Dr. Anthony E. Clark is an Associate Professor of East Asian history at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA, and his research centers on the history of Western missionaries in China. He is an author of several academic and popular works, including books and articles on Chinese historiography, cultural interaction between China and the West, and the history of Sino-Western religious and cultural re-presentation during China’s late imperial to early modern era. Dr. Amanda C. Roth Clark received her Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Alabama, and additionally holds degrees from the University of Oregon in the fields of Western architectural history and Asian art. She is coauthor with her father, Leland M. Roth, of Understanding Architecture, and is currently the director of the library at Whitworth University.
When the Catholic priest and architect Leon Battista Alberti (AD 1404–1472) wrote of the ideal church, he asserted: “I would deck it out in every part so that anyone who entered it would start with awe for his admiration at all the noble things, and could scarcely restrain himself from exclaiming that what he saw was a place undoubtedly worthy of God.”