Saving the Nation

Reviews / Votes

This is a timely study for historians of Christianity and modern China... Reilly' emphasis on Protestant elites tied to the establishment is a helpful counterbalance to the many recent studies of popular or lesser known Chinese Christianities by the likes of Arrington, Christie Chow, Inouye, Ireland, Kilcourse, and Woodbridge. * Tim Yung, Religious Studies Review * This book on Chinese Social Christianity fills a significant gap in the mission history of the Republican period. The historical background and organizational development are intertwined with lively and passionate figures who love China and God, albeit as complex characters. * Xiaoli Yang, Researcher and HDR Supervisor, Whitley College, University of Divinity,Box Hill, VIC, Australia, Mission Studies * This book is a fine introduction to the importance of the Chinese Protestant urban elite. Reilly has provided a solid foundation for understanding the impact of Chinese Protestant elite at a pivotal moment in modern China, and makes a strong case for their inclusion in the study of both the Church in China and China's twentieth-century story. * Church History * this book provides a solid basis for future studies of social Christianity in China, and it will be of great value to scholars interested in the history of Christianity in China and global history of social Christianity * Zhixi Wang, China Information * This is a thoughtful history of the role of the Chinese Protestant elite in the struggle to build a new nation during the critical years from 1922 through 1952... Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * S. C. Pearson, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville * Thomas Reilly brilliantly demonstrates how Chinese leaders of the YMCA and the Protestant elite argued the case for national salvation, citizenship, and resistance against Japanese aggression...Saving the Nation has great appeal and significance for scholars and students of Chinese Christianity and modern Chinese history. * Alexander Chow, author of Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in Chinese Christianity * This radical, opinionated, and immensely energetic account of early twentieth century American missionaries and Chinese Christians from the urban elite is a strongly argued defense of their contributions to Chinese society and the Chinese nation state. The subject matter ranges from YMCA campaigns against child labor to the dramatic story of an American woman missionary struggling to rescue young women during the Rape of Nanjing. It will compel many readers to rethink their assumptions. * Henrietta Harrison, University of Oxford * With vivid detail, this book tells the story of people and institutions caught up in the encounter between Western social gospel Christianity and a China in the throes of war and revolution in the first half of the 20th century...This book will be of value not only to historians, but to social scientists and theologians - all who look for meaning in the fraught history of Sino-Western relations. * Richard Madsen, UC San Diego * By giving voice to a diversity of actors embedded in the industrialized social context of Shanghai, this book shows how Christianity was adopted and made local by the Chinese agents and contributed to the emergence of a Republican Chinese civil society, thus shattering the image of Christianity in China as culturally alien. * Nanlai Cao, American Historical Review *