(Thread) As someone who has had to live with a Very Christian and Chinese and Culty family and had to go to these Weird Culty Meetings, there is an important history to all the ridiculous conspiracy theories spread by city revival and Joanna Theng et al.

First, if you’re wondering why it’s so Western in its particular brand of conspiratorial nonsense, it’s because it is. Many of the Christian conspiracy theories circulated in Singapore are taken from American websites and video channels.

They gain credence quite easily because a lot of Chinese Singaporeans have internalised white supremacist ideas, and so a white man spouting random things in a convincing way = must be correct

I’ve heard all kinds of things: liberals selling aborted babies as placenta pills, the US dollar no longer backed by gold but some kind of devious Satanic bond, a lot about the Illuminati too etc etc the list goes on

Second, how these ideas are spread can be exceedingly organised. People don’t just strike up conversation, they can make a whole day out of it. They will seriously book their condo function room and bring over chicken wings and fried beehoon so we can all hear about how (...)

the Shroud of Turin is REALLY AND TRULY the burial cloth Jesus was wrapped up in and why Venus is the Gigantic Big Star that guided Mary and Joseph to the inn along with obviously fake anecdotes about generic white people named James or Ann or Terence

Also sometimes they will go to your house and vaguely FEEL FEEL about for “bad spirits” and tell you that you need to throw away and burn “contaminated items” like sofas or lamps or whatever because evil spirits love to lurk in your IKEA bookcase or something wtf

Third, there are honestly a ton of shady and dubious “Christian” organisations in Singapore. It’s not just one church or one cell group, we have an entire underground subculture. They tend to be run out of industrial areas or sometimes they rent other churches’ spaces.

A lot of these organisations also deal with “inner healing” and like literally trying to exorcise demons from your house and from your body. I’ve seen my mother throw up a bunch of times during these “sessions” — she says it’s the Holy Spirit working ..

In fact, sometimes these people get into more “mainstream” churches and spread their nonsense there, like Methodist or Anglican Churches whose doctrines literally go against almost all of the things these conspiracists promulgate

There is a honestly an unnecessarily large proportion of the Christian church in Singapore that believes we will all get microchipped with the mark of Satan once Revelations comes to pass

NONE of these ideas are Christian. Absolutely NONE. They are not real churches or religious groups. They are CULTS. They are RADICALIZED CHRISTIAN GROUPS. If you disagree please read the Bible in CONTEXT.

Fourth, why are there so many organisations? Because it is easy easy money. Christians give “love gifts” to church leaders sometimes. So for every “spiritual cleansing” or “inner healing session” they get money.

In other words, you have actual groups that intentionally perpetuate hate and falsehoods in order to scare people into “cleansing their soul” just so they can suck money off them.

Many of these ideas are also incredibly Islamophobic. I’ve heard a Full Grown 55 Year Old Man make the logical leap from “Satan is a snake” to “Islam is Satan because Arabic characters look like snakes”

Again, much of the Islamophobia is imported from Conservative American hysteria and manages to take root in Singapore because Chinese people are the goddamned worst.

Fifth, if you think it’s “only stupid people” who believe these things, let me just say that there are more Joanna Thengs out there. There are so many intelligent people who are so biased and prejudiced they will literally believe ANYTHING that affirms their superiority

These people love to play the victim. They buy into all sorts of narratives just so they can PRETEND TO BE OPPRESSED and complain about why nobody wants to open their hearts to the love of God.

They will proselytize to you so that when you inevitably say no please fuck off they can run back to their little group and cry about How Mean Non-Christians Are and affirm their own Niceness and Kindness.

Finally, I apologise for how rambly and unwieldy this thread has become but the point of this thread was to highlight how dangerous and how influential these groups are.

The fact that NCCS, the National Council of Churches in SG, thinks it’s worth writing a whole letter about how some Christmas decorations in Orchard Road ruin the real meaning of Christmas but doesnt seem to want to take a stand on Christian radicalisation is disappointing.

It is here that I underline how badly this country needs real protections for the marginalised — discrimination laws that can actually be enforced.

The Christian church has shown itself to be unable of taking a stand when it is most desperately needed to show the LGBTQ+ community love and acceptance. Which pastors have denounced this?? Which youth leaders have pointed out that this is hate speech?

How come your Christian friends can tell you they don’t believe this in private but never publicly state this even though their insta stories are vocal as hell about “cancel culture” and “reverse racism” ??????

We cannot wait for them to somehow come around to the idea that gay people deserve to be treated as humans. We need to enshrine LGBTQ+ rights in the law before more of these people — these dangerous and influential people — continue to harm the community with impunity.