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CHINESE SCHOOL OFFICIALS TO ADD BIBLE TO STUDENTS’ READING LIST

For the first time a communist education authority in China is suggesting that children read the Bible. Within the next two weeks the Shanghai Education Commission is expected to publish a recommended reading list for middle school children, which includes Kung Fu novels—and the Bible, reported The Shanghai Daily Tuesday, Oct. 19.
The commission has suggested in the past that students read Chinese classics such as “A Dream of Red Mansions” as well as some Western literature. This year the list will include the Old Testament and the works of Jin Yong, China’s most popular author of Kung Fu stories.
Education officials noted that the Bible plays an important role in Western culture and that Chinese students should understand it in order to truly know foreign countries. The Bible is still a scarce commodity in China and may only be sold at special outlets for Christians. Some parents are worried that teenagers will get involved in religion at an early age.
Ren Xiaomei, the mother of the 14-year-old boy, said that reading the Bible at such an age “does him no good.” Teenagers in Shanghai are eager to read the Kung Fu novels because of the popularity of martial arts. “We are no longer asked to only read those monotonous classics,” said Wang Wenjia, a local student.


Some want to live within the sound
Of Church or Chapel bell
I want to run a rescue shop
Within a yard from hell.
C.T. Studd


From the news flow at Intercessors Network

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Lars Widerberg

What an interesting development!
Let us pray fervently together with our Chinese friends.
Mark

I doubt you could get the Bible on the reading list for the U.S. government schools, so there's a certain amount of irony here.

Let us pray for our brethren in China, the Lord is blessing them greatly there. And let us pray for the church here in the U.S. (and the western world in general, more or less), for God may yet have mercy...