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) Gies, Frances 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 Korea’ Exchange 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) 姚崧龄: 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.)

Genocide in Nigeria? Wheelchairs, Wildebeests, and Christian-Muslim Tensions

David Marshall: Welcome to Wind of the Tao Podcast. Today we have a special guest, Ron Rice, a pastor at Westside Presbyterian Church in West Seattle. He's also an authority on the country of Nigeria. A lot's been going on in that largest of African countries in the last few years, which has mostly Muslims in the north and mostly Christians in the south.

Ron Rice is an old friend of my parents. Ron, could you please introduce yourself?

Ron Rice: Yes.  I'm a retired Presbyterian pastor. I'm 88 years old. I've been to Nigeria 31 times and I have a major ministry there.  I live in West Seattle.  My wife has been with me 16 times to Nigeria. I've actually traveled in 33 of Nigeria's 36 states. I have yet to meet a Nigerian who has seen as much of Nigeria as I have.

 

Wheelchairs for Nigeria

There's more polio in Nigeria than anywhere in the world. There are uncounted tens of thousands of polio survivors and basically no one is helping them. Now huge efforts have been made at polio eradication.  Rotary started this over 40 years ago. They've raised over a billion dollars from Rotary clubs around the world. Gates Foundation has given five billion.

So the good news is that the World Health Organization declared that Nigeria was polio free maybe six or seven years ago.

I have a partner (in Nigeria) who walks on his hands on wooden blocks. He's a graduate of the law faculty of the University of Joss. And we have a shop in Joss, Nigeria with 46 employees.  And we build a tricycle made of bicycle parts.  We build them for $150.

I first my met my partner 26 years ago. This started very slowly. I had a wheelchair or tricycle built for him and it's grown and grown and now we have last month we topped 40,000 of these tricycle wheelchairs that we have built and donated. No one else in that huge country. You know, Nigeria has 230 million people. It's two-thirds the population in the United States. And no one else is doing what we're doing for polio survivors. But we've just scratched the surface.

(These wheelchairs) transform lives because (the recipients) have been crawling on the ground.  Imagine if you could never get further from your house and you crawl on your hands and knees all your life. You're not going to go out in public. Nobody's going to know about you except your family and they're ashamed.  It's an honor-shame culture. And there's a lot of shame connected with having a disabled person in your family. And so mobility absolutely transforms their lives. Kids can go to school, adults can go to the market or to church or to the mosque.  And our of course our goal is that they can be self-supporting and many of them do become self-supporting.

A couple years ago we did a distribution in at an emir's palace. You know an emir is a king and traditional ruler. And here was a man on one of our wheelchairs that he had gotten 10 years before and he has a little business selling fruit. He has someone that goes into Joss and buys fruit and brings it back and he sells it and he's supporting his family.  So (for) many it absolutely changes their life.

We're a Christian organization. Our name is Beautiful Gate, taken from the book of Acts in the Bible. Peter and John going to the temple to pray at the gate called beautiful. And (they meet) a crippled beggar there.  Peter says, “Silver and gold have I none, but I'll give you what I do have. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And this man who had never walked jumped to his feet and went in temple praising God.

We tell that story wherever we go, wherever we give out wheelchairs.  We can't do what Peter did, but we're doing the next best thing by giving mobility to these who cannot walk.  Of our 46 employees, probably maybe 15 or 20 of them are Muslim.

Marshall: That reminds me of the ministry that Christian missionaries did in China when they helped uh overthrow foot-binding in the 19th century in the early 20th century.

So some of your employees are Muslim and some are Christian and your ministry is obviously to both Muslims and Christians and also anybody else who may belong to other religions as well.

Rice: It’s in the city of Joss, a city maybe about the size of Seattle, in the middle belt of the country.  It’s about half Christian half Muslim -- actually Plateau State where Joss is located is maybe 70% Christian.

Christian-Muslim Violence

Marshall:  So do you see any hostility between Muslims and Christians in a place like that or is it more confined to particular regions of Nigeria?

Rice: Oh yes yes yes we've had what they call crises. The first one was in 2001 – it started five days before 911, but had nothing to do with 911 here.  But you never know what triggers it.

On Friday afternoons the Muslims block off the main roads for parking for people going to the mosque to pray. And the story was – you never know the details – that some lady went through the parking lot or something. Anyway, it triggered hostility and and there were probably several thousand people that were killed, both Christians and Muslims.  (You know, when you talk about Christians and Muslims, these are people from Christian tribes or Muslim tribes. It doesn't mean when you say they're Christian that they all go to church, although many do.)

There have been several other crises that were triggered by who knows what and there were maybe several thousand killed.  That doesn't really have anything to do with the current killing across the country.

Our old shop which we started in 2004 was in a Christian area on a back road, very hard to find. And after one of these crises, some of the ladies came from the community to tell my partner Yuba, you better not allow any of your Muslim workers to come through the neighborhood because it won't be safe for them. You know, back then, I mean, it was awful. They'd stop a motorcycle – and back in those days the taxis in town were motorcycles. They don't have those anymore in Joss – they have the three-wheeled jimny from India.

But the motorcycle would be going through the wrong part of town and a gang of young guys would stop the motorcycle and find out if the if the passenger was a Christian or Muslim and if they were in the wrong area, maybe they'd make them quote the Lord's Prayer or something to find out, but they tell them to pull out your phone and call your family and tell them that they won't be seeing you anymore and they kill them right there on the spot. And so there has been that that kind of killing.

But that's been quite a while I think since we've had a crisis like that, at least 10 years.

Marshall: In a large country with 230 million, people, you've got three kinds of interreligious violence.  You've got this sort of community upwelling of violence and you've got the Fulani herders who are in conflict with the farmers and then you have the – what's the name of that terrorist organization up in the north?

Rice: Boko Haram.

Marshall: They've also split into different groups as well  . . .

Rice: Let me talk about those three groups.

Boko Haram started in the northeast maybe 15, 20 years ago.  Boko means “book” and they're trying to reestablish the Islamic caliphate and destroy all western education. Most high schools in Nigeria are boarding schools. the government would try to send have families send students from the southwest or the southeast to a school in the north and vice versa to try to break down tribal animosities. and Boko Haram would come to a school in the night, a boarding school, high school, and they would light fire to the boy’s hostel and shoot all the boys as they came out and then they'd go to the girls’ dormitories and bring the girls out and tell them to go home and get married.

Well, you didn't have to do that more than a few times and no families were ever going to send their students to a boarding school in the north.

And the estimates now that I've gotten from my colleague, Professor Danny McCain at the University of Joss, who heads up their Peace Department. So, he's really on top of things. The latest research is that the Boko Haram has killed between 300,000 and 350,000: 60% Muslim, 40% Christian. Of course, remember they're in the north and the north is mostly Muslim. So when they're going into villages and killing school kids or whatever the majority of the victims are going to be Muslim certainly killed plenty of Christian

Marshall: From what I understand Boko Haram has split into different factions and is fighting itself nowadays.

Rice: Probably.  You know some have lined up with ISIS uh up in the Middle East and the army has killed thousands.  The army of course they don't make very good soldiers. They come in and shoot them up when they can’t capture them. They don't mostly they don't take prisoners and of course a lot of soldiers have been killed by Boko Haram. They're ambushed and Boko Ram has a lot of weapons from up north and so it has been very tragic.

Marshall: So that sounds a little bit more complicated than what we usually hear about Nigeria.

Rice: It's all very complicated.

So the next group would be the bandits. This is in the Northwest. And from the news we get there's no religious connotation.

Marshall: I've heard that they shout Allahu Akbar when they attack. 

Rice:  These would be Muslim bandits attacking Muslim villages

A lot of Ibos from the south and people in the southeast and southwest are predominantly Christian. They're much more entrepreneurial than in the north, more educated.  So during that period (20 years ago) there were many Ibos that came to set up little shops and do business. And there was one main street in Joss that had a whole bunch of Ibo shops. And of course when this crisis started, the army moved in within a day or so.  But a gang of young Muslim men –  probably not educated. you know, very devout Muslim families don't send their kids to school, or send them to a school run by an emir who may have 50 boys and can't feed them. They're out begging on the streets.

Anyway, they were they were attacking these some of these shops uh shouting Allah Akbar, God is great. And the army, they had a machine gun set up there and they just mowed them down. And the these Muslim young guys thought they were bulletproof. And you never know. Of course the government and the army buried these bodies very quickly and they never reported any details (because that would) just escalate retaliation back and forth.

Marshall: But what is the government's position on all this? They just trying to calm everything down or they take a definite side for one side or the other?

Rice: Yeah, let me come to that. Let me talk first about the Fulani.

The Fulani are nomadic cattle herders.  There are 30 to 40 million Fulani in west Africa, probably fifteen to twenty million in Nigeria. They have a lot of cows. They have big families. They have multiple wives. And in the past there wasn't really such a big problem. And I should add that the farmers have traditionally no fences. We have never seen a fence around a farm in Nigeria. And so as the population has grown, as the desert has moved south, there's less and less pasture for the cows. And so the conflict as the as the cows invade a farmer's field, of course he's going to get angry and maybe shoot a cow and then the Fulani are going to way over retaliate.

They've probably got AK-47s from payments from kidnapping and they come in and shoot up the village and houses. 

Marshall: Of the 10 or 15 million or so Fulani in Nigeria, how many do you think are participating in these sorts of activities?

Rice: I have no idea, but it would be it would be a small minority and it would be regional.

I'm on the board of Phyllis Sortor Schools for Africa. She's a tremendous missionary in Nigeria. She was Seattle Pacific Alumni of the Year a couple years ago.  An amazing lady – she has 20 Christian schools for Fulani children.  Up in Niger state where the bandits came, nobody knows kidnapped these 300 students just a week or so ago from a Catholic school in Niger state.  Phyllis has six primary schools and one new high school for Fulani children in a huge grazing reserve where thousands of Fulani live. They are very peaceful and uh but now she's had to shut down her schools there and also in couple other states. The governor of Niger state has closed all schools because of this kidnapping.

Why did they pick a Catholic school? Well, probably they figured that these families that could for afford to send their student to a private school would have more money than families that sent their students to a public school. And of course, I'm sure this is all for ransom. Anyway, that's what's currently in the news.

My guess is that those are the bandits. I don't know that Boko Haram has been operating that far west in Nigeria. It could be but if it were Boko Haram, the girls would probably be forced into marrying

Marshall:  The notion that some people have been bantering around in the US is that this is a sort of genocide against Christians. Obviously you don't see it as something so simple as that.

Rice: No. I I have here in front of me an article (from) my colleague Danny McCain. This is written by a Muslim and his figures (show that) in Benway State, which is just south of Plateau State where we're located, probably 90% Christian, some sources suggested as many as 2,000 villages have been sacked over the years, Zamfara State in the far north, 95% Muslim and there's been 481 villages sacked.  The April report noted 100 deserted villages and 300,000 displaced people. Those would be 95% Muslim. Plateau State is 70% Christian. That's where we're located. Armed herders have sacked at least 43 villages between 2018  and 2023. Then Katina state again in the far north probably 95% Muslim (according to a) 2024 report, 200 villages and towns were destroyed.

So you can see it's a mixed it's a mixed deal.  Some states that are predominantly Christian farmers have been heavily attacked by the Fulani, but up in the north it's Muslim villages that have been.

Marshall: But the state that you mentioned that had 2,000 villages was a mostly Christian state though so (Christians) would still probably constitute the bulk of the number (of victims).  But you don't really think there's a very large religious component to that. They're just out for either vengeance or for, like you said, sacking. They're trying to get some money, take people hostage and things like that.

Rice: Well no, they're after land for their cows.  People in that village and in surrounding areas are going to flee in fear to a refugee camp and so now the Fulani have pasture for their cows. You know this was a problem in the United States in the west what 150 years ago something like that between herders and farmers.

Marshall:  “Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.” Like that musical from Oklahoma?

Rice: Yeah. And historians have said that the solution to that problem was the invention of barbed wire.

Marshall: Even if you go back to ancient Sumer or China this dynamic between settled farming peoples and the nomadic herders . . .  the Mongolians too, who conquered China. This has been going on since the dawn of time.

Rice:  When the Fulani come and shoot up a village and burn the houses. If it's a Christian village, they're going to burn the church. They may seek out the pastor. Not because necessarily he's a Christian pastor, maybe, but maybe because he's a leader of the village. He's highly respected. And so in these reports here in the US when they talk about burning churches, maybe many of those have been when they've burned a village.

Marshall: So, your colleague, the woman who has started schools for Fulani children, I guess she's hoping that (her work) will help the Fulani adjust and allow the two cultures to live side by side.  It sounds like things are not really going that well, though.  Is there hope?   Is there a solution to this problem besides barbed wire?

Rice: Let me back up and say that she learned some years maybe 15 years ago about a scientist in Zimbabwe.  The conventional wisdom is that as the desert moves south desertification occurs because of over-grazing.  But this scientist has said, “No!  Let us look at the big national park in the north of Tanzania and Marara Park in Kenya the Masara park.  You’ve all seen on TV the migration of the wildebeest.  Thousands of of wildebeest. And as they cross the rivers, the crocs are having a a big feast."

What you find in these two national parks that straddle a country border is that the wildebeests are chewing up the ground and fertilizing it. And then as the rains move, they're moving around following the rains in a big circle. And eventually when they come back, of course, now the grass is growing great because it's been fertilized and been plowed by their hooves.

And so what he what he proposed was what's called rotational grazing. You take a big plot of ground. You put a deep well in the center. You divide it up into separate paddocks and you move the cows around so that by the time they come around in the course of a year, the grass is growing and there's good pasture.

And so she has gotten the governor of Niger State and a couple other states to (donate) a great big piece of land. And they dug or drilled several deep wells and as I say there are tens of thousands of Fulani there. She's established six primary schools and now a new high school, and a number of clinics.  She's had some of the women in the village trained as health workers and employs both Muslims and Christians teachers. They have to be very well qualified and pass the national teaching certificate.

And part of the solution is giving land to the Fulanis so that they have pastures for their cows and of course the schools. She tries to establish these schools so that some of the farmer kids can go to school with the Fulani and build friendships.

Marshall:  So what role does the government play in all of this?

Rice:  Let me back up and say the previous president was a Fulani himself. There are royal Fulani and then you have nomadic herders who are not educated. Kids don't go to school. They're sent out to watch over the cows.  The former president was Fulani himself and probably at least half of the army are Fulani. So there's some suspicion that the government was going easy on the Fulani.  I doubt that.  Maybe the soldiers in in the local barracks.

The current president is a Muslim and he talks a good game and called a national emergency recently and is trying to get the army to try to track down these militant Fulanis. Sometimes they attack during the day, but lots of times at night.  Poor villagers, you don't call 911 and the and the authorities are going to come quickly. No, the army is in their barrack barracks. It may be 20 miles away and the Fulani out-gun them anyway.  And by the time the army would ever come, they're probably afraid of being ambushed.  There's a lot of incompetence.

My colleague Dr. McCain attributes a lot of this to the incompetence of the authorities of the army and so on. 

Marshall: So how should Christians in America look at this? Is there anything that we can do or how should we think about this?  Many Christians are concerned about these brothers and sisters who are being killed in one way or the other by militants or Boko Haram or by Fulani raiders.  How should we see this?

Rice: Well, I think number one is to pray.  Christians have been killed down through the centuries and partly I think (we need) to understand the complexity of the situation.  Nigeria is very concerned about (their country’s) reputation.  If you were a Nigerian American – there are many doctors and professionals (here) – they understand that it's more complex and that it is not a genocide.

Marshall: On the ground level, you mentioned however that it's getting dangerous. What was the name of your friend who runs the schools, the lady from SPU?

Rice: Her name is Phyllis Sortor.  A marvelous lady.  Her website is Phyllis Sortor Schools for Africa.  I'm on her board and a few years ago we split the cost of an armored vehicle, a 2006 Lexus SUV that we would both use. She also has a second vehicle, an extended cab pickup. She employs two policemen full-time. They ride in the passenger seat of the two vehicles with their gun between their knees and their rifle, and they don't fasten their seat belt. They need to be ready to go.

Two years ago in October we linked up with Phyllis and their security team and we did eight or nine big distributions. We gave out I think almost a thousand wheelchairs in these distributions.

Kidnapping now is a risk for me why I can't go back.  The kidnapping isn't in the cities. It's out on the lonely highways and it's strictly commercial. And if they ever caught an American, it'd be a huge ransom. And my colleague wrote to me a couple years ago when we were considering coming and he said, "Well, you might be able to survive in the bush for a week or a month or however long it would take uh your friends in the US to raise your ransom. But think about your wife.  You wouldn't have your medications, maybe not your glasses. You'd be barefoot probably. And they'd be moving you around the bush.”

So to be kidnapped there is a risk and several missionaries have been kidnapped. They've all been released.  But nobody knows how many thousands of dollars were paid in for their ransom.  That's why after 31 trips I can't go anymore.

Although we have wonderful people running our Beautiful Gate workshop and in November they had I think already built 3,700 wheelchairs this year. They're on schedule to build 4,000 wheelchairs in 2025.

My big job is raising money. I've got to raise about $25,000 a month in order to maintain our production.

Marshall: And how are you doing? 

Rice; Well, we've been doing quite well except the last few months. I don't know why, but donations have been going down quite drastically.

Marshall: Okay, I'll put a link up to your organization so people can look into that.  

Aside from that, on a personal level, you’ve taken your wheelchairs into Muslim villages as well as Christian villages. So, it seems like there must be on a ground level, there's often some good relationships between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria as well. We're talk concentrating on the on the negative side, but there's must be some positive relations as well.

Rice: Absolutely. You know, you know, I was turbaned as a chief by a Muslim tribe.  That's the highest honor they can give. And they gave me this beautiful black robe with all this gold embroidery. And then of course a turban, which is a a fabric about 25 ft long.  The protocol is that I have to wear my chief road my turban and so yes we've had wonderful and many times when we have done distributions in Muslim areas the local leader or the local imam or the leader of the community maybe the government leader will praise us and say, “Look at what these Christians are doing for us and we don't do anything for them.”   And just go on and on. So, it's been quite a witness and we've never had an issue of bad relationships with the Muslims.