Book Club Recommendations
Wild Swans
THREE DAUGHTERS OF CHINA
Author: Jung Chang
Abstract: The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.
An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician.
As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Pages: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2003)
The Souls of China
THE RETURN OF RELIGION AFTER MAO
Author: Ian Johnson
Abstract: The Souls of China tells the story of one of the world’s great spiritual revivals. Following a century of violent anti-religious campaigns, China is now filled with new temples, churches, and mosques—as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty—over what it means to be Chinese and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is searching for new guideposts.
Ian Johnson first visited China in 1984; in the 1990s he helped run a charity to rebuild Daoist temples, and in 2001 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the suppression of the Falun Gong. While researching this book, he lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. Along the way, he learned esoteric meditation techniques, visited a Confucian sage, and befriended government propagandists.
He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle—a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world’s newest superpower.
Pages: 480
Publisher: Pantheon (2017)
Chinese Public Theology
GENERATIONAL SHIFTS & CONFUCIAN IMAGINATION IN CHINESE CHRISTIANITY
Author: Alexander Chow
Abstract: It has been widely recognized that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China. Yet it would be a mistake to describe Chinese Christianity as merely a clandestine faith or a privatized religion. Chow argues that Christians have been constructing a more intentional public theology to engage the state and society since the Cultural Revolution.
Chinese Public Theology recalls the events which have led to this transformation and examines the developments of Christianity across three generations of Chinese intellectuals. Moreover, Chow shows how each of these generations have provided different theological responses to the same sociopolitical moments.
This study illustrates how Chinese public theology has developed through an intermingling of Christianity and Confucianism. Chow draws from the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis and the Chinese traditional teaching of the unity of Heaven and humanity to offer a way forward in the construction of a Chinese public theology.
Pages: 264
Publisher: Oxford University Press (2018)
Beyond East & West
Author: John C.H. Wu
Abstract: When Beyond East and West was first published in 1951, it became an instant Catholic best seller and was compared to Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, which had appeared four years earlier. It was also hailed as the new Confession of St. Augustine for its moving description of Wu’s conversion in 1937 and early years as a Catholic.
Wu recounts his early life in Ningpo, China, his family and friendships, education and law career, drafting of the constitution of the Republic of China, translation of the Bible into classical Chinese in collaboration with President Chiang Kai-Shek, and his role as China’s delegate to the Holy See.
In Beyond East and West, Wu develops a synthesis between Catholicism and the ancient culture of the Orient.
In passages of arresting beauty, the book reveals the development of his thought and the progress of his growth toward love of God, arriving through experience at the conclusion that the wisdom in all of China’s traditions, especially Confucian thought, Taoism, and Buddhism, point to universal truths that come from, and are fulfilled in, Christ.
Pages: 412
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press (2018)
A Short History of China
FROM ANCIENT DYNASTIES TO ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE
Author: Gordon Kerr
Abstract: An absorbing introduction to more than 4,000 years of Chinese history, this book tells the stories of the tyrants, despots, femmes fatales, artists, warriors, and philosophers who have shaped this fascinating and complex nation. It describes the amazing advances that China's scientists and inventors made hundreds of years before similar discoveries in Europe. It also investigates the Chinese view of the world and examines the movements, aspirations, and philosophies that molded it and, in so doing, created the Chinese nation.
Finally, the book examines the emergence of China as an economic and industrial 21st-century superpower.
Pages: 160
Publisher: Pocket Essentials (2013)
Jesus in Beijing
HOW CHRISTIANITY IS TRANSFORMING CHINA & CHANGING THE GLOBAL BALANCE OF POWER
Author: David Aikman
Abstract: In Jesus in Beijing, David Aikman recounts the fascinating story of how Christianity began in China, the bloody anti-Christian persecutions, the revival of an underground Christian movement led by brave men and women risking death, and the flowering of Christianity-though still under persecution-today with the result that China is actually producing missionaries to the world.
While China's Communist rulers hope to reap the social and economic benefits of Christianity without losing power, as David Aikman so provocatively points out, the Chinese dragon just might be tamed by the Christian Lamb.
Pages: 336
Publisher: Regnery Publishing (2006)
The Importance of Living
THE CLASSIC BESTSELLER THAT INTRODUCED MILLIONS TO THE NOBLE ART OF LEAVING THINGS UNDONE
Author: Lin Yutang
Abstract: The Importance of Living is a wry, witty antidote to the dizzying pace of the modern world. Lin Yutang's prescription is the classic Chinese philosophy of life: Revere inaction as much as action, invoke humor to maintain a healthy attitude, and never forget that there will always be plenty of fools around who are willing-indeed, eager-to be busy, to make themselves useful, and to exercise power while you bask in the simple joy of existence.
At a time when we're overwhelmed with wake-up calls, here is a refreshing, playful reminder to savor life's simple pleasures.
Pages: 462
Publisher: William Morrow (1998)
Redeemed by Fire
THE RISE OF POPULAR CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN CHINA
Author: Xi Lian
Abstract: This book is the first to address the history and future of homegrown, mass Chinese Christianity. Drawing on a large collection of fresh sources, Lian Xi traces the transformation of Protestant Christianity from a small, beleaguered missionary church buffeted by antiforeignism to an indigenous popular religion energized by nationalism and millenarianism.
Lian shows that, with a membership that rivals that of the Chinese Communist Party, and the ability to galvanize China’s millions into messianic exuberance, the popular Christian movement channels the aspirations and the discontent of the masses.
Pages: 352
Publisher: Yale University Press (2010)
A New History of Christianity in China
Author: Daniel H. Bays
Abstract: Until comparatively recently, Christianity had made few major inroads into Chinese culture. Bays, one of the world's foremost authorities, expertly charts the history of outreaches: Nestorian, Jesuit, Protestant, Catholic, Russian Orthodox, and the underground church. Scrutinizes how Christianity survived Mao's purges and its surprising resurgence.
Pages: 248
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (2011)
Shanghai Faithful
Author: Jennifer Lin
Abstract: Within the next decade, China could be home to more Christians than any country in the world. Through the 150-year saga of a single family, this book vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious evolution of the world’s most populous nation.
Pages: 332
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; First Edition (February 16, 2017)
Faith in the Wilderness
Author: Hannah Nation & Simon Liu
Abstract: In Faith in the Wilderness, editors Hannah Nation and Simon Liu pull together the insights of the Chinese church for the West. Readers will be convicted, encouraged, and edified by the testimony of these Chinese Christians.
Pages: N/A
Publisher: Lexham Press
True Son of Heaven
Author: David Marshall
Abstract: The saga of Jesus, the True Son of Heaven, touches on one paradox within another inside the Great Wall of China. In the voices of her sages and poets, the rustle of bamboo, the smell of incense or mud in a rice paddy in spring, in the taste of pork dumplings, in red and gold New Year's characters, appear traces of His name.
Pages: 283
Publisher: N/A