Feature
2 September 2024
14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 5:14-16, ESV)
Our Lord’s words, delivered over the occasion of the Sermon on the Mount, points undeniably to the public nature of our belief and our citizenry in the kingdom of God. The church belonging to Jesus Christ necessarily possesses a public presence and bears a public witness in society. Coupled with another of our Lord’s sayings, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt 22:21) — a saying particularly applicable to the secular state but religiously plural society of Singapore — the presence of the church in the public square is to be marked neither by dominance nor isolation, but by what James Davidson Hunter in To Change the World has called “faithful presence”. This Christian practice of faithful presence is both individual and institutional, and is seen in all the different spheres of public life.
It is in strengthening the faithful presence of the Singaporean church in the public square that the National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS), Trinity Theological College (TTC) and the Bible Society of Singapore (BSS) formed the ETHOS Institute for Public Christianity in 2014 as a Christian think tank in Singapore. On the 3 Apr 2024, during the ETHOS Seminar 2024 “Church and Society in a Post-Truth Era”, we took the opportunity to commemorate ETHOS Institute’s ten-year anniversary, and to recommit ourselves to the mission of being a think tank with the two-prong purpose of equipping the saints and engaging society.
Equipping the Saints
No one who has their feet firmly plugged into our postmodern and ideologically diverse (and driven) world today will deny that there is a “clash of civilisations” (Samuel Huntington) or a “clash of orthodoxies” (Robert George) between the Judeo-Christian worldview and the many “isms” of contemporary culture (secularism, relativism, consumerism, individualism and its more recent sibling, expressive individualism, and wokeism, to name a few). The clash or conflict has left many Christians confused, resulting in either an outright rejection of these alternative “isms” and an aggressive promotion of the Judeo-Christian worldview, or an embrace of a bipolarity in their thinking where there is a segmentation of the Judeo-Christian worldview to the church and the different “isms” to wider society, with the Christian somehow straddling both worldviews in a two-minded manner! Both outcomes have undesirable consequences for the church’s “faithful presence” in the public square. The first pushes the church’s presence toward one of power and domination while the second tends toward a presence of compromise.
In this regard, ETHOS Institute as a think tank is committed to the discipleship of the Christian mind. Through the regular publication of articles on its website and the conduct of seminars and conferences, we hope to show how the Bible, theology (especially that forged by the Church even as she has read Scripture down the ages), and Christian thought—in other words, the Christian worldview—engages with the many “isms” of thought out there. We publish articles via three regular columns on our website: Feature (focusing on some aspect of public theology or a Christian treatment of certain societal aspects); Pulse (a Christian commentary on recent popular movements or trends), and Credo (focusing on a particular Christian doctrine or ethical concern). Published articles have covered topics like Artificial Intelligence (AI), creatureliness as a gift, dementia and the church, Critical Race Theory, the doctrine of Christian perfection, thinking theologically about theological education, and many others.
In terms of seminars and conferences, ETHOS Institute annually organises four major events: the ETHOS Conversation; ETHOS Seminar; ETHOS Annual Conference and ETHOS Annual Lecture. Together, these events have covered topics as diverse as the Christian Zionism (2020), the Doctrines of the Trinity (2021), Transgender moment (2022), Theological Anthropology (2022), Origins of Humanity and Evolution (2023), Mental Health and the Church (2023), and, the Culture of Death (2023), and more recently, Civil and Religious Liberties in Singapore (2024). Moving ahead, ETHOS Institute is exploring the possibility of conducting short evening courses on different topics related to public theology.
Engaging Society
Charles Taylor has previously commented that for societies situated within the framework of political liberalism, public square deliberation will increasingly be forged within the boundaries of an “overlapping consensus”, which consists in the agreed principles and common shared ground between the various and diverse viewpoints—religious and non-religious—held by the citizenry. In Singapore, the government has played the role of a mediator in canvassing the different viewpoints from the various constituents of the citizenry and defining the shape and contours of the “overlapping consensus”.
As part of its canvassing of viewpoints, the government often turns to the NCCS for a specifically Christian viewpoint on public square issues. ETHOS Institute assists the NCCS to respond to these issues. Together, NCCS and ETHOS Institute have responded to the following issues: the debate on the legalisation of online gambling (2016), Mitochondrial Replacement Technology (2018), Capital Punishment (2018), Social Egg Freezing and Surrogacy (2019), the amendments to the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (2019), Advanced Maternal Age in IVF (2021), revision of divorce laws (2021), repeal of Section 377A of the Penal Code and the enactment of Article 156 of the Constitution (2022) and the discussion on Big Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (2023).
Though not highlighted, such work of providing rational and reasonable Christian responses to public square issues as part of our contribution to the “overlapping consensus” is highly important. It is a vital component of the church’s faithful presence in the public square, even more so when our responses are undergirded by the fundamental conviction that God who created this world also embedded a certain creational order within his creation that is intended for the common good and flourishing of any society.
Conclusion
ETHOS Institute is thankful to God for his faithful presence with us over the past decade and we continue to affirm our mission and purpose of reinforcing the church’s own faithful presence in the public square as a think tank. To that end, ETHOS Institute’s two-pronged means of service and ministry as a think tank remains the same—equipping the saints and engaging society—even as we press on into the future.
Rev Dr Edmund Fong is a lecturer in Theology, Hermeneutics and Presbyterianism at Trinity Theological College, and an ordained minister with the Presbyterian Church in Singapore.