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Thursday, June 11, 2026

How Christ has Changed the World: A Bibliography

Yesterday I ran across a comment on a friend's Facebook page blasting the arrogance and harm of the Christian faith: 

"The only species (sic) Christianity offers salvation to is the modern day European. Every other ethnicity has gained nothing but harm from it."

As my friend pointed out, in fact there are more Christians in Africa now than in Europe.  It is patronizing to assume they convert against their own interests or understanding.  It is people who denigrate the positive impact of Christianity on the world who lack understanding.  So as Sophia says in Proverbs, let the foolish come and drink!  Here are 176 works from which to imbibe knowledge, both from personal experience and from systematic and sweeping research.  

I apologize for offering so short a short list!  I only recommend works that I have read (or wrote), and have probably forgotten half of those.  The sections on education and medicine could no doubt run thousands of volumes each. 

I begin with own writings relevant to this subject, since this is my site, and I may as well get my confession out first.  You really should, let me state this dogmatically but not egotistically, read my new books on How Jesus has Liberated Women!  But the person who may have written most helpfully on this subject in recent years is Indian philosopher and reformer Vishal Mangalwadi, aided by his wife Ruth, and many of their books are also listed in the relevant sections below.   


A: My most relevant books


(1) Marshall, David: True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture (1996, 2002) (Especially pages 121-132, then from 175 on.) 

                      Jesus and the Religions of Man (2000) (Pages 41-159.)

                      Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could (2005) (Chapters 10 and 11, then the comparison of the gospels to other ancient works in Part III of the book.) 

                       The Truth About Jesus and the "Lost Gospels" (2007) (Especially chapters entitled "Jesus was the 'Original Feminist,' "The Gospel Brings True Sexual Liberation," "Gnosticism Would Not Set the World Free," "Jesus Brings True Freedom," and "Meniggestroeth Didn't Make Your Mind.")

                      The Truth Behind the New Atheism. (2007) (Parts II and III, "Word and Flesh," and "Truth and Consequences.")

                      Faith Seeking Understanding (2012), "Marx, the Mob, and Missions" by Bill Prevette

                      How Jesus Passes the Outsider Test: The Inside Story (Especially Chapter Four, "The Gifts," which describes twelve gifts Christianity has given the world, then lists 73 or so followers of Jesus who have changed a big part of the world.)

                      How Jesus has Liberated Women Part I: Before Christ

                      How Jesus has Liberated Women Part II: In the Year of Our Lord  


B. Overviews

(10) Adeney, Miriam: Kingdom Without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity

(11) Becker, Ernest: The Denial of Death  Becker was an atheist.  His intermittent comments about the psychological insight and healing power of Christian faith are therefore especially convincing.  

(12) Brooks, Arthur: Who Really Cares? The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism – Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and why it Matters (One of the most revealing and important books on this list.  Brooks focuses on charitable giving and other actions in the United States.  The title is somewhat misleading, because what really counts, as Brooks shows, is religious belief, more than political position.  Simply put, those who are religiously involved tend to give many times as much to charity as those who are not, and to be more generous in every measurable way.) 

(13) Campolo, Tony: The Power Delusion

(14) Carroll and Shielett: Christianity on Trial  Good journalistic style: more objective than Kennedy, lots of interesting facts. 

(15) Cahill, Thomas: How the Irish Saved Civilization

                Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus

(17) Coles, Robert: Harvard Diary

(18) Cunningham, Loren, The Book That Transforms Nations

(19) D'Souza, Dinesh: What's so great about Christianity?

(20) Esolen, Tony: The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization

(21) Girard, Rene: The Scapegoat translated Yvonne Freccero
 
                 I See Satan Fall like Lightening translated by James G. Williams

(23) Hays, Richard: The Moral Vision of the New Testament

(24) Henrich, Joseph: The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous  

(25) Holland, Tom: Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World  (A tour de force, but focuses mainly on the West.)  

(26)  Keener, Craig: Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (This book didn't seem to fit anywhere else, so I put it here.  Keener is a respected New Testament scholar, but this mammoth, and massively-footnoted work, is mostly about MODERN miracles.  At the very least, one must conclude that the Gospel has remarkable psychosomatic properties, beyond what one might think possible, on millions of sick [and yes, even dead] people.) 

(27) Kennedy, James : What if Jesus had never been born?  These two books sometimes get a bit carried away in ascribing everything good to Christianity, but they make lots of worthwhile points.

                        What if the Bible had never been written?

(29) Landes, David: The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some are so poor  (The influence of Christianity is not the main focus of Landes' book, but he makes some interesting parenthetic comments.)

(30) Mangalwadi, Vishal: The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization

(31) Monroe, Kelly: Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Thinking Christians (Several stories in this book are especially important or moving, including those by Robert Coles, Glenn Loury, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Armand Nicholi, Charles Thaxton, Brent Foster, Poh Liam Lim, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Krister Siarsingh, and Lamin Sanneh).

(32) Ortberg, John: Who Was This Man? (A short, pithy, and thoughtful introduction to how Jesus has changed the world.)

(33) Peck, M. Scott: People of the Lie

(34) Pelikan, Jarislov: Jesus Through the Centuries: his place in the history of cultures

(35) Sanneh, Lamin: Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture 

(36) Schmidt, Alvin: How Christianity Changed the World  (This book is uncritical and exaggerated, but does contain a lot of interesting information.)   

(37) Nick Spenser: The Evolution of the West: How Christianity has Shaped our Values (More nuanced and critical.) 


C: The Early Years

(38) Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  (Observe the many ways Jesus blessed those around him.) 

(42) Acts of the Apostles

(43) Augustine: City of God

(44) Durant, Will: Caesar and Christ  (Especially the late chapters.)

(45) Hart, David: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies


(46) Stark, Rodney: The Rise of Christianity

                                  Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief

                                   How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity


D: Positively Medieval

(49) Cavill, Paul: Vikings: Fear and Faith (Especially the chapter on King Alfred.)

(50) Chesterton, G. K: St. Francis of Assissi

(51) Chaucer, Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales (The role and status of the sexes is often debated in these stories, with different travelers holding to opposing views, often quoting Scripture.  See my How Jesus has Liberated Women II for an overview, and an argument that his tales reflect a generally healthy banter between two unusually free sexes.)

(52) Clark, Kenneth: Civilization (Look at the pictures, if nothing else!) 

(53) Fletcher, Richard: The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity

(54) GiesFrances and Joseph, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages

(55) Harrison, Dick: The Age of Abbesses and Queens: Gender and Political Culture in Early Medieval Europe

(56) Pernoud, Regine: Women in the Days of the Cathedrals

(57) Stark, Rodney: For the Glory of God


                       God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades

                          One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism


(60) Tierney, Brian: The Crisis of Church and State, 1000-1350, With Selected Documents

(61) Williams, Charles: Descent of the Dove


E. Women

(See my How Jesus has Liberated Women books, cited above, for the most thorough overview.  Some relevant books are also listed in the Medieval section.

(62)  Mona Charen: Sex Matters  (Charen is Jewish, but makes clear the value of Judeo-Christian marriage, and the consequences of flouting the "traditional" rules.) 

(63) Haugen, Gary: Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World (Haugen is founder of the International Justice Mission, one of many Christian organizations to challenge the sex industry that exploits young women, and men, around the world.) 

(64) Hitt, Russell: Sensei: The Life Story of Irene Webster-Smith

(65) "Population Briefing Paper, Population Crisis Committee, Country Rankings of the Status of Women: Poor, Powerless, and Pregnant," No. 20, June, 1988

(66) David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is Drawing Muslims around the World to Faith in Jesus Christ (The story on pages 194-199 is by turns appalling, revealing, and hopeful.)

(67) Goode, Steve and Marie, Bring Your Eyes to See: Our Journey into Justice, Compassion, and Action (YWAM Publishing: 2015)

(68) MacDonald, Heather: War on the Cops (a good complement to Charen's book, in that it describes the consequences of post-Christian marriage from a law enforcement perspective).

(69) Timothy Taylor: The Prehistory of Sex


F. Birth of Science

(70) Barr, Stephen: Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

(70) Chapman, Allan: Slaying the Dragons: Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith

(71) Hannam, James: The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution

? Huff, Toby:  Intellectual curiosity and the scientific revolution. (Suggested by visitor to Christ the Tao blog.)

(72) Pearson, Nancy, and Thaxton, Charles: The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy

(73)  Seb Falk, The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science


G: Democracy and Confronting Tyranny

(74) Burke, Edmund: Reflections on the Revolution in France


(75) Campolo, Tony: The Power Delusion: A Serious call to consider Jesus' approach to power (It is particularly interesting to read Campolo's account in Chapter Seven of meeting Benigno Aquino in Boston, before he returned to the Philippines to transform that country by his sacrificial death.  Campolo does not mention his name, for that had not happened yet when he wrote this book, apparently, but he recognized the potential of what Aquino said.  That story is but one illustration of the Christian principles Campolo teaches.)

(76) Colson, Charles: Kingdoms in Conflict

(77) Dalin, David: The Myth of Hitler's Pope: Pope Pius XII And His Secret War Against Nazi Germany

(78) De Toqueville, Alexis: Democracy in America

(79) Eidsmoe, John: Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of our Founding Fathers

(80) Mosab Hassan Yousef: Son of Hamas

(81) Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: The Gulag Archipelago

                                One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich  
(Solzhenitsyn converted to Christianity in the Soviet slave labor camps.  The Baptist character in this book describes the witness of Christians imprisoned with him, generalized about in The Gulag Archipelago, that helped lead to his renewal of faith -- and his subsequent contribution to overthrowing the communist system.)

(83) Treadgold, Donald: Freedom: A History

(84) Weigel, George: The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism  (Note: the historian of Eastern Europe James Felak seems to agree with Weigel's general argument, but tells me he finds it a little simplistic.  Felak is writing his own more detailed book on the fall of communism and the role Pope John Paul II played.)

(85) Woodberry, Robert: "The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy" (This article may be the most succinct and powerful argument of all: read this, if nothing else, and let the books flesh out the details.) 


(86) Wurmbrand, Richard: In God's Underground

                   Tortured for Christ


H. Ending Slavery

(Also see Stark, For the Glory of God, above, and my post about the early anti-slave movement on this site.)

(88) Drescher, Seymour, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery

(89) Metaxas, Eric: Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery  

(90) Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom's Cabin.  (Read the famous novel as a debate over whether the Bible supports or opposes slavery.  Note the impact of this book on northern anti-slave sentiment before the Civil War.)  

(91) Thomas, Hugh: The Slave Trade


I: Education

(This section is absurdly short.  I have studied and taught almost exclusively in secular schools, many of which were founded, in part, by Christians following their boss's vocation of teacher, including leading high school networks in Hunan and Shandong Provinces, Peking University, and Shandong University.  Growing up in a Buddhist family, my wife went to Catholic schools in Japan.  From founders of the great universities of Europe and America around the world, to little homeschool coops and schools for girls in countries where female education had been neglected, devout followers of Christ have played an enormous role in shaping education.  Some of this history can be found in neglected missionary biographies, including some cited in other sections of this bibliography.)

(92) The Third Education Revolution (2021, co-editors, Vishal Mangalwadi and David Marshall)

(93) Girardot, Norman: The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage


J: Other Early Social Reform

(94) Benge, Janet and Geoff: George Muller: The Guardian of Bristol's Orphans

(95) Burger, Delores: Women Who Changed the Heart of the City (Mostly about the role women played in city missions, which helped thousands of people turn their lives around.)  

(96) Collier, Richard: The General Next to God: The Story of William Booth and the Salvation Army

(97) Wesley, John: Journal of John Wesley


K. Changed Lives that Changed Worlds


(98) Adeney, Miriam and Aalish, Rashid: Afghan Mountain Faith: Stories of Justice, Beauty, and Relationships

(99) Colson, Charles: Loving God

(100) Lu Daihao, 收刀入鞘 : 一个黑道變傳道的真实故事  (The story of a gangster in Taiwan to whom a Christian girl wrote many letters . . . He escaped from a prison island.  I knew him a little, an amazing tale.)

(101) Pullinger, Jackie Andrew Quicke: Chasing the Dragon: The true story of how one woman’s faith resulted in the conversion of hundreds of drug addicts, prostitutes, and hardened criminals in Hong Kong’s infamous Walled City (I had the chance to get to know one of them a little!)  

(102) Sanborn, Art: Walking Miracle: A Vision for Asia, A Prayer for Healing (Art led us around Thailand in 1984, telling us amazing stories, as we saw amazing things happen that suggest to me that the stories in this book probably really happened.)

(103) Soothill, William: Timothy Richard of China, seer, statesman, missionary and the most disinterested adviser the Chinese ever had


(104) Taylor, Geraldine: Pastor Hsi: A Struggle for Chinese Christianity

(105) Wilkerson, David: The Cross and the Switchblade



L. Tribal Societies (Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Pacific)

(106) Bingham, Hiram: Selected Writings of Hiram Bingham, 1814-1869, Missionary to the Hawaiian Islands   (The Christian outreach to Hawaii was wildly successful in the short-term, but largely failed in the long-term, due mainly to the greed and lust of imperial powers, including some descendants of missionaries, it seems.  However, these two books show how much the Gospel achieved, and how many people it helped, in those early years, through replacing the caste system of Hawaii (which was awful), educating, and protecting Polynesians from prostitution.  I might add that Bingham's own great-grandson saved thousands of Jews by flouting US State Department rules during the Holocaust, and getting punished for it.  Among others, he saved Marc Chagall, the great Jewish artist.)

(107) Crossman, Eileen:  Mountain Rain: A New Biography of James O Fraser 

(108) Covell, Ralph: The Liberating Gospel in China: The Christian Faith among China's Minority Peoples

(109) De La Haye, Sophia: Tread Upon the Lion: The Story of Tommy Titcombe

(110) Dekker, John, with Lois Neely, Torches of Joy

(111) Frederick Forsyth: The Outsider, My Life in Intrigue  (Forsyth is a journalist and a novelist, author of Day of the Jackal, who spent about a year and a half in Biafra, a southern corner of Nigeria that succeeded from the union and attempted to protect itself from Nigerian attacks.  While not a Christian, Forsyth describes the leading role Catholic and other Christian missionaries and church personel played in defying Nigeria and trying to save the millions who were dying of starvation.  He credits the church with saving a million lives during that struggle.  Let me add that the book as a whole is riveting.)  

(112) Daniel Fontaine, Health for All (by an effective medical missionary in Africa)

(113) Daniel Kikawa, Perpetuated in Righteousness: The Journey of the Hawaiian People from Eden . . . to the Present Time.  

(114) Jungleman (+ Mark Ritchie): Spirit of the Rainforest

(115) Livingstone, W. P.: Mary Slessor of Calabar

(116) Mason, George: Memoir of Ko Thah-Byu, the First Karen Convert

(117) Richardson, Don: Peace Child

                        Lords of the Earth

                       Eternity in Their Hearts

(120) Studd, C. T.: With C. T. Studd in Congo Forests


M. India and South Asia 

(121) Anderson, Courtney: To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson

(122) Brand, Margaret and Jost, James: Vision for God: The Story of Dr. Margaret Brand 

(123) Brand, Paul: The Gift of Pain  (An Indian friend of mine recently noted that people who make history seldom write it.  Here's an exception: Paul Brand was a missionary doctor who helped medical science understand, and deal with, leprosy, combining the story of his own life with this intellectual adventure.)   

(124) Farquhar, John: The Crown of Hinduism

                     Modern Religious Movements in India

(125) Hale, Thomas: Living Stones of the Himalayas  (Hale was a medical missionary in Nepal, where many people have become Christians in recent years.  Hale shows how that happened, often involving concrete acts of healing and mercy.) 

                  Don't Let the Goats eat the Loquat Trees

(126) Hefley, James: God’s Tribesman: The Rochunga Pudaite Story

(127) Howard, Randolph Levi: Baptists in Burma

(128) Mangalwadi, Vishal

            The World of the Gurus Mumbai

            Truth and Social Reform 

            India: Missionary Conspiracy: Letters to a Postmodern Hindu Mussoorie

            India: The Grand Experiment  

            The Quest for Freedom and Dignity: Caste, Conversion, and Cultural Revolution

            The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization

(135) Mangalwadi, Vishal and Mangalwadi, Ruth

The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for the Transformation of a Culture  

(137) Mangalwadi, Vishal and MacNicol, Nicol

What Liberates a Woman?: The Story of Pandita Ramabai — A Builder of Modern India

(139) Wead, Douglas: The Compassionate Touch: Haunting Stories of prostitutes, lepers and beggars on the streets of Calcutta -- and their response to a daring demonstration of God's love (One of the supervisors for my doctoral work now leads much of the work Mark Buntain established.) 

(140) Wellman, Sam: Amy Carmichael: A Life Abandoned to God

(141) Wilson, Dorothy: Ten Fingers for God: the Life and Work of Dr. Paul Brand


N. East Asia 

(142) Aikman, David: Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Challenging the Global Balance of Power

(143) Broomhall, A. J.: The Shaping of Modern China: Hudson Taylor's Life and Legacy

(144) Burgess, Alan: Inn of the Sixth Happiness (The title is strange, based no doubt on the movie, but the inn was actually named after 8 happinesses, which makes sense in Chinese, and the book was originally called The Small Woman.  But it's a great story, anyway.)

(145) Buswell, Robert and Lee, Timothy: Christianity in Korea

(146) Cary, Otis: History of Christianity in Japan: Protestant Missions 

Clark, Donald: “Mothers, Daughters, Bible-Women, and Sisters: An Account of ‘Women’s Work’ in the Korean Mission Field”

(148) Dunch, Ryan: Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of Modern China, 1857-1927

(149) Goforth, Rosalin: Goforth of China

(150) Goode, Steve and Marie: Bring Your Eyes and See: Our Journey into Justice, Compassion, and Action   (The Goodes have been involved in refugee relief, tsunami relief, training, and red light ministries in Southeast Asia with Youth With a Mission for decades.. This book represents the work of many other Christians as well.)

(151) Lee, Jung Young: ‘The American Missionary Movement in Korea, 1882-1945: Its Contributions and American Diplomacy’ Missiology: An International Review 12/ 4: 387-402

(152) Ledyard, Gari:“Kollumba Kang Wansuk, an Early Catholic Activist and Martyr,” 38-71, in Christianity in Korea, edited by Robert E. Buswell and Timothy S. Lee

(153) Lovett, Richard: James Gilmour of Mongolia: His Diaries, Letters, and Reports

(154) Kim, Yung Han: ‘Christianity and Korean culture: the reasons for the success of Christianity in KoreaExchange 33 / 2: 132-152.

(155) LaTourette, Kenneth Scott: A History of Christian Missions in China

(156) Legge, James: The Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism Described and Compared with Christianity  (Legge was the West's greatest early sinologist.  His translations of the Chinese Classics are still standard, 150 years later, and his insights careful and fair-minded.) 

(157) Lodwick, Kathleen: Crusaders Against Opium: Protestant missionaries in China, 1874-1917

(158) MacKay, George Leslie: From far Formosa : the island, its people and missions  

(159) Park, Yong-Shin: ‘Protestant Christianity and Social Change in Korea University of California, Berkeley, dissertation for the Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology

(160) Phan, Peter: Missions and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam

(161) Rees, Vaughan: The Jesus Family in Communist China

(162) Ricci, Mateo: China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Mateo Ricci: 1583-1610

(163) Scheiner, Irwin: Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan

(164) Seat, Karen: Province Has Freed Our Hands: Women’s Missions and the American Encounter With Japan

(165) Sharmon, Lyon: Sun Yat-sen: His Life and Its Meaning 

(166) Soothill, William: Timothy Richard of China: seer, statesman, missionary, and the most disinterested adviser that China ever had

(167) Standaert, Nicholas: Handbook of Christianity in China

(168) Taylor, Geraldine: Pastor Hsi: A Struggle for Chinese Christianity

(169) Trout, Jessie: Kagawa, Japanese Prophet

(170) 顾卫民: 基督教与近代中国社会  (Christianity and Contemporary Chinese Society, a great historical overview which offers quite a bit of detail on how Christianity transformed China in about 500 pages.)

(171) 林治平改變历史:華人文化舆宣教事工   (To Change History: The Culture of the Chinese People and the Work of Missions, by well-known Taiwanese historian and Christian publisher, Lin Zhiping.)

(172) 李金强,林治平, 風雨中的彩虹:基督教從百年足迹  

(173) 李金强,林治平風雨中的彩虹:基督教從百年足迹   (The Rainbow in the Midst of the Wind and Rain: The Footprints of Christianity from 100 Years On.  This is the first of a series of five books by Lin Zhiping and Li Jinqiang on the Christian influence on the Chinese Republican revolution of 1911.

(174) 姚崧: 影响我国维新的几个外国人 (A Few Foreigners Who Influenced Our Nation's Reform.) 

(175) 远志明: 神州忏悔录:上帝与五千年中国   (China's Confession: God and China's 5000 years.  Yuan Zhiming's remarkable retelling of the story of China, with Christ as the agent who has begun to reform it, and brings it hope for the future.) 

(176) Garrett, Shirley: Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese YMCA, 1895-1926  (An important force for change in early modern China.)

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

How the Brothers Grimm Overthrew the Evil Empire

 The following was originally published in Books and Culture, in September / October, 2005. 


How the Brothers Grimm Overthrew the Evil Empire

A fairy tale.


It is rumored that, due to the cumulative effect of small atmospheric variations, downdraft from a butterfly's wings on one side of the world may cause a typhoon on the other. Similarly, Ray Bradbury told how a tourist traveled in time to the Jurassic Era and stepped on a butterfly. He returned to the 20th century to find tyranny had replaced democracy. The Butterfly Effect, as it is called, thus refers to "sensitive dependence on initial conditions," in particular the spell cast by small causes on large events at a distance.

What good is a fairy? In an era when fantasy was under suspicion, Bruno Bettelheim wrote an ingenious and fruitful book with a title, Uses of Enchantment, that justified Tinkerbell in just such utilitarian terms. Bettelheim argued that fairy tales not only entertain, but "enlighten (a child) about himself" and help him "find meaning in life." J. R. R. Tolkien had already pointed out that fairy tales teach children the wonder of simple things. If we lend credence to the Butterfly Effect, we may add a further use of enchantment: Grimm fairy tales helped win the Cold War.

What did Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm have in mind when they gathered, edited, and rewrote their collection of Central European folk tales? Bettelheim hinted at spiritual dynamics beneath his own gently Freudian reading of the Grimms. In The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove: The Religious Meaning of the Grimm's Magic Fairy Tales, Jesuit scholar Ronald Murphy explored those depths.1 Within the gingerbread of beloved tales—"Hansel and Gretel," "Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding Hood"—he detected strangely familiar dogmatic latticework. Most obviously, perhaps, in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves":

Once it was the middle of winter, and the snowflakes fell from the sky like feathers. At a window with a frame of ebony a queen sat and sewed. And as she sewed and looked out at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell in the snow. And in the white snow the red looked so beautiful that she thought to herself: "If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in the window frame!" … When the child was born, the queen died.

Snow symbolizes purity, and Snow White the young, innocent but vulnerable soul. The drops of blood from the queen's finger are Trinitarian: her death hints at divine purpose in suffering.

Like a traveler admiring a mountain stream, one can attend to the surface flow of the story or focus on the spiritual bedrock over which it pours. Snow White finds refuge among seven dwarves with seven candles (the church, which exists to warn and protect lost travelers). She undergoes a series of temptations, the first two—"Pretty things for sale!" "Now, for once, I'll comb your hair properly"—appealing to the vanity that ensnared her stepmother. Giving in, she falls down "as if dead," only to be revived by the dwarves. The third temptation involves an apple. Like Eve, Snow White falls, not "as if dead," this time, but "dead, and she remained dead." The dwarves anoint her with water and wine, but cannot revive her. They place her in a glass coffin on a hill, where owl, raven, and dove watch over her still form.

Scanning the Greek New Testament that Wilhelm Grimm read in morning devotions, Murphy found themes from the Grimm fairyland in the passages Wilhelm underlined: "The Spirit of God, divine providence, love of God and of neighbor, faithful confidence, ecumenical acceptance of other faiths, the Resurrection to eternal life."

One passage Wilhelm highlighted was the "Mars Hill" narrative in which Paul quoted Greek poets about a God who transcended culture: "As even some of your poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.'"

At first glance the owl, raven, and dove by Snow White's grave may seem as ornamental—and even more incidental to the story—as Flower the skunk to Bambi or the English sheep dog to Disney's Little Mermaid. But in fact their presence carries deep theological meaning. By them, the Grimms symbolically address the great question that confronted Paul in Athens, and confronts us today: How do the religions of the world fit together? Should we simply reject other beliefs and (with Karl Marx) "abolish all eternal truths?" Should we welcome all beliefs to an undifferentiated and indifferent parliament of sectarian fowls?

The Grimm birds bring three spiritual civilizations to the grave of Snow White: Greek (owl), German (raven), and Hebrew (dove), the traditions on which the brothers drew for their stories. The cultures of the world, this scene implies, are beautiful, and can lead (like the white duck that carried Hansel and Gretel home) toward truth.

Yet in the end, salvation itself comes from another source: "A king's son happened to come into the forest and went to the dwarves' house to spend the night." The Prince, Lord of the seven churches, brings Snow White to life. (Wilhelm also marked the Johannian phrase, "en auto zoe en … phos ton anthropon": "in him was life, and the life was the light of men.") Confessing his love, the Prince took Snow White to his "father's palace" as wife. The evil stepmother put on "red hot slippers" and danced till she dropped dead.

The Brothers Grimm thus hint at what Paul Tillich called a "universalism" that "did not mix" but subjected other beliefs to "an ultimate criterion." That criterion is Christ, the King's Son (who appears in various guises in many of their most popular tales). Not only Jewish Scripture and Greco-Roman philosophy and poetry but also German folk tales could serve as "tutors to Christ," in Justin's famous formulation. And the stories do not fail to note the fate of wicked stepmothers, because Christian tradition is a free, therefore perilous, universalism: the cross stretches in all directions, yet still crucifies.

Adults who keep a foot in Never-Neverland continue to enjoy the simple narrative flow of these childhood stories. We may also sense their psychological depths. But before Murphy's detective work, few I think recognized the spiritual bedrock over which the stories flowed. Yet this quietly redemptive Grimm subtext set in motion a chain of events, like dwarfish dominos, or an avalanche released by the tread of leprechauns across powder snow, that ultimately toppled the castle of one of the most wicked philosophical "stepmothers" of our day.


Domino one. In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton explained how fairy tales brought him to Christian faith. "The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now," he confessed in a chapter called "Ethics of Elfland," "are the things called fairy tales." Chesterton tipped his hat to "the fine collection of Andrew Lang," senior romantic at the Illustrated London News.2 But his examples were mainly drawn from the Brothers Grimm: "That giants should be killed because they are gigantic." "The terrible allegory of Sleeping Beauty … how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death, and how death also may perhaps be softened to sleep." Beyond specific lessons, the air of Fairy awoke in Chesterton a childlike wonder at the elementary phenomena of nature. "These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water."

Fairy tales led Chesterton to five theological conclusions: "This world does not explain itself"; "There was something personal in the world"; "This purpose is beautiful in its old design, in spite of defects, such as dragons"; "The proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint"; and "All good was a remnant."

Just as owl, raven, and dove perched by the coffin of Snow White but could not save her, so Chesterton argued, in Everlasting Man, that mythology, while beautiful, had by the birth of Christ been "drained to the dregs." "Pan was dead and the shepherds were scattered like sheep." Christ himself gathered enchantment into the fold of redemptive history.

Domino two. J. R. R. Tolkien's understanding of fairy tales and their relation to faith owed much to Chesterton. In his essay "On Fairy-Stories," he mentioned Chesterton several times, and (in a passage that could almost serve to list the material assets of Hobbiton) echoed "Ethics of Elfland": "It was in fairy stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; trees and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."

"Snow White"'s happy denouement suggested a conclusion even beyond the magic of nature. This Tolkien christened the "eucatastrophe," the good disaster. Fairy tales not only breathe the magic of renewed sight into earthly beauty, but hint that God will breathe life into mankind again:

It has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt-making creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories … But this story has entered History and the primary world … The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.

Domino three. Reprieved from trench warfare in France, C. S. Lewis read Everlasting Man and "for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history" in a form that made sense. Echoing New Testament passages that Wilhelm Grimm underlined, Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy:

The question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. It was rather, "Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?"

When Lewis returned to postwar Oxford, he fell in with "Tollers," and it was Tolkien who helped him see Christ as the answer to that question. (Phantastes, a "Fairie Romance" by another Grimm disciple, George Macdonald, also played a role.)

Domino four. Charles Colson is the first person in the lineage I am tracing to hold political power. He read Lewis' Mere Christianity just as he lost that power—the very moment students of Fairyland know to anticipate great things. In Born Again, Colson described the transforming impact of his conversion to Christ at that moment when he had hit bottom.

Domino five. A few years later, an imprisoned Filipino senator, Benigno Aquino, read Born Again and experienced spiritual renewal. Exiled to the United States, Aquino heard sociologist Tony Campolo speak on "Authority and Power in Social Change." Campolo argued that God redeems society through love, not force. (Without, however, specifically mentioning the prince's kiss in "Sleeping Beauty.") After the lecture, Aquino told Campolo he was "willing to die" for truth: "You have given me hope," Aquino said. "I know that when I return to my homeland I will be powerless: but you have helped me to see that I will have authority." Recounting their conversation in his book The Power Delusion, Campolo reflected, "I will be anxiously waiting to see how this once powerful leader affects the people in his native country."

Neither anxiety nor hope were misplaced. Aquino was shot to death at Manila International Airport. (Now named in his honor.) When the dictatorial President Ferdinand Marcos attempted to steal the subsequent election from Aquino's widow, millions of citizens poured into the streets and gave birth to what was called "People Power." Like the huntsman in "Snow White," Marcos' soldiers refused to fire on the demonstrators, and their king and queen (known, by the way, for her collection of slippers) danced off the archipelago to political doom.

Copy-cat revolutions erupted soon afterward in Burma and China and were suppressed. Then, on the turn of an autumn tide, the masses of Eastern Europe, inspired by People Power revolts, toppled statues of Lenin and smashed the Berlin Wall, fragments of which were sold in Western department stores to stuff stockings on Christmas 1989.

Redemptive history moves in mysterious ways. Events set in flow by the Incarnation touch individual lives, but the full causal pattern is (as Paul hinted) greater than those lives, and ultimately beyond human comprehension. Now and then, some small part of that great pattern comes to light.

"The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road," Chesterton whimsically informed us. The line of causation I have traced may appear (as his poem put it) to "ramble round the Shire." But in the company of such as Tolkien and Grimm, what better place to wander? As that great Shire rambler, Bilbo Baggins himself, remarked, "Step into the Road, and … there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." If you follow my hobbit logic, it may be that a spell cast on the world by the Greek Prometheus (to whom Marx and Engels were in thrall) was broken by the angelic wings of German fairies, beating in tune to the canonical, and still useful, multiculturalism of St. Paul.

David Marshall is director of Kuai Mu Institute for Christianity and World Cultures. His newest book is entitled Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could: A Populist Defense of the Gospels (Kuai Mu Press).

1. Ronald Murphy, The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove: The Religious Meaning of the Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000).

2. Aside from his famous "color" collections of fairy tales, which remain popular with children, it was also Andrew Lang who cast doubts on two standard anti-Christian arguments of his day: Edward Tyler's theory of the evolution of religions, and James Frazer's theory that the gospels belonged to a common mythological pattern of "dying and rising gods."