The Religious and the Secular in Singapore

Asia Research Institute Roundtable "The Religious and the Secular in Singapore" November 24. 2009
Speakers: Prof Ten Chin Liew, NUS Philosophy Department
Dr Kenneth Paul Tan, LKY School of Public Policy Assistant Dean & Associate Professor in Political Science
Rev Dr Yap Kim Hao
Chair MS Lai Ah Eng, ARI Senior Research Fellow


Thank you for inviting me to this Roundtable on “The Religious and the Secular –divide or common space. Our presence and participation here is an indication of what common space is and could be. As a member of the one of the many Protestant Christian faith communities, I have traditionally and contemporaneously lived on the other side of the majority even in my own church and society. I expect that since I chose to be a Protestant – critical and protesting!

Let me first paint with a wide brush how this divide played up in Singapore according to my perceptions

Two weeks ago the book on the Fajar Generation was launched. Five political detainees from Operation Coldstore wrote the essays. The February 2, 1963 operation was authorised by the Internal Security Council which comprised representatives from the British Colonial, Malaysian Federal and Singapore governments. They drew the line that divided at least 111 which included key leaders of the opposition political party said to be pro-Communists from the rest of us and alleged subversive.

About five months ago two books authored by some who were detained without trial in Operation Spectrum was launched. The operation in May 21, 1987 netted 22 young Roman Catholic church and social activists and professionals, accused them of being members of a dangerous Marxist conspiracy trying to subvert the PAP-ruled government by force and replace it with a Marxist state. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew drew the line and tagged them as Marxists.

In September 3. 1994, Ms Catherine Lim a novelist published a political commentary, “The Great Affective Divide.” She argued that while Singaporeans respected the PAP’s efficiency and were grateful towards it for bringing Singapore economic success, they lacked any real affection or warmth for the party. This time PM Goh Chok Tong drew the line and castigated her and told her that if she wanted to voice her opinion on politics, she should join a political party.”

This year PM Lee Hsien Loong in his National Day Rally Speech in August 16 elaborated the issue that we are discussing today arising from the AWARE controversy. He posed the rhetorical question: You may ask, Does this mean that religious groups have no views, cannot have views on national issues? Or, that religious individuals cannot participate in politics? Obviously not. And obviously, he went on to say, many Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists participate in politics. In Parliament, we have people of all faiths. In the Cabinet too…The public debate cannot be on whose religion is right and whose religion is wrong. It has to be on secular, rational considerations of public interest - what makes sense for Singapore. PM Lee did not draw any line and blurred those that were drawn before.

But this was not the case of Rev Derek Hong of Church of the Saviour in Queenstown who was quoted to have preached on April 26 in his church at the height of the AWARE Controversy: “This is not a crusade against the people but there is a line that God has drawn for us, and we don’t want our nation crossing that line.” This dogmatic assertion is frightening.

In my humble opinion I strongly disagree with Hong’s view. My Jesus was obliterating the lines drawn by the scribes and Pharisees of His day - lines rigidly drawn between Jew & Greek, slave & free, male & female, and clean & unclean, sacred & profane. I don’t draw lines excluding others for I prefer to draw circles including all of God’s people.

I know my own Christian history where the Church especially after Emperor Constantine in 321 C.E. believes not only in what Peter Berger calls the “sacred canopy” but also the solid St Peter’s Dome that for a long time claims salvation only for the Catholics. It took Martin Luther and other leaders of the Reformation to remove the authority of the Pope and the responsibility for individuals to make their own interpretation of their sacred text. It promoted freedom and rationality leading to the Enlightenment and abolished the divine right of monarchs to rule. I stand in that tradition.

Across the years since the Enlightenment, secularization advanced rapidly and displaced the role of religion in public space and reduced it to a personal privatized faith. It drew dark solid lines between religion and politics, sacred and the secular. It erected walls between church and state. It proclaimed religions and politics don’t mix.

Secularization is sometimes credited with the paradigm shift in society following the emergence of rationality and the development of science as a substitute for superstition. Max Weber called this process, "the disenchantment of the world." What used to be the perception that everything is sacred and the world is populated by mysterious spirits and gods or controlled by the one God has become secular and the world managed only by man and woman, to be politically correct.

Most of the Western world has seen this secularization paradigm dominate political life. You therefore have a secular government that does not represent or privileged any particular religion. Some even opposed religion and want its total annihilation. Secular state is the norm in democratic countries where free elections are held. The individuals that make up the government and the civil society at large have the freedom to choose whatever religion they want. Because of this freedom, in a multi-religious world, there is a requirement for governments not to cause resentment or divisions by identifying itself with any particular religion. The well-known phrase proposing secular democracy as an ideal is Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state."

Countries in the Islamic world continue to look at some form of a theocracy or give some constitutional status to Islam. Only Turkey has formally instituted the separation of mosque and state. It has enacted the removal of Islam from the constitution, and the abrogation of the sharia law. The status of Islam ranges from the Islamic Republic of Iran, which gives religion central position, to the rather minimal reference in the Syrian constitution, which says the laws of the state shall be inspired by the sharia. Saudi Arabia which does not have a written constitution still accords a very considerable place to religion and sharia .

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, has a great potential to resist complete secularization for its religious tenets do not try to divorce itself from society and historical events. In this sense it does not share the non-historical, monastic and otherworldly orientation of Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions.

At the height of human arrogance the expectation was that there will be a withering away of religion and the proclamation that God is either a delusion as propagated by Richard Dawkins currently or by some Christian theologians that God is dead some years ago. This death announcement seems to be premature.

Basically, it is an issue of power in society. This is in accordance with Machiavelli's definition of politics as the "art of gaining and maintaining power. Or Max Weber's rendition, "striving for participation in power and influence, the distribution of power between states and within groups within a state."

Those in authority like religious leaders in the past want to consolidate the power in their own hands and pushed contenders of other faiths or those who do not agree and challenge their views aside as much as they could. So they rule by violence and conquest and assert control by force and detention. Even faith communities now continue to do that by terrorism and ex-communication.

Secularization is still prevalent and dominant. History shows the direction toward secularism in the age of modernity. But of late it also shows movements to desecularize and a resurgence of religious devotion. Without being limited largely to Western society there is room for other regions of the world to develop religiously in a new way. In the last decade a major religious resurgence is seen in different parts of the world from private to public faith although beginning with a conservative trend and even with a radical and extremist approach.

Peter Berger ironically propagated desecularization in his 1999 publication entitled: The Desecularization of the World.” Father Andrew Greeley, a prominent sociologist in his publication, “The Persistence of Religion,” discusses the desecularization of society. Even with the affluence we have achieved and the comfort that we enjoy man is in search of values and meaning and purpose in life. A re-enchantment of the world is taking place.

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth published his 1990 Reith Lectures in BBC in the book “The Persistence of Faith: Religion, Morality and Society in a Secular Age.” If faith persists, then the virtues, institutions and communities associated with it can be recovered. He calls for the spiritualisation of society, not politisation or secularisation of religion. He claims that there is a role in charting our shared moral landscape, that sense of common good that we need if our communities are to have social cohesion. It is to temper competition with compassion, individualism with responsibility, and give the search for social justice its religious voice.


Sacks made this interesting observation: “God enters society in the form of specific ways of life, disclosed by revelation, mediated by tradition, embellished by custom and embodied in institutions. Faith lives not only in the privacy of the soul but in compassion and justice: the structures of our common life.”



Robert Bellah with reference to our concern for the environment and ecology warns us that damage to our social or moral ecology will destroy ourselves long before natural ecological disaster has time to be realized. He appeals for an end to war, genocide and political repression now.

Today, we are trying to define the rightful role of religions in secular society. We recognize there is a resurgence of religious faith even in Singapore. It is important to know what is the outcome and nature of this resurgence. If it is the kind of what we know as the Religious Right as demonstrated by the AWARE controversy, then we are going back to the days when lines were drawn to divide. If it is the resurgence of the use of violence like the Al Qaeda, then we are heading towards clashes of civilizations and religious wars to overthrow and displace existing structures. .

A pluralistic society needs a moral and cultural base. We need to view community as a series of environments in which we learn local languages of identity alongside a public language of collective aspirations. It needs communities where individuals can feel that that their values are protected and can be handed on to their children. And it needs an overarching sense of national community in which different groups are participants in a shared pursuit of the common good.



This can only be achieved when we have a truly open society. The circle I want to draw brings together the religions and secular. It is premised on an open and free society seeking continuous renewal process in each sector or smaller circles - religion, economics, civil and political – and interacting within itself and in the large circle. I call for circle of circles.



For this, I am indebted to the image provided by Johannes Althusius, a Dutch Calvinist humanist’s concept of a political model of “community of communities.” The different circles or communities are in symbiotic relationships committing themselves each to the other to “mutual communication of whatever is useful and necessary for the harmonious exercise of social life.”



Each circle can maintain its uniqueness and values which may be irrelevant to others but at the same share their concerns and commitments with other circles in an interactive process enriching one another an enhancing the life of the large circle. The circles will have conflicting interests but they also share common concerns and seek to grow or enlarge this common space. Yet we have to recognize and accept that pluralism or diversity is written indelibly into human history. We appeal to rationality and humaneness to order our pluralistic future.



Much will depend upon in our situation to the powerful and influential political circle which needs to lead by example of its willingness to risk and entertain opposing views and in their attitude towards all the other sectors. It calls for a radical change in our mind-set to engagement not containment, tolerance not condemnation. It calls for encouraging and maintaining a culture of freedom of expression and therefore promoting a climate of open and transparent discussion in all the circles in our society. It is expected that there are reasonable limits for the sake of decorum and for the cohesion of our community. It is the affirmation of diversity with respect for differences and the willingness to dialogue and working together for common values, seeking a common good and ensuring our common future. This is my hope.

Rev Dr Yap Kim Hao