Jacqueline Chang

Love Offering is a novella set in a prosperous Singapore megachurch.

Unfortunately, in this world, faith and family have been thrown into a cocktail mixed with commerce. God, as the wry and watchful narrator, is slightly troubled by this. 

Zara is the church’s worship leader whose exemplary marriage and vast online following provide her a rice bowl.

When Zara discovers that her husband, Daniel, has been having an affair with a church employee, she chooses to ensure that nobody else finds out. She instructs him to preserve the appearance of reconciliation while the church turns their marital crisis into promotional content with controlled confessions and an approved narrative of forgiveness.

Maya is a documentary director hired to film the couple. With a hidden second camera, she records the moments in which Zara is not performing and can see through to the truth behind their polished testimony. Maya is also a witness to a wider pattern of suppressed lives, from the queer relationships denied public recognition to the women trained to mistake endurance for virtue. 

Maya eventually hands this unedited footage over to Zara. When Zara watches it, she suddenly realises that she has never had true ownership of her marriage or her family. The church had dictated the roots and fruits of her faith and femininity. Taking her infant son, she quietly leaves her husband and the institution that profited from them.

With sociological insight added to theological satire, Love Offering asks what remains of faith when a woman chooses to find herself.