City of Evangelicals
Whether its mega-churches, media censors, creationist science museums or pious politicians, we have all the trappings of a culture war here in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s mega-churches are the loudest indicators of the evangelical fervor currently alive in the city. According to Reverend Ralph Lee Ting-sun, a director of the Hong Kong Christian Council, 10,000 passionate worshippers appear every Sunday at the biggest mega-church in To Kwa Wan, while similar churches in Causeway Bay, North Point, Sha Tin, and Lok Fu boast turnouts of 4,000-5,000 each. It is in these holy houses, according to Lee, that healings, speaking in tongues and other charged encounters with the Holy Spirit are found.
At the same time, Professor Lo Lung-kwok of Baptist University’s Religion and Philosophy Department observes that senior Hong Kong Government officials have become more “high profile” about wearing their religious – and yes, evangelical – identities on their sleeves. In mind are figures such as Secretary for Justice Wong Yan-lun, Secretary of Security Ambrose Lee, and Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Frederick Ma.
The latter’s wife, Linda, has drawn considerable attention with Citywide Renewal, a group that organizes mass prayer rallies and activities in dispossessed areas such as Tin Shui Wai (and their son Jaeson, himself an evangelical pastor/Christian rapper, even claims to have converted Edison Chen to Christianity). “Many other senior officials are adherents to the evangelical branches of Christianity,” Lo adds.
For confirmation, one needn’t look further than last year’s Franklin Graham Festival, Hong Kong’s largest evangelical soiree ever. Devout Catholic Donald Tsang himself was present among the 420,000 flock that made it to the Queen Elizabeth Stadium. Indeed, the event was adopted by the government as part of the official celebrations the handover anniversary.
“It might seem a rather strange event with which to commemorate the return of Hong Kong to the mainland,” says Professor Bob Chan Shun-hing, a colleague of Lo at Baptist University. “But we believe many high-ranking religious Government officials may even have been involved in pulling some threads behind the scenes.”
More remarkable yet was the attendance of senior mainland figures, from director of Foreign Affairs Guo Wei to Rev Teng Fuk-chuen, vice president of the mainland’s official Protestant church, the Three Self Patriotic Movement.