Worshiping among the Muslim majority in Malaysia

WORLD reporter Sophia Lee is traveling through Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and other Southeast Asian countries. She’s sending us regular reports of what she sees, feels, and does—Nellie Bly–style.

JOHOR BAHRU, Malaysia—We sat in a black sedan with the air conditioner blasted up to arctic degrees, moving inch by inch on the Johor-Singapore causeway, a 0.7-mile link between northern Singapore and Johor Bahru, a booming city on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. Stuck in a bladder-killing congestion, I idled my time by observing other motorists picking their noses or sucking on preserved plums, an antidote for drowsiness.

This particular Saturday morning I had joined three Singaporean Christians on their weekly trip to a fledgling Johor Bahru house church, which holds its main service on Saturdays instead of Sundays. That’s because Johor’s Sultan Ibrahim Ismail recently decreed that the state’s official “weekend” is Friday and Saturday to make it more convenient for Muslims to attend their obligatory Friday prayers in mosques, even though almost 42 percent of Johor residents are non-Muslims.

Nevertheless, it benefits this year-and-a-half-old house church of about 12 ethnic-Chinese Johoreans who are desperate for a doctrinally sound, discipleship-oriented church. They say they can’t find one in their region, so it’s a godsend for them to have another church’s assistant pastor willing to travel four hours every week from Singapore to shepherd them. Together, they envision a church that transforms lives through the gospel and raises local disciples to fulfill the Great Commission.

Of course, proclaiming that mission out loud would stir alarm and instant shutdown from local Islamic leaders and government officials. In fact, the house church I’m visiting is technically illegal, since it’s not officially registered as a religious organization—a rather tedious, opaque process for most non-Islamic entities. Just three months ago, local authorities had denied approval for a Christian revival event called “MforJ (Malaysia for Jesus) 2015: Take Possession of the Land Kingdom Conference,” whose promotional video clips contained “provocative” proselyte language that irked some local Islamists. So I have to tread carefully here—no details on names and location.

On this hazy Saturday, the Singaporean team and I left at about 10 a.m., entered Johor Bahru past noon, scarfed down “beefacon” burgers at a nearby Burger King, and reached a little neighborhood of residential units just in time for the 1:30 p.m. service. I detected the house church at once—in place of its house number “1” was a sign that read “The Chosen One.” I smiled, remembering the fish symbol during the early church era that signaled to all Christian strangers that they’re in the company of a common Spirit.

It was a real cozy church service, the kind you’d expect from a tight-knit family trying to preserve the formalities of proper worship with what little they had. We hunched on butt-pinching plastic chairs in the living room and read from lyrics and verses projected on a white wall. Because we had no musical instruments, we sang hymns to a recorded audio of piano notes that a young woman played on her tablet. Then, as we listened to a 90-minute sermon about the baptism of Jesus, barefoot toddlers ran around the makeshift sanctuary, laughing and squealing. A mother yanked them aside with louder scoldings. Used to such disruptions, nobody else paid attention to them, though some may have silently prayed for a children’s Sunday school teacher.

After the service, we crunched and munched on the church’s mid-afternoon “tradition”: crackly fish crackers and cool guava sprinkled with preserved orange peel and sour plum powder. One 28-year-old woman wearing a bright red dress told me she hates Johor’s new official rest days, because as a public schoolteacher she has Friday and Saturday off, but her husband who works in the private sector gets Saturday and Sunday off—just one of the many issues that pop up in an Islamic nation with a pluralistic population.

Another garrulous man told me he has several Malay co-workers to whom he wants to share the gospel but can’t. Law mandates that ethnic Malays register as Muslim, and they are rarely allowed to convert to other religions. “I have the heart to evangelize to Malays but I dare not,” he said. “What if someone reports me?” So he tries to share his faith in indirect ways.

Like most Malaysians, he complained about dirty politics seeping into the fabric of private religious life, as politicians try to appease the Muslim Malay majority, often at the expense of the religious freedom of minorities. But as I once again sat waiting to cross the border station back to Singapore, I thought about Malaysia’s tragic irony. Perhaps, the most religiously oppressed people in Malaysia are the so-called “privileged” Malays themselves, for they are systematically prevented from hearing and accepting the gospel.