By Mark H. Hunter, Special to the Message
The Kachin people moved down from the Tibetan Plateau into northern Myanmar in the 10th Century. They worshiped animal spirits but also a Creator God of Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence. There are about a million Kachin, according to officials.
[img_assist|nid=7279|title=Burmese Christian|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=64]The first several American missionaries to the Kachin people died of malaria but William H. Roberts in 1879 opened a primary school. He baptized several Kachin in 1882. In the following years more missionaries translated the Bible into Kachin language and opened dozens of health clinics and schools that were all closed in 1963 when a Socialist government took over.
Military dictatorships have continued to oppress the Kachin as well as the Karen tribes up to the current rule of Gen. Than Shwe.
Myanmar Baptist Convention
The Myanmar Baptist Convention is the result of the early work of American Baptist missionaries Adoniram and Anne Judson, who went to Yangon, Burma, in 1813. Judson is credited for being one of America’s first missionaries of any denomination and he inspired many other denominations to send missionaries to foreign countries.
He and his wife labored for six years before their first convert was baptized. Judson learned the Burmese language and translated the entire Bible into Burmese, a work that took until 1834 to complete.[img_assist|nid=7279|title=Burmese Christian|desc=About two dozen men, women, teenaged boys and girls have been meeting at Parkview Baptist each Sunday afternoon since late January to worship in their own language. Not all the group’s members are Baptists, explained Nhkum Lama, one of the leaders, so they named their group the Myanmar Christian Fellowship.|link=none|align=right|width=640|height=407]
About two-thirds of the Christian population is considered Protestant and almost half of them are Baptist. In 2003, the Myanmar Baptist Convention listed 629,146 members in 3,513 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 United States official policy of persecution
According to the U.S. State Department, the nation of Myanmar – which used to be called Burma – is on the department’s list of “countries of particular concern” because of the “most severe violations of religious freedom.”
Burma, which is nearly the size of Texas, is fifth on a list of countries that restrict religious freedom as an official policy, according to the Pew Forum, a group that monitors religious issues worldwide. Saudi Arabia tops the list of offenders, followed by Iran, Uzbekistan, China, and Egypt.
More than a half-million Burmese have fled their country since 2007, according to the CIA’s latest World Factbook, and the country, which is ruled by a military junta, is a primary source of human trafficking of women as sex slaves and children as slaves from Malaysia to China. It is second only to Afghanistan in poppy production for opium and heroin.
According to Persecution News, a recent flare-up of violence against Christians was provoked by the military junta, led by Gen. Than Shwe, in December of 2010, who declared the ethnic minority tribes must adopt Buddhism as the official religion or they will be viewed as “insurgents.”
Since then, dozens of villages were sacked and burned in the Karen state and tens of thousands have fled into nearby Thailand.
Burma is 24th in the world in population, with more than 53 million people made up of seven major ethnic groups or tribes: Burman, 68 percent; Shan, 9 percent; Karen, 7 percent; Rakhine, 4 percent; Chinese, 3 percent; Indian, 2 percent; Mon, 2 percent; and “other” at 5 percent, according to the CIA.
About 40 percent of the Karen tribe are Christians, according to several missionary groups and are the most persecuted of all the groups.
More than 25,000 Burmese die of AIDS each year and about 240,000 people are infected, according to the CIA. The equatorial, mostly jungle nation is 50th in the world in infant mortality and 64th in the world with AIDS.
One of the poorest nations on earth, per capita income is $1,100 per year, and more than a third of the population lives below the international poverty line, which is far below America’s poverty line, according to the State Department. Eighty-nine percent of the population are Buddhist, with only six percent practicing Christians, three percent Muslim and one percent practicing animism or ancestor worship.
The Kachin people moved down from the Tibetan Plateau into northern Myanmar in the 10th Century. They worshiped animal spirits but also a Creator God of Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence. There are about a million Kachin, according to officials.
The first several American missionaries to the Kachin people died of malaria but William H. Roberts in 1879 opened a primary school. He baptized several Kachin in 1882. In the following years more missionaries translated the Bible into Kachin language and opened dozens of health clinics and schools that were all closed in 1963 when a Socialist government took over.
Military dictatorships have continued to oppress the Kachin as well as the Karen tribes up to the current rule of Gen. Than Shwe.
SIDEBAR – Official policy of persecution
According to the U.S. State Department, the nation of Myanmar – which used to be called Burma – is on the department’s list of “countries of particular concern” because of the “most severe violations of religious freedom.”
Burma, which is nearly the size of Texas, is fifth on a list of countries that restrict religious freedom as an official policy, according to the Pew Forum, a group that monitors religious issues worldwide. Saudi Arabia tops the list of offenders, followed by Iran, Uzbekistan, China, and Egypt.
More than a half-million Burmese have fled their country since 2007, according to the CIA’s latest World Factbook, and the country, which is ruled by a military junta, is a primary source of human trafficking of women as sex slaves and children as slaves from Malaysia to China. It is second only to Afghanistan in poppy production for opium and heroin.
According to Persecution News, a recent flare-up of violence against Christians was provoked by the military junta, led by Gen. Than Shwe, in December of 2010, who declared the ethnic minority tribes must adopt Buddhism as the official religion or they will be viewed as “insurgents.”
Since then, dozens of villages were sacked and burned in the Karen state and tens of thousands have fled into nearby Thailand.
Burma is 24th in the world in population, with more than 53 million people made up of seven major ethnic groups or tribes: Burman, 68 percent; Shan, 9 percent; Karen, 7 percent; Rakhine, 4 percent; Chinese, 3 percent; Indian, 2 percent; Mon, 2 percent; and “other” at 5 percent, according to the CIA.
About 40 percent of the Karen tribe are Christians, according to several missionary groups and are the most persecuted of all the groups.
More than 25,000 Burmese die of AIDS each year and about 240,000 people are infected, according to the CIA. The equatorial, mostly jungle nation is 50th in the world in infant mortality and 64th in the world with AIDS.
One of the poorest nations on earth, per capita income is $1,100 per year, and more than a third of the population lives below the international poverty line, which is far below America’s poverty line, according to the State Department. Eighty-nine percent of the population are Buddhist, with only six percent practicing Christians, three percent Muslim and one percent practicing animism or ancestor worship.