Sacred Networks and Struggles among the Karen Baptists across the Thailand-Burma Border

Abstract

In this article, I provide a case study of a moving border between Thailand and Burma. Emphasizing the agency of people who become refugees, the article is concerned to point out the important role of religious networks in providing humanitarian assistance, shelter and mobility to stateless Karen refugees. I argue that Christian and Buddhist literate networks- realigned in political exile, develop competing visions of a Karen “homeland.” Arguing that membership in the network is crucial for survival, the article follows the social organization and religious practices in Baptist networks. I examine how the Baptist church network in close partnership with the Karen National Union is able or not able to mobilize refugees for proselytization. Karen refugee leaders and KNU-pastors find analogies in the bible to find an explanation to the suffering of the Karen civil population in the war. The article is interested in the nexus and overlap of humanitarian ideology, Christianity and nationalism in the transitional space between Thailand and Burma. Providing case-studies of individual refugees, the article gives ethnographic sketches from the refugee camp, the countryside and humanitarian assistance to the internally displaced.