The Anglican Church in Singapore

Jarvis has a gift for sifting through extensive and diverse archival material to find the key figures whose lives are pivotal in the controversial history of the Anglican church. In this volume, the under-researched relationship between colonizers and Christians in Singapore is explored historically and in engaging narrative style. Careful to avoid the easy binary approaches that either praise or condemn colonizing developments, Jarvis' account is detailed and nuanced, not afraid to criticize or to tease out the unexpected. While the colonial administrators sought to present their efforts as Christian, they simultaneously constrained church leaders: for the East India Company profitable trade and commerce was the real priority. Consequently, the early Church in Singapore was both entwined in the expansion of the British Empire and subverting its restrictions. With established church leaders interned during World War Two, the Church in Singapore faced a crisis, but one from which it was to benefit. As local leaders took over, the scene was set for a path to independence that saw a post-colonial Church find growth rather than decline by embracing Asian identity and a new Pentecostalism in place of the High-Church of Anglo-Catholicism. A rewarding read for anyone interested in the spread of Christianity in Southeast Asia. Jarvis, in this study, offers a well-researched and deeply insightful critique of today's dynamic culture in one of the richest and most religious cities in the world. His book will challenge the reader to address anew the issues arising from the nature, charism, and potential of Anglicanism. The place of the Anglican Church in Singapore is of sufficient currency that it definitively needs a historical narrative such as this one. This history has not been widely studied before, and the author demonstrates a masterful awareness of the depth and breadth of the subject, opening new ground on the historical record of the church. Clergy and interested laypeople in Singapore will doubtlessly find it of interest, but its primary audience of scholars of Church history, colonialism/imperialism, especially with interest in the British Empire and South Asian history, will find it of the upmost importance.