Home ¢ The Rev Dr Andrew Peh is the Chairperson of the Council of Archives and History of The Methodist Church in Singapore. He is currently a faculty member at Trinity Theological College, teaching Missions and World Religions. His area of research is missions history in East and South East Asia, particularly Singapore, which is the focus of his published dissertation, Of Missions and Merchants. / Photos courtesy of the Methodist Archives and History Library
A lasting legacy
I
n the BBC series, A History of the World in 100 Objects, writer and presenter Neil MacGregor, who is also the British Museum director, commented that he was “travelling back in time, and across the globe, to see how we humans over two million years have shaped our world and been shaped
by it, and I’m going to tell this story exclusively through the things that humans have made: all sorts of things, carefully designed, and then either admired and preserved, or used, broken and thrown away.” This novel approach of retelling history has also sparked a new initiative of teaching history with a partnership of the Department of Education in the United Kingdom. 1
It is in the same spirit of informing and showcasing our Methodist history that we have embarked on collecting some of the important objects that are pertinent in recounting the story of Methodism in Singapore. Some of the important and priceless artefacts include:
The Polglase Bible John Polglase, a British Wesleyan, was one of the three potential lay candidates to hold office at the elections of the first Quarterly Conference held on 23 Feb 1885. Due to the absence of the other two candidates, Polglase was elected to all the offices that had to be filled by laymen, including Sunday School Superintendent, trustee, steward and church treasurer! The Bible that Polglase used through his service is one of the most prized possessions of the Methodist Archives.
Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church bell Telok Ayer CMC began in a shophouse
in
Upper
Nankin
Street that was converted into a place for Sunday worship services in 1889 by Dr Benjamin West,
an
American
medical
doctor and Methodist missionary. When the church was able to acquire land to build a more permanent
building,
a
bell
tower was included, where the bell would be rung to remind the predominantly Chinese labourers (and ex-opium addicts) to come 8
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for services. METHODIST MESSAGE SEPTEMBER 2020
