Construction is set to start on the largest Christian Church in Cambodia

Construction is set to start on the largest Christian Church in Cambodia, the Khmer Times reports. The city’s Anglican church, Church of Christ Our Peace is set to begin work on an eight-story church and community center on the sight of the former residence of the last pre-Khmer Rouge mayor of Phnom Penh. (proposed church pictured above). Approximately 60 per cent of the funding for the $3 million project has already been raised, the church reports. The Cambodian capital has seen a boom in religious building in the past few years with the government giving its full support to religious pluralism and freedom of worship. In 1975 following the Khmer Rouge victory in the Cambodian civil war, the Communist guerillas closed all of the country’s Christian churches and demolished Notre Dame de Phnom Penh, burning the books in the church library, and converting its cemetery into a banana plantation. The Catholic Cathedral in Battambang was also demolished while the city’s mosque was turned into a pig sty. The new Church of Christ our Peace will have a 300-seat sanctuary and a 200-seat multipurpose hall, allowing the church’s expatriate English-speaking congregation and the local Khmer-speaking congregation to worship simultaneously. The Anglican Church has had a presence in Cambodia since 1993 when King Norodom Sihanouk gave permission to the Archbishop of Canterbury for Anglicans to begin missionary work in the war ravaged country. The Anglican Church in Cambodia presently consists of ten churches and nine preaching stations.