by Dr. Kyle Essary
When people trust Christ in Malaysia, they often face resistance from their family. The family often sees the new believer as rejecting their heritage and culture. These new Christians might hear statements from loved ones, such as “Christianity is a Western religion.” They may not know how to respond. Despite having originated in the Middle East and spread both east and west in its earliest centuries, the Western reputation of Christianity has persisted due to historical associations with Western missionaries.1 The logic of this claim assumes that if someone converts to Christianity, they must reject their culture for a Western culture. They must experience two conversions: the first from their former religion and the second from their former culture. Disciples and churches will struggle to multiply if Christianity demands that individuals remove themselves from their own culture and its forms.
A biblical framework
The association between Christianity and a particular cultural form goes back to the earliest days of the Christian church. In Acts 15, some members of the Jerusalem church held that Gentiles needed to be circumcised and keep the laws of Moses to become Christians (Acts 15:5). In response, the apostle Peter argues that God’s promises made no distinction between Jews and non-Jews regarding faith and salvation. He states clearly that ‘we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way they are’ (Acts 15:11). In conclusion to the discussion, James and the Jerusalem church agree that Gentile Christians should keep certain practices for their good and to respect Jews in their cities, but they do not need to become Jews to become Christian. Previously, the apostle Paul had confronted Peter on this very issue asking him, ‘If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews’ (Gal 2:14)? The early church agreed that Gentiles can remain Gentiles and faithfully follow Christ while recognising and respecting the Jews as a separate culture than their own. This teaching from the earliest church naturally allows expressions of the church within cultures that look distinct. The result and implication of the decision in Acts 15 meant that the expression of Christianity within the Gentile culture of Antioch would look different than the expression of Christianity in Jerusalem with its Jewish culture.
The Jerusalem Council's decision assumed that Gentile cultures were fit vessels for the gospel. But someone might wonder whether the corruption of sin makes any culture truly redeemable. And if cultures can be redeemed, does this include their culture? Genesis 1–3 helps us to frame these questions. God has made humanity, all of it, in his image (Gen 1:26–28). This means that God’s image extends to humans in all cultures, places, and languages. God referred to his creation of humanity in his image as “very good” (Gen 1:31). Sin brought disorder into society. Genesis 3:16–19 speaks of disordered relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, and humans and the earth. Sin does not have the power to remove the goodness of God’s creation, though, and God’s image continued in Adam’s children (Gen 5:1–3). Christopher Watkin, a philosopher at Monash University, has said, “nothing in culture is so full of [sin] that it can fully erase the goodness of the original creation.”2 This distinction between creation’s goodness and sin’s corruption provides theological support for suggesting that the gospel can work within any and all cultures.
A theological framework
Herman Bavinck, the Dutch Reformed theologian, argued helpfully that Christianity can “enter into all situations, can connect with all forms of natural life, is suitable to every times … and is relevant in all circumstances.”3 His theology led him to believe that “Christianity is only against sin, not culture as such.”4 In other words, Christianity does not oppose cultures, but opposes the corruption of sin in those cultures. Christianity does not demand that a person convert out of their culture. Instead, Christianity displays God’s diverse goodness through various expressions of the gospel in every culture. Abraham Kuyper, a contemporary of Bavinck and prime minister of the Netherlands, applied this doctrine to his understanding of Indonesian Christianity. He did not desire “to make them ‘Dutch’ but to make them Javanese Christians in whose domestic and social life a spiritual life will flow according to its own character and form.”5
When framed in this way, Christianity is not a Western religion. Nor can Christianity only thrive and multiply in Western cultures. In its opposition to sin, Christianity seeks to reject and root out all idolatries in Western cultures from consumerism to secularism. Christianity also seeks to redeem and transform those aspects of Western cultures that have been corrupted by sin. But it does these things within the natural goodness of Western culture. Thus, we can accurately speak of Western expressions of Christianity. But Western expressions are only one part of the greater diversity in global Christianity. Christianity does not oppose the cultures of Malaysia. Christianity opposes sin in those cultures, just as it opposes sin in Western cultures, and seeks to redeem all cultures, so that they might thrive as unique expressions of Christianity within the diverse expressions of global Christianity. In this way, Christianity both adapts to cultures and challenges them.6
Removing the cultural barriers
Removing the cultural barrier allows Christianity to flourish and multiply. Christians from different cultures can disciple one another, recognising that the gospel's work in another culture can illuminate blind spots in their own.7 Christian small groups and churches can multiply in various languages, with different forms of music, style, and meals. Malaysian Christians can joyfully sing songs in BM and Tamil. They can eat communal meals as a church that include Cantonese and Nyonya food. They can feel comfortable wearing batik to church and incorporating Malaysian topics into their sermons and small groups. These diverse expressions of Malaysian Christianity confess the beliefs of the global church but express them in Malaysian cultural forms. As Indonesian theologian Gray Sutanto says, “The Christian faith, after all, is neither Western nor Eastern but cosmic, having to do with the God of the universe who became incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.”8 This truth allows the gospel to spread and flourish in every family, community, and culture. When someone confronts the new Malaysian Christian saying, “Christianity is a Western religion,” the new believer can joyfully say, “Christianity is a global religion, and the gospel allows me to flourish as a Malaysian!”
1. See Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Expanded Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2015).↑
2. Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2022), 169.↑
3. Herman Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church” Translated by John Bolt. Calvin Theological Journal 27 (1992): 249.↑
4. Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2022), 55.↑
5. Abraham Kuyper, “Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life.” Pages 19–44 in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, edited by James Bratt (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 41.↑
6. Tim Keller, Center Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 257.↑
7. This is an argument from Stephen T. Pardue, Why Evangelical Theology Needs the Global Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023). An excellent example of this can be seen in N. Gray Sutanto, “4 Realities in Jakarta That Expose Western Judgments of Christianity” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/jakarta-western-judgments/, accessed 14 May 2026.↑
8. Gray Sutanto, “4 Realities.”↑
Author
Dr. Kyle Essary serves as a pastor of Flourish Hill in Bukit Damansara. He was previously an elder at Gospel City Church and the church planting pastor for Covenant Baptist Church in Melaka. He serves as a lecturer in Old Testament studies for Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary. He has lived in the US, China, Yemen, and for more than fifteen years in Malaysia.
