Lost Heritage: Chinese Christians as Early Reformers

UCLA Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Carol Lee Hamrin on the new, edited volume "Salt and Light: Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China."

One hundred years ago there was an earlier wave of globalization when the telegraph and steamship brought nations into closer contact. Pioneer modernizers, often Western-educated, built bridges of cooperation between China and the outside world.

China's outstanding citizens of the early twentieth century included Christians who modeled and promoted virtues essential to moral and social progress. As some of China's first professionals as educators, doctors and nurses, journalists and diplomats, they were motivated by their faith to introduce practical reforms and support new civic associations.

The life stories of ten of these Chinese Christians touch on themes important in today’s global era: patterns of East-West cooperation; the transnational nature of Chinese Christianity and its contribution to international understanding, and the positive social impact in China of Christianity. Recovering that earlier heritage is an important building block for today's global society and for world Christianity.

Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin will introduce these themes from her new, edited volume, Salt and Light: Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009).

Hamrin (PhD, Comparative World History, University of Wisconsin) is a Research Professor at George Mason University and Senior Associate with the Global China Center in Virginia. Her career as a student of China’s modernization and China-U.S. relations spans three decades as a senior government research specialist with the Department of State and an educator in D.C. area universities.