Regent University’s motto is “Christian Leadership to Change the World,” and Seattle Pacific University markets itself as “Where world change begins.” Other Christian institutions and many Christian leaders make similar claims. But can Christians really change the world? And what does it really mean to change the world?

A survivor of the terrible Henan famine of 1943, in which five million died in three months, including his two brothers, Os was a witness to the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949 and the beginning of the reign of terror under Mao Tse Tung. He was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951 and returned to Europe where he was educated in England.