Karl Ludvig Reichelt (1 September 1877 – 13 March 1952) was a Norwegian Lutheran missionary and religious scholar who worked in China.
In 1906, he had an experience that would be crucial to his later work when he undertook his first visit to the famous Buddhist Weishan monastery close to town.
He later wrote that he just gave a glimpse of a unique and exclusive world of deep religious mysticism, of heartbreaking tragedy, but also immensely rich.
This he used some force to his years in Hunan and Hubei, first as a pioneer missionary (to 1911, when he returned to Norway for a time), then as a teacher in the NT at the priest school in Shekou [no] (1913–1920).
A coordination committee for the mission companies in the three Scandinavian countries, was established to guarantee a minimum amount of support in case the gift supply would not reach the expected size.
Reichelt and missionary Notto Normann Thelle then went back and got their planned center, called the Ching Fong Shan ("the shining wind rock"), just outside Nanjing.
It was not long before the first itinerant Buddhist monks found their way to the Christian "monastery", and eventually, the number of such visitors in approximately 1,000 per year, and most were there for a longer or shorter period.
In his meeting with China's Buddhist monks,Karl Ludvig Reichelt developed a new view on mission work that made him controversial.
Reichelt was awarded the St. Olav's Medal in 1939 and was appointed honorary doctor at Uppsala University for his extensive research on Eastern religious life in 1941.