Alex Kennedy in The Associated Press, Jun.16, www.cjad.com/news/56/1154374
New Creation Church, which says it has a congregation of 20,000 worshippers, said it apologized for a sermon by Mark Ng in 2008 that was posted last week on YouTube and subsequently picked up by local media websites.
In the audio clip, Ng, who heads the church’s Mandarin and Hokkien ministries, makes fun of some Chinese traditions and compares praying to a Taoist god to paying a criminal gang for protection.
“We Chinese are under a lot of superstition and rituals,” Ng said in the sermon. “Praying to him for what? For protection. It’s just like a secret society, you know, gangster.”
Singapore, whose five million people include an ethnic Chinese majority along with significant Malay and Indian minorities, enforces a strict ban on speech about race and religion. The government argues the restrictions are necessary to avoid conflict among the different groups, which include Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Taoists. Some commentators urged preachers to learn about different religions and cultural practices to avoid offensive comments.