Bishop Paul tan advises candidates to avoid biblical miscues

Catholic Bishop Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing has urged Christian candidates in the upcoming general election to desist from appropriating revered personages of biblical history for their campaign purposes.

The head of the Catholic Church in the Melaka-Johor diocese who is concurrently president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, Tan (left) was responding to a question on the propriety of a BN MP’s use of aspects of the Christian narrative for his re-election effort.

Lawas MP Henry Sum Agung, was reported by the Borneo Post on May 9 as having urged the mainly Christian Lun Bawang community in Lawas to vote for the BN “and not act as Judas of BN which has contributed much to their well-being.”

Sum’s call has set off a storm of controversy in which the BN legislator has been accused of blasphemy.

“It would better if Christian candidates refrain from appropriating biblical personages for partisan political ends,” advised the bishop.

“Christian teaching authority is famously opposed to political power making use of religion for its own ends, so Christian candidates should take their cue from this to refrain from portraying themselves and others as characters in the biblical narratives, unless of course such depictions are simple and straightforward,” he remarked.

Emulate Lincoln

Bishop Paul Tan said he found highly edifying the stance adopted by the by US president Abraham Lincoln when confronted with similar misappropriations of biblical narratives during the country’s civil war in the 1860s.

“You will recall in that conflict both the North and the South portrayed themselves as doing God’s will.

“Lincoln faced a lot of criticism that he was not spouting enough from the Bible to defend his positions on the burning issue of slavery.

“When he was criticised that he was not concerned to have God on his side, his response was that he was more concerned to be on God’s side than the other way round.

“Now that’s the kind of attitude that Christian candidates should adopt with regard to finding the will of God in political matters,” advised the prelate.