Thank you. I used the link you provided and did as you recommended.

My navigation of the site/s did not succeed in locating contact information in English for each of the Methodis churches in Sibu.

I did send a link to my article to two email addresses I found on the websites. I also sent my article as an attachment to one of the addresses.

In both emails I included this statement “Most who read my article think I am sympathetic to the Sibu churches.”

Thank you for providing some of the rationale for your response. I look forward to gaining a better understanding of the depth of your passion.

Shalom

Shalom

“The people who know their God will stand firm and take action.”

and

“The gentle shall inherit the earth…”

Thank you for speaking up. I have decided to write to The Micah Mandate.

It was wrong of me to be so overwhelmed by anger that I saw some offence in the article and some reactions here when there was none intended. At the time I was experiencing severe disillusion when (obviously West Malaysian) Pakatan Rakyat supporters on Facebook were blatantly using the Sibu by-election results as an arsenal in their own political debates. Some of my anger had overlapped into this issue.

The issue of an East-West Malaysian readership and value system is relevant, but I failed in explaining why it was so. Hopefully I will be able to clear things up in the very near future.

I do not understand what you mean when you can’t contact the Bishop. It took me less than five minutes of Googling for me to find the main page of the entire Methodist denomination in Malaysia. There are links to the details of every Methodist church in Sibu, regardless of conference, and they come complete with contact information (phone numbers, even!).

What I object is not that this is a ‘situation’, what I object to was the way in which the ‘situation’ has been handled by Christians, especially Christians who claim to speak for justice. I do not check The Micah Mandate regularly, and I found out about this via forwards on Facebook.

There are plenty of reasons to be wary about the kind of power the Internet can wield. I will be writing to The Micah Mandate to explain why I was so upset at this article and the reactions of Christians here.

“Love one another as I have loved you so that the world may know that your are my disciples”.

Therefore, I agree with her that “thought-to-be-dirty or dirty linen” could be better discussed in the privacy of loving human relationships.

How would Mr Goh feel if he were in the shoes of the leaders of the 4 churches? Publicly condemned without trial…something many of the moral protesters want to eliminate anyway? Could not Mr Goh have talked with the people in charge of the 4 churches 1st and let them respond as and when they deem fit if they see it fit to respond publicly at all?

Shalom

1. Did anyone think that there would have been a better alternative to address the accusation that the churches were receiving ‘bribe money’?

2. Did anyone bother to think of the churches themselves, before imposing their own experience on the churches?

3. Did anyone check to find out if the church leadership and members could actually ‘defend’ themselves on the Internet? A quick read on the article on The Malaysian Insider tells me, a Sarawakian, that these are congregations very likely unable to communicate fluently in English and probably old (thus not on the Internet often if at all).

A quick read on the article on The Malaysian Insider also tells us that these monetary aid was money requested by these churches and applied by them before — they were only granted shortly before the elections.

4. We know through Scripture that it is explicitly stated that Christians should resolve matters peacefully amongst themselves before taking a fellow Christian to court, on account of the fact that their behaviour made poor witnesses of Christ. Did anyone consider the consequences of dragging the internal affairs of churches — especially with regards to a church’s finances — into a space as public as the Internet?

Do you know what this honestly looks like?

It looks as if a bunch of outraged West Malaysian Christians have chosen to drag into public another Christian merely ACCUSED of accepting bribery, and then demanding that they confess their sins and make penance in the same public space, when:

a. Accepting the money was never considered a wrongdoing before.

b. No respect for the other brother or sister was given. No respect was given to the leaders whom God chose to lead them — a simple e-mail, phone call, or letter to the pastor or bishop overseeing these churches would have sufficed.

c. This does not even consider the fact that no investigation was done on the background of these churches and their congregation. It seemed that no one had even bothered to find out if the church congregation was even proficient in English!

If my understanding of the situation as a Sarawakian is correct, then West Malaysian English-speaking Christians have taken rumours from the public at face value, and then chose to heckle these largely Chinese-speaking Christians who may or may not have done what they are being accused of.

And even if they have, what is wrong with it? No one sent a memo to these churches to reject financial assistance from political figures. In my time in West Malaysia I have seen politicians invited to churches, *as politicians*.

Is the acceptable moral conduct of churches in Malaysia subject to the opinions of the mob?

This is another reason why I have come to hate West Malaysian political activists with an intense passion. I have personally resolved to NOT vote in the upcoming Sarawakian elections, because I absolutely REFUSE to capitulate to another colonizing force from West Malaysia.

If my voting for an opposition party member to protest the injustice of current government members is a vote for this kind of privileged, self-serving, demanding and completely non-understanding ‘activists’ who refuse to respect the political decisions of East Malaysians to run their own churches and thus, run their own state, then I refuse to vote.

If you cannot trust us to run our own churches, do you trust us to run our own state? If you cannot trust us to run our own state, do you even trust us to run our own lives?

Rama Ramanathan, not ONCE did you bother to check what the churches in Sibu were like. If you looked at the names, and if you knew the nature of churches in East Malaysia, you would know immediately that the churches are CHINESE SPEAKING churches.

The Christians whom you choose to attack via an online means (a weblog) have NO MEANS to defend themselves. From what I know of, most Methodists in Sarawak are Foochow. Most of them are also of an older generation. The bigger churches with young people who MIGHT be proficient in English are all Evangelicals or non-denominational churches.

However, West Malaysian Christians, in this case, have seen absolutely nothing wrong in parading the financial decisions of these Christians in East Malaysia on the Internet, and demanding that these Christians ‘answer’ them, when there is a high likelihood that these Christians CANNOT even answer them.

I ask again: has ANYONE bothered to contact the Bishop? Did anyone bother to write a letter to the church pastors? Or are these people just interested in shamefacing other Christians because they made political decisions that were not in line with their own political conviction?

West Malaysians almost never listen to East Malaysians. All they want from East Malaysians is for East Malaysians to support their political causes. They will listen to us only so far as they can gain something from us. While I am aware that Christians are not exempt from committing crimes of privilege — in fact, Christians are among the worst, often blatantly indulging in sexist, homophobic, and racist jokes among other Christians –I am utterly disappointed and disgusted that this attitude is displayed so casually among Christians in a public space as the Internet.

I remember something my priest said to me which makes a lot of sense. “It is always easier to see the sin of someone else than to see your own”.

“I write not to criticize or to condemn but to promote Christian virtue and offer Christian sympathy.”

Which you do by sitting in front of your computer, typing in English, addressing a largely West Malaysian and English speaking audience.

If you cared so much, again, as I say — write to the Bishop.

“So, leaders and members of each of the four churches in Sibu, the world is watching and waiting for your response. Here are some questions to help you think this through and frame your response:

1.What is the purpose and total cost of the project for which you requested public funds?
2.When and to whom did you first submit the request for funds?
3.What responses did you get? When and from whom?
4.How many times did you follow-up? Who was present and what actions were agreed?
5.What did you actually receive “from a representative of the DPM” last week?
6.How much notice did you receive before meeting the “representative of the DPM”?
7.What conditions are attached to the funds you received?
8.If you had declined to receive the funds last week, what do you think would have been the result?
9.Have you previously received public funds for church projects? When and how much?
10.What representations/protests have you ever made about the local/state or federal governments?
11.How much does your congregation give (just to) to your church every year?
12.How have you been praying for your projects and what do you think has been God’s response?

Brethren, I too have been involved in church building projects. I know the holy aspirations, the humbling rebuffs and the hurtful questions. I write not to criticize or to condemn but to promote Christian virtue and offer Christian sympathy.

If the Lord writes us a letter as He did to the seven churches in the book of Revelation (1:4 – 3:22), what would He say?”