In the Rubble of War, A Little Flower: How Thérèse Conquered the Oriental Heart of John C. H. Wu

Abstract

This paper narrates the conversion story of the Chinese statesman and scholar John C. H. Wu at the beginning of the Second World War in Asia. Wu’s conversion to Catholicism was the culmination of a public intellectual’s struggle for peace and harmony in the violent and disturbing decades of the new Republic. Wu represented a Chinese humanist school of thought that desired some form of meaningful synthesis and integration between Chinese culture and western modernity for the salvation and reconstruction of their country. Though his political hopes were shattered by the war, he found inspiration through an encounter with Thérèse of Lisieux, who showed him the possibility of peace and reconciliation between East and West, between tradition and modernity, and between Chinese and Christian religions.