“We Are One in Jesus”? Sociality, Salvation, and Moral Dilemmas

Abstract

Several Sundays a year, the vernacularized version of a modern English hymn used in churches across Malaysia, We are One in Jesus, is sung to the accompaniment of guitars by the congregation of St Matthew’s Chapel. It begins with the lines, “Bara ta ndi rawang, ndi darum Jesus” which, literally translated, gives its English counterpart a rather more specific gloss, because rawang actually means “household,” the core unit of belonging, ownership, and obligation in Bidayuh society. What my acquaintances are singing, in other words, is “We are one household, one household in Jesus.”