Back on the Peninsula

Wesley Methodist Church - Seremban, Malaysia

I’m now one step closer to home. This morning, after another al fresco breakfast in Miri, I flew to Kuala Lumpur on the Malay Peninsula or Mainland. The slower pace of Sarawak gave way to the bustle of a city of seven million.

The Malay Peninsula possesses a different kind of diversity than Borneo. Here, the presence of the majority Malay population is much stronger. Mosques in various styles dot the horizon. As we came south from KL to Seremban, the presence of the south Indian Tamils became more apparent. In the modest city of Seremban, many businesses in the city center are Tamil owned and form a kind of “little India.” Tamils’ roots in Malaysia go deep, dating to the height of the British Empire, when many came to what was then known as British Malaya to work on the rubber plantations. The rubber trees themselves were imported from Brazil. It was one of several historic waves of globalization, the same British Imperial wave that carried many Malays to the Cape Town area of South Africa.

Downtown Seremban remains a bustling place, with hundreds of small shops signed in some combination of Chinese, English, Malay, and Tamil. Restaurants cater to dozens of different ethnic tastes. So far, I’ve seen four churches (two rather imposing structures for the Catholics and Methodists, with two others for the Adventists and Assemblies of God), two Hindu temples, and several mosques in various architectural styles.

Masjid Jamek/Jamek Mosque - Seremban

Meetings continue to confirm the complex interethnic dance that in many ways defines this country. My neighbor at dinner tonight recounted that his family speaks a Hokkien dialect of Chinese in the home, his primary schooling was in Mandarin, his secondary schooling in Malay, and his university education in a mixture of Malay and English. Dramatic shifts in the country’s education system, especially regarding the language of instruction, have left whole generations more comfortable in either Malay or English. This of course presents great challenges for those seeking to lead higher education institutions. I enjoyed a couple of hours with the faculty of a seminary here today talking about a whole host of issues relating to theological education.

Hindu Temple - Seremban

Sometimes it’s nice to pretend that the world in which we live is a simple place, with nice, neat lines on the map that divide nation from nation, religion from religion, and worldview from worldview. But the real world is not that simple. The world we live in today is one that is deeply mixed, and has been for a long time. As I travel, I’m always struck by the fact that, although cultures and societies are very different, there is much that is fundamentally human. As I watched a young couple (probably in their early 20s at most) trying to shush and comfort their boisterous two-year-old during a church service earlier this week, it was the same scene that played out many times in our family’s pew in Indianapolis or Grand Rapids. The shared enjoyment of meat cooked over a good charcoal fire in Sarawak wasn’t all that different from a Midwestern barbeque in Ohio. The questions about what it means to be a good theological teacher are remarkably similar, regardless of whether the conversation is taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu, Caracas, or Krakow. Without bursting into an overly idealistic ode to human unity or pretending that differences don't matter, I’m reminded again that 1) we're all on this thing called earth together and 2) we have an awful lot in common.