CONNECTIONALISM AND PRINT: NETWORK, IDEAS AND COMMUNITY FORMATION IN THE CHINESE-SPEAKING METHODISTS OF MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE, 1936-1960 KWAN QI XIANG (B.A. (Hons), NUS) ScholarBank@NUS A THESIS SUBMITTEDprovided by View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk CORE brought to you by FOR THE DEGREE OF THE MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2015 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis is my original work and it has been written by me in its entirety. I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information which have been used in this thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree in any university previously. __________________________________ Kwan Qi Xiang 19 August 2015 i ii Acknowledgements Being able to complete my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in NUS has been a privilege and a joy. A thesis that is, in many ways, the culmination of six years of education will definitely accumulate many debts of gratitude. History as a discipline shapes one’s mind; to study under world-class professors, alongside brilliant and enthusiastic course mates, shapes one’s passion, desire, life. A/P Bruce Lockhart has been a mentor, brother and friend through the larger part of these past six years. Having supervised my undergraduate thesis, he agreed to supervise my Masters as well. I am grateful for the ways he has shaped me as a student of history. He patiently read the drafts of chapters that I sent him, and gave many helpful comments and admonishments. Beyond the academic guidance he offered, A/P Lockhart has shown me what it can look like when a Christian historian takes his responsibility towards education, society and the Church seriously. I am deeply grateful for these priceless lessons. A/P Maurizio Peleggi, A/P Peter Borschberg, A/P Ian Gordon and Dr. Sai Siew Min taught the graduate classes that I was enrolled in. They were instrumental in shaping the way I think about and write history. I would also like to thank A/P Yang Bin for the Graduate Student Seminar, especially Chi Tim and the participants who gave many helpful comments. My fellow graduate students have played an important part in my graduate student life. They made lessons more stimulating, and the life of a graduate student less lonely. I wish to especially thank my friends in the Religion and Diaspora reading group: Joshua, Beiyu and Kisho. Your wide interests, and deep enthusiasm for the topics of religion and diaspora has greatly enriched my academic journey. My thesis does not do justice to the joy, knowledge and wisdom that I received from the many chats and discussions we had. To all my fellow graduate students: All the best for your own dissertations; I know you all can do it because all of you have helped me complete mine. Special thanks to the people who read drafts of my thesis, or gave comments in one form or another: Chye Guan, Tiang Peng, Joshua Sim, Wilfred Teo, Kenneth Goh, Isaac Koh, Prarthi, Leo, Kevin, Daolin. Your comments have helped me to write better, but your friendship has been an even greater blessing. To my friends from VCF, NUS and Ang Mo Kio Methodist Church who kept me sane, you have my thanks too. The comments given by the two anonymous markers have also helped me to sharpen my arguments and correct the worst of my mistakes. Any remaining errors and inelegance are my own. Thanks must also go to the gatekeepers of resources. From the Methodist Archives and Library of the Methodist Church in Singapore, I want to thank iii Jenny and Amy. Their assistance has been invaluable; without their efforts, many stories of the Methodist Church in Singapore would have remained buried. I would also like to thank Rev. Sam Men Biew, Head of the Archives Committee of the CAC, Malaysia, and Ms. Kam Fui Yee, executive editor for the Southern Bell. They went above and beyond their duty in helping me gain access to issues of the SB that were not available in Singapore. I wish to extend my thanks to NUS, for the generous support schemes that allowed me to focus on my research, and also have opportunities to tutor some of the bright young minds that NUS attracts. I want to mention Adeline especially; without her support, I would have been terribly lost in the administration procedures. My gratitude goes to her as well. Finally, I want to thank my family and Estee. Their support has been unconditional, is especially treasured because they bore the brunt of my stress reactions yet continued to encourage me. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote in his book The Edge of Words that the human experience sometimes runs into phenomena that surpasses human understanding and ability to capture in words, and can therefore only be marked by silence. To my family and Estee: I cannot find the words to thank you enough. iv Contents DECLARATION ......................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... iii Contents ....................................................................................................................... v Summary ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................ vii Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2 – Christianity with Chinese Characteristics ......................................... 27 Chapter 3 – Nanyang Connections .......................................................................... 53 Chapter 4 – To the Ends of the Earth ..................................................................... 73 Conclusion – Shifting Connections and Community building .............................. 92 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 103 v Summary In 1936, the Malaysia Chinese Mission Conference was formed as an autonomous Methodist Conference operating largely in Malaya and Singapore. Current research on this community has largely focused on a narrow geographical area. However, the MCMC (later renamed as the Malaysia Chinese Annual Conference, or MCAC for short) was a regional community, consisting of multiple Chinese Methodist congregations bound together by the Methodist ethos of “connectionalism”. These connections allow for the communication of ideas and the shaping of a united community. This thesis studies the trans-border community-building process of the Chinese-speaking Methodists of Malaya and Singapore. Their sense of community and identity at each point of time was the product of the intersection of Chinese overseas nationalism, Christian theologizing, and the Church periodical that shaped their view of the world and themselves. The Chinese Methodists of Malaya and Singapore changed from a community that was highly concerned with events in China, to one that was localized within Southeast Asia, due largely to the needs and opportunities of the Malayan Emergency. Throughout this time, the Chinese Methodists of Malaya and Singapore were connected to a wider evangelical transnational network that became a key part of the Chinese Methodist identity. This thesis thus draws together the fields of Chinese overseas studies and world Christianity to explain the changing communal identity of the Chinese Methodists of Malaya and Singapore. vi List of Abbreviations JMCMC - Journal of the Malaysia Chinese Mission Conference JMCAC - Journal of the Malaysia Chinese Annual Conference MCMC - Malaysia Chinese Mission Conference MCAC - Malaysia Chinese Annual Conference SB - Southern Bell vii Chapter 1 - Introduction “Ultimately the house of common fate was – as it would be for millennia – built from words” - Simon Schama1 Rescuing Church History from the Nation?2 This thesis seeks to examine the history of the Chinese Methodists in Malaysia and Singapore by focusing on the Church leaders’ ideas of what a Chinese Christian community should be, and the processes by which such a community was created.3 Recent trends in the studies of the Chinese in Southeast Asia and of world Christianity suggest that the history of this particular community can contribute to these studies.4 However, such a history has not been written; furthermore, current histories on the Methodist denomination in Singapore and Malaysia have shortcomings that restrict their potential contribution to the study of either of those two contexts. This thesis hopes to tell this fuller story by paying attention to the regional “connectionalism” of the Chinese Methodists: 1 Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews, (New York: Ecco, 2013) 2 The title of the section is adapted from Pransenjit Duara’s influential book on Chinese history, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 3 In this thesis, I will use “Church”, in its capitalized form, in two ways. The first is to denote the ecclesial and institutional structure of the Methodist Church, whether in Malaysia or Singapore, as a whole. The second usage of the capitalized form would be when it is part of a proper noun, such as “Hinghwa Methodist Church”. The non-capitalized form, “church”, will be used to refer to local congregations, such as “the church in Telok Ayer”. 4 The