Interrogating Chinese Exceptionalism in Chinese Historiography

Is China the oldest continuous civilisation? How did China survive while the Roman empire did not? Did Chinese culture stay true to itself by resisting or sinicizing foreign influences? Was historic China uniquely peaceful and stable among world cultures? Is the reunification of Taiwan and other ethno-culturally Chinese lands 'inevitable'? I'm ethnic Chinese and a …

Christian Dignity and Its Political Consequences

King Mwanga II ascended the throne of Buganda at the age of 16 on 18th October 1884. The 19th century Bantu kingdom, located in present day Uganda, was the focus of Christian missionaries during the Scramble for Africa. Traditionally, the Bugandan king's power was absolute, and that included pleasing his sexual appetite through the unyielding pages …

The Christian Invention of Romantic Love

Perhaps one of my favourite Netflix series, Indian Matchmaking traces matchmaker Sima Taparia as she guides clients through the Indian arranged marriage process. Before we assume this a practice largely swept away by our contemporary world's notion of marriage for love, it is worth sharing surveys as recent as 2018 in India showed 93% of …

How Christianity Subverted Ancient Family Values

What is the traditional family? If one thinks its defining features as a nuclear family with heterosexual parents, it may come as a surprise that this is a fairly recent concept that is by no means historic across most cultures, both Western and non-Western. While the ethnographic and historical literature on familial structure is vast, …

The Case of Slavery: How Christians Can (and Should) Go Beyond Scriptures

The 4th century saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote: You are condemning to slavery human beings whose nature is free and characterised by free will. You are making laws that rival the law of God, overturning the law appropriate for humankind. Human beings were created specifically to have dominion over the earth; it was determined by …

Freedom of Speech and Freedom to Listen

The concept of freedom of speech carries a lot of cultural baggage. It is perceived variously as a fundamental right of liberal democracies to an unwelcome Western import. Singaporean theologian Roland Chia argues that freedom of speech is crucial for an open society and a "discursive form of democracy", but also that: ...if truth is …

Silencing Scriptures through Inerrancy & Its Discontents

Debates on inerrancy tend to rest on two opposing principles. Inerrantists proclaim a 'high view of Scriptures' to accent Scriptures' truthful nature. Scholars denying inerrancy, especially those of a historical-critical persuasion, emphasize having a view of Scriptures rooted in how the text behaves. Such debates often end in a quagmire: the two principles are incommensurable since they rest on different systems of value-judgment. I'd like to approach this issue differently. These two perspectives, despite their superficial disparity, make a foundational assumption about truth, namely, they both assume that truth is correspondence to an external reality.

Simulcrum and Shadow: Reviving the ‘Anti-Christ’ Archetype for Geopolitics

The Temptation of Christ (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1–13) is a climatic portrait of confrontation between good and evil. Jesus, alone and starving in the wilderness, was confronted by the Devil who in a series of increasingly seductive snares, promised him food, immunity from death, and finally domination over humanity. The Devil figure quoted Scriptures (Psalms …

The Origins of Secularism in Pre-Enlightenment Christianity

Is secularism of irreligious provenance? This common perspective is echoed in Singaporean Christian magazine Salt & Light: The separation of religion from politics, resulting in the notion of “private religion”, is the outcome of the secularism associated with the 18th century European Enlightenment. Here, secularism is linked with the irreligious rationality of the Enlightenment, a period …

Faith Resources

Since June 2023, I've decided to include this second list of resources for confessional perspectives. My first list on scholarly resources can be found here. Last updated 1st Nov 2023 Christian Literature Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor Shusaku Endo, Silence Church History Herbert Waddams, Church and Man's Struggle for Unity Dairmaid McCulloch, Silence: A Christian History …