In an attempt to raise funds for a Christmas event, the
Archdeacon of the Anglican Church in Singapore deliberately created the
spectre of threat from Buddhists. In doing so, he undermined religious
tolerance and harmony in Singapore.
On the other hand, it was such a hamfisted attempt, some may be tempted
to just laugh it off.
My friend Clarence received an email that was circulating on 23
December 2005. Here it is, verbatim:
A very warm greeting to you in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ at this Christmastide!
It is after much prayer and with a heavy heart that I send you this
open letter.
Celebrate Christmas In Singapore Ltd (CCIS), though registered as a
company, is a Christian non-profit making inter-denominational
(independent churches included) setup supported by the National Council of
Churches of Singapore (NCCS). The purpose and objective are to proclaim
the real reason of celebrating Christmas to our fellow residents in
Singapore. That is Jesus Our Saviour Is Born. Contrary to the popular
belief, this national event started last year in 2004, is Church initiated
and led and not mooted and financed by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB).
The fact was that a group of church leaders approached STB in early 2004,
seeking for assistance to help us to secure Orchard Road as our main venue
to celebrate Christmas in Singapore.
The CEO of STB, though a non-Christian, graciously agreed to help.
Without the support from STB, CCIS would not be able to put up stages in
the Civic Plaza in front of Ngee Ann City, the plazas in front of Paragon
and Tong Building. The closure of Orchard Road for Christmas celebration
would be impossible and the floats driving through the heartlands would
not be possible too.
This year Celebrate Christmas In Singapore are also being organised in
Chinatown, Queenstown, Bukit Batok and Yishun with the help from the local
churches and community leaders such as mayors, MPs, CCC, local businessman
associations etc. In a real sense, we have brought the message of
Christmas to the people all over Singapore.
In a national event of this scale, inevitably we might have overlooked
certain things and have made some mistakes as we are all part-timers and
so shorthanded. If we have offended you or hurt your feeling in anyway,
rest be assured that it is unintentional and we sincerely apologise and
pray that you would forgive us in the love of Christ.
We cannot take for granted that CCIS will continue in the years to
come. Out of 95 participating churches and organisations, 73 have
contributed to date. Our budget for this year is $800,000 which is low
compared to Chinese Chinggay’s $2 millions. But to date we have only
received about $320,000. We cannot expect STB to bail us out nor it is not
their baby in the first place.
The Buddhist sect, SUKA [1], has already asked STB for the use of
Orchard Road. The gay activists, have also approached the authorities for
an international gay parade at Orchard Road on Christmas Eve.
If we, the Church in Singapore, give up our right of presence in the
public at Christmas, the Christmas Tree may be called the Holiday Tree in
future as it is already happening in USA. Even the name Christmas Season
may be changed to Holiday Season as it is what
happens now in Birmingham, UK.
I am by nature an introvert who prefers to shy away from the limelight
and enjoys working in the backstage. I am hoping that someone would take
over the CCIS co-chairmanship which I am holding currently. The CCIS
Chairman Rev Oh Beng Khee is Chinese educated, so am I. Our networking is
somewhat limited to the more Chinese speaking churches which are weaker
than the English speaking churches in Singapore. I pray that more English
speaking church leaders will rise up to the occasion and continue with the
race. I give you my words that I will continue to give CCIS my fullest
support and continue to be a member of CCIS Executive Committee if
invited.
Please feel free to forward or circulate this open letter of mine to
all those whom you think may be concerned.
May I take this opportunity to wish you a Blessed Christmas and a Happy
New Year.
Yours sincerely in Christ and co-worker in His harvest field,
Siow Chai Pin (Ven)
CCIS Co-Chairman
Archdeacon of the Anglican Diocese of Singapore
Could this have been a hoax? I asked myself. There is no reason to
think so. See footnote [2].
The 8th paragraph is the one that caught Clarence's attention and mine.
In effect, Siow was suggesting that if Christians didn't come forward with
more money, Orchard Road this season would be given over to Buddhists or
"gay activists". By deliberate implication, he was charging
another faith and the gay and lesbian minority with wanting to take
Christmas away from Christians. You would have noticed too how his
references to "Holiday Tree" and "Holiday Season" feed the same fear.
You don't have to ask whether SOKA was really planning a parade down
Orchard Road on Christmas Day. It is so preposterous an idea, it can only
be the creature of a feverish mind.
As for gay activists planning a parade, the government won't even let
us have a private ticketed party!
An ex-Anglican friend of mine -- he is Buddhist now -- said he was
not surprised. Christian churches make such allegations of threat from
others all the time, he said.
* * * * *
In the last few years, many people around the world have been alerted to
the dangers posed by the curriculum in Saudi Arabian schools, and to an
extent, in some madrasahs in other countries as well, such as Pakistan.
Their textbooks speak of non-Muslims as infidels and war-mongers who are
out to destroy Islam. They keep stressing how
Judgment Day will not come until the whole world has converted to Islam or
submitted to it, and by extension then, that going out to defeat other
religions is a just and worthy cause.
We now realise that such blinkered and hate-filled views can spur a
small fraction of people to commit terrible atrocities. These are then
magnified by the misguided sympathies of the population, who either excuse
them, or continue to deny that the kind of discourse ever-present in their
culture perpetuates the problem.
The inculcation and spreading of such views pose a great danger to
peace, whether on a local or global scale. When people are led to feel
they're under siege when it is not really so, that group is likely to
respond in unnecessarily defensive and truculent ways. This in turn leads
other groups to feel themselves under attack, and things spiral down from
there.
Siow's email poses exactly that danger. No, he initiates it by creating
an entirely imagined invasion of a Christian festival by others.
* * * * *
In order to show you how seriously the authorities in
Singapore take such waving of imagined threats, I was going to cite the
example of the sms messages that had been circulating about Muslim and
Christian adoptions. This was just after the tsunami hit Aceh in December
2004, leaving many children without families. The sms messages, invoking
the threat of Christians adopting the children, losing these otherwise
Muslims children to another religion, called upon Muslims to step forward
to adopt 300 orphans.
I recall that the Singapore Muslim authorities (perhaps the Singapore
government too) quickly stepped in to squelch these rumours. They pointed
to how the Jakarta government had banned the taking of children out of
Aceh as an assurance that the imagined scenario could not happen. Those
who were disseminating the messages were irresponsible, the leaders said,
clearly recognising the dangers to civil peace as a result of unfounded rumours
creating mutual suspicion.
But I cannot cite this example because it is not a parallel for the
purposes of this article. Whereas Siow's email went out of the way to
create otherwise non-existent threats, when I did a Google check before
writing this article, I found that in fact there was some basis for that
300-orphans claim.
The Washington Post had reported on 13 January 2005 -- the same article
also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle -- that,
Christian group's plan for orphans
Muslim children will be raised by missionaries
by Alan Cooperman, Washington Post
Thursday, January 13, 2005
A Virginia-based missionary group said this week that it had airlifted
300 tsunami orphans from the Muslim province of Banda Aceh to Jakarta, the
Indonesian capital, where it plans to raise them in a Christian children's
home.
The missionary group, WorldHelp, is one of dozens of Christian, Muslim
and Jewish charities providing humanitarian relief to victims of the Dec.
26 earthquake and tsunami that devastated countries around the Indian
Ocean, taking more than 153,000 lives.
Most of the religious charities do not attach any conditions to their
aid, and many of the larger ones -- such as WorldVision and Catholic
Relief Services -- have policies against proselytizing. But a few of the
smaller groups have been raising money among evangelical Christians by
presenting the tsunami emergency effort as a rare opportunity to make
converts in hard-to- reach areas.
"Normally, Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the
gospel, but because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning
the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel,"
WorldHelp said in an appeal for funds on its Web site this week.
The appeal said WorldHelp was working with native-born Christians in
Indonesia who want to "plant Christian principles as early as
possible" in the 300 Muslim children, all younger than 12, who lost
their parents in the tsunami.
"These children are homeless, destitute, traumatized, orphaned,
with nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat," it said.
"If we can place them in a Christian children's home, their faith in
Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people."
The Rev. Vernon Brewer, president of WorldHelp in Forest, Va., said his
organization had collected about $70,000 in donations and was seeking to
raise an additional $350,000 to build the Christian orphanage.
Source:
SFgate.com
Here is how a Muslim portal, IslamOnline.net, carried the story:
300 Muslim Tsunami Orphans to be Christianized: Report
CAIRO, January 13. Giving credence to fears that Christian
missionaries are exploiting the tsunami disaster to proselytize poor and
needy Muslims, The Washington Post reported Thursday, January 13, that a
US missionary group plans to christianize 300 Muslim children from the
Indonesian province of Aceh.
While many religious charities have policies against proselytizing,
Virginia-based WorldHelp is an exception raising money among evangelical
Christians by presenting the tsunami as a rare opportunity to make
converts in hard-to-reach areas, said the American daily.
"Normally, Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the
gospel," the missionary group said in a fund appeal on its Web site,
according to the Post.
"But, because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning
the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel."
The Post stressed that the Web site was changed, and the appeal was
removed after a reporter called to inquire about it.
Source: IslamOnline
What this example does show is that fears about one religion stepping
into another's domain is a very sensitive, perhaps explosive, situation.
It is something that reasonable people must be alert to and be ever ready
to slam the brakes on. The Washington Post, in its exposé, did exactly
that.
It is therefore particularly heinous that an Anglican churchman, in his
eagerness to raise funds for his parade, would recklessly use Buddhists and
gay people as bogeymen, and in so doing, sow discord.
Such words raise the temperature between religions. It creates
unnecessary suspicion and ill-will. It is inexcusable when the writer of
the email holds a senior clerical position. It should be criminal when it
is patently false.
If 3 young men could be prosecuted under the Sedition Act
[3] for sowing
ill-will between races and religions through their online words, with 2 of them
going to jail, I will be most interested to see what happens or does not
happen to archdeacons who do likewise. 
© Yawning Bread
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