Highland Christianity

Christianity has become one of the most powerful markers of identity in the mountainous borderlands of China and Southeast Asia, also known as Zomia. This region is home to tens of millions of people—including the Ahmao, the Kachin, the Lisu, and many other highlanders—all living at a far remove from the population centers of the lowlands. This volume explores how their creative engagement with Christianity has transformed their communities and reshaped their relationships with nation-states and dominant cultures.

Highland Christianity brings together indigenous, in-group scholars and external researchers to examine Christianity’s complex entanglement with ethnicity and modernity across eastern Zomia. Chapters investigate mass conversions, the creation of Bible orthographies, the indigenization of Christian practice, and the tensions Christianization generated with lowland states and majority populations. Contributors highlight the dramas and ambiguities of these changes while foregrounding the creative agency of highland peoples in reworking the faith to generate cohesion, cultural capital, and renewed forms of belonging. Moving beyond colonial frameworks, this interdisciplinary volume maps the profound and ongoing transformations of communities across this borderland region. It will be an essential resource for scholars and students of world Christianity, Asian studies, and anthropology.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Aminta Arrington, Chijui Hu, Jianxiong Ma, Pum Za Mang, Lagai Zau Nan, Anh-Minh Nguyen-Dang, Yoichi Nishimoto, and Zhu Jili.

“Highland Christianity offers an extraordinarily rich and quite fascinating range of case studies of Christianity in multiple societies that stand on the margins of the better-known societies of Southeast Asia. There is so much of value here for scholars of Christian conversion in the modern world, and of Christian adaptation to diverse cultural settings, not to mention for borderland studies in general. The essays are of uniformly high quality.”—Philip Jenkins, author of Kingdoms of This World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions

“The editors have assembled a first-rate international team of scholars in a book of obvious importance for the recent history of Christianity, but also for illuminating ethnology, Asian tribal languages, and modernization theory. For the Hmong, Lisu, Karen, Miao, Ahmao, and Lahu peoples who live where China, Burman/Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand come together, the surprisingly strong presence of Christian adherence turns out to have resulted not from “the colonization of consciousness” but from conversions experienced for the hill peoples’ own purposes. It is a fine book with importance far beyond its revelations about this one corner of the world.”—Mark Noll, author of The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith

“Through the lenses of indigenization, modernity and ethnicity, this important volume reshapes our understanding of the Christianities of South, Southeast, and East Asia in its pioneering integrated approach to the border-crossing peoples and languages of the uplands. Fascinating case histories draw out missionary and colonial legacies while fore grounding the oppositional identities and local agency shaping Highland Christianity.”—Chloë Starr, author of Chinese Theology: Text and Context

“The mountainous borderlands of Southwest China and Southeast Asia have become fertile soil for the indigenization of Christianity, especially evangelical Protestantism. Until now scholars have largely neglected these popular movements of conversion among ethnic minorities who straddle national boundaries. Highland Christianity rectifies this omission, highlighting the compulsive attraction of missionary orthographies and the modernizing literacy that followed. This book will become the authoritative treatment of the subject.”—Brian Stanley, Professor Emeritus of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh

“Displaying a sophisticated approach to analyzing the complex factors surrounding the embrace of Christianity among the hill peoples of the Southeast Asian borderlands is still largely unknown to scholars of world Christianity. With an admirable attention to the agency and lived experiences of many ethnic groups, this expertly edited collaborative volume is a must read for anyone interested in the processes of Christian conversion, modernization, and ethnic regeneration in landscapes still largely unknown to scholars of world Christianity.”—David Hempton, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

“A compelling analysis of Christianity in highland Asia. It examines how their Christianity enables the Indigenous peoples of this region to creatively construct their identity and ethnicity on their own terms amid the bewildering forces of colonialism and nation-making processes. Instead of analyzing the origins of Christianity as simply a colonial encounter, the contributors demonstrate how it provides social cohesion and intellectual, cultural, and political capital.”—Arkotong Longkumer, author of Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging: The Heraka Movement in Northeast India

Lian Xi is David C. Steinmetz Distinguished Professor of World Christianity at Duke University. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China, and Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China.

David Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University. He is the author of A Grammar of Lisu and coauthor of Language Endangerment.

Ralph A. Litzinger is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and is affiliated with the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and Global Health Institute at Duke University. He is the author of Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging and coeditor of Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Lian Xi

Part 1: The Beginnings of Highland Christianity

chapter 1 Christianity, Modernity, and the

Karen in Burma

Pum Za Mang

chapter 2 Baptist Christianity in the Making of

Modern Kachin Identity in Burma

Lagai Zau Nan

chapter 3 Beyond Belief: Conversion to Christianity

Among the Highlanders in Kon

Tum, Vietnam, 1850–1945

Anh-Minh Nguyen-Dang

chapter 4 The Family of William Young Among

the Lahu: Baptist Mission on the Border

Between China and Burma

Jianxiong Ma

chapter 5 The Making of a Modern Ahmao Intellectual: Han

Jie and A Brief History of the Flowery Miao

Zh u Jili

Part 2: Ethnic Christianity on the

Margins of Nation-States

chapter 6 Eschatological Beliefs in the Christianity of the

Miao in Southwestern China, 1950–1960

Chijui Hu

chapter 7 The Baptist Church’s Civilizing Project and the

Lahu’s Appropriation of Christianity: A Case

Study of the Christian and the Traditionalist

Lahu of Northern Thailand

Yoichi Nishimoto

chapter 8 Performing Expressive Culture,

Performing Governance, and Performing

Togetherness: The Church as a Stage for

the Display of Lisu Identity

Aminta Arrington

Part 3: Borderland Christianity in

Comparative Perspective 201

chapter 9 Christianity and Writing on the China–

Southeast Asia Border

David Bradley

chapter 10 Productions of Knowledge About Highland

Christianity on China’s Southeast Asia

Frontier: A Historical Review

Lian Xi

Selected Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

History

           History of Religion

Religious Studies & Religion

           History of Religion

Sociology

           Sociology of Religion