Chinese Calvinists Celebrate 500th Year with Weblog Conference

Saturday, Feb. 21, 2009 Posted: 2:42:19PM HKT

In commemoration of the unprecedented 500th anniversary of Protestant reformer John Calvin this year, Chinese Reformed churches in Singapore and Malaysia are about to embark on an equally historic initiative to stir up theological discussion among Chinese Calvinists on the worldwide web.

In what is called Chinese Reformed Evangelical Discussion Online or CREDO for short, 15 pastors and specialists of the Calvinistic branch of Protestant Christianity were invited to submit articles on Calvin’s thoughts and influences in the 16th and 17th centuries and explore their implications within Chinese churches today, according to the organisers.

“The aim of this conference is to foster theological reading habit and research discipline on reformed and puritans’ heritages among Chinese theo-bloggers via the blogosphere,” stated Pastors Jonah and Lemuel.

The conference, which will run from May 4 to 8, will see essay contributions on nearly every theological field of study including biblical theology, Christian ethics, historical theology, pastoral theology and Christian culture.

During the five-day period, the dissertations will be published and comments from the online community encouraged.

Articles will cover topics including evaluating the New Perspective on Paul’s exposition of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, evaluating the Purpose Driven paradigm and recapturing the vision of the centrality of the gospel and the place and necessity of creeds and confessions in the modern church.

Contributors, who represent Baptist, Reformed, Reformed Presbyterian and Methodist denominations and various occupations ranging from church ministers and leaders to ministry leaders to apologists, include David Chong from the Agora online ministry, Daniel Chew and Pastor J J Lim and Linus Chua from Pilgrim Covenant Church in Singapore.

For more information, click here to visit the CREDO 500 website.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com