Project Description

A series of short books, each with several lively “life stories” of outstanding Chinese Christians from different walks of life, would focus on the positive impact on China’s modern progress by outstanding individuals and their partners and organizations. The books would include some photos and other graphics, and would be the centerpiece for such promotional activities as a website with more graphics and resources, a lecture series, T.V. and radio interviews, and CDs with study guides. The project would build upon, and add depth and value to, the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity (http://www.bdcconline.net/).

Project Need

Influencers in Chinese society are re-thinking their past history and culture in search of “true history” from which to form a new identity that is at once modern, democratic and authentically Chinese. They are seeking personal meaning and purpose as well as solutions to China’s pressing social problems. People want to learn from others who lived moral and meaningful lives. This provides a historic opening for reviving a balanced history of Christianity in China and reaffirming China’s Christian heritage.

Prominent thinkers and social reformers already are translating the stories of Western missionaries, and publishers are willing to publish such works for the first time. But even Christian thinkers have no training in church history or access to the lost and forgotten lives of indigenous Chinese Christians. Ironically, any number of early Chinese modernizers and democrats are household names, but their spiritual commitment to Christ is not known, even among overseas Chinese Christians, who focus on stories of church leaders rather than influential laity.

Diverse communities -- including Mainland and overseas Chinese scholars, as well as Christian leaders and young professionals -- meeting with us in recent months have confirmed the need and explained the concrete opportunities for publishing biographical material on Chinese Christians. They perceive breakthroughs for getting state approval of ISBN for Christian material, and they believe that good biographies can provide both living history and living theology for their peers and for a wider popular urban audience in China and among Chinese elsewhere.

Project Outcomes

Highly readable books with purposeful life stories and attractive graphics would spur public interest in China’s rich Christian legacy, and inquiry into the values of today’s Chinese Christians. This will help:

• Provide heroes - models for living - for young adults and children (also useful for spiritual formation within the church as well as outreach).
• Create a breakthrough in the paradigm for thinking about Christianity from negative to positive, by expanding awareness that some of China’s greatest citizens have been Christians.
• Build the open culture that can sustain a new level of legitimacy and legality for religious freedom.

The book series would reach multiple audiences:

• Young, educated urban mainland citizens, including Christians and their families
• University students, seminarians, young lay pastors and leaders
• Senior middle school students, church youth
• Chinese overseas (many of them English-speakers); non-Chinese English-speakers who seek and welcome models for life and career.

Team

Series Editor: GCC Senior Associate and George Mason University Research Professor, Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin Editors for individual volumes: Global China Center staff and associates Partners: Chapter authors; a China team of writers, illustrators, publishers.

Project Timeline

2005: Preliminary outlines created; research begun; first contacts with chapter authors.

2006:
Spring and Summer - editing of existing material, networking with authors and funders.
Fall - travel to coordinate with China-based writers and publishers, finish project design.

2007:
Spring - finish first draft of edited English volume, send to publisher
Summer - begin translation into Chinese, create of graphics
Oct-Nov. - submit precis to publishers; request copyright permission, etc.
Fall-Winter - release English version, with 2007 commemoration of Robert Morrison's 1807 arrival in China; begin to develop the next books in the series

2008-09:
Early 2008 (Chinese New Year’s national book fair) - release and promote Chinese version in mainland China; create a website with additional graphics and references
Later in 2008 - serialize individual stories in magazines or e-journals
Edit an issue of CHRISTIAN HISTORY magazine to reach English-speaking audiences.
Explore other media (audiotape, CD, MP3 digital files, radio broadcasts) study guide,
illustrated youth & children’s booklets or comics; video or film

TOTAL COST: $57,500