Race and the Church in Singapore
By: Tan Jing Min
Tags: Christianity, Singapore, Race

Jonathan Chan and Tan Jing Min

Leaders of the Trinity Annual Conference, Emmanuel Tamil Annual Conference, and Chinese Annual Conference of the Singapore Methodist Church in 2016. Image taken from Salt&Light.

What is there to talk about race in Singapore?

As young Singaporean Christians immersed in social media and educated in the United Kingdom, we were involved in conversations around systemic racism in the Western world after the murder of George Floyd. The Black Lives Matter movement made evident the systemic injustices that Black people face on a daily basis in the United States. Terms like ‘brownface’ and ‘Chinese privilege’, as well as anecdotes of racial discrimination, resurfaced in social media discourse and were discussed with gusto or dismissed entirely. There is no doubt that the socio-cultural context of Singapore is very different from that of the United States and Western Europe, but it does not mean that racialised thinking is a distant reality here. We write this piece as a way of imagining what a conversation about racial justice in the Singapore Church might look like. Of course, ‘the Church’ in Singapore is neither homogeneous nor monolithic. There is a multiplicity of conversations happening within ‘the Church’, according to the stages of life, socioeconomic situations, ethnic backgrounds, and political leanings of its members.

What is ‘race’? In Singapore, it is easy for us to look to the racial classification model of ‘Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other’ (CMIO) as an answer. However, historians and anthropologists tell us that from the 16th to the 18th centuries, groups of people around the world were distinguished based on physiological and stereotypes of cultural differences, and hierarchised into ‘Savages’, ‘Semi-Civilised’, and ‘Civilised’. Racism is a global structure, a logic that underpins discrimination and labour exploitation with material effects. Its entrenchment was accelerated by the expansion of European empire, seen first under the Spanish from the 15th to the early 19th century, and then the British empire from the 16th century until the 20th.

As political theorist Dr Jaako Heiskanen explains, race has ‘a clearly hierarchical connotation, which reflected this division of the world on an imperial basis into the colonial periphery and the European core.’[1] In the 15th century in Spain, racialised thinking was wielded in the Spanish Inquisition to justify the mistreatment of Jews and reconcile such injustice with the Christian belief in human equality. British colonialism took racial hierarchies as a governing principle — justifying expropriation of Black-owned land in South Africa, famines in India, and the exploitation of Black bodies in the global slave market. The codification of systems that routinely dehumanised indigenous people in the Americas, slaves originating in Africa, and colonial subjects in Asia gave racism an institutional expression. Any pre-existing awareness of ethnic difference was codified, institutionalised, and propagated by imperial pseudoscientific thinking. This is why discussions on race from different parts of the world can never be wholly divorced from one another.

Our histories of racial relations may be different from our counterparts across the Pacific, but this conceptual framework of racialised thinking flows from this shared legacy of European colonialism. In the late 19th century in Singapore, the British delineated formal racial categories and popularised stereotypes of the different races as part of ‘divide and rule’ policies. Along with the propagation of racialised thinking that originated in Europe, colonial rule sowed seeds of suspicion and division between the racial groups in Singapore that germinated over decades, and would spring forth in the violent racial riots of the 1960s.

Under the British, the very construction of modern Singapore was premised on Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Hence, ‘European Town’ (today’s downtown Singapore) was geographically and functionally prioritised over other communal zones. In turn, Singapore’s Arabs, Bugis, Malays, and South Indians were allotted lands on the settlement’s outskirts, lest they tarnish British prestige. It is worth remembering as well that Stamford Raffles’ own father was a slave trader.

Stereotypes that find their origin under British governance, such as the ‘lazy Malay’, ‘venal’ Chinese and ‘cringing and cheating’ Indian,[2] have infected societal mindsets and individual interracial encounters to this day. Yet, this does not disavow us of other concomitant, regional manifestations of ethnic discrimination. From the 19th century up to the early 20th century, Bugis traders brought shiploads of slaves who were themselves from Bugis (modern day Sulawesi Island in Indonesia) to trade in Singapore as well. It would also be remiss to omit manifestations of racism under Japanese imperial rule, one that created a new form of ethnic hierarchy with the Japanese in governing roles and drove the systemic killings of the Chinese across Malaya under the Sook Ching campaign.

Racism is not always so overt: subtler forms of differential treatment that dehumanise individuals belonging to minority groups are manifestations of this same racialised thinking. The remnants of this colonial construction of race continues to proliferate all areas of public life, our inner biases, and social organisation. Therefore, while ‘race’ is not a stable fact or truth that has existed since time immemorial, we persist in thinking in racial terms, and this extends in subtle ways to policy, governance, education, and social assistance in Singapore. Racialisation is intuitive for most people, even if we do so without understanding what it is. As a sociological phenomenon, it is defined as the process of ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such.

The protests in the US and recent controversy in Singapore surrounding allegedly racially inflammatory statements made by Workers’ Party MP Raeesah Khan have reinvigorated discussion in Singapore on racial injustices that occur beneath a thin facade of multiculturalism. The present and future integrity of our multicultural society requires that it be further interrogated, not least when discriminatory behaviour was never just the domain of European colonialists.

Singaporean Christians are not invulnerable to latent prejudice, whether that manifests as indicating racial preferences in advertisements on the housing rental market, indicating a preference for fluency for Mandarin when recruiting employees, or assuming that members of a church community that have a different skin tone do not belong to the congregation. The Church in Singapore, as a social institution, is not exempt from discourse and developments happening in wider society. It should not neglect engaging in difficult critical self-reflexivity — as Christians, we simply know this deepening recognition of wrongdoing as ‘repentance’.

2. What is there to talk about race in the Singaporean Church?

In understanding not only the colonial history that Singapore shares with other multicultural nations grappling with the question of ‘race’, such as the United States, India, or South Africa, but also the local and regional histories that culminated in interethnic interaction on our shores, we can begin to understand racism as a particular manifestation of sin. Racism assumes that a group of people share a set of largely negative physical or behavioural characteristics on the basis of their physiology or ethnic background. This reduction of individuals contravenes our ability to affirm the doctrine of Imago Dei. Genesis 1:27 states that ‘God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them’.

When we allow presumption to cloud our ability to affirm the image of God in another person, it paves the way for behaviour that is insensitive, demeaning, and spiteful. The hatred can easily take root from a handful of misguided assumptions; one needs to look no further than the dismissal of migrant workers from Bangladesh as prone to criminality, the denouncement of Indian expatriates on the presumption of their arrogance, or the continued characterisation of the Malay community as backward. The call to love our neighbour emanates from our common identity in our Creator.

Each of us is made to be loved by Him and in turn, to show this same extravagant love to those around us. Pastor Rodney Woo writes, ‘The fact that as humans we all equally possess a divine image necessitates that we perceive and treat each other with a dignity commensurate with this truth. To interact with someone who has been created in His image, regardless of skin color, affords us the opportunity to see the face of God as we gaze into the face of another created being.’[3] The ethnic diversity of Singapore, described by Bishop Emeritus Dr Robert Solomon as its historic ‘multi-racial reality’[4], provides us as a church with ample opportunity to realise this call to recognise the dignity of each person. It is out of this that we can pursue our call from Jesus to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37–40 NIV)

Within the schema of agape love that God compels us toward, there can be no room for animosity or suspicion on the basis of one’s ethnicity to linger. Christ himself models the radical love that dismantles ethnic barriers in choosing to parse the divides between Jews and Gentiles during His ministry on earth. We see this in his approach of the Samaritan woman and asking her for a drink of water, in spite of the historic mutual hostility between her people and the Jews. In doing so, He dismantles any sense of racial disparity by regarding her as His social equal. We see this in the love and compassion Jesus extends to the Roman centurion who places his faith in Jesus to heal his servant in Matthew 8, as well as in early examples from the church of Antioch that had its own set of ethnic tensions to grapple with.

What provides the possibility of racial reconciliation in the church is not only an assurance of our divine imprints, but also of a shared faith in Christ. Such is the power of this recognition that it extends to every person, whether or not they profess to know Jesus, for as is written in the Gospel of Luke: ‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.’ (Luke 6:32)

Of course, Singapore is fortunate to have not experienced the same ethnic strife that continues to rock the world, effectively guarding and pre-empting any threat to its social compact. It is easy to presume that racism does not operate in the same pervasive way in our society that it does in others, where a history of European settler colonialism or rapid imperial expansion may sully even the most innocuous of interactions. Much of this can be attributed to careful state management of population policies, whether in establishing racial quotas in different neighbourhoods, or keeping a tight rein over immigration and naturalisation. The riots of 1964 remain a spectral presence that the state consistently returns to in outlining its prevailing ideology of multiracialism, one that justifies the state’s strict management of discourse surrounding race and religion.

Yet, what this results in is a diminishing of the discrimination faced by our minority communities from schools to the workplace, from the media to our civic institutions. The corrosive effects of assuming the immutability of ethnic difference manifest time and time again, from anecdotal accounts of minorities being demeaned because of cultural practices such as Indians applying coconut oil to their hair, to material forms of discrimination such as employers only recruiting those who are fluent in Mandarin. That most Chinese Singaporeans rarely have to contend with such patronising treatment has been attributed to ‘Chinese privilege’ in contemporary discourse.

Our own churches often stand at the nexus of education, economic power, and racial homogeneity. It would be remiss to assume that our church communities are exempt from such instances of prejudice or microaggression, not least when so many of them continue to be predominantly monoethnic, whether because of ministry being conducted in specific languages or, more worryingly, a failure to accommodate difference. When too many Christians are willing to overlook certain behaviours that may be considered sinful, we may cease as a body to find the need for repentance at all. We cannot allow our hearts to harden toward the easy allure of cheap prejudice at the expense of our brothers and sisters of different ethnic backgrounds.

This leads us then to the image of the church that is presented in the book of Revelations. John writes of the future coming of Christ:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. [Revelation 7:9a (NIV)].

The vision that John receives is one of unity in difference, one that does not homogenise the church as one discrete linguistic or cultural identity, but one that affirms that the church is a multiethnic, multilingual body. The Singaporean church is uniquely positioned to affirm this principle and provide a model of how to pursue multiethnic ministry, as well as the spiritual maturity it demands. It is not uncommon for larger campaigns, such as the Celebration of Hope, or even Billy Graham’s crusades in Singapore in 1978, to consciously engage in multilingual ministry. In fact, it is not uncommon for churches themselves to organise fellowships that reach out to different linguistic communities. International Baptist Church, for example, organises services in English, Tagalog, and Bahasa Indonesia, Church of Singapore (Marine Parade) conducts services in Hokkien, Cantonese, and Mandarin, and The Methodist Church of Singapore as a denomination is organised according to its churches that conduct ministry in English, Mandarin, and Tamil.

Yet, the challenge that remains is the integration of discrete linguistic communities into one united church community; the sharing of individual rooms in a common building is no substitute for fellowship in direct proximity with those of different backgrounds. It remains necessary for our churches to affirm the multicultural principle at the heart of the Gospel, one in which ‘there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.’ (Colossians 3:11).

Beyond the confines of our own churches, it is here that we have an opportunity to distinguish ourselves in our unequivocal denouncement of racial prejudice. This is particularly crucial at a time when people are beginning to regard Chinese Anglophone Christians in Singapore with a particular scrutiny, not least when so many of this milieu are in positions of authority in government, education, or healthcare. Even if we rigorously guard against racial prejudice within our congregations, it is imperative that we show our faith by our works in the public domain, actively pursuing a love of our neighbours while recognising that we live in a rich, complex, and pluralistic society. Oftentimes, the advantages bestowed by rare encounters with prejudice may lead us to an obliviousness toward the social and cultural capital we maintain. It can be easy to overlook how these unconscious advantages operate on account of this axis of race, religion, and education.

To love our neighbours demands an active recognition that we are no better for our material or societal positions, and that to love another person is to humble oneself, affirming the common dignity we share as image bearers of God. This further compels us toward exercising empathy, sensitivity and an active willingness to sit with others and listen to the struggles and difficulties they may face. To love one’s neighbour can surely extend beyond a mere tolerance of another’s existence, and be shaped into a deep understanding and acknowledgement of another person in their fullness.

3. What can we as the Singaporean Church do?

Having understood that systemic racism is antithetical to the all-embracing redemption of Christ, how can the Church respond? The primary role of the Church is to bear faithful witness to the Gospel through proper handling of Scripture and discipleship. The Church’s attention is drawn to divine justice and Christian life, and the outflow of this to our respective social spheres is where our concern with social justice can be made manifest. Our belonging to the body of Christ does not stop at the buildings where we physically meet (or, in this season, the Zoom rooms we dial into). We also reflect Christ as the wider Church, in how we collectively mobilise to impact our communities, and in how we love one another (John 13:35). As individuals and congregations, how can we practice belonging to one united church community?

Bishop Emeritus Dr Solomon suggests one way: celebrating our multi-ethnicity by taking care of our minorities. Within the Church, there are some areas that are more well-resourced than others. Perhaps the Church would be nourished by more cross-congregational interactions, through sharing resources and facilities, as well as through intentional exchanges.

As individuals, this requires a preparedness to be uncomfortable, as missionary Dr Mark Syn points out. Cross-cultural relationship building demands radical hospitality and an awareness of certain identities that define the matrices of belonging to a certain group, so that those who hold those ‘dominant’ identities are intentional about including those who hold ‘subordinated’ identities. This radical hospitality should look the same regardless of whether the other party is Singaporean or a work pass holder, a professional expat or a foreign domestic worker. And this radical hospitality operates at a collective, institutional level too: so, for instance, if a Tamil-speaking congregation and a largely Chinese Anglophone congregation hold a joint event, leadership of both churches can be intentional about projecting the event as a collaboration, rather than one church ‘reaching out’ to another, and making the necessary adjustments to facilitate multilingual ministry.

Christian leadership should also be unequivocal about preaching against prejudice, particularly in its latent, subconscious form. In the spirit of theologian Karl Barth’s counsel, pastors should preach with the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other: we cannot afford to go to Sunday services to forget about our country and our world. Quite the contrary: we are nourished by God’s Word so we can return to our neighbourhoods, families, workplaces and manifest biblical justice even more boldly. When xenophobic rhetoric wracks public debate on television broadcasts, news headlines and Facebook comment threads, it is crucial for our pastors to speak against it. When a racist joke or racialised comment is made offhand in church settings, we all have a responsibility to gently rebuke our brothers or sisters in love.

It is the strength and embedded awareness of the church’s status as a multinational and multiethnic body that empowers us to be empathetic and compassionate members of Singapore’s pluralistic society. It is fundamentally rooted in a recognition of Imago Dei as made manifest in each person and every culture. Beyond the confines of the institutional church, Scripture instructs us not only to ‘seek the welfare of the city’ where God has sent us into exile (Jeremiah 29:7), but also to be ‘peacemakers’ (Matthew 5:9). These injunctions necessarily encourage us to live at peace with all those who we share our nation with, regardless of whether they are believers in the Christian faith. As Reverend Malcolm Tan explains, ‘I believe that through the Lord Jesus Christ we can be agents of peace and promote social holiness and social peace.’ This ethos of seeking peace is underpinned by the necessity of respecting the human dignity of each person we talk to, especially those of other faiths and ethnic backgrounds, which are so often entwined in the Singaporean context.

As Reverend Tan further illustrates, John 1:4 states that in the Word ‘was life, and that life was the light of all mankind, and this light shines in everyone who has come into the world. This underscores the fact that the light of Christ shines in the hearts of everybody and that even in non-Christian cultures, there are elements of the light of God therein. This helps us understand not only that the light of Christ can be discerned in all people, but that we should be humbled by the prospect of such reciprocity with every person we meet. Each encounter holds the wondrous possibility of sharing something of Christ and learning something of Christ in return.

As theologian Emil Brunner describes, truth is not just propositional, it is also personal, and it is captured in an encounter. The impetus for Christians in a pluralistic, multiracial society, therefore is to seek to introduce people to the Christ, praying that they may receive His witness, but also to maintain a mutual, social respect in our interactions. This spirit of reciprocity enables us as a church to listen empathetically, seek justice, and oppose instances of racism individually and systemically, while also actively pursuing a deeper knowledge of the religious faiths and practices of those we live with.

As Christians, we should not be afraid to address the question of racial and religious difference, not least when its histories are punctuated by discomfiting associations with colonialism, racism, systemic injustice, and violence. In seeking the peace and welfare of the nation we reside in, we may find ourselves having to reckon with the illicit elements of the church’s past, as well as instances where the church has not represented Christ well to the broader populace, whether because of the behaviour of public figures or other organisations.

Equally, we may be impelled toward looking outward to the instances of injustice that pervade within organisations and as a result of imperfect policies. Yet, an increasing sensitivity to the needs of our neighbours, as well as a deepened willingness to humble ourselves and to listen those who have faced experiences of marginality and discrimination, will only serve to strengthen our sense of compassion as we continue to bear witness to the love of Christ.

This is an extended version of a forthcoming article with ETHOS Institute Singapore.

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[1] Emil Sondaj Hansen, ‘Dr. Jaakko Heiskanen: “We are not inherently or naturally ethnic … It is the modern international order that makes the world seem to us this way”.’, Cambridge Journal of Political Affairs, 8 September 2020 < https://www.cambridgepoliticalaffairs.co.uk/blog/jaakko-heiskanen-interview>

[2] Syed Hussein Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native (Great Britain: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1977), p. 115.

[3] Rodney M. Woo, The Color of Church (USA: B&H Publishing Group, 2009)

[4] Robert Solomon, ‘The Church as a Multi-racial Community’, Graduates’ Christian Fellowship, 11 and 12 September 2003 < http://www.gcf.org.sg/resources/the-church-as-a-multi-racial-community>