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The Lord has given us the Great Commission to preach the gospel to the people of our generation. The Blessings Foundation is a Christian agency with a clear purpose to evangelize the Chinese intellectuals. We have been working hard in plowing this field in order to sow the seed of the Gospel. Traditionally Chinese culture, viewed as fortress of naturalism and humanism, can often hinder the acceptance of the Gospel. Our goal is to eliminate these obstacles so that the work of evangelism among the Chinese people can be fruitful.
Founded in 1994, the Blessings Foundation began to offer scholarships in 1996 for the sake of nurturing two types of talent. The first are those who specialize in mass media communication, including writing, broadcasting, internet ministries, audio-visual production, publication, etc. The second type of talent are those that are able to exert influence on the academic community. There is no need to explain why mass media would be culturally influential, so here I wish to focus on explaining the need for Christians to dedicate themselves to the work of academic research and apologetics.
Since the 1990s, Christianity has been gaining wide popularity in China , both among the laity and in prestigious academic institutions.
Many institutions of research and higher learning have since developed academic programs related to Christianity, such as Religious Studies and Christian Studies. Regretfully, most scholars in this area are not yet Christians. In the Western tradition of scholarship, they approach Christianity with critical and philosophical investigations. If Christian scholars are not actively involved in this new found trend in the academia, then the non-Christian monographs published in the past few years will soon become the mainstream understanding of Christian theology in China, causing Chinese intellectuals to misunderstand the message of Christianity. Therefore, it is of urgent need in this new scholarship that we encourage Chinese Christian scholars who are pure in faith and mature in spirit to dedicate themselves to the area of academia.
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Our Vision To prepare the hearts of the Chinese for Christ by demonstrating the transforming power of the Gospel through cultural mission.
Our belief We accept the Bible as the inerrant revelation of God, guiding faith and living. We also accept the creeds of the early churches and the evangelical confessions.
Plowing in the Field of Chinese Culture Why should we care about the cultural mission in China? The response of any people group to the Gospel is greatly influenced by its culture. Over the past two thousand years the Chinese gradually deviated from the concept of One God, the Creator of the universe. Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religions penetrated the soil of Chinese culture. At the turn of the twentieth century, Marxism, naturalism, scientism, and Darwinian Evolutionism invaded the thoughts of the Chinese intellectuals and soon swept the whole populace. Nowadays most of the Chinese embrace atheistic ideologies based on their biased interpretation of tradition and western humanism. Thus, the cultural ethos in China has become a stronghold against the advance of the Gospel. Therefore, removing these cultural obstacles has become a matter of greatest urgency.
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