The intersection of Catholicism as the world’s largest Christian religion with the Asian continent, the home of two thirds of the world’s population and growing in political, cultural and economic influence, is just one of the realities that will be acknowledged at the Alpha Asia-Pacific regional gathering taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this month.

With a focus on the evangelising mission of the parish, I will be privileged to be speak at and be part of the gathering, learning of the diverse and emerging forms of mission in Asia with 450 leaders from 20 countries, including clergy and lay leaders from India, Indonesia and Singapore.

The Religions of Malaysia

The religiosity of Malaysia itself is heavily shaped by its geographical position between the ancient civilisations of India and China. The Strait of Malacca remains to this day one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, and for centuries has provided direct passage and safe harbour for merchant travelling between the Indian and Pacific oceans. This geography explains the significance of Penang, Malacca and Singapore as central ports and trading hubs along this route.

The activities of Indian and Chinese traders led to the dominance of Buddhism on the peninsula from the fourth century, with successive Buddhist kingdoms including the region within its domain. Islam was introduced to the peninsula in the thirteenth century from the Muslim port kingdom at Pasai, today’s Aceh in Indonesia, before Christian missionaries came onto the scene at the beginning of sixteenth century.

The Portuguese arrived in 1511 at Melaka, led by Alfonso d’Albuquerque, then came the Dutch a century later in 1641, and Britain in 1786 under the command of Sir Francis Light. It was the British who shaped and in a sure sense promoted the ethnic divisions that remain today in Malaysia, through a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy that brought in Chinese for the ports and mines, Indian labour for rubber plantations, and exercised a paternalistic approach that sought to restrain the Malays to agriculture as farmers and fisherman. It could be put that the division of political and economic influence by the British was designed to keep the Chinese out of politics, the Malays out of any role in the economy, while the Indians enjoyed neither political nor economic power.

Fast forward to today and two-thirds of Malaysia’s population remains Malay, one quarter Chinese and the remaining ten percent is largely Indian. While Islam is the defining essence of the Malay identity as enshrined in the Federal Constitution, the reality on the ground is a highly pluralistic and syncretic religiosity that presents challenges as well as opportunities for the Gospel which are well worth exploring.

Christianity in Asia

The life and affairs of the church in Europe, Latin America and Africa tend to dominate coverage of global Catholicism. However, Catholicism in Asia is no less noteworthy and will become increasingly significant for the world church, including the church in Australia, in the decades to come.

We have already seen an increasing Asian presence in our local churches, not only in our pews but also on the sanctuary. Clergy and religious from the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Korea, and other parts of the region have arrived to form an integral part of our church in Sydney and Australia.

Apart from the Philippines and Timor-Leste, Catholics in Asia are a religious minority—as are Christians more generally in the region.

There are an estimated 380 million Christians in Asia, representing 8 per cent of a total population of 4.5 billion. Hence, the faith is lived out without the supports of an extensive Christian presence or substantial institutional resources, and in full contact with the major Asian religions, dominant philosophies, and their adherents, including Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, and Shintoists.

Nonetheless, the vibrancy of Catholic and other Christian groups in Asia remains, as seen in the Syro-Malabar and Eastern Orthodox communities. The witness and evangelical energy of these churches are well known, not only in Asia but increasingly in our own dioceses.

Historical Influences

The lived situation of Catholics in Asia today and their outlook on evangelisation are deeply shaped by historical circumstances.

In many parts of Asia, Christianity is viewed as a product of European colonisation and therefore foreign to local culture. The impact of the missionary endeavours of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries looms large in this perception. Consider the British missionaries in Sri Lanka, the Portuguese and Dutch in India and Malacca, the Spanish in Philippines, the French in Vietnam, the Italians and other foreign missionaries in the history of Chinese Christianity.

However, what can be missed in the conventional affiliation of the Christian faith with western imperialism is that the Catholic and Protestant missionaries of these centuries were not always so neatly aligned with colonial administrations, or their trading partners.

For instance, the East India Company was long reluctant to admit Christian missionary organisations into their territories, on account of their tendency to upset the local social order and prevailing religious sensibilities. The patron saint of the east, St Francis Xavier, was himself often in conflict with the Portuguese authorities over their mistreatment and exploitation of indigenous groups.

Moreover, the misperception of Christianity in Asia as a late and artificial imposition from the west overlooks the presence of the Gospel in south and central Asia at the very origins of the church, millennia prior to the rise of modern colonial empires.

As is well known, St Thomas the Apostle arrived with Jewish traders in the south of India in the first century and thousands were baptised on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts.

The faith spread east in subsequent centuries, along the old Silk Road on which Nestorians travelled.

The famous Xi’an stele attests to the arrival of the Assyrian missionary Alopen in modern-day China in the seventh century, during a period of religious toleration under the T’ang dynasty, which saw the first Christian churches built at the emperor’s expense.

The collapse of that dynasty in the tenth century led to persecution of many religious groups and the near extinction of Christianity in that region for two centuries or so.

The Christian faith would not reappear in China with any significance until the time of the Mongols.

Then there is the figure of John of Montecorvino, an Italian Franciscan of the late thirteenth century, who evangelised thousands and went on to construct Catholic churches in the heart of Beijing.

The Challenge of National Religion

The situation of Catholics in Asia has also been shaped by rapid decolonisation that followed the Second World War, with these various independence movements leading not to secularism as has been the story in the West but to assertive forms of national religion in which ethnicity and religious identity have coalesced.

One thinks of the rise of Islamic nationalism in the region, Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, and Hindu nationalism in India, which have placed Christian minorities under significant pressure and threat.

This is not to say that religious indifferentism and excessive individualism are not also present in Asia but the challenge of opposing religiosities with official backing is predominant in the minds of Asian Christians.

It is amidst these challenges that Catholics and other Christians demonstrate courageous witness to the Gospel in families, local networks, and worshipping communities.

As Pope John Paul II shared with the church in Asia, some 25 years after Paul VI’s landmark visit to the region, while the religious traditions of the ancient cultures of the East remain a challenge for the mission of evangelisation, the call to bring the Gospel to maturity in ways which are “fully Christian and fully Asian” remains before us.

This is because the Christian faith is not alien to these lands but an integral part of their history and indeed a vital force for their future.