The Books That Shaped My Thinking in 2025
Keeping a record is not about accumulating more, but about digesting and sorting through. Only when we attempt to rearticulate the insights of others do they truly become nourishment for our own thinking.
Books
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Summer 2024 Reading Recommendations
Looking for a good end-of-summer book? Check out this roundup of the book reviews we’ve done over the last year, from memoir to biography to in-depth history to analysis of the current situation in China.
Further Reading and Listening on the Diaspora and Missions
Get more context for the Chinese diaspora experience with our list of podcasts, recorded lectures, websites, and reading material.
Meet the Missionaries Who Went to China
God works through the lives of individual believers to spread the gospel and fulfill the great commission. In this post, we have rounded up several posts that look at multiple important missionaries from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
A Summer Read to Enjoy Together
Join Joann Pittman for an online discussion of Beyond East and West by John C.H. Wu.
《亲子共成长》Growing through Parenting
A new book emphasizing the opportunity for parents to grow as they raise their children—to grow and become more like Jesus.
Chinese Migrants in the Stew Pot of Dubai
The religious environment [in Dubai] prompts many Chinese expatriates to do some soul-searching… For Muslims… it has meant being in an environment where they are …part of a majority… They feel the pressure of having to be “good citizens” …as they are unofficial ambassadors.
Messy Choices in Messy Situations
When facing situations in which right and wrong choices are not quite so black and white, we need each other more than ever to discern the right path to take. In supporting each other, I believe we should also give each other the benefit of the doubt more often than not.
From Brush Strokes to Unicode—How China Became Modern
Official and popular attitudes towards the written language vacillate between shame (characters are too awkward, slowing China’s development) and pride (characters are China’s unique cultural heritage) …China’s place among the nations rises in tandem with the development of her language, revealing the intimate relationship between linguistic modernization and the modernization of the nation itself.
Twenty Quotes from Faithful Disobedience
Wang Yi said, “We have an opportunity to demonstrate to society what the church is; why spiritual authority should not be in the hands of those who wield the sword; why we can…endure external governance but cannot allow our faith, worship, teaching, …and members to come under the state’s review and control.”
A New Song of the Wanderer for Today
What is the truth about the relationship between science and faith? Are they incompatible or harmonious with each other? . . . Above All Things: The Romance and War between Christianity and Science . . . attempts to analyze the delicate relationship between science and faith.
China’s Vision for the World
The World According to China looks at the broader policy decisions made by the Chinese government within the context of Xi’s call for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese state.” The author details how Xi “envisions a China that has regained centrality” in a global world.