Christianity in Southeast Asia

4. Malaysia

Malaysia 47 47 Chapter 4 Malaysia The story of Christianity in Malaysia is to a certain extent interwoven with that of Singapore, as the two countries were part of the same colonial administrative region before finally separating in 1965. The area of the Malay Peninsula, together with parts of the coastal region of the island of Borneo, which collectively make up the modern-day nation of Malaysia, had long been occupied by Malay fishermen, traders and agriculturalists when Hindu and Buddhist influences came to the region from the ninth century onwards (Ho 1996, p. 260). From the fourteenth century onwards, Islam became the dominant religion in the whole of the Malay archipelago, and became deeply ingrained into the Malay culture, identity and way of life. As with other parts of Southeast Asia, the Malay Peninsula (in particular, the northwestern part) had contact with the Eastern Church, probably in the seventh century, although little remains of this contact (Roxborogh 1992, p. 2). Portuguese traders brought the first enduring Christian presence when they captured and settled the port of Malacca on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula in 1511. As with other Portuguese settlements (such as in Macau and Goa), the Portuguese presence in Malacca consisted only of a small garrison, which was intended to guard the port rather than conquer and control a large territory in the hinterland. The result 48 Christianity in Southeast Asia is that the Catholic influence introduced by the Portuguese did not have an extensive reach in the Peninsula, although it did establish an enduring community of Catholic Eurasians in and around Malacca itself. In the seventeenth century, trade rivals — the Dutch — established themselves in the region, ousting the Portuguese from Malacca in 1641. Political and religious reasons led the Dutch to discourage Catholicism and promote their own Reformed Protestantism instead (Roxborogh 1992, pp. 7–8). However, Dutch commercial and political energies were largely concentrated in Indonesia, particularly after the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824, which carved out the respective areas of influence of the two colonial powers; this also meant that the Dutch had little lasting impact on Christianity in Malaysia. The Dutch-built Christ Church in Malacca, established in 1753, catered to Dutch worshippers, and was handed over to the Anglicans in 1838 (Ho 1996, p. 262). British influence in the Malay Peninsula grew progressively, beginning with the three “Straits Settlement” ports of Penang, Malacca and Singapore, and then in a series of treaties (in 1874, 1896, 1909 and 1914) with groups of Malay States extending to more and more of the Peninsula. The British “residency” system was intended to allow the colonial government to influence affairs in the Malay States, with the end of protecting their commercial interests, particularly in the lucrative tin and rubber industries, without having to incur a heavy administrative or political cost in terms of the direct control of territory. This in effect meant a policy of disturbing Malay customs and affairs as little as possible, with the consequence that the supremacy of Islam and the Malay language were left intact (Goh 2003b, p. 31). While Christian missionaries capitalized on British control of the Malay States to send missions, especially from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards, in many ways their impact on Malaysia 49 both the religious and socio-educational landscapes was more circumscribed than in places like Singapore and Korea. As with Singapore, there was an initial interest in Malaya as both a mission field and gateway to the “Ultra Ganges” area, following the growth of British control over the region in the early nineteenth century onwards, and accordingly the London Missionary Society set up its Ultra-Ganges Mission in Malacca in 1815. William Milne, the friend and associate of Ultra-Ganges Mission founder Robert Morrison, also established the AngloChinese College in Malacca in 1818, with an aim of “the cultivation of Chinese and English literature, and the diffusion of Christianity, in the countries and islands which lie to the eastward of Pulau Penang” (cited in Sng 1980, p. 28). With the concentration of the early ministry largely to the British community, and the shift in the LMS focus to China after 1842, Protestant missions in Malaya in the first half of the nineteenth century generally proceeded slowly. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw the arrival of the Presbyterians in 1851, the Christian Brethren in 1860, the Basel Mission (Swiss Lutherans...