The world of communication has changed irrevocably. With the founding and rapid expansion of the Internet, the transnational flows of information, media and applications have never been so open and free. For most of us, we are only a few mouse clicks away from a wealth of knowledge and materials online. We also have the means at our fingertips to produce, publish and distribute through social networks, our own texts, images and viewpoints.

But there is also a darker side of the Internet and new media^[1] to consider. The availability and prevalence of questionable material (pornography, political and religious extremism, and violence etc.) is both a negative influence and constant temptation. Where, we might ask, are the moral and ethical digital gatekeepers when we need them the most?

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Rather than rejecting or avoiding technology and media because they are sometimes put to disreputable uses, we could accept them cautiously and simply hope for the best in the name of liberty. But arguably, this exposes us, for example, to attacks on our privacy through spam (unwanted bulk email), phishing (email disguised as official correspondence in an attempt to trick us into revealing personal information) and surveillance (tracking our online activities without our knowledge or consent). We need to be more careful and proactive.

A different approach involves direct engagement. Crucially, from a Christian perspective, this requires discernment—knowing with assurance and following the will of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 16:21-23) and propriety—acting in ways that are “… worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27). Consequently, instead of prohibition, discerning Christian Internet users would prefer to talk through differences believing this helps them defend and apply their faith. Further, they would advocate giving children media literacy skills, teaching them to evaluate and interpret popular culture (and its tools) within a Christian compass.

Given the rate of technological advancement, there is probably no best or optimal time to begin with Information Technology. If we Christians do not act, the ungodly will. I believe God’s purposes are best served on the Internet and with new media when we act in love and with distinctiveness. Above all, these are eternal truths relating to excellence in all spiritual things (cf. Philippians 4:8) and require taking on the mantle of servant-leadership (Mark 10:42-45).

To illustrate, there are several ways Christians can be a positive influence online by personally demonstrating certain principles.^[2]

1. Be astute and observe the world with critical, God-fearing eyes. It is important for us to be mindful of the potential unintended consequences of our postings, status updates and other published material on social media. In this respect, we need to ask ourselves: Are we serving Christ or building up our own personal kingdom?
2. Be a bold witness for God. In every respect, our online presence should be clear and explicit about who we are and how we are being continually transformed by the Holy Spirit. One way we can do this is to give our testimony online to glorify God and encourage others. Another way is to share our Christian resources and materials freely.
3. Be available and communicate promptly. In the spirit of community building, we should strive to be accessible to others. It would also be useful to acknowledge and reply to email and other electronic correspondence within a set time. These actions show respect to others.
4. Be a blessing. Our online presence should, whenever appropriate, minister to others’ needs.
5. Be graceful. Harsh words are harmful and terseness on-line can often come across as rudeness. We need, therefore, not to be judgemental or critical in our viewpoints.
6. Be prayerful and act with integrity. We would be well-advised to think carefully and prayerfully about the topics we address online. In addition, a wise move would be to consult with others frequently before acting in sensitive or important matters. Raise awareness not alarm. Make defensible claims.
7. Be humble. Rather than being out front or above, an Internet and new media leader places him/herself in the midst of people and leads from within. This does not mean being weak or susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm. Rather, it requires confidence and looking forward in faith (Hebrews 11:8).

Clearly, using the Internet and new media is not just a question about what we do and how we do it. It seems inevitable that our actions, in many respects, define who we are and what we are prepared to stand up for.

In closing, the effective communication of ideas and knowledge are as important and common today as they were 2,000 years ago. So too are the temptations we face (see 1 Cor. 10:13). Ultimately, I believe the problems that arise from technology relate to our misplaced and poorly understood values.

In contrast, my preference is to edify God’s Church; to embrace and engage technological and new media innovations rather than prohibit or restrict them. But this course of action requires knowing God’s will intimately and acting purposively to glorify Him. It also involves a very keen awareness of where we are situated and what we are up against. Let us be mindful that what we profess as Christians does not sit comfortably within the often competitive and individualistic environment of secular life where gaining the approval of one’s peers and superiors is crucial to gaining status, promotion and a good job. Alternatively, we are called to be channels of God’s blessings and love in an attitude that leaves a legacy for others to build on and follow. And so, our Internet and new media use are important and necessary sites for ministry action today.

^Notes:

^{[1] New media represents any material in digital format that can be easily accessed, distributed, manipulated and consumed. For example, YouTube.}

^{[2] For more information see Reynolds, J. M., & Overton, R. (Eds.) (2008). The new media frontier: Blogging, vlogging, and podcasting for Christ. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books.}

Dr. Phillip A. Towndrow (Ed.D., Durham) is a church lay leader with extensive experience in small group work, discipling, and Christian education. He is currently a teacher, teacher-educator, and educational researcher at a tertiary-level institution in Singapore where he specialises in New Media Literacies, Teacher Professional Learning, and Pedagogy and Classroom Practices. Phillip is also the author of the ETHOS Engagement Series booklet, ‘Education and Society: A Christian View of Education in Singapore‘. 

The beheadings of American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and the British aid worker David Haines by the Islamic State (IS) in 2014 have not only shocked and outraged the world, but they have also revived the debate about religious violence.

Both President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron were determined to stress the distinction between the IS and Islam as a religion. In an address in Parliament, Cameron categorically asserted that the “IS is not Islamic” and that “they are not Muslims; they are monsters”.

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In the past 15 years, numerous books have been written on the contentious issue of religion and violence. For example, in When Religion Becomes Evil, published just one year after the horrific events of 9/11 (Sept 11, 2001), Charles Kimball argues that “it is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil, perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history.”

Apart from the fact that Kimball does not identify these rival institutions or provide evidence for his claim (perhaps he thought it too trite to require evidence), scholars have also criticised him for naively bracketing religion away from political ideologies. Such separation is artificial and contrived. As Jonathan Smith has rightly put it, “religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study … Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy”.

From the Christian theological perspective, however, because of human sin it is difficult to think of any form of organised human activity or institution that could not be corrupted or perverted.

Take democracy for example. A broad and popular way of describing democracy is a ‘government by the people for the people’. Many people would no doubt maintain that democracy is a good form of government, with its commitment to human dignity and freedom.

Yet democracy not only can go terribly wrong, it can also be dangerous. Adolf Hitler was democratically elected. And even though democracy is said to prevent oppressive governments, in Germany and South Africa it produced, for a period, extremely racist societies.

For many Muslims, jihad (a term that is often brandished unexplained by the media) refers fundamentally to striving for moral goodness and justice for society. And although this concept has four meanings, one of which is associated with just war, it does not in principle encourage acquiescence to violence.

However, since the 1970s under the influence of the Egyptian Umar Abd ar-Rahman and the Palestinian Abdallah Azzam, the ideologist for the Hamas movement, this concept has been radicalised by extremist groups, including those associated with Wahhabism. Al Qaeda and IS have commandeered the radical meaning of jihad in promoting their violent campaigns against the West and fellow Muslims who do not embrace their political convictions.

That Islam itself does not promote violence is evidenced by the fact that the Quran does not describe Allah as the ‘lord of war’ but rather as compassionate and merciful, and as the loving one and the forgiver.

Etymologically, islam, which refers to the surrender or submission that human beings must show to Allah, is derived from salam, which means peace – hence the Muslim greeting, “Peace be with you” (Salàm Ualaikum). In fact, in Surah 41:33-35 we read the injunction: “Requisite evil with good, and he who is your enemy will become your dearest friend.”

Although religious beliefs in themselves are not causes of violence, it is important to note that religion – like ethnicity and language – is a significant marker of identity. And as a marker of identity, religion can be subtly used to fan the flames of social and political conflicts. When religious sentiments are combined with political ideologies in a certain way, even a peaceful religion can be conscripted in the exercise of violence.

The Bible mission in Singapore has always involved the local Church since its inception in 1823. These partnerships were formalised and strengthened when the Bible Society of Singapore was officially registered in 1970, following the country’s independence. 

From its beginnings, the Bible Society enjoyed a close relationship with the Methodist Church. Its first president, Rev Khoo Siaw Hua, was a senior pastor at the Chinese Annual Conference of the Methodist Church. When the society was drafting its constitution, the Methodist Bishop was invited to oversee it as an advisor, and the conference presidents were also invited to the society’s advisory panel and executive committee. The Methodist Church also recognised the Bible Society as an official mission agency, inviting them to submit Bible mission reports annually. 

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As the Bible mission grew, so did the partnership with each conference. The Emmanuel Tamil Annual Conference jointly organised events with the Bible Society, and its leaders were crucial in developing a strategy for Tamil Bible printing. The Trinity Annual Conference played an instrumental role in the Bible House rebuilding project in 2008, providing a significant amount of support. The Chinese Annual Conference committed its churches to hold Bible Society Sundays in June, and strongly supported the Revised Chinese Union Version Bible, a Bible Society project. 

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The relationship between the Bible Society and the Methodist Church will surely endure for many years to come. May the Bible mission continue to garner more support from the whole Christian community in Singapore! 

Written by Rev James Seow, a retired Senior Pastor in the Methodist Church in Singapore, and Vice President of the Bible Society’s Executive Committee. 

(by invitation only)

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‘Postmodern’ is a word that seems to appear very frequently in both print and conversation these days. This dreadful coinage can be traced to the 1930s, but it was probably not until the 1970s that it began to receive wide and serious attention in academia and popular culture.

Postmodernism is a complex idea because it refers not only to cultural sensibilities but also to the way we have come to look at reality itself. It points to a sentiment as well as to a philosophy. Postmodernism in fact signifies a monumental shift in outlook that has affected every aspect of contemporary culture, including science and the arts.

In addition, the prefix does not indicate a peaceful and quiet departure from modernity. Rather it is iconoclastic: it points to the radical demolition and rubbishing of everything that modernity purports to cherish. As David Harvey puts it, postmodernism represents ‘for the most part … a wilful and rather chaotic movement to overcome all the supposed ills of modernism’.

As Ihab Hassan has so perceptively pointed out in The Dismemberment of Orpheus, ‘The postmodern spirit lies coiled within the great corpus of modernism … It is not really a matter of chronology: Sade, Jarry, Breton, Kafka acknowledge that spirit’.

Christian theologians have in some measure welcomed the postmodern critique of what may be broadly described as the ‘Enlightenment Project’. For example, theologians concur with postmodernism’s rejection of the reductive rationalism of the Enlightenment that has excluded important human experiences such as religion. In similar vein, theologians have also endorsed postmodernism’s critique of scientism, the exaggerated estimate of the competence of science that is so pervasive in western cultures.

These important agreements notwithstanding, there is also much in postmodernism that Christians must not only criticise but also roundly reject.

According to Jean-François Lyotard of the Institute Polytechnique de Philosophie of the Universite de Paris in Vicennes, France, postmodernism can be chiefly characterised as the incredulity toward metanarratives. By metanarratives, Lyotard refers to ‘any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectic of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working spirit, or the creation of wealth’.

In rejecting metanarratives, postmodern thinkers insist that no single worldview, ideology or vision of reality can claim universal assent. We find in postmodernism a kind of naïve egalitarianism, a ‘democratisation’ of worldviews that prohibits the privileging of one over the other.

According to postmodernism, Christians cannot insist on the universal significance of the Gospel because the narrative of the salvation of fallen humanity in Jesus Christ must be seen as just one religious account of reality among many others.

Closely related to the rejection of metanarratives is the postmodern aversion to the notion of objective truth. Just as there is no grand scheme within which reality must be understood, so there is also no objective truth, no truth-claim that can command universal allegiance.

Postmodern relativism extends beyond philosophy and epistemology to include morality as well. Walter Stace defines moral relativism thus: ‘Any ethical position which denies that there is a single moral standard which is applicable to all men at all times may be called a species of ethical relativism. There is not, the relativist asserts, merely one moral law, one code, one standard’. Underscoring the implications of this, Richard Brandt describes the moral relativist as someone for whom conflicting ethical opinions are all valid.

The postmodern rejection of objective truth also has implications in hermeneutics, the theory of interpretation. According to some postmodern philosophers, there is no inherent meaning in a text. Others would argue that even if there is one it cannot be gleaned by the reader, especially one that is historically removed from the text. Consequently, meaning is not supplied by the text but by its reader whose reading of the text is profoundly influenced by his own historical and cultural locations and existential questions from which he cannot extricate himself.

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All this has profound implications for the Christian church – its gospel, Scriptures and doctrine.

Needless to say, Christians could neither affirm the postmodern rejection of objective truth nor its moral relativism. The Christian doctrine of revelation asserts that the Church’s truth-claims concerning God is objectively grounded in the divine self-disclosure. And while Christians concur that certain metanarratives like that of hegemonic secularism stemming from Enlightenment rationalism must be challenged, God’s plan for the world as disclosed in Scripture cannot be subjected to postmodern incredulity.

Twenty-one year-old Lt Maurice Little lost all but his life fighting at Quinn’s Post, the most advanced post of the ANZAC line at Gallipoli. But it did not destroy his spirit or his trust in God.

He was known as a man of fine Christian character, a born leader with the ability to cheer and inspire his men.

Five weeks after the landing on 25 April 2015, the Turks launched their fiercest attack yet on Quinn’s Post. In places, opposing trenches were as little as 7m apart.

The Turks tunneled beneath the Australian trenches to plant a mine.

Official War historian C W Bean wrote, “At 3.20am … a series of loud and heavy explosions shook the valley… Earth and debris began to fall from the sky, half-burying men… In the ensuing confusion the Turks stormed the Australian lines and occupied a section of the trench system including two bomb-proof shelters.”

Hastily regrouped, the Australians recaptured one of the shelters. Little and two of his men crept close enough to the second shelter to throw a bomb directly into it. Maurice cut the fuse short for a quick explosion against the running Turks. The first bomb was precise, exploding as it hit the ground. The next burst in his hand. His face cut to ribbons, both eyes blinded, his chest and knee torn, his arm a bleeding stump, he was carried out of the firing line.

Maurice was transferred to the hospital ship Gascon, then evacuated to Egypt. Both his eyes were excised and his right forearm was amputated. His left knee needed surgery, his face was pitted with shrapnel and he had lost teeth from his upper jaw.

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Not yet 22, he was totally blinded and permanently incapacitated.

Bessie Crowther, 22 years his senior, was a Church Missionary Society medical missionary volunteering in the hospital. Her constant dedicated attention nursed Maurice back to health.

They fell in love and married in the military barracks just outside Alexandria. His friends carried him down the aisle on a chair.

He returned to Australia in 1915 and was feted as a hero. The Queensland Times reported that the sight of the recumbent figure on the wicker couch on the platform ‘seemed to go straight to the hearts of the onlookers, and it was natural that the emotions thereby stirred should find vent in the tumultuous cheering that rang through the evening air.’

The Bible Society presented Maurice with all 29 volumes of the Braille Bible. Maurice then stood to speak, supporting himself on his good arm with a cane and his other arm on his father’s shoulder. A spontaneous and deafening standing ovation erupted in and outside the town hall such that Maurice was unable to be heard for a long time.

Chaplain Andrew Gillison was praised in one soldier’s war diary as ‘the bravest man’ he ever knew. Dearly loved by the Gallipoli soldiers for whom he gave his life, his memorial still stands at Embarkation Pier at Gallipoli.

Andrew Gillison was born in 1868 in Scotland where he became a Presbyterian minister, serving in several churches in Scotland and the USA before working for the Presbyterian Church in Australia in 1903.

His church in Glasgow had been next door to the army barracks and he took a particular interest in ministry to soldiers. He became a part-time chaplain to the Australian Military Forces in 1906. When war was declared in 1914, Gillison made the decision to enlist immediately and was appointed chaplain the same year.

He was attached to the 14th Battalion and based aboard ship off the beaches at Gallipoli.

On 25 April 1905, there were far too many dead to ferry back to the ships and too many lonely wounded lying in pain and waiting further treatment. The officers knew the importance of funerals. No soldier wanted to go into danger thinking that they or their body would be abandoned. The officers understood that the chaplains were needed to comfort the injured and that they also had a role in encouraging the soldiers. Gillison was allowed to go ashore the next morning, 27 April, the second chaplain to do so. He was 47 years old.

He immediately attached himself to the dressing station, the first place to which the casualties were brought, consoling the wounded and burying the dead. Chaplain Gillison conducted funerals under cover of darkness, beginning at 11pm and finishing when possible before first light. One soldier wrote in his diary that Gillison was the bravest man he ever knew and that “everyone praised his efforts to cheer the men under hardship and when wounded.”

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Gillison was involved in the decision to agree to the armistice on 24th May 1915, proposed by the Turks, to bury the huge number of dead lying between the Turkish and ANZAC lines. He was one of those who went over to retrieve the dead.

He wrote later in his diary: “Our dead were the result of the first day’s advance. I never beheld such a sickening sight in my life, and hope it may not be my lot again.” But he carried the dead in and buried hundreds in shallow massed graves.

He was leading a burial service over yet more bodies when he heard groaning in the scrub above them on the ridge. The men crawled up to the top from where they could see a wounded soldier, covered in ants. They crawled out to the wounded man and started to drag him back over the ridge. Suddenly they were in the sights of a Turkish sniper. Crawling backwards, a bullet hit Gillison in the shoulder and exited through his chest. He died in agony three hours later.

Chaplain Gillison’s body was laid out with ceremonial care. He was buried near the pier, a small cross marking his grave. This was not enough for the men of the 14th Battalion who did not want his final resting place to be lost or forgotten and they erected a more lasting memorial. When they finally left on 18 December, they filed past his grave as they walked onto the pier. His memorial still sits at the head of Embarkation Pier today.

‘Behind The Wardrobe Door: The Continuing Legacy and Challenge of CS Lewis’

Speaker: Dr Robert Banks

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Venue: St. Andrew’s Cathedral

Forty years ago, as the violent Khmer Rouge regime swept through Cambodia, Arun Sok Nhep made a promise.

Like hundreds of thousands of others, he’d been imprisoned during the Pol Pot regime, which began 40 years ago (17 April 1975).

He vowed that if got saved his life and got him out of prison, he would one day return to serve the ethnic minority people of South East Asia.

“I forgot this prayer for many years,” he says today. “But God never forgets. What I prayed that day in the prison is exactly what I’m doing here now.”

As chief executive of Bible Society in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, Arun is responsible for bringing Scripture to one of the fastest-growing churches in the world.

It was just five months after he’d become a Christian in 1975 that the Khmer Rouge came to power.

The Marxist leader, Pol Pot, aimed to take the country – renamed Kampuchea – back to the Middle Ages.

Arun, an Army officer, was forced to flee. He was caught in the attempt and spent four months in prison in neighbouring Vietnam and later 18 months in a so-called re-education camp in Laos.

During this time he met other Christians who had scraps of Bibles, which sustained his faith. But he lost touch with his family for decades.

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It took two years, but eventually Arun escaped to France. There, he trained as a pastor, married and served in a Cambodian church.

He returned to Cambodia until 1993 to complete the translation of the Khmer Bible and fulfill his prayerful promise.

As Cambodia marks the 40th anniversary of the rise of Pol Pot’s murderous regime he says, “I have learnt especially how God has used the circumstances of my life – how pain and suffering can turn to the benefit of his kingdom.”

“The difficult time for me has become a personal opportunity – an opportunity now to supply Scripture.”