Huỳnh Phú Sổ

Huỳnh Phú Sổ is the central founding figure of the Hòa Hảo movement. Adherents attribute to him a series of revelations and homilies delivered in the village of Hòa Hảo (An Giang province) beginning in 1939; these teachings, preserved in vernacular form and circulated by pamphlet and oral recitation, form the core devotional and ethical corpus of the tradition. Historically he is identified as a charismatic rural teacher who articulated a simplified Buddhist path oriented toward household practice and moral renewal. Historians date his initial public activity to 1939 and note the rapid growth of his following in the Mekong Delta through the early 1940s.

Sổ’s religious program combined familiar Buddhist ethical motifs—compassion, avoidance of harm, filial piety—with a pointed critique of ostentatious temple ritual and clerical privilege. He urged adherents to enact piety in the family: maintaining simple home altars, reciting short prayers, and pursuing honest livelihood. This emphasis on lay practice and moral reform distinguished Hòa Hảo from contemporary urban Mahāyāna institutions. Sổ’s vernacular style made his message accessible to peasant audiences, and his teachings were quickly disseminated through popular networks and printed pamphlets in the Vietnamese language during the 1940s.

The historical period in which Sổ taught was one of political upheaval: the late colonial era, the Japanese occupation, and the postwar contestations that followed. Hòa Hảo under Sổ became not only a religious renewal movement but also—through local defense groups and community organization—a social actor capable of mobilizing adherents. After his disappearance and widely reported death in 1947 during conflict with Việt Minh forces, the movement entered a period of fragmentation and contestation over leadership. Followers narrate his death with the language of martyrdom and spiritual preservation; historians place his disappearance in 1947 as a turning point that led to the rise of local leaders and militarized factions in the Delta.

Sổ’s legacy is complex. For adherents he remains the authoritative source of teaching and the founding exemplar; his sermons continue to be read and recited in households and meeting halls. For historians, Sổ is also a case study in how charismatic rural leadership, vernacular textuality, and social grievance combine to produce mass religious movements. The post-1947 history of Hòa Hảo—the emergence of armed leaders, negotiations with political authorities, and later institutional pluralism—cannot be separated from the foundational role Sổ played in articulating a distinct moral and devotional orientation for southern Vietnamese peasants.