A short history of Chinese Protestantism in Singapore

In September 1935, John Sung (1901–1944), one of the most influential Chinese evangelists of the 20^th century, arrived in Singapore to conduct a series of revival and evangelistic meetings at Telok Ayer Methodist Church. Preaching mainly in Henghua (Hinghwa)-accented Mandarin, Sung’s sermons were translated into Hokkien for the large number of audiences who came to hear him.

Sung’s meetings were a success. Over 1,300 people converted and 111 voluntary evangelistic teams were formed. The teams became part of a transregional network of Sung-inspired evangelistic teams that had been established across China and Southeast Asia. Between 1935 and 1939, Sung visited Singapore eight more times, resulting in the formation of more teams. These teams galvanised Singapore’s Chinese Protestant churches, leading them into a period of evangelistic fervour through regular preaching activities among many local Chinese communities in Singapore and Johor, until the Japanese Occupation in 1941.

Sung’s revivals are representative of two key historical patterns in Singapore’s Chinese Protestantism:

• Identification with China and its Protestant individuals, models, institutions and resources.
• Identification with speakers of Southern Chinese languages such as Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese, and the use of these languages as the main medium of evangelism, worship and instruction. This was extended to Mandarin, and to a lesser degree, English, during the second half of the twentieth century.

This essay provides an introductory historical narrative of Chinese Protestantism in Singapore through a selected number of cases during three discernible periods since colonial Singapore was founded. These cases will underline the presence and evolution of the two historical patterns in the different periods. The three periods are characterised as:

• The use of Singapore as a training ground to reach Southern Chinese migrant communities, while waiting for China to be open to Christianity (1819–1840s);
• The building of diasporic churches in Singapore with close connections with native-place and national Protestant movements in China (1840s–1945);
• The struggles of Chinese Protestant churches to find their place in an increasingly English-speaking Singapore nation (1945–present).

Historically, Chinese Protestantism is a minority religion in Singapore. Nonetheless, this article recovers its contributions to Singapore’s engagements with China and the island’s Chinese-speaking communities.

Early days: A training ground (1819–1840s)

The eminent China scholar, John K. Fairbank (1907–1991), once commented: “Protestant missions [in the 19^th century] began a flank attack on China through the soft underbelly of expatriate overseas Chinese communities in South-east Asia.” Singapore was one of the places where this flank attack began. This period lasted from 1819 to the late 1840s, when early Euro-American missionaries and Chinese evangelists relocated their base of operations from Singapore to China after the First Opium War concluded in 1842. Significantly, Fairbank’s statement highlights that Protestantism in Singapore began with the objective of bringing Christianity to China. Migrant Chinese communities in Singapore were seen as stepping-stones to fulfilling this objective. The missionaries looked towards these migrant communities as a training ground for their future ministries in China.

Early colonial Singapore had a large transient population. Chinese migrants, many of whom did not settle for long, formed a large proportion of the growing population. In the 1824 census, Chinese people made up 31% of the 10,683-strong population. By 1849, the Chinese had become the majority community, making up 52% of the 52,891 people on the island. On the one hand, Singapore was an ideal training ground for the missionaries to conduct evangelistic and educational work among a critical mass of Southern Chinese speakers, especially the Teochews and Hokkiens. Most missionaries employed teachers from Chaozhou and Fujian to teach them these languages. Some of these teachers converted to Christianity, and assisted in preaching, translation and publication work. On the other hand, the early endeavours of the missionaries and Chinese evangelists yielded little fruit. Besides the transience of the migrant Chinese community, which made it challenging for missionaries to achieve substantive interactions, settled individuals such as merchants were not receptive to the Christian message. Some reasons included their unwillingness to reject polytheistic practices for Christianity, and their objections to Britain’s role in the Opium War. Thus, the number of Christian converts remained small.¹

A lack of sympathy for Christianity meant there was only a trickle of converts to the faith. Nonetheless, historians have managed to recover stories about some of Singapore’s early converts. For instance, Su Ching reveals rare details about Chae Hoo, the first Hokkien convert who was baptised in Singapore. Chae Hoo came to Singapore in 1827 and was baptised in 1835. His baptism was a public event attended by 30 Chinese people. Post-baptism, he worked for the missionaries, engaging in educational and printing work. It is not known if he returned to China with the missionaries in the 1840s.

Singapore (and port-cities like Melaka) also served as a training ground for the small number of converts who became full-time Christian workers. A significant case is Liang Fa (1789–1855), who is considered China’s first Chinese Protestant evangelist. Liang wrote the religious tract Quanshi liangyan (Good words to admonish the age), that inspired Hong Xiuquan’s (1814–1864) vision for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Liang had two working stints in Southeast Asia. The first was from 1815 to 1822 when he engaged in publishing work with William Milne (1785–1822), the second Protestant missionary to China. The second was from 1834 to 1839 as an evangelist. Liang’s work in Southeast Asia produced mixed results, although it prepared him for ministry in China. His publishing work in Melaka allowed him to develop original publications that built up to Quanshi liangyan (published in 1832). Liang’s second stint in Singapore was less effective. As a Cantonese native, Liang learnt to speak Hokkien and preach to the Hokkien- and Teochew-dominant Singapore Chinese population. Unfortunately, Liang failed to master the language and yielded only one conversion in Singapore. In all, these cases demonstrate how Singapore’s early Chinese Protestantism served as a launchpad for China missions.²

Diasporic churches: Native-place ties and nationalism (1840s–1945)

Singapore Chinese Protestantism’s relationship with China and Southern Chinese language speakers evolved from the late 1840s to 1945. Protestant native-place ties became intertwined with denominational affiliations. Thus, churches in Singapore formed intra-denominational connections with the churches that were established in their native places, especially Fujian and Guangdong. Singapore’s Protestants also increasingly identified as huaqiao (diasporic Chinese) when the term gained currency from the late 19^th century to the first half of the 20^th century.

Native-place connections were a crucial factor in the early formation of Hokkien-speaking Presbyterian and Brethren churches in 19^th-century Singapore. An individual who was intimately connected to these churches was the Hokkien preacher Tan See Boo (1833–1884), who had been converted by William Chalmers Burns (1815–1868), the first English Presbyterian Mission (EPM) missionary to China. Tan moved from China to Singapore in 1856 to work for the EPM. From 1856 to 1867, he worked with the missionaries to evangelise the colony’s Hokkien communities. Tan was a significant figure in forming Hokkien Protestant congregations in Bukit Timah and on the premises of Chinese Girls’ School in Sophia Road. In 1864, the EPM planned to transform the Sophia Road congregation into a full-fledged church. Tan, who had embraced Brethren beliefs by then, thwarted their plans and successfully persuaded his congregants to leave the EPM and build their own Brethren church. ³ Emboldened, Tan returned to Xiamen in the late 1860s and mid-1870s to promote his new beliefs. However, unlike Singapore, he found it challenging to popularise those beliefs there.⁴

Tan’s efforts to influence Hokkien Protestantism in Singapore and Xiamen demonstrate how transregional influences and connections developed between churches in South China and Southeast Asia during the 1860s and 1870s. These links intensified from the early 1900s. One aspect was the provision of manpower from the native-place churches. The lack of missionary manpower in Singapore during the first half of the 20^th century meant that the Chinese Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican congregations had to recruit pastors and Bible women from sister congregations in South China to meet their needs. This problem was exacerbated for minority groups like the Henghua and Foochow who struggled to find the right personnel to manage their churches because of the lack of ministers who could speak their languages. Provision of manpower from the native-place churches continued up to the late 1940s, before the Chinese Communist Party came into power. To be sure, resources also flowed from Singapore as congregations funded the schools and church building projects of their native-place churches and denominations.⁵

A significant development that arose in the first half of the 20^th century and peaked during the 1920s to 1940s was the formation of a China-oriented nationalism among the denominational Chinese churches in Singapore. The acceptance of a huaqiao identity among the Chinese churches meant an increased identification with China as a modern nation-state. By this point, the number of Chinese Protestant members and churches had increased to a sizable critical mass that could be mobilised for causes with some effect. At the beginning of the 20^th century, there were around 2,300 worshippers in a dozen churches — making up less than 1% of the island’s population of 226,842 in 1901. By the 1930s, there were 21 denominational Chinese churches. The percentage of Chinese Christians increased to 2.8%. Specific denominations like the Chinese Methodists and Presbyterians also saw substantial increases in membership.⁶

An early instance of nationalism was the influence of revolutionary fervour during the 1900s. Tay Ping Teng (1872–1944, better known as Tay Sek Tin), who was employed as the first ordained Chinese minister for Hokkien speakers by the EPM in 1898, became an important figure in Singapore’s Chinese society from the 1900s to 1910s. Significantly, he was also a major Protestant promoter of Chinese nationalism during that period. Besides establishing and pastoring Hokkien Presbyterian congregations in Tanjong Pagar and Paya Lebar (now known as Jubilee Church and Bethany Presbyterian Church), Tay’s social contributions included the creation of the Sin Chew Reading Room and his involvement in opium rehabilitation. The Sin Chew Reading Room, which was originally established for Singapore’s educated elite, became a major site for Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary activities in Singapore and the Tongmenghui’s transregional network.⁷

Tay’s influence extended beyond revolutionary activities. As a senior pastor, he was part of a group of leading Presbyterian, Methodist and Anglican Chinese ministers who promoted inter-denominational cooperation in the late 1920s. In 1931, these ministers decided to advance this cooperation and form the first inter-denominational association in Singapore — the Singapore Chinese Christian Inter-Church Union (SCCIU). The formation of SCCIU meant that, for the first time, Chinese churches in Singapore had an independent and representative umbrella body that had the authority to mobilise church members and resources across denominations and native-place affiliations. This allowed the SCCIU to imbue a sense of China-centric identification across all congregations.

On the one hand, the SCCIU introduced national patterns of spiritual revival from China by inviting John Sung and other prominent China-based evangelists to conduct evangelistic and revival meetings. Sung’s revivals were particularly successful in energising church members and clergy from all denominations to participate in regular team-based evangelism, creating a “spiritual movement” which permeated churches in Singapore and Southeast Asia from 1935 to 1941. On the other hand, the SCCIU fostered nationalism in the churches by enjoining them to identify with the National Salvation movement in China as huaqiao Christians. Other than mobilising the churches to raise funds for China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the SCCIU became a key promoter of a transregional religious nationalism that appropriated the discourse of National Salvation for Singapore’s Chinese churches. This was expressed through prayers and liturgies in regular Sunday services and inter-denominational activities.⁸

Towards nationhood: language and identity struggles (1945–present)

The postcolonial independent Singapore nation-state presented Chinese Protestantism with two new challenges. Firstly, what did it mean for Chinese-Singaporean Protestants to identify with China? Secondly, as English became the primary lingua franca in Singapore, what did it mean for the use of Southern Chinese languages and Mandarin in the churches?

Several changes occurred within Chinese Protestantism after the post-war period of the late 1940s. The disruption of connections with native-place churches in South China led to a loss in religious manpower. Due to the urgent need for manpower, the SCCIU established a high-grade Chinese seminary in 1951 called the Singapore Theological Seminary (now known as Singapore Bible College) to train ministers for the local churches. The College was one of five theological schools formed from the late 1930s to 1960s to cultivate local church clergy and leaders. During the 1950s and 1960s, a total of 44 new congregations were started by the traditional groupings of the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists and Brethren, as well as four new denominations, the most prominent of which were the Baptists and Bible-Presbyterians. The sharp growth in congregations was due to conversions of local-born Chinese and non-Chinese who were part of a post-war youth boom. This increase did not mean direct growth of the Chinese Protestant sector. Due to the increasing number of baby boomers who were English-educated, English-speaking congregations arose from the Chinese churches and new denominations, creating a fresh generation of English-speaking Protestants who were local-born Chinese from traditionally Chinese-speaking families. In 1980, 203,517 Chinese Singaporeans (10% of Singapore’s Chinese population) identified as Christians. Nonetheless, English-speaking churches started to dominate the landscape — their membership grew by 65.9% from 1970 to 1978, while Chinese church membership only increased by 29.1%.⁹

In 1987, schools in Singapore transitioned to using English as the main medium of instruction. Responding to these changing times, Singapore’s Chinese churches came up with methods to retain their English-educated youth and adult members. However, these measures were unable to fully stem the flow of these young members to English-speaking congregations. By 1980, the landscape of Protestantism in Singapore had furthermore become highly associated with the English-speaking class, who were generally well-educated. In order to rejuvenate their congregations and strengthen their evangelistic work, the Chinese churches turned their attention to the broader segment of non-Christian Chinese-educated Singaporeans during the mid-1980s, calling them the “Chinese-speaking grassroots”. English-speaking churches also participated in this shift by starting new Mandarin and Southern Chinese language congregations for the Chinese-speaking grassroots. What this meant was that Chinese churches had to move away from a conventional multi-generational church model to one which catered to working-class and middle-aged to elderly Chinese-speakers.¹⁰

The re-opening of mainland China during the Reform era (1978 onwards) enabled re-connections between the churches in Singapore and China. For the pre-baby boomer generation, native-place based identification with China was rekindled from the 1980s to early 2000s, when South China’s Protestant communities looked to raise funds from Singapore’s churches to rebuild their church buildings and infrastructure. However, native-place ties did not appeal to the local-born baby boomer and post-boomer generations as they were at least one generation removed from the migratory experiences of their ancestors. Nonetheless, they still strongly identified as ethnic Chinese, and with China. Thus, for them, identification with China became more of a concern for the growth of Christianity and church-state relations there. This concern was manifested through the provision of theological education for China’s Protestant workers and clergy. In the late 1990s, Singapore’s leading theological higher education institute, Trinity Theological College, enrolled pastors and preachers from the registered churches in Fujian. Students from registered and unregistered churches across China would also train at Singapore Bible College and other seminaries, before returning to China to serve as ministers.

By the 2000s and 2010s, identification with China and Chinese speakers was partially reoriented towards the large influx of Chinese migrants to Singapore. These migrants came from different provinces and had varied backgrounds. Some churches created specific programmes that ministered to these migrants based on their occupations, such as fellowships for Chinese construction workers and nurses. Other churches tried to integrate new Chinese migrant members into their congregations by forming China-specific Bible study groups and recruiting them into church leadership positions. In the last analysis, circumstances arising from nationhood recalibrated the ways in which Singapore’s Chinese Protestants related to local-born Chinese speakers, Reform-era China and its large wave of emigrants.¹¹

The three periods in the history of Chinese Protestantism in Singapore illustrate the changing relationship of Singapore Chinese Protestantism with China, and speakers of Chinese languages. Through these changes, Singapore’s Chinese Protestants were able to adopt, adapt and navigate the China-based influences and language changes, while developing transregional connections with the broader Chinese Protestant sphere. Each period brought its own challenges: a small number of converts in the first period; the dependence on China for religious manpower in the second period; and the need to adapt to and survive in an increasingly English-speaking nation in the final period. Nevertheless, Singapore’s Chinese Protestants have demonstrated the agency and resilience to advocate for and imbue renewed meaning into their faith communities in the face of the contingencies of their time.