I don’t know why anyone is surprised at the evangelicals in Asia going all in on T***p. I left my church in Singapore for its overt overtures to Bush fighting the holy war against Muslims. Guess that’s the kind of foreign intervention the Singapore government doesn’t mind.

American revivalists have made Asia their stomping grounds since the 60s. Their particular appeal intersects with the rise of the East Asian middle class’ aspirations. Worship this foreign God, pay tithes, make money (or have a large market for real estate / MLM to sell to)

I remember anti-Muslim tracts being passed around in the 90s and satanic panic also took on some form in Asia a few years after it did here. In a way, it never truly left that region. I believe most of Asia’s ‘word of faith’ churches are going to get more dangerous in this decade

Go to any word of faith church in Singapore today and you’ll hear preaching reminiscent of the far right talking points here. Except it’s all wrapped up in polite middle class Chinese Singaporeaness.

It’s like a mashup of Joel Osteen AND the Epoch Times AND Australian evangelism at the same time. Happening in the top churches in Singapore and Malaysia (that I know for a fact). Might be more muted elsewhere but definitely the same under the covers.

The appeal of T***pism to evangelicals in Asia is kinda racial, kinda not. It’s about appealing to a majoritarian sense of superiority over others. About being special. After all, this cult believes that Jews are no longer God’s chosen ones, but that THEY are.

Add in there a hefty sense of Chinese superiority (many evangelicals in Asia are East Asian, mostly Chinese or Korean) and you have a potent mix of racism, social conservatism, and deep respect for Mammon. They LIKE pastors in Armani. A lot.

At the same time, there’s a lot that can be said for how evangelical Christianity has been a negative mark on community relations in Asia. They came to us saying this is the one true God and you CANNOT participate in any of your folk rituals or beliefs. Ever. It’s.. satanic.

I wish I could paint a picture of the scenes at hospices and hospitals where pastors are brought in to convert dying people, and refusing to let their families participate in any of their traditional (satanic, apparently) rituals.

In 2016 I remember yelling at a few of my Chinese Singaporean friends’ parents (all upper middle class and evangelical) about their support for T***p. They responded: you are a leftist commie homosexual, straight out of Fox News.

(But there was definitely an element of resentment at my supposed class traitorism.)

I will continue to yell at them, and at evangelicals all over the world but particularly in Singapore, for the rest of my life. They have no right to infect my country with their political virus.

And yet, the Singapore government continues to believe that gay and liberal activists are a scourge upon our society. Mostly, I believe, because many of them belong to these churches. If they don’t, then their political message aligns with theirs.

I’ve said more than once, in the last decade, that Singapore’s top evangelical pastors have little to no theological training other than for their nefarious connections for ‘Joel’s Army’: untrained clergy who believe evangelicals MUST dominate politics and society.

In 2014, I wrote this: https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014/07/24/singapores-so-called-moral-majority/

It may be time for part II, because they have only grown in strength and numbers.

On a related note: in 2009, an evangelical Christian group in Singapore attempted to takeover the country’s leading feminist org. This is an excellent podcast about that episode https://open.spotify.com/show/3Sh2eWK60RGRV9dVN6W8R9?si=xN-F-B8CT8KpSFr24vQkiQ

They have NOT retreated. They are merely picking their battles now. They are sanitizing their appearance to look more reasonable. But they are more hateful. They are setting up ‘both sides’ media companies on the one hand; and

Putting up the sandbags in their community on the other hand. Home schooling their children. Setting up Christian-content-only cinemas in Bukit Timah. Putting their photogenic children forward as the face of photogenic homophobia (cc Joanna Theng)

The big lie in evangelical Christianity in Singapore is that they believe their faith makes them more moral. The truth is that it does the opposite. You can’t base your morality on hatred and bigotry. Yet they mistake Sunday niceness for morality. Like Christians worldwide do.

Am i anti-Christian? God, no. I have simply found a home for my faith in the arm of it that is steeped in social justice and revolution. I don’t know why people who worship Mammon have any more claim to the faith than the rest of us.

But that cult teaches, and preaches, that all non-evangelical versions of Christianity including and especially Catholicism and Lutheranism are actually demonic. So I have no qualms in calling them Mammonites led by false prophets.