Church Buildings
Churches are allowed in Malaysia, though there are restrictions on construction of new churches through discriminatory zoning laws. No pre-existing churches have been closed down by the government and no standing congregations have been disbanded. However, it is difficult to build new churches. For instance, it took more than twenty years for the local authority in Shah Alam to allow a church to be built there, with an additional condition that the church must look like a factory and not a more conventional church appearance. Most of the time, new churches are started in a clandestine manner as ordinary businesses in shops, especially in major cities like Kuala Lumpur.
Read more about this topic: Christianity In Malaysia
Famous quotes containing the words church and/or buildings:
“If Jesus, or his likeness, should now visit the earth, what church of the many which now go by his name would he enter? Or, if tempted by curiosity, he should incline to look into all, which do you think would not shut the door in his face?... It seems to me ... that as one who loved peace, taught industry, equality, union, and love, one towards another, Jesus were he alive at this day, would recommend you to come out of your churches of faith, and to gather into schools of knowledge.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)