In this three year program of research, I explored the way that Christianity (a world religion transmitted through transnational networks) is locally grounded in the issues, symbols, languages, and histories of Christian groups in Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore (June-August 1997), I explored the local impact of a controversial "practical theology" that calls on all Christians to engage in "spiritual warfare" against "territorial spirits," thereby ritually dramatizing the competition between Christianity and local popular religious cultures. In Singapore and Malaysia (January-May 1999), I investigated the Brethren Movement, a Christian sectarian movement that missionaries and European sojourners brought to Southeast Asia in the mid-nineteenth century. The research explored the impact of this group's "end-time" teachings on their contemporary evangelical practices, and also investigated the recent history of waves of Christian revival (many originating in Asia) that have precipitated dramatic schisms within the movement, leading to the formation of new independent churches. Finally, archival research conducted in England in summer 2000 gave insight into the processes by which the Brethren Movement became indigenised in Singapore and Malaysia.

      An article entitled "Spiritual Warfare and Territorial Spirits: The Globalization and Localization of a "Practical Theology" has been published in the Journal of Religious Studies and Theology. In that article, I observe that since 1989, a small number of Christian leaders have formalized a "practical theology" of territorial spirits and spiritual warfare that they teach through books, internet sites, and international conferences. As a result of their efforts at promotion, the practices associated with spiritual warfare have circled the globe and found widespread acceptance among charismatic Christians. Most striking is the fact that within a global framework, this movement accommodates the multiplicity of 'territorial spirits' associated with different cultural forms of Christianity. While cultural congruence appears to explain the popularity of spiritual warfare and the ministry of deliverance in countries like Guatemala and Singapore (in which Christianity exists in tension with local popular religious cultures), the popularity of this movement in urban North America appears to be based on the attempt to re-enchant Protestant Christian cosmology.

     I also explicate the practical theology of spiritual warfare and territorial spirits presented in the writings of key leaders in this movement, and the objections posed by some of their critics. In order to better understand the process of global diffusion of the spiritual warfare agenda, I discuss a 1998 international conference held in Guatemala at which the organizers neatly demonstrated the efficacy of spiritual warfare by showcasing a prosperous town that they claim to have taken from the control of a demonic spirit. Finally, I analyse the localized form that spiritual warfare has taken in Singapore to demonstrate the congruence between Chinese popular religious culture and the practice of spiritual warfare that have led to a ready local acceptance of this "practical theology."      In January - May 1999, I focussed my research efforts on the Brethren Movement, a Christian sectarian movement that missionaries and European sojourners brought to Southeast Asia in the mid-nineteenth century. This movement's leaders were among the early founders of a form of fundamentalist Christianity that reinterpreted the Bible in light of end-time prophecy. Spurred by the development of new technologies of travel that opened up the possibility of global evangelism, they formed a sectarian movement whose primary "full time workers" were not trained ministers, but rather missionaries and itinerant evangelists who circulated from country to country, linking local Assemblies into the Brethren network.

     By the early twentieth century, travelling members, missionaries, and evangelists had established Brethren Assemblies in Europe and Africa, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and North and South America. In colonial Malaya, members and missionaries together established assemblies that often drew together a mixed community of Chinese immigrants, Eurasians, and European sojourners. During the Japanese occupation, these assemblies proved more resilient than many other Christian Churches, since these groups were autonomous and independent, and not dependent on non-local leadership or financial support. Despite their lack of formal, centralized institutions, the Brethren movement has had a disproportionate influence on the development of contemporary para-church groups and independent churches in Singapore and Malaysia, and now actively support a number of missionaries in other parts of the world (including China, Burma, Thailand, and Japan).  In contemporary Singapore and Malaysia, the Brethren movement still flourishes. As the consequence of waves of charismatic revival since World War II, however, many new independent churches have "come out of" the Brethren movement through a process of schism. In this period of research, I sought to investigate the processes by which schisms had taken place within the movement, and also to explore the tensions between emergent charismatic Brethren Assemblies and the more traditional Brethren.

     Because this research trip fell in the first part of 1999, as the year 2000 approached, I also documented Christian perspectives on the millennium in Singapore and Malaysia. I have published an article based on this research to the Journal of Ritual Studies (Volume 15.1 2001).  In that article, I observe that the premillennial framework of interpretation developed by the Brethren movement's founder, John Nelson Darby, and popularized through the Scofield Bible continues to provide a framework of meaning and explanation that influences the practice of Singapore's evangelical Christians. For them, the prophetic and apocalyptical view of the Bible has multiple dimensions. First, end-time prophecy contributes an overwhelming logic and urgency to the matter of conversion and evangelism. The prophecy of the second coming motivates people to engage in missionary work, but members also used this prophesy rhetorically to convince people that their becoming born again is a matter of some urgency. Second, the premillennial interpretation of the Bible also lends urgency to the `Great Commission" to preach the gospel to all nations, since the gospel of Matthew 24:14 states "and this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all peoples, and then shall the end come." Finally, the premillennial interpretation of the Bible gives time (from eternity to eternity) both coherence and meaning, offering the individual an optimistic future orientation. In this article, I both investigate the tenets of premillennial theology, and consider how contemporary Singaporean and Malaysian Christians who are Brethren (or whose independent churches emerged from the Brethren movement) localized and interpreted this theology in 1999, as the year 2000 approached. Publications and Public Presentations based on this program of research.

Book manuscript in progress: "If the Lord Be Not Come...": The Brethren Movement in Singapore and Malaysia

Publications

N.D. "A Short History of Nonconformist Protestantism in Penang and the Mission House at 35 Farquhar Street." Submission to The Penang Story, Volume 2, edited by Yeoh Seng Guan and Khoo Salma Nasution.

To access this article in PDF format, please click on this link: The Mission House [PDF]

2001
"Chinese Christian Syncretism in Singapore and Penang, Malaysia," forthcoming in Chinese Populations in Contemporary Southeast Asian Societies: Regional Interdependence and International Influence, edited by Jocelyn and Warwick Armstrong. London: Curzon Press [invited chapter].

“If the Lord Be Not Come. . .End-Time Teachings and Evangelical Practice in the Brethren Movement in Singapore, in the Journal of Ritual Studies 15(1): 4-16 [I].

1999
“Spiritual Warfare and Territorial Spirits:  The Globalization and Localization of a ‘Practical Theology’,” in Religious Studies and Theology 18(2): 66‑96 [R].

1998
“Towards a Chinese Christian Hymnody:  Processes of Musical and Cultural Synthesis,” in Asian Music 29(2): 83-113, coauthored with Vernon Charter (JED 50%/ VC 50%) [R].

Conference and Seminar Presentations:

2005
"Towards a Rhetoric of Syncretism:  Chinese Genesis,” presented at an invited international conference on “Rhetoric in Social Relations and Religion” at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany, 13-17 February 2005.

2004
“The Open Door: Chinese Christian Evangelists in the Straits Settlements and Malaya,” presented on a panel on “Asian Travelers: Narratives of Asian Voyages in Southeast Asia, Historically and Today” at the meetings of the International Association of Historians of Asia, Taipei, Taiwan, 6-10 December 2004.

“The Brethren Movement in the Straits Settlements and Colonial Malaya:  Emplacing a Network Religion in a World in Motion,”  presented at an invited international conference on “Transnational Religion, Migration, and Diversity” organized by the Social Science Research Council Conference, Kuala Lumpur, 2-4 December 2004.

“Christianity and Chinese Religious Culture in Singapore: Anthropological Perspectives.”  Inter-cultural Dialog at the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore, 24 November 2004.

2003

"Singapore and Malaysia: The Charismatic Movement and Spiritual Gifts," presented on a panel on "Recent Patterns of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement in Asia" at the meetings of the American Society for Church History, Chicago, January 2003.

2002
"Operation World: Singaporean and Malaysian Christian Evangelists at the Millennium," presented at a panel on "Beyond Ethnicity: Identity and Culture in Contemporary Malaysia and Singapore," at the meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington, D.C., April 2002.

2000
"Chinese Genesis," presented at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November 2000.

1999
"'The Great Shaking That is to Come': Modernity and the Millennium in a Singaporean Evangelical Movement," presented at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, November 1999.

"The Globalization (and Localization) of a Millennial Vision: Evangelical Christianity in Singapore," presented at a seminar organized by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, May 1999.

1998
"Mapping Spiritual Territories: Syncretism and Anti-syncretism in Chinese Christian Practice," Canadian Anthropology Society and American Ethnological Society joint conference, Toronto, May 1998.

Coordinator, two-part panel on "Rituals at Risk: Syncretism and Anti-syncretism in the New World Disorder," Canadian Anthropology Society and American Ethnology Society joint conference, Toronto, May 1998.