265 Years of History in This Malaysian Church
Just think of the stories an old church would tell if it could talk. From the characters who once sat in the pews to the weddings, baptisms and funerals that took place within the four walls. That's what I was thinking when I visited Malaysia last year only to discover a treasure trove of British colonial-era churches — the sort of historic churches you wouldn't expect in Southeast Asia.
One of those churches was Christ Church in Melaka, which until last year was called Malacca, as in the famed Straits of Malacca. The church, built for a Dutch Reformed congregation, faces a square fronted by other relics of colonialism, including the mid-17th century Stadthuys (literally Dutch for city hall).
Erected more than a hundred years after the Dutch acquired this part of present-day Malaysia from Portugal in 1641, Christ Church wouldn't become an Anglican house of worship until 1838. By then, the British East India Company had controlled Malacca for 13 years.
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Despite construction having taken 13 years (1753-1776) the church is elegantly simple with its most notable features being the Nantucket red exterior — the same color is found in colonial buildings from the same era in the West Indies — and Dutch-style gambrel roof that wouldn't be out of place in the Netherlands.
The interior is overrun by centuries of clutter that include church monuments on the walls and tombstones with their barely legible inscriptions in the floor to modern hymnals, liturgy books and even a ladder and cleaning supplies. Among the monuments is one to William Milne (1785-1822), who was a Congregationalist minister and prominent early Protestant missionary to China.
The architecture inside is more 18th century meetinghouse than anything else. The chancel and altar are only separated from the wooden chairs of the nave by communion railings, which were almost certainly installed in the 1830s by Anglicans.
Christ Church may be old, but it isn't a museum. It remains a vibrant religious community with three services every Sunday. In fact, as a parish of the Anglican Diocese of West Malaysia it is the oldest extant Protestant church in a majority Muslim country.
But unlike a similarly old church elsewhere in Malaysia, it welcomes visitors, both tourists and those seeking prayer and contemplation.
Just don't expect a leaflet or guidebook, as sadly the church hasn't seen fit to properly document its rich history that spans part of four centuries.
Spires and Crosses is published every week.
