Protestants in Myanmar
Encyclopedia
Protestants in Burma make up 3% of that nation's population, many of them Baptists. The Protestant Churches of Burma were begun in the early 19th century by Adoniram Judson
, an American
Baptist
missionary
. Since the 19th century, Christianity has become deeply rooted and has grown stronger through many adversities.
In 1966 all missionaries were expelled by the Burmese government, but the Burmese Church has become a vibrant missionary-sending movement, despite financial limitations and geographic isolation. Baptists, Assemblies of God, Methodists and Anglicans form the strongest denominations in Burma. Many Christians are well-educated, but cannot rise to positions of responsibility.
Most Christians are from the minority ethnic groups such as Karen
, Lisu, Kachin, Chin
, and Lahu
. An estimated 0.1 per cent of the Bamar
population is Christian.
At the age of 25, Adoniram Judson
was the first Protestant missionary
sent from North America
to preach in Burma. He graduated from Brown University
in 1807 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1810. Passionately eager to serve abroad, and convinced that "Asia with its idolatrous myriads, was the most important field in the world for missionary effort" and appeared before the Congregational Church's General Association to appeal for support to their missionary intentions. Impressed by the polite behavior of the 4 men and their sincerity, the elders in 1810 voted to form the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
.
The Judsons and the Newells sailed for Calcutta in early 1812, the first North American missionaries to Asia. They had been advised to try to locate their mission in Burma, but to inquire first in India
how feasible such a mission might be. They were ordered out of India by the British East India Company
, to whom American missionaries were even less welcome than British.
It was another difficult year before the Judsons finally reached their originally intended destination, Burma. Buddhist Burma, Judson was told by the Serampore Baptists, was impermeable to Christian evangelism. Four years passed before Judson dared even to hold a semi-public service. At first he tried adapting to Burmese customs by wearing a yellow robe to mark himself as a teacher of religion, but soon changed to white to show he was not a Buddhist. Then he gave up the whole attempt as artificial and accepted the fact that no matter how much he changed his clothes, no Burmese would identify him as anything but a foreigner. But he was aware of some accommodations to Burmese customs and built a zayat
, the customary bamboo and thatch reception shelter, on the street near his home as a reception room and meeting place for Burmese men. 15 men came to his first public meeting in April 1819. He was encouraged but observed that he suspected that they had probably come more out of curiosity than anything else. Their attention wandered and they soon seemed uninterested. 2 months later he baptized his first Burmese convert, Maung Naw, a 35 year old timber worker from the hill tribes.
By 1820, after 17 years of American Baptist missionary work, Judson reported only ten Burmese converts. Nevertheless there was much to encourage him. He had written a grammar of the language that is still in use today, and had begun to translate the Bible
. His remarkable wife, Ann Hasseltine Judson, was even more fluent in the spoken, conversational language of the people than her more academically literate husband, and made friends everywhere, with the kind wife of the viceroy of Rangoon as quickly as with illiterate workers and women. Moreover a printing press which had been sent from Serampore, and a missionary printer George Gough, whose arrival from America with his wife in 1817, produced the first printed materials in Burmese ever printed in Burma, including 800 copies of Judson's translation of the Gospel of Matthew
. The chronicler of the church, Maung Shwe Wa, concludes this part of the story: "So was born the church in Rangoon – logger and fisherman, the poor and the rich, men and women. One travelled the whole path to Christ in three days; another took two years. But once they had decided for Christ they were his for all time."
One of the early disciples was a teacher, U Shwe Ngong, leader of a group of intellectuals, dissatisfied with Buddhism, who were attracted to the new faith. He was a Deist skeptic, to whose mind the preaching of Judson, once a college skeptic himself, was singularly challenging, but he assured Judson that after consideration he was ready to believe in God, and Jesus Christ and the atonement. Judson, instead of welcoming him to the faith, pressed him further, asking if he believed what he had read in the gospel of Matthew, that Jesus
the son of God died on the cross. He shook his head, "Ah, you have caught me now. I believe that he suffered death, but I cannot believe he suffered the shameful death on the cross." Not long thereafter he came back to tell Judson, "I have been trusting in my own reason, not the word of God... I now believe the crucifixion of Christ because it is contained in scripture."
The essence of Judson's preaching was a combination of conviction of the truth and rationality of the Christian faith, a firm belief in the authority of the Bible, and a determination to make Christianity relevant to the Burmese mind without violating the integrity of the Christian truth, or, as he put it, "to preach the gospel, not anti-Buddhism." By 1823, ten years after his arrival, Judson could take pride that the membership of the little church had grown to eighteen, and that he had finally finished the first draft of his translation of the entire text of the New Testament
in Burmese
.
and Bengal
; Britain responded by attacking and absorbing two Burmese provinces into her India holdings to broaden her trade routes to East Asia. The war was a rough interruption of the Baptists' missionary work. English-speaking Americans were too easily confused with the enemy and suspected of spying.
Judson and Price were arrested and dragged off to the infamous, vermin
-ridden "death prison" of Ava
. Twelve agonizing months later he and Price, along with a small group of surviving Western prisoners, were marched overland, barefoot and sick, for six more months of misery in a primitive village near Mandalay
. Of the sepoy
British prisoners-of-war imprisoned with them, all but one died. The sufferings and brutalities of those twenty long months and days in prison, half-starved, iron-fettered, and sometimes trussed and suspended by his mangle feet with only head and shoulders touching the ground, is described in unexaggerated detail by his wife, Ann, shortly after his release.
The heroic Ann, however, was perhaps the greater model of supreme courage. Heedless of all threats against herself, left alone as the only Western woman in an absolute and anti-Christian monarchy at war with the West, beset with raging fevers and nursing a tiny baby her husband had not yet seen; she rushed from office to office in desperate attempts to keep her husband alive and win his freedom.
The collapse of Burma's armies brought Judson out of prison, but his release was not complete freedom. For several months in 1826 after the surrender, Burma pressed Judson into its service as a translator for the peace negotiations. Some have used Judson's acceptance of a role in the treaty negotiations as evidence of complicity in imperialism
, but it should be noted that he first acted on behalf of the defeated Burmese as translator, not for the Western victors.
But a few months later, Ann was dead, a victim of the long, dreadful months of disease, death, stress and loneliness that had been hers for 21 months. She died alone. Her husband was already out exploring in one of the ceded provinces, Tenasserim. And it was in the wild hills of that newly British province of Tenasserim that the first signs of rapid growth in Protestant Christianity in Burma began. The statistics are startling. Within a few years of the end of the war, Baptist membership doubled on an average of every eight years for the thirty-two years between 1834 and 1866.
Three significant factors had a part, though not the only part, in such growth. Most of the growth was in British-ruled territory, not in the Burmese-ruled kingdom. It may also be significant that after an Anglo-Burmese war, the missionaries were American, not British. But probably the most telling factor was religion. Most of the growth came from animist tribes, not from the major population group, the Buddhist Burmese.
The nation was Burmese; its lost province was British; and the missionaries were American, but the "apostle" of that first numerically significant evangelistic breakthrough was neither British nor American nor Burman. He was a Karen
, Ko Tha Byu, though credit is rightly due also to the three missionary pioneers to the Karen, George Boardman
and his wife, Sarah, and Adoniram Judson.
The Karen people were a hunted minority group of ancient Burmo-Tibetan
ancestry scattered in the forests and jungles of the Salween River
and in the hills along the southeast coast. Judson was the first missionary to make contact with them about 1827 when he ransomed and freed a debt-slave from one of his early converts. The freed slave, Ko Tha Byu, was an illiterate, surly man who spoke almost no Burmese and was reputed to be not only a thief but also a murderer who admitted killing at least thirty men, but could not remember exactly how many more.
In 1828 the former Karen bandit, "whose rough, undisciplined genius, energy and zeal for Christ" had caught the notice of the missionaries, was sent south with a new missionary couple, the Boardmans, into the territory of the strongly animistic, non-Buddhist Karen. There, he was no sooner baptized than he set off into the jungle alone to preach to his fellow tribespeople. Astonishingly, he found them strangely prepared for his preaching. Their ancient oracle traditions, handed down for centuries, contained some startling echoes of the Old Testament
that some scholars conjecture a linkage with Jewish communities (or possibly even Nestorians) before their migrations from western China into Burma perhaps as early as the 12th century.
The core of what they called their "Tradition of the Elders" was a belief in an unchangeable, eternal, all-powerful God, creator of heaven and earth, of man, and of woman formed from a rib taken from the man. They believed in humanity's temptation by a devil, and its fall, and that some day a messiah would come to its rescue. They lived in expectation of a prophecy that white foreigners would bring them a sacred parchment roll.
While the Boardmans and Ko Tha Byu were penetrating the jungles to the south, Adoniram Judson shook off a paralyzing year-long siege of depression that overcame him after the death of his wife, Ann, and set out alone on long canoe trips up the Salween River into the tiger
-infested jungles to evangelize the northern Karen. Between trips he worked untiringly at his lifelong goal of translating the whole Bible into the Burmese language
. When he finished it at last in 1834, he had been labouring on it for twenty-four years. It was printed and published in 1835.
Judson lived for fifteen more years of work in and for Burma. He lived to approve and welcome the first single women missionaries to Burma. A general rule of the mission had hitherto prevented such appointments. It was, said Judson, "probably a good" rule, "but our minds should not be closed" to making exceptions. The first two "exceptions" were extraordinarily exceptional. Miss Sarah Cummings arrived in 1832. Miss Cummings proved her mettle at once, choosing to work alone with Karen evangelists in the malaria
-ridden Salween River valley north of Moulmein, but within two years she died of fever. A second single woman, Eleanor Macomber, after five years of mission to the Ojibway Indians in Michigan
, joined the mission in faraway Burma in 1835. Alone, with the help of Karen evangelistic assistants, she planted a church in a remote Karen village and nurtured it to the point where it could be placed under the care of an ordinary missionary. She lived five years and died of jungle fever.
of 1852-1853 divided Burma into a British south and a Burmese north, a north ruled by one of the best of its monarchs, King Mindon
(1853–1878). That put an end to fifteen years of persecution under Mindon's two predecessors, one of whom is described as "drunken and insane", and the other as "abandoned to pleasure." Mindon brought a measure of reform into a government that had degenerated under hopelessly corrupt governors and arrogant, irresponsible kings. There followed for the Protestant missions a period of highly successful growth. In 1850 almost all of Burma's eight thousand Baptists were in British territory in the southeast (Arakan State) and the Karen southwest (Tenasserim State). The war once again opened the southern center of Burma to the Baptist missionaries, who promptly moved back form their interim center across the bay in Tenasserim to which they had fled during the years of government repression. They moved to Rangoon, Judson's last home, and with them they brought the Baptist Press.
Among their first actions in Rangoon was to call a Missionary Convention in 1853 to discuss mission policy for the next half century. All were agreed that the first key, evangelism, would in the long run depend on the second: a determined effort to accelerate the training of a native Burmese clergy. The missionaries gratefully acknowledged their debt to the 11 Burmese pastors and 120 national preachers, then on the rolls, who, as they put it: "had made the jungles ring with hymns and the praises of God, so that the missionaries, following in their footsteps, had found Christian churches already established." A goal was set: a Burmese ordained pastor for every church and Burmese evangelists to reach out to non-Christians lest the mission be reduced to Christians preaching to Christians without ever touching "the thousands who had not yet decided for Christ."
In this period in the middle of the century the name of Saw (or Thra) Quala stands out. A Karen
, he was the Baptists' second convert after Ko Tha Byu, the "apostle to the Karens". When Francis Mason
, linguist and pioneer to the "heartland" of the Karen tribes, was forced home by ill health in 1857, he decided to turn over the district to his ablest helper, Saw Quala, in whom he had developed the utmost confidence. In the Karen, Saw, he astutely discerned a leader for a second stage of Christian outreach in Burma. Within two years of the time that Mason turned the district over to him, Saw Quala had increased the number of assistants working with him from 3 to 11; they had established 27 new churches; and had baptized 1,880 adult converts. Quala wrote:
And he added in his journal, later, "When I think of my inability to do the work, I weep."
Dr. Mason also pioneered in answering the convention's second call – a request for a more usable translation of the Bible. Not only did Mason encourage the use of Karen evangelists, he, along with Jonathan Wade, made the significant decision to promote a version of the Bible
in the Karen language to supplement what was already being done with the Bible in the national language, Burmese
. The story is told that in 1831 on his first trip into Karen territory, an old man confronted him. "Where is our book?" he asked, referring to the Karen legend mentioned before. "If you bring us our lost book, we will welcome you." Wade was quick to respond. It is said that he reduced the Karen language to writing even before he could speak it, and Dr. Mason took Wade's adaptation of the Burmese alphabet to Karen sounds and threw himself into the arduous task of translating the Bible into Sgaw Karen. Thus did the Karens receive "their Book". The first printed portion was the Sermon on the Mount
in 1837; the New Testament
appeared in successive printing stages from 1843 to 1861, and the Old Testament
in 1863.
churches in Burma.
The famous American Baptist missionaries, Adoniram and Ann Judson
, moved to Yangon
in 1813 when British authorities refused to allow them to stay in India
. The Judsons were in Burma six years before their first convert was baptized. Adoniram Judson gathered a group of believers and labored under many trials, but his missionary tenure of almost 40 years helped firmly establish the Baptist work in Burma. His monumental work included translating the Bible into Burmese
, which was completed in 1834. George Dana Boardman began a work among the Karen
peoples in 1828. Today the Karen Baptist Convention is the largest member body of the Burma Baptist Convention, which was formed in 1865.
HIV/AIDS is a significant problem in Burma. In 1992, the Baptist Convention created a 32-member AIDS commission, because they see the problem as spiritual, as well as social and medical.
In Burma about 6% of the population is Christian
, with two-thirds of them being considered Protestant/Non-Catholic. Almost half of these are Baptists. In 2003, the Convention had 629,146 members in 3513 churches. The Burma Baptist Convention has 17 affiliated conventions under its umbrella, and is a member of the World Council of Churches
and the Baptist World Alliance
.
The Convention operates the Myanmar Institute of Theology
, the leading Christian seminary
in Burma, founded in 1927 and located in Insein
.
Address and Contact of MBC
Myanmar Baptist Convention, 143, Minye Kyawswa Road, Lanmadaw, Yangon, Myanmar. Fax: 95-1-211530, 95-1-221465, General Secretary Ph: 221464 (Res), 9595018934 (HP), Office: 212859, 223096, Email: MBC@mptmail.net.mm , website http://www.mbc1813.com/
is represented in Burma by the Church of the Province of Myanmar
. , it has about 62,000 members.
, mostly to educate the Anglo-Burmese and British
. The Church has become the Headquarters of the Methodist Churches of Myanmar. The School has become a state school since nationalization in 1966, and has been independent of the church eversince.
, the only Burmese denomination to do so.
of Burma. It is also present in China
and India
and is predominantly Baptist
.
Infor: General Secretary: Rev. Dr. Greeta Din (2010) http://www.kbc1913.org/index.php There is a Karen Baptist Church in Singapore www.kbcs.org.sg.
, Burma, Thailand
and a part of India
. Missionaries had been working in the Lisu area since the early 20th century. The first to work among the Lisu, in the Yunnan
province in China, was James O. Fraser
, who also developed the written Lisu language and the Fraser Alphabet
, which today is officially adopted by the Chinese government. Writing and reading in Lisu has been mainly developed by the church. Today there are an estimated 300,000 Lisu believers. The Lisu Church has both the Bible
and a hymn book in their own language.
, growing out of the Pentecostal movement. Since its foundation it has spread to other countries including Burma.
As of 2000, there are two churches, one in Taungphila and Pyindaw Oo, and prayer houses in six different areas: Pyidawtha
, Sakhamayi, Tedim
, Falam
, Nud Kyi Kone, and Yangon Shwebogan .
Adoniram Judson
Adoniram Judson, Jr. was an American Baptist missionary, who served in Burma for almost forty years. At the age of 25, Adoniram Judson became the first Protestant missionary sent from North America to preach in Burma...
, an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
. Since the 19th century, Christianity has become deeply rooted and has grown stronger through many adversities.
In 1966 all missionaries were expelled by the Burmese government, but the Burmese Church has become a vibrant missionary-sending movement, despite financial limitations and geographic isolation. Baptists, Assemblies of God, Methodists and Anglicans form the strongest denominations in Burma. Many Christians are well-educated, but cannot rise to positions of responsibility.
Most Christians are from the minority ethnic groups such as Karen
Karen people
The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...
, Lisu, Kachin, Chin
Chin people
The Chin , known as the Kuki in Assam, are one of the ethnic groups in Burma. The Chins are found mainly in western part of Burma and numbered circa 1.5 million. They also live in nearby Indian states of Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur and Assam. Owing to Mizo influence and Baptist missionaries'...
, and Lahu
Lahu people
The Lahu are an ethnic group of Southeast Asia and China.They are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China, where about 450,000 live in Yunnan province. An estimated 150,000 live in Burma. In Thailand, Lahu are one of the six main hill tribes; their...
. An estimated 0.1 per cent of the Bamar
Bamar
The Bamar are the dominant ethnic group of Burma , constituting approximately two-thirds of the population. The Bamar live primarily in the Irrawaddy basin, and speak the Burmese language, which is also the official language of Burma. Bamar customs and identity are closely intertwined with general...
population is Christian.
History
Adoniram Judson
Adoniram Judson, Jr. was an American Baptist missionary, who served in Burma for almost forty years. At the age of 25, Adoniram Judson became the first Protestant missionary sent from North America to preach in Burma...
was the first Protestant missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
sent from North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
to preach in Burma. He graduated from Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in 1807 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1810. Passionately eager to serve abroad, and convinced that "Asia with its idolatrous myriads, was the most important field in the world for missionary effort" and appeared before the Congregational Church's General Association to appeal for support to their missionary intentions. Impressed by the polite behavior of the 4 men and their sincerity, the elders in 1810 voted to form the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the first American Christian foreign mission agency. It was proposed in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College and officially chartered in 1812. In 1961 it merged with other societies to form the United Church Board for World...
.
The Judsons and the Newells sailed for Calcutta in early 1812, the first North American missionaries to Asia. They had been advised to try to locate their mission in Burma, but to inquire first in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
how feasible such a mission might be. They were ordered out of India by the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
, to whom American missionaries were even less welcome than British.
It was another difficult year before the Judsons finally reached their originally intended destination, Burma. Buddhist Burma, Judson was told by the Serampore Baptists, was impermeable to Christian evangelism. Four years passed before Judson dared even to hold a semi-public service. At first he tried adapting to Burmese customs by wearing a yellow robe to mark himself as a teacher of religion, but soon changed to white to show he was not a Buddhist. Then he gave up the whole attempt as artificial and accepted the fact that no matter how much he changed his clothes, no Burmese would identify him as anything but a foreigner. But he was aware of some accommodations to Burmese customs and built a zayat
Zayat
A zayat is a Burmese building found in almost every village. It serves primarily as a shelter for travelers, at the same time, is also an assembly place for religious occasions as well as meeting for the villagers to discuss the needs and plans of the village. Theravada buddhist monks use...
, the customary bamboo and thatch reception shelter, on the street near his home as a reception room and meeting place for Burmese men. 15 men came to his first public meeting in April 1819. He was encouraged but observed that he suspected that they had probably come more out of curiosity than anything else. Their attention wandered and they soon seemed uninterested. 2 months later he baptized his first Burmese convert, Maung Naw, a 35 year old timber worker from the hill tribes.
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. His remarkable wife, Ann Hasseltine Judson, was even more fluent in the spoken, conversational language of the people than her more academically literate husband, and made friends everywhere, with the kind wife of the viceroy of Rangoon as quickly as with illiterate workers and women. Moreover a printing press which had been sent from Serampore, and a missionary printer George Gough, whose arrival from America with his wife in 1817, produced the first printed materials in Burmese ever printed in Burma, including 800 copies of Judson's translation of the Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
. The chronicler of the church, Maung Shwe Wa, concludes this part of the story: "So was born the church in Rangoon – logger and fisherman, the poor and the rich, men and women. One travelled the whole path to Christ in three days; another took two years. But once they had decided for Christ they were his for all time."
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
the son of God died on the cross. He shook his head, "Ah, you have caught me now. I believe that he suffered death, but I cannot believe he suffered the shameful death on the cross." Not long thereafter he came back to tell Judson, "I have been trusting in my own reason, not the word of God... I now believe the crucifixion of Christ because it is contained in scripture."
The essence of Judson's preaching was a combination of conviction of the truth and rationality of the Christian faith, a firm belief in the authority of the Bible, and a determination to make Christianity relevant to the Burmese mind without violating the integrity of the Christian truth, or, as he put it, "to preach the gospel, not anti-Buddhism." By 1823, ten years after his arrival, Judson could take pride that the membership of the little church had grown to eighteen, and that he had finally finished the first draft of his translation of the entire text of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
in Burmese
Burmese language
The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
.
The First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826)
Two irreconcilable hungers triggered the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824: Burma's desire for more territory, and Britain's desire for more trade. Burma threatened AssamAssam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...
and Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
; Britain responded by attacking and absorbing two Burmese provinces into her India holdings to broaden her trade routes to East Asia. The war was a rough interruption of the Baptists' missionary work. English-speaking Americans were too easily confused with the enemy and suspected of spying.
Judson and Price were arrested and dragged off to the infamous, vermin
Vermin
Vermin is a term applied to various animal species regarded by some as pests or nuisances and especially to those associated with the carrying of disease. Since the term is defined in relation to human activities, which species are included will vary from area to area and even person to person...
-ridden "death prison" of Ava
Ava
Innwa is a city in the Mandalay Division of Burma , situated just to the south of Amarapura on the Ayeyarwady River. Its formal title is Ratanapura , which means City of Gems in Pali. The name Innwa means mouth of the lake, which comes from in , meaning lake, and wa , which means mouth...
. Twelve agonizing months later he and Price, along with a small group of surviving Western prisoners, were marched overland, barefoot and sick, for six more months of misery in a primitive village near Mandalay
Mandalay
Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma. Located north of Yangon on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, the city has a population of one million, and is the capital of Mandalay Region ....
. Of the sepoy
Sepoy
A sepoy was formerly the designation given to an Indian soldier in the service of a European power. In the modern Indian Army, Pakistan Army and Bangladesh Army it remains in use for the rank of private soldier.-Etymology and Historical usage:...
British prisoners-of-war imprisoned with them, all but one died. The sufferings and brutalities of those twenty long months and days in prison, half-starved, iron-fettered, and sometimes trussed and suspended by his mangle feet with only head and shoulders touching the ground, is described in unexaggerated detail by his wife, Ann, shortly after his release.
The heroic Ann, however, was perhaps the greater model of supreme courage. Heedless of all threats against herself, left alone as the only Western woman in an absolute and anti-Christian monarchy at war with the West, beset with raging fevers and nursing a tiny baby her husband had not yet seen; she rushed from office to office in desperate attempts to keep her husband alive and win his freedom.
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, but it should be noted that he first acted on behalf of the defeated Burmese as translator, not for the Western victors.
The rise of the Burma Baptist Church (1826-1850)
The end of the war should have been a time of rejoicing for the mission. As soon as Ann and her husband were released by the Burmese, Mrs Judson wrote that one good result of the war could be that terms of the treaty which ceded Burmese provinces to the British might provide opportunity to expand the witness of the mission into hitherto unreached parts of the country.But a few months later, Ann was dead, a victim of the long, dreadful months of disease, death, stress and loneliness that had been hers for 21 months. She died alone. Her husband was already out exploring in one of the ceded provinces, Tenasserim. And it was in the wild hills of that newly British province of Tenasserim that the first signs of rapid growth in Protestant Christianity in Burma began. The statistics are startling. Within a few years of the end of the war, Baptist membership doubled on an average of every eight years for the thirty-two years between 1834 and 1866.
Three significant factors had a part, though not the only part, in such growth. Most of the growth was in British-ruled territory, not in the Burmese-ruled kingdom. It may also be significant that after an Anglo-Burmese war, the missionaries were American, not British. But probably the most telling factor was religion. Most of the growth came from animist tribes, not from the major population group, the Buddhist Burmese.
The "Karen Apostle" and expanding church growth
Karen people
The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...
, Ko Tha Byu, though credit is rightly due also to the three missionary pioneers to the Karen, George Boardman
George Boardman
George Dana Boardman was born in Livermore, Maine, the son of the Rev. Sylvanus Boardman. He attended Colby College, and was the school's first graduate in 1822. He served as tutor for a year at Colby, then continued his education at Andover Theological Seminary. On February 16, 1825, he was...
and his wife, Sarah, and Adoniram Judson.
The Karen people were a hunted minority group of ancient Burmo-Tibetan
Tibetan people
The Tibetan people are an ethnic group that is native to Tibet, which is mostly in the People's Republic of China. They number 5.4 million and are the 10th largest ethnic group in the country. Significant Tibetan minorities also live in India, Nepal, and Bhutan...
ancestry scattered in the forests and jungles of the Salween River
Salween River
The Salween is a river, about long, that flows from the Tibetan Plateau into the Andaman Sea in Southeast Asia. It drains a narrow and mountainous watershed of that extends into the countries China, Burma and Thailand. Steep canyon walls line the swift, powerful and undammed Salween, one of the...
and in the hills along the southeast coast. Judson was the first missionary to make contact with them about 1827 when he ransomed and freed a debt-slave from one of his early converts. The freed slave, Ko Tha Byu, was an illiterate, surly man who spoke almost no Burmese and was reputed to be not only a thief but also a murderer who admitted killing at least thirty men, but could not remember exactly how many more.
In 1828 the former Karen bandit, "whose rough, undisciplined genius, energy and zeal for Christ" had caught the notice of the missionaries, was sent south with a new missionary couple, the Boardmans, into the territory of the strongly animistic, non-Buddhist Karen. There, he was no sooner baptized than he set off into the jungle alone to preach to his fellow tribespeople. Astonishingly, he found them strangely prepared for his preaching. Their ancient oracle traditions, handed down for centuries, contained some startling echoes of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
that some scholars conjecture a linkage with Jewish communities (or possibly even Nestorians) before their migrations from western China into Burma perhaps as early as the 12th century.
The core of what they called their "Tradition of the Elders" was a belief in an unchangeable, eternal, all-powerful God, creator of heaven and earth, of man, and of woman formed from a rib taken from the man. They believed in humanity's temptation by a devil, and its fall, and that some day a messiah would come to its rescue. They lived in expectation of a prophecy that white foreigners would bring them a sacred parchment roll.
While the Boardmans and Ko Tha Byu were penetrating the jungles to the south, Adoniram Judson shook off a paralyzing year-long siege of depression that overcame him after the death of his wife, Ann, and set out alone on long canoe trips up the Salween River into the tiger
Tiger
The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...
-infested jungles to evangelize the northern Karen. Between trips he worked untiringly at his lifelong goal of translating the whole Bible into the Burmese language
Burmese language
The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
. When he finished it at last in 1834, he had been labouring on it for twenty-four years. It was printed and published in 1835.
Judson lived for fifteen more years of work in and for Burma. He lived to approve and welcome the first single women missionaries to Burma. A general rule of the mission had hitherto prevented such appointments. It was, said Judson, "probably a good" rule, "but our minds should not be closed" to making exceptions. The first two "exceptions" were extraordinarily exceptional. Miss Sarah Cummings arrived in 1832. Miss Cummings proved her mettle at once, choosing to work alone with Karen evangelists in the malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
-ridden Salween River valley north of Moulmein, but within two years she died of fever. A second single woman, Eleanor Macomber, after five years of mission to the Ojibway Indians in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, joined the mission in faraway Burma in 1835. Alone, with the help of Karen evangelistic assistants, she planted a church in a remote Karen village and nurtured it to the point where it could be placed under the care of an ordinary missionary. She lived five years and died of jungle fever.
The Second Anglo-Burmese War and Burmese preacher-evangelists (1850-1880)
Judson died in 1850, just before the Second Anglo-Burmese WarSecond Anglo-Burmese War
The Second Anglo-Burmese War was the second of the three wars fought between the Burmese and the British Empire during the 19th century, with the outcome of the gradual extinction of Burmese sovereignty and independence....
of 1852-1853 divided Burma into a British south and a Burmese north, a north ruled by one of the best of its monarchs, King Mindon
Mindon
Mindon may refer to:*mindon - hypothetical spirit particles for telepathy*Mindon Min -King of Burma*Mindon, Burma - a town...
(1853–1878). That put an end to fifteen years of persecution under Mindon's two predecessors, one of whom is described as "drunken and insane", and the other as "abandoned to pleasure." Mindon brought a measure of reform into a government that had degenerated under hopelessly corrupt governors and arrogant, irresponsible kings. There followed for the Protestant missions a period of highly successful growth. In 1850 almost all of Burma's eight thousand Baptists were in British territory in the southeast (Arakan State) and the Karen southwest (Tenasserim State). The war once again opened the southern center of Burma to the Baptist missionaries, who promptly moved back form their interim center across the bay in Tenasserim to which they had fled during the years of government repression. They moved to Rangoon, Judson's last home, and with them they brought the Baptist Press.
Among their first actions in Rangoon was to call a Missionary Convention in 1853 to discuss mission policy for the next half century. All were agreed that the first key, evangelism, would in the long run depend on the second: a determined effort to accelerate the training of a native Burmese clergy. The missionaries gratefully acknowledged their debt to the 11 Burmese pastors and 120 national preachers, then on the rolls, who, as they put it: "had made the jungles ring with hymns and the praises of God, so that the missionaries, following in their footsteps, had found Christian churches already established." A goal was set: a Burmese ordained pastor for every church and Burmese evangelists to reach out to non-Christians lest the mission be reduced to Christians preaching to Christians without ever touching "the thousands who had not yet decided for Christ."
In this period in the middle of the century the name of Saw (or Thra) Quala stands out. A Karen
Karen people
The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...
, he was the Baptists' second convert after Ko Tha Byu, the "apostle to the Karens". When Francis Mason
Francis Mason
Francis Mason , American missionary and a naturalist, was born in York, England. His grandfather, also Francis Mason, was the founder of the Baptist Society in York, and his father, a shoemaker by trade, was a Baptist lay preacher there.-Early life:After working with his father as a shoemaker for...
, linguist and pioneer to the "heartland" of the Karen tribes, was forced home by ill health in 1857, he decided to turn over the district to his ablest helper, Saw Quala, in whom he had developed the utmost confidence. In the Karen, Saw, he astutely discerned a leader for a second stage of Christian outreach in Burma. Within two years of the time that Mason turned the district over to him, Saw Quala had increased the number of assistants working with him from 3 to 11; they had established 27 new churches; and had baptized 1,880 adult converts. Quala wrote:
And he added in his journal, later, "When I think of my inability to do the work, I weep."
Dr. Mason also pioneered in answering the convention's second call – a request for a more usable translation of the Bible. Not only did Mason encourage the use of Karen evangelists, he, along with Jonathan Wade, made the significant decision to promote a version of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
in the Karen language to supplement what was already being done with the Bible in the national language, Burmese
Burmese language
The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
. The story is told that in 1831 on his first trip into Karen territory, an old man confronted him. "Where is our book?" he asked, referring to the Karen legend mentioned before. "If you bring us our lost book, we will welcome you." Wade was quick to respond. It is said that he reduced the Karen language to writing even before he could speak it, and Dr. Mason took Wade's adaptation of the Burmese alphabet to Karen sounds and threw himself into the arduous task of translating the Bible into Sgaw Karen. Thus did the Karens receive "their Book". The first printed portion was the Sermon on the Mount
Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount is a collection of sayings and teachings of Jesus, which emphasizes his moral teaching found in the Gospel of Matthew...
in 1837; the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
appeared in successive printing stages from 1843 to 1861, and the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
in 1863.
Burma Baptist Convention
The Burma Baptist Convention is an association of BaptistBaptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
churches in Burma.
The famous American Baptist missionaries, Adoniram and Ann Judson
Adoniram Judson
Adoniram Judson, Jr. was an American Baptist missionary, who served in Burma for almost forty years. At the age of 25, Adoniram Judson became the first Protestant missionary sent from North America to preach in Burma...
, moved to Yangon
Yangon
Yangon is a former capital of Burma and the capital of Yangon Region . Although the military government has officially relocated the capital to Naypyidaw since March 2006, Yangon, with a population of over four million, continues to be the country's largest city and the most important commercial...
in 1813 when British authorities refused to allow them to stay in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. The Judsons were in Burma six years before their first convert was baptized. Adoniram Judson gathered a group of believers and labored under many trials, but his missionary tenure of almost 40 years helped firmly establish the Baptist work in Burma. His monumental work included translating the Bible into Burmese
Burmese language
The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
, which was completed in 1834. George Dana Boardman began a work among the Karen
Karen people
The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...
peoples in 1828. Today the Karen Baptist Convention is the largest member body of the Burma Baptist Convention, which was formed in 1865.
HIV/AIDS is a significant problem in Burma. In 1992, the Baptist Convention created a 32-member AIDS commission, because they see the problem as spiritual, as well as social and medical.
In Burma about 6% of the population is Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, with two-thirds of them being considered Protestant/Non-Catholic. Almost half of these are Baptists. In 2003, the Convention had 629,146 members in 3513 churches. The Burma Baptist Convention has 17 affiliated conventions under its umbrella, and is a member of the World Council of Churches
World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches is a worldwide fellowship of 349 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service. It is a Christian ecumenical organization that is based in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland...
and the Baptist World Alliance
Baptist World Alliance
The Baptist World Alliance is a worldwide alliance of Baptist churches and organizations, formed in 1905 at Exeter Hall in London during the first Baptist World Congress.-History:...
.
Executive Secretaries
- Rev.Dr.Zaw Win
- Rev.Saw Samson (A)
The Convention operates the Myanmar Institute of Theology
Myanmar Institute of Theology
The Myanmar Institute of Theology is a Protestant Christian Baptist seminary located in Insein Township, Yangon, Myanmar. The Judson Research Center and the Peace Studies Center are parts of the Myanmar Institute of Theology...
, the leading Christian seminary
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
in Burma, founded in 1927 and located in Insein
Insein
Not to be confused with Insein, KaleInsein Township is located in the northern Yangon. The township comprises 21 wards, and shares borders with Shwepyitha township in the north, Hlaingthaya township in the west, and Mingaladon township in the east and south...
.
Departments
- Treasury
- Ministers Council
- Evangelical & Mission Department
- Theology Department
- Christian Education Department
- Men Department
- Women Department
- Press & Publication Department
- Youth department
- Leadership Development Department
- Christian Communication Department
- Christian Development Department
- Facility Department
Address and Contact of MBC
Myanmar Baptist Convention, 143, Minye Kyawswa Road, Lanmadaw, Yangon, Myanmar. Fax: 95-1-211530, 95-1-221465, General Secretary Ph: 221464 (Res), 9595018934 (HP), Office: 212859, 223096, Email: MBC@mptmail.net.mm , website http://www.mbc1813.com/
Anglicanism
The Anglican CommunionAnglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is an international association of national and regional Anglican churches in full communion with the Church of England and specifically with its principal primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury...
is represented in Burma by the Church of the Province of Myanmar
Church of the Province of Myanmar
The Church of the Province of Myanmar in Asia is a member church of the Anglican Communion. The province is bordered by China on the north, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west and India on the northwest, with the Andaman Sea to the south and the Bay of Bengal to the...
. , it has about 62,000 members.
Methodist Church
Methodist missionaries entered the country along with the British once Burma became a British colony in the late 19th century. Methodists established, similarly to the Anglicans, schools in the country, most notably the Methodist English High School in YangonYangon
Yangon is a former capital of Burma and the capital of Yangon Region . Although the military government has officially relocated the capital to Naypyidaw since March 2006, Yangon, with a population of over four million, continues to be the country's largest city and the most important commercial...
, mostly to educate the Anglo-Burmese and British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The Church has become the Headquarters of the Methodist Churches of Myanmar. The School has become a state school since nationalization in 1966, and has been independent of the church eversince.
Christian Reformed Church in Burma
The Christian Reformed Church in Burma is a reformed church of Burma. It was founded in 1985. It has 50 congregations. It belongs to the Reformed Ecumenical CouncilReformed Ecumenical Council
The Reformed Ecumenical Council is an international organization of CalvinistChurches. It has 39 member denominations from 25 countries in its membership, and those churches have about 12 million people together. It was founded in 1946 as the Reformed Ecumenical Synod...
, the only Burmese denomination to do so.
Kachin Church
Kachin Church is a church centered in Kachin StateKachin State
Kachin State , is the northernmost state of Burma. It is bordered by China to the north and east; Shan State to the south; and Sagaing Division and India to the west. It lies between north latitude 23° 27' and 28° 25' longitude 96° 0' and 98° 44'. The area of Kachin State is . The capital of the...
of Burma. It is also present in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and is predominantly Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
.
Karen Baptist Convention
Karen Baptist ConventionKaren Baptist Convention
', Myanmar was established in 1913. It is located in Lanmadaw Tsp, Yangon, Myanmar. Today the Karen Baptist Convention is the largest member body of the Myanmar Baptist Convention, which was formed in 1865. Leaderships in the organization are for a four-year term and can only be re-elected for one...
Infor: General Secretary: Rev. Dr. Greeta Din (2010) http://www.kbc1913.org/index.php There is a Karen Baptist Church in Singapore www.kbcs.org.sg.
Lisu Church
Lisu Church is a Christian church of an ethnic minority of southern ChinaChina
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Burma, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and a part of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Missionaries had been working in the Lisu area since the early 20th century. The first to work among the Lisu, in the Yunnan
Yunnan
Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...
province in China, was James O. Fraser
James O. Fraser
James Outram Fraser was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He pioneered work among the Lisu people of Southwestern China in the early part of the 20th century.- First years in Yunnan:...
, who also developed the written Lisu language and the Fraser Alphabet
Fraser alphabet
The Fraser alphabet or Old Lisu Alphabet is an artificial script invented around 1915 by Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen preacher from Myanmar, and improved by the missionary James O. Fraser, to write the Lisu language. It is a single-case alphabet....
, which today is officially adopted by the Chinese government. Writing and reading in Lisu has been mainly developed by the church. Today there are an estimated 300,000 Lisu believers. The Lisu Church has both the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and a hymn book in their own language.
True Jesus Church in Burma
The True Jesus Church is a nontrinitarian Christian denomination begun in ChinaChina
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, growing out of the Pentecostal movement. Since its foundation it has spread to other countries including Burma.
As of 2000, there are two churches, one in Taungphila and Pyindaw Oo, and prayer houses in six different areas: Pyidawtha
Pyidawtha
Pyidawtha is a village located in the Kalay Township, Sagaing Division, northern Myanmar . The total estimated population is 4,500 people. It is one of the major places where the Tedim Zomi people live....
, Sakhamayi, Tedim
Tedim
Tedim is a town in Chin State in the northwestern part of Myanmar. The name "Tedim" was derived from a pool on the top of the hills that used to be twinkling under sun's light, therefore, called "te " and "dim " in local Paite dialect.-Early history:As a result of lack of a formal writing system...
, Falam
Falam (town)
Falam is a town in north-western Burma near Burma's western border with the Indian state of Mizoram. The town was originally founded by the British in 1892, and became an important place for the British government to rule the whole Chin Hills at that time...
, Nud Kyi Kone, and Yangon Shwebogan .
See also
- Christianity in BurmaChristianity in BurmaChristianity in Burma has a history dating to the early 18th century.-Roman Catholicism in Burma:There is a significant Roman Catholic minority among the churches of Burma.-Protestantism in Burma:...
- Myanmar Institute of TheologyMyanmar Institute of TheologyThe Myanmar Institute of Theology is a Protestant Christian Baptist seminary located in Insein Township, Yangon, Myanmar. The Judson Research Center and the Peace Studies Center are parts of the Myanmar Institute of Theology...
- Roman Catholicism in MyanmarRoman Catholicism in MyanmarThe Roman Catholic Church in Burma is part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and curia in Rome. The church is overseen by an Apostolic Delegate. As of 2006 the delegate is Salvatore Pennacchio, who is also the Apostolic Nuncio of Thailand.There are...
- Myanmar Baptist Convention