirely.^[10] On 12 August 2022, the Supreme Court in South Korea upheld the acquittal of Lee Man Hee on charges that he obstructed the government’s response to COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020.^[11]