A REFLECTION ON CHRISTIANS IN NATION-BUILDING IN SINGAPORE
October 10, 2004
As Christians living in communities where we have been born into or have adopted as our home country, we can each play a small part in nation-building and contribute to the well-being of the society. Many Christians indeed have played vital roles in the history of many countries, including Singapore, but these may not be well-known.
For instance, the contribution of Christian missionaries and local believers in China in the past two hundred years is well researched, even in the universities in Singapore. Ironically, there is a dearth of such writing on the Singapore historical context.
The contribution of Christians in Singapore, both in their individual capacities or collectively as a church or organization, needs to be researched and documented and shared as part of our heritage. This research will be an important historical resource as well as spiritual resource to the Church.
Mooted by the leaders of Asian Journeys and Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia in 2002, a two-day “Christians in Nation-Building” Conference was organized on Sep 11-12, 2003 held at Trinity Theological College, and attended by a hundred participants, comprising of pastors, church leaders and academics.
The organizing committee was chaired by Dr Lee Soo Ann, then General-Secretary of the Bible Society of Singapore, and committee members included Associate Professor Ernest Chew, Dr Bobby Sng, Dr Hwa Yung, Ms Valerie Lim and Mr Lawrence Ko. The event was also supported by the National Council of Churches in Singapore.
Fourteen papers were submitted for discussion at the conference with topics ranging from theological to historical perspectives on nation-building and covering areas from decolonization to multiracialism, education, healthcare, social welfare services, economics and so on. Many presenters relied heavily on Dr Bobby Sng’s latest edition of “In His Good Time” for historical material on Singapore’s church history. However there were some new material presented which gave fresh insights on the initiatives undertaken by Christians and churches to meet the needs of the new nation over the past 5ive decades since the second world war.
Many interesting points were noted including the reality that Singapore is still a nation in the making and not yet a nation. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s imprint was evidently indelible as nearly all of the papers alluded to his speeches on the myriad of topics discussed. I believe that Dr Bobby Sng spoke for all when he said that the issues which were raised as a result of the two-day conference could serve as the agenda for a week-long follow-up conference. Indeed much remains to be done but in my opinion, the significance of this conference is that we have affirmed the need and the desire to research, document and analyse our contribution to the social concerns .
Reinhold Niebuhr , the great American theologian and activist of the 20th C, once said that Christianity is not a flight into eternity from the tasks and decisions of history.[1] It was personally fulfilling for me to discover through my own research on the topic of “Decolonization and Christian Leadership in Singapore 1945-78” that there have been many outstanding examples of individual as well as collective Christian efforts to improve the welfare of the people just as they were faithfully meeting the spiritual needs through the church.
Christians, emulating Christ, must be similarly involved in the world, being intimately concerned with the temporal issues of life even though we are ultimately concerned with our eternal destiny. I am glad that examples of such Christians who are engaged in both the affairs of the Kingdom of God as well as the kingdom of the temporal realm abound in Singapore.
The vision of such spiritual giants in our own local church history as well as the gallant efforts of such Christian men and women deserve further research and study. As we can discover and recover the faith and spirituality of our spiritual forefathers in Singapore, and through the study of their contribution in the years gone by, we can perhaps be inspired to tackle our own challenges.
In 1992, I remembered attending an Evangelical Fellowship of Singapore prayer meeting in 1992 where the late Dr Tay Eng Soon was addressing the pastors assembled. Being a young pastor and full of passion for the church to impact lives for eternity, I drank in Dr Tay’s encouragement for pastors to lead the church into reaching the poor and needy since most Christians were both influential and economically well-off in society. He also exhorted the church to reach the majority of the Chinese community which was Chinese-speaking rather than English-speaking and to do that, the image of the Church as primarily middle-class, Westernised and English-speaking, needs to be addressed.
As the Chinese proverb puts it, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Over the last decade of the 20th C, it has been heartening to witness the Church seeking to reach the Chinese-speaking community by taking small steps into the community through setting up family service centres and the many community-penetration efforts.
The reports at the Sep 2003 Conference reviewed for us the milestones and accomplishments of the church, which affirmed for me the intentionality of the Church in addressing the concerns raised by Dr Tay.
Much of course remains to be done as more Christians are needed to initiate and participate in civil society, developing fresh vision and talents in the arts and culture, spearheading creative ideas to promote racial and religious understanding, training more pastors, leaders and workers conversant in the local languages to reach both the grassroots and the intelligentsia of the various cultural communities and so on.
Recording and revealing the participation of Christians in nation-building is needed and will help shape the kind of faith response we want to see in our present as well as the next generation. As we revisit the agendas and accomplishments of Christians involved in nation-building in the past, we hope these historical roots can become declaration of our mutual commitment and shared passion in the nation.
[1] Reinhold Niebuhr, Ten Years that Shook My World