Abstract
Universiti Brunei DarussalamBetween 10 to 20 per cent of all the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Lahu people now subscribe to one or another version of the Christian religion.The largest proportion of present-day Lahu Christians inherited the genre of this Western religion propagated by American Baptist missionaries in the former Kengtung State of Burma (from 1901 to 1966), in Yunnan (from 1920 to 1949), and in North Thailand (from 1968 to 1990). For this reason, it is often thought that pioneer American Baptist among the Lahu, William Marcus Young (1861–1936), was the first to induct a representative of this people into the Christian faith.In fact this is not the case. The first Lahu Christians lived in North Thailand, baptised by long-time Chiang Mai-based American Presbyterian missionary, Daniel McGilvary. This was in 1891, thirteen years before Young’s first baptism of a Lahu in Kengtung, Burma, in October 1904.The paper addresses three questions. Why were Lahu living in upland North Thailand in the early 1890s? Why did one small Lahu community decide to embrace the Christian religion? Finally, why, in stark contrast to Baptist Christianity in the Lahu Mountains, did this fledgling Lahu Presbyterian community disappear, apparently without trace, sometime after 1920?
Highlights
Why were Lahu living in upland North Thailand in the early 1890s? Why did one small Lahu community decide to embrace the Christian religion? why, in stark contrast to Baptist Christianity in the Lahu Mountains, did this fledgling Lahu Presbyterian community disappear, apparently without trace, sometime after 1920?
In 1974 veteran American Baptist missionary-scholar Paul Lewis produced a brief mimeographed report on the state of the Lahu Baptist Church in Thailand, in which he declared that ‘Lahu Christians first came into Thailand from Burma about 1953’
Much of the supportive data for this paper was acquired during the early 1990s from copies of American Presbyterian Mission archives held at Payap University in Chiang Mai
Summary
In 1974 veteran American Baptist missionary-scholar Paul Lewis produced a brief mimeographed report on the state of the Lahu Baptist Church in Thailand, in which he declared that ‘Lahu Christians first came into Thailand from Burma about 1953’. When McGilvary returned to Mae Kon three months later, he was delighted to find the small Lahu community still enthusiastic about becoming Christians He writes (ibid., 326–27) that: On Saturday morning the whole village came down. Ca Hpu Kaw’s little band of outcast Lahu had understood that one had to participate in the ritual of baptism to be formally accepted as a Christian and seem to have expected McGilvary to baptise the whole community there and . Important do they consider the observance of the Sabbath day that they have prohibited their Moosur friends from visiting them on that day Both missionaries and local Christian elders had abandoned any reservations they might once have entertained about admitting the remainder of Ca Hpu Kaw’s Lahu community to church membership. The first baptism of a Lahu in Kengtung, Burma, would not occur until 1904 (Young 1904, 45)
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