Singapore’s Chinese Protestants in transition: From China-orientation to local-orientation in the 20^th century

Along with their non-Christian Chinese counterparts, Singapore’s Chinese Protestant community witnessed significant shifts in the island’s socio-cultural and political landscape in the 20^th century. They participated in the high point of China-oriented nationalism from the 1900s to 1940s, watched from afar the rise of the Communist regime in China in 1949, and experienced the subsequent developments which led to an independent Singapore nation state by 1965. These shifts raised existential questions. To what extent should they continue to link their faith to China’s religious and political developments? How should they relate to Singapore, their adopted place of settlement? Singapore’s Chinese Protestants, as prominent scholar Shih Shu-mei noted, were forced to contemplate the end of their status as diasporic Chinese by the late 1940s and 1950s.¹

Chinese Methodists

The Chinese Methodists churches in Singapore (and broadly, Malaya) became more locally-oriented than China-oriented between the first and second halves of the 20^th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, these churches made significant efforts to forge closer connections with each other and establish themselves as an “autonomous” group within the local Methodist denomination. This included the launch of the Chinese-language publication Southern Bell in 1929, and the Malaysia Chinese Mission Conference in 1936 (known later as the Malaysia Chinese Annual Conference in 1948). In the 1930s, the Southern Bell was not only a means of fostering ties between the different Chinese Methodist churches; it also became a key instrument in building a deep concern for Chinese nationalism, and enabling Chinese Methodists to “negotiate between their Chinese and Christian cultural identities” by focusing on themes like the anti-Japanese National Salvation movement and the “subsuming of Chinese thought under Christian faith and morality”.

From the 1940s to 1960s, under the leadership of the China-born leaders who had survived World War II, China dropped out from the pages of the Southern Bell. Instead, reports focused mainly on local stories about the churches as “pressing issues [like the Communist insurgency] were now those affecting Malaysia and Southeast Asia, rather than China”. These reports emphasised the growth achievements of various churches; the pastoral and evangelistic work conducted by missionaries and the Conference’s preachers and volunteers in the New Villages (newly-created settlements for rural Chinese communities living in peninsular Malaya) during the insurgency; and Christian marriages in the churches. This effacement of China and emergence of the local socio-political context as the central reference point in the Southern Bell marked the beginning of the “end of diaspora” in the Chinese Methodist churches.²Nonetheless, the Southern Bell’s primary aim to connect disparate Chinese churches across Malaya and Southeast Asia remained unchanged after World War II. What shifted was the lens through which they reported these connections: from a China-oriented lens to a local Cold War perspective.

Chinese Presbyterians

Singapore’s Chinese Presbyterians emphasised the idea of a “Three-Self Church” — a self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating body — modelled after the Presbyterians in China during the 20^th century. The British missionaries and China-born pastors and preachers assiduously implemented this “Three-Self” policy in Singapore (and broadly, Malaya). This model remained a part of their long-term strategy, even after the Chinese Presbyterians dropped their direct affiliations with the Presbyterians in China after 1949.

This was evident in their vigorous pursuit of independence. The Hokkien and Teochew Presbyterian congregations in Singapore were considered the first denominational Chinese churches to pursue autonomy from their mission body, the English Presbyterian Mission (EPM). In 1901, the eight congregations which had been established by EPM missionary J.A.B Cook (1854–1926) over the past 20 years organised themselves into a Chinese Synod, taking steps to create self-governing and self-supporting congregations. By 1931, the EPM missionaries ceded power to the Chinese Synod and all congregations in the Synod were required to self-finance. While the desire for autonomy was driven locally by China-born Presbyterian leaders and the missionaries, they were also influenced by earlier initiatives for independence by the Presbyterian churches in Fujian and Chaozhou.³

Besides striving for autonomy from the EPM, a key feature of the “Three-Self” strategy was the building of institutions. This involved establishing Presbyterian congregations and schools across Singapore and Malaya. According to one historical account, 32 churches were founded in Singapore, Johor and other places across the peninsula (such as Kelantan and Terengganu) from 1901 to 1950. The number increased from 1951 to 1970 as a consequence of the Emergency and a plan to add the number of churches across Singapore and Malaysia. By then, the Chinese Presbyterians had cut their affiliations with the Presbyterians in China. This expansion plan resulted in new churches in the New Villages and as far up north as Penang, Kuala Lumpur, and Ipoh. By 1968, when the Chinese Presbyterians identified themselves as part of the local denomination, The Presbyterian Church in Singapore and Malaysia, there were 52 Chinese Presbyterian churches with a combined total of 6,498 members.⁴

Quek Keng Hoon (1884–1975) was one of the Teochew Presbyterian pastors who led this expansion during the 1950s and 1960s along with his close friend, Hokkien Presbyterian pastor Yap Kok Hu (1887–1978). They pioneered church initiatives across Malaysia as part of the “Three-Self” conviction to make the Chinese Presbyterian churches fully independent. One of these was the churches’ purchase of 200 miles of palm plantations in Pontian, Johor in a step towards financial independence. Unlike the Methodists, Singapore’s Presbyterians followed China’s “Three-Self” model, even when they had fully identified as an ecclesia in Singapore and Malaysia and stopped identifying as a diasporic Church.⁵

Individuals from the John Sung-inspired evangelistic teams

In the 1930s and 1940s, an evangelical revivalist spiritual movement originating from China spread to Chinese Protestant churches in Singapore. Under the influence of John Sung (1901–1944) — a prominent Chinese evangelist — evangelistic teams were formed, adopting a model that extended to urban and rural areas across mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Singapore became a crucial node in this network.⁶

One individual who was deeply involved in Singapore’s evangelistic teams after World War II was Leona Wu (Goh Cheng Leng, 1897–1974), who arrived in Malaya in 1934 after a distinguished teaching career with the EPM in Xiamen. She was the first and longest-serving President of the Singapore teams from 1935 to 1974, as well as the founding principal of the first Chinese-medium Protestant higher education institute in Singapore, Chin Lien Bible Seminary (considered the sister institution of the teams). Chin Lien and the evangelistic teams were inspired by specific institutional movements which had been developed in Republican China. The former was based on the ‘spiritual seminary’ model which was established by Jia Yuming (1880–1964), considered as one of the most outstanding and prolific conservative theologians in Republican China. Jia had been Leona Wu’s teacher in Ginling Women’s Theological Seminary (Bible Teacher’s Training School for Women) from 1934 to 1935. The latter, as mentioned, was directly influenced by John Sung. Wu’s broad aim for these two institutions was to replicate the successes of China’s evangelical revivalist movement among Chinese churches and communities in Southeast Asia during the 1930s and 1940s. Though a respectable level of spiritual revitalisation was achieved during the 1930s, the Japanese Occupation put an abrupt stop to the activities of this revivalist movement. After 1945, the movement was unable to regain the same level of momentum and popularity. This was partly due to Sung’s death in 1944, which meant the loss of the movement’s most charismatic figure. Wu responded strategically to this post-World War II circumstances. Recognising the decline of the evangelistic teams as a popular movement, she shifted her focus towards supporting regional missionary work to rural Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaysia. This involved the evangelistic teams financially supporting theological training at Chin Lien Bible Seminary in Singapore for young men and women missionary trainees, reflecting a commitment to long-term local engagement.⁷

Wu also pursued global Christian and political affiliations for the institutions she led. She aligned the evangelistic teams (and indirectly, Chin Lien Bible Seminary) with the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC), an important global Protestant fundamentalist and anti-communist association during the mid-20^th century. This strategic move, influenced by her key associates Timothy Tow (Tow Siang Hui, 1920–2009) and Quek Kiok Chiang (1916–2015), enabled Wu to maintain ties with Taiwan through visits and nostalgic expressions of loyalty to the Republic of China. ⁸

Tow and Quek were Teochew Presbyterian youths who had joined the evangelistic teams in Singapore in 1935. They became significant Singaporean church leaders with global ambitions after World War II. Unlike Wu, Tow and Quek had arrived in Singapore in their youth, after spending part of their childhood and teenage years in China. Their education in Singapore’s mission schools and training as interpreters under the Chinese Secretariat of the colonial civil service system fostered proficiency in English, Teochew, and other Chinese languages. Both men tended to situate their faith-based endeavours within the global context of Anglo-American-led evangelicalism, prioritising global orientation over diasporic affiliations to China. Inheriting a conservative theological stance from Sung’s evangelistic teams, they were swayed by the ICCC’s advocacy for doctrinal purity across churches worldwide, and pledged their loyalty to this fundamentalist faction of global evangelicalism.

Aiming to enact the global fundamentalist agenda in Singapore, Tow and Quek led the newly-established English-language congregation of the Teochew Life Presbyterian Church (Say Mia Tng) to form the first local fundamentalist church in Singapore — Life Bible-Presbyterian Church. This church would expand into the Bible-Presbyterian Church of Singapore and Malaysia — the island’s fastest-growing denomination from the 1950s to 1980s. Their other major contribution was the founding of the Chinese-English bilingual publication Malaysia Christian, which became a public news and recruitment platform for fundamentalism in Southeast Asia. Ultimately, Tow’s and Quek’s diasporic affiliations to China were subordinated to the goals of their global-local fundamentalist project.⁹