Upfront: with Dr. Gwee Li Sui

Upfront: with Dr. Gwee Li Sui

Foreword
Dr Gwee Li Sui is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore (NUS). He has been teaching a wide array of courses including introductory world literature, 18th-century fiction, poetry and criticism in NUS for the last 6 years. His current research interest includes 17th and 18th century literature, British and German Romanticism, Modern German literature, Singaporean literature, and last but not least, Reformation and Modern Theology.

Dr Gwee came into prominence at the height of the AWARE saga when his written notes on the topic were widely publicized. In his writings, he provided from the Christian perspective an opposition voice to the religious-motivated infiltration of AWARE by a group of like-minded individuals from the Church of Our Saviour. The Kent Ridge Common is indeed honored to feature an email interview with Dr Gwee.

We sought his thoughts on the pertinent issues surrounding the AWARE saga, asking the questions that you the readers have wanted to ask all along

KRC: Do you agree that Christians today have to support liberal viewpoints actively or be castigated? If it does happen, do you think that it is natural for democratic societies to cause different groups to attempt to moderate to centrist views? How can secularists and the religious harmonise with each other?

Dr. Gwee: This question involves a central misconception I want to correct here. Respecting the space for civility among people with different worldviews and lifestyles does not need to result in the erosion of conservative religious values. Its establishment may require everyone to observe clear rules of engagement, but it does not oblige a person to compromise his or her own set of essential beliefs. This should be made clear from the start. There has always been good historical and theological basis to state that pluralism and the cultures of, say, Christianity and Islam are not at odds.

aware2 What I want therefore to get us to see is that the fear of conformity itself is a dangerous subtler way of “moderating to a centre”. It compels people to band together in self-elected groups and forgo what is unique in their own value systems for a more primitive vision of exclusiveness. In this vision, the world becomes too neatly organised in binary terms (good/evil, us/them), and then a whole range of features familiar in the history of politics reappear. There is nothing new about crusades, divine mandates, hidden demons, enemies, betrayers, and so on. Their simplicity conversely explains why so many forms of fundamentalist expressions feel and sound alike.

Allowing the space for others to believe differently is thus not just something one should welcome: it also brings with it benefits to one’s own belief system. For example, if I lived in a religiously homogeneous community, what would I have learnt about my fear of difference and my need to defeat fear with love? Also consider how a pluralistic space can enable me to have faith more radically or, rather, more purely. If religion is the business of one’s soul, what secularism allows is the work of clarity to be pursued individually from within and not by a convenient definition against something or someone else. One becomes a more inwardly involved and more focused believer.

KRC: There has been talk of encouraging Miss Josie Lau’s group to start their organisation to advance their own interests. Assuming that they start a women’s organisation with a similar philosophy as that of their church, the Church of Our Saviour, how do you think such an organisation will fare?

Dr. Gwee: I have no insider’s knowledge into the affairs of AWARE or the Church of Our Saviour and can only make general guesses here. I am not sure if Miss Lau and friends will go on to form their own advocacy group, but it will be very telling if they don’t. A failure will play into the persistent suspicion that their goal has been the neutralisation of an organisation they deem to have liberal leanings all along. In other words, there might be no real affirmative content to the takeover: the team could have less desire to understand the range of issues confronting diverse women than to push a myopic, value-laden, and vengeful focus. If this is true, the irony shouldn’t be lost that a covert sabotage of society is what its supporters continue to charge AWARE of.

Miss Lau’s team is no doubt thrown into a terrible dilemma now. It has a moral obligation to follow through what it has claimed to be a noble collective wish to serve women and their families. But to set up a faith-based organisation for women, new questions will emerge. Given its highly publicised origin, the group may end up attracting people who already favour the same set of values that the team holds. So how wide-reaching such a body can be is as much a concern as what it will do on a day-to-day basis. Will it take up the work of counselling any woman in need, seeking redress for others, and affirming broad-based women’s rights, what has made AWARE respectable? Or will it focus more on mounting regular assaults on what it identifies as liberal incursions into mainstream society, playing a kind of unimaginative nemesis of AWARE? In other words, will it assume a real constructive role or a mere reactionary one?

KRC: Do you think this AWARE episode would set a precedent for churches or Christian groups to adopt an anti-homosexuality stand? Should a Singapore church even adopt an anti-homosexuality agenda like their counterparts in the US? Why?

Dr. Gwee: I hope that this AWARE episode will get each church or Christian group to consider how it feels about homosexuals and whether it wants to be openly exclusive, actively inclusive, or quietly inclusive. Being quietly exclusive is the only option I do not see as helpful enough to be encouraged. To be sure, positions can vary further: the conflation of Christianity with anti-homosexuality is not as universal as particular voices in this saga have made it out to appear. It is nonetheless true that many believers in Singapore consider homosexuality more a matter of choice even when there are gay Christians and at least one gay church here. How each Christian decides to engage this small community is another open issue.

Indeed, homosexuality – and a range of issues such as abortion, surrogacy, and euthanasia – make the present time an exciting one for Christians in Singapore. We may be redrawing the lines of Christian disagreement, and these are real despite the needless discomfort some have with the fact. Internal differences have been as old as the Christian Church, and they manifest themselves in historical moments from the early Councils to events tied to the Reformation and the current diversity of Christian struggles across the world. We have to aim to reclaim such a space for divergence as Christianity’s heritage and strength, what can contain different takes on the way to practise God’s unconditional love. The abstract idea of Church itself was this early neutral all-inclusive space in which Christians could affirm both their unity and their diversity.

US influence on our churches is definitely stronger now than it has ever been at any point in Singapore’s history. It is therefore important that believers be conscious of this import in the way they worship, think, and behave and be encouraged to revisit Church history with an open mind. What cannot be helpful is a triumphalist attitude that treats the most recent Christian trends as also the most positive and privileged. It is rather painful to hear some believers talk about the events involving AWARE and their aftermath as being a battle between “traditional” Christianity and “postmodern” society. This idea that what we see as dominant in Church life today has been around for a long time needs to be examined critically. Even the current obsession with the social implications of homosexuality has a short history here.

KRC: The AWARE issue has seen a spike in membership. Do you think that these new members were there for the hype or will they be committed to the long-term future of AWARE?

Dr. Gwee: This question reminds me of another one which Miss Lau’s team used as a means to legitimise its spectacular power grab. It asserted that AWARE under the Old Guard deserved what it got since it was slack enough to have allowed its own members to become apathetic and not show up at the AGM. This was an brazenly poor excuse: just because my family members fail to appear for reunion dinner doesn’t make it right for a neighbour to kick me out of my own home. So, when, by the same measure, others help me to reclaim my space from these “trespassers”, the gesture must be read in a very particular light.

The main issue should be cast not in the form of a question but as evidence of hope; it shouldn’t keep us dithering on whether people came just out of the hype but should get us to celebrate how they did come. These individuals have chosen to participate in what many have felt to hold their personal sense of society at ransom. If the new members then go on to be involved in a number of AWARE’s activities, it can only spell good for the organisation on the whole. But, even if they don’t, my respect still goes out to them for having taken the time, money, and effort to do what mattered when it mattered. They rightly refused to let their own passivity weigh on their conscience should things in Singapore make a turn for the worse as a result.

KRC: Much criticisms have been directed at the way audiences heckled Miss Josie Lau’s team, i.e. the booing and catcalls. What would this episode spell for the chances of conflict resolution between Miss Lau’s team and the rest of the AWARE membership?

Dr. Gwee: Here is one irony that never fails to bother me when mostly Christian critics still complain about Miss Lau’s team being treated badly at the EGM. They are expecting an unorganised crowd of individuals from all walks of life to behave with the kind of decency denied to others by a small Christian team while in office. The better call would have been to ask each person to examine his or her own conduct from the perspective of another from a different camp. In any case, I am quite sure that there has been a lot of ground-level technicalities that didn’t become common knowledge, and these could explain the day’s rowdiness more precisely.

But I want to read all this in yet another light: what we have seen may effectively be two modes of civil behaviour whose conflict affects the way we can make objective sense of the EGM. From this perspective, both parties have been equally polite and rude but not on the same terms. The regimental quietness of one side reflected its own values of solidarity, discipline, respect for real and perceived leaders, peaceful conduct, verbal politeness, and all that. The nature of civil engagement, however, is messy by nature: it is full of open disagreements, rhetoric, wit, claims to good sense, and little triumphs. Its spirit of civility lies not in outward form but in a respect for another to be vocal and open and to challenge.

These essentially cultural differences point to the difficult task of reconciliation ahead. The central qualities all parties should have are a willingness to sit at the same table and talk and a transparency of procedures. In this respect, Miss Lau’s team is still found wanting: it should show all its cards and engage in open discussion without fear of ideological “contamination” or “unholy” compromise. But as long as AWARE keeps these individuals informed and involved, there is a lot of hope in the matter yet. Remember: only extend the fact that roughly a third has voted in favour of the now-deposed team, and you will see that diversity is exactly what the newest ex-co has inherited. Whether it can now take the hard walk of inclusiveness it preaches remains to be seen and certainly to be wished for by all of us.

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