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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.)

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