Presents the life stories of outstanding Chinese Christians who, as early modernizers, promoted China’s nation building and moral progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These role models of believers who impacted society are largely unknown today, but they can inspire new generations of Chinese, both believers and unbelievers. New and exciting resource to awaken interest in Christianity among intellectuals.
Read this description from the author as written up by ChinaSource.org:
Stacey Bieler together with Carol Hamrin edited three volumes of Salt and Light: Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China. Here she talks about how Salt and Light came to be and the impact it has had on her own life.
3 Questions
1. What is the Salt and Light series?
Salt and Light is a three-volume series of short biographies of Chinese Christians who lived between 1850-1990. Each volume focuses on 8-10 different people. The second volume has two chapters with second-generation stories: a man named Yan and his son, and the Xu family—parents and children.
Although we could have focused a volume on just educators, we chose not to because Chinese Christians were active in so many aspects of Chinese society. The biographies include a writer, a filmmaker, a businessman, a diplomat, YMCA and YWCA directors, a philosopher, cultural commentators, a judge, social activists, doctors, literacy and rural workers, an artist, and a general.
In writing the articles, we asked each author to not just tell the story of what the person was known for, but to include information about their families and how their Christian faith motivated their actions. Many were active in their professions, but also invested in helping to address societal problems, such as promoting literacy, protecting children, and fighting leprosy. These individuals were also active in local church life, some helping to establish local churches.
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