A Brief History of Nonconformist Protestantism in Penang and the Mission House at 35 Farquhar Street 1 Submission to: The Penang Story, Volume 2 Edited by Yeoh Seng Guan and Khoo Salma Nasution Draft: Please do not cite without permission Jean DeBernardi
[email protected] The old Brethren Mission House still stands at 35 Farquhar Street, a colony of bats its only residents. Not far from this simple two-story structure is the Protestant cemetery (1789- 1892) where many of Penang’s early European residents are buried, including Sir Francis Light, prominent lawyer Jonas Richard Logan, and missionaries Thomas Beighton, Johann Georg Bausum, and Maria Tarn Bausum. Restored by the Penang Heritage Trust in 1993-1994, the Protestant cemetery is site location 9 on Penang’s American Express Heritage Trail 2, and tourism websites urge visitors to explore its frangipani-shaded paths. 2 Although the Brethren mission continued one of the oldest Christian missions in Asia, all but a few Penangites have forgotten the historical significance of the now-derelict Mission House, and to date no one has stepped forward to restore it. 1 The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the University of Alberta Humanity, Fine Arts, and Social Sciences Research Fund Research funded ethnographic and archival research on evangelical Christianity and the Brethren movement in Singapore and Malaysia (see also DeBernardi n.d.). I would like to thank the School of Oriental and African Studies Council for World Mission Archive, Echoes of Service in Bath, the Christian Brethren Archive at the John Ryland University Library at the University of Manchester, and the Scriptural Knowledge Institution at Müller House in Bristol for allowing me access to their library and archival collections.