 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Church of the Province of South East Asia" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Province of the Anglican Church in South East Asia | |
|---|---|
| Classification | Protestant |
| Orientation | Anglican |
| Scripture | Holy Bible |
| Theology | Anglican doctrine |
| Polity | Episcopal |
| Primate | Titus Chung |
| Headquarters | Singapore |
| Territory | Malaysia,Singapore,Brunei,Indonesia,Thailand,Cambodia,Laos,Vietnam andNepal |
| Independence | 1996 |
| Members | 168,079 (2016) |
TheChurch of the Province of South East Asia is an autonomous member of theAnglican Communion, created in 2 February 1996 with the fourdioceses ofKuching,Sabah,Singapore andWest Malaysia.
There are approximately 168,079 Anglicans within the province,[1] and the currentMetropolitan Archbishop and Primate of the Province isTitus Chung,Bishop of Singapore.
_by_Francis_Grant.jpg)
Anglicanism was first introduced with the establishment of theBritish East India Company's settlement ofPenang Island in 1786.George Caunter, a local magistrate, was appointed as a Lay Clerk/Acting Chaplain in 1799 under the jurisdiction of theSee of Calcutta. In 1819, the first Anglican church building,the Church of St. George the Martyr, was consecrated by the Bishop of Calcutta,Thomas Fanshawe Middleton.
In 1826, the Mission Chapel of theLondon Missionary Society (LMS) started services inSingapore and the first church building in Singapore was built in 1837. In 1842, a missionary of the LMS started the first girls school in Singapore, now known as St. Margaret's School. The work inBorneo started in 1848 when a group of missionaries led byFrancis Thomas McDougall was invited byJames Brooke, theRajah ofSarawak. In 1849, a wooden church was built in Kuching. In 1851, this church was consecrated by Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta in honour ofSt. Thomas the Apostle.
Letters patent was issued in 1855 to establish the Bishopric ofLabuan and McDougall was appointed the firstBishop of Labuan. McDougall was also appointed the Bishop of Sarawak by the Rajah of Sarawak due to the political conventions of the day ruled that no Anglican Diocese might be created outside the limits of theBritish Empire, and Sarawak was then technically an independent kingdom. This practice prevailed until the Sarawak became aCrown Colony in 1946.
In 1867, The East India Company transferred Penang to the British Crown and with that ended thechaplaincy of theMadras Presidency in Penang. The Anglican churches in Penang,Malacca and Singapore were organised into the Church in the Straits Settlement while remaining under the jurisdiction of theSee of Calcutta.
The Church in theStraits Settlement was separated from the See of Calcutta by anAct of Parliament in 1869 and placed under the episcopal care of the Bishop of Labuan as the United Diocese of Singapore, Labuan and Sarawak. In 1909, the United Diocese was further divided into the Diocese of Singapore, the Diocese of Labuan and the Bishopric of Sarawak. The 3 separate Dioceses developed independently from then onwards until the creation of the Province.
The period between the division of the United Diocese and the outbreak of theSecond World War in the Pacific, missionary work continued with increasing ordination of local clergy and planting of churches all throughout theMalaya and Singapore.
During the duration of the Second World War, most expatriate clergy and missionaries were interned by the Japanese. Without the benefit of its expatriate clergy, the work of the church fell on the shoulders of local clergy and church workers.
This development highlighted the urgent need for training local leaders for this developing part of the Anglican Church and eventually led to the establishment of Singapore's Trinity Theological College in 1951.
Malaya gained her independence from British rule in 1957. Following this, in 1960, the Diocese was renamed the Diocese of Singapore and Malaya. In 1970, the churches inWest Malaysia were separated from the Diocese and reconstituted as the Diocese of West Malaysia by an Act of Parliament and the Diocese was renamed the Diocese of Singapore.
Work inBritish Borneo after the division of the United Diocese until the outbreak of the Second World War followed a similar pattern to the work in Malaya and Singapore. It was supported from 1909 by theBorneo Mission Association. Anglican missionaries were however more successful than their counterparts in Malaya and Singapore in evangelising the indigenous peoples.
Following the devastation of the Second World War, the Diocese of Labuan and the Bishopric of Sarawak was joined together as the Diocese of Borneo and the first bishop,Nigel Cornwall, was consecrated in 1949. In 1962, the Diocese was again divided into the Diocese ofJesselton (later Diocese ofSabah) which included Labuan, and theDiocese of Kuching which includedBrunei.
In 1985, the four Dioceses of West Malaysia, Singapore, Kuching and Sabah requested theArchbishop of Canterbury,George Carey, to create a new province for the region.[2] The request was affirmed by Carey.[2]
In 1996,autocephaly was attained when the Province of the Anglican Church in Southeast Asia consisting of the Dioceses of West Malaysia, Singapore, Kuching and Sabah was established by the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey.Moses Tay, Bishop of Singapore, was installed as the first Metropolitan Archbishop of the Province the same year.[3]
On 23 January 2024, Titus Chung, Bishop of Singapore, was installed as the Archbishop of the Province of the Anglican Church in South East Asia atSt Andrew's Cathedral in Singapore.[4]
There are at least 168,079 Anglicans out of an estimated population of 33.9 million.
The polity of the Church of the Province of South East Asia isepiscopalian church governance, which is the same as otherAnglican churches. The church maintains a system of geographicalparishes organised intodioceses. The Province is divided into four dioceses. Furthermore, the Dioceses of Kuching, West Malaysia and Singapore are further subdivided intoarchdeaconries anddeaneries.
| Archbishops of South East Asia | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| From | Until | Name | Notes |
| 1996 | 2000 | Moses Tay | b. 1934, alsoBishop of Singapore from 1982 to 1999. |
| 2000 | 2006[5] | Yong Ping ChungPGDK | b. 1941, alsoBishop of Sabah from 1990 to 2006.[6] |
| 2006 | 12 February 2012 | John Chew | b. 1947, retired after attaining clerical retirement age; alsoBishop of Singapore from 2000 to 2012. |
| 12 February 2012 | 22 February 2016 | Bolly LapokDPMSPGBK | b. 1952, elected in September 2011;[7] Installed on 12 February 2012. AlsoBishop of Kuching from 2007 to 2017. |
| 22 February 2016 | 9 February 2020 | Ng Moon HingPJN | b. 1955, elected in September 2015;[8] Installed on 22 February 2016. AlsoBishop of West Malaysia since 2007. |
| 9 February 2020 | 23 January 2024 | Melter Tais | Elected in September 2019;[9] Installed on 9 February 2020. AlsoBishop of Sabah since 2014. |
| 23 January 2024 | February 2028 | Titus Chung | Elected in September 2023; installed on 23 January 2024. AlsoBishop of Singapore since 2020. |
The Church of the Province of South East Asia embraces three orders of ministry: deacon, priest, and bishop. A local variant of theBook of Common Prayer is used.
The center of the Church of the Province of South East Asia's teaching is the life and resurrection ofJesus Christ. The basic teachings of the church, orcatechism, includes:
The threefold sources of authority in Anglicanism are scripture, tradition, and reason. These three sources uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way. This balance of scripture, tradition and reason is traced to the work ofRichard Hooker, a sixteenth-century apologist. In Hooker's model, scripture is the primary means of arriving at doctrine and things stated plainly in scripture are accepted as true. Issues that are ambiguous are determined by tradition, which is checked by reason.[10]
The dioceses of the Church of the Province of South East Asia participate in the ecumenicalWorld Council of Churches via their respective national church councils:
However, unlike many other Anglican churches, the Church of the Province of South East Asia is not a member of theWorld Council of Churches in its own right.[13]
Together with theChurch of the Province of Rwanda, the Church of the Province of South East Asia maintained a missionary organisation, theAnglican Mission in the Americas, in theUnited States andCanada, from 2000 to 2011. The Church of the Province of South East Asia has been active in theAnglican realignment, as member of theGlobal South and theGlobal Anglican Future Conference. In 2025, the Primate of the province expressed concern about GAFCON's direction and announced the province's intention to remain a part of the Anglican Communion.[14]
The province was represented at theGAFCON III, held on 17–22 June 2018, inJerusalem, by a 18 members delegation, coming fromMalaysia,Singapore andCambodia.[15]
| General |  | |
|---|---|---|
| African provinces | ||
| Pan-American provinces | ||
| Asian provinces |
| |
| European provinces |
| |
| Oceanian provinces | ||
| Extra-provincial churches | ||
| Churches infull communion | ||
