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1. Introduction: Missionary Movements and the Coming of Christianity to Southeast Asia
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
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Missionary Movements and Coming of Christianity to Southeast Asia 1 1 Chapter 1 Introduction: Missionary Movements and the Coming of Christianity to Southeast Asia Christianity in Southeast Asia is in many ways a relatively recent phenomenon, with the most significant events taking place from the late nineteenth century onwards. Certainly compared with religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, Christianity in the context of Southeast Asia as a whole must be considered a minority religion and one that has only recently begun to make a cultural impact. Yet this impact is by no means negligible, and has played quite an important role in shaping some aspects of Asian modernity, especially in the areas of education, medical and social work, and in laying the foundation for significant international networks in the age of Asian diasporas and globalization. The earliest signs of a Christian presence in Southeast Asia possibly date back to the seventh century; archaeological finds suggest that there were a number of Christian settlements (originating in Central Asia, and spreading through India) in the Malay Peninsula and parts of Sumatra and Java (Gillman and 2 Christianity in Southeast Asia Klimkeit 1999, pp. 307–9). However, little is known about these early Christian settlements, and they certainly had no lasting impact on the early kingdoms and cultures of Southeast Asia. It was only in the early sixteenth century that Christianity entered Southeast Asia to make a sustained impact, and it was in large part because religion entered together with mercantile and military interests that this sustained presence was effected. From this point onwards, the spread of Christianity in Asia is connected, if in complex ways, to European colonial interests. It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century, after most of the Southeast Asian nations gained independence, that indigenous leadership and growth in the churches took place. Catholicism arrived in Southeast Asia well before the main Protestant missionary movements. The earliest sites of Catholic influence in Southeast Asia were Malacca, a port which the Portuguese occupied in 1511, and the Philippine islands, which Spain claimed from 1521, although it was not until the latter part of the sixteenth century that their control over the islands was complete. The impact of Christianity was quite different in these two cases, since the Portuguese and Spanish forms of colonialism placed quite different degrees of emphasis on religious conversion. By all accounts the Portuguese seemed much less inclined to push the proselytizing agenda: as a small nation interested primarily in trade, they did not have the resources to establish more substantial a colonial presence than a number of ports and settlements scattered across the world. With only a few exceptions, the Portuguese did not exert as systematic and forceful a control over the hinterlands of their ports as did the later European colonial powers, and this also meant that their cultural legacy in terms of religious conversion was less pronounced. Other factors determining the extent of Catholic influence in these two sites include the duration of control by the colonial [44.201.131.213] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:37 GMT) Missionary Movements and Coming of Christianity to Southeast Asia 3 power, and the moderating force of other colonial powers and their religious policies and affinities. The Portuguese colonial influence in Southeast Asia, as in most parts of the world, waned in the seventeenth century, and they were ousted from Malacca by the Dutch in 1641. The Dutch, who had fought their own war of independence against Catholic rulers and whose national Church, the Lutheran Reformed church, was hostile to Catholicism, did their best to stifle Catholicism wherever they encountered it in their colonial expansion, including in Malaya and the Indonesian islands (Roxborogh 1992, pp. 7–8). In contrast, the Spanish exerted almost continuous control over the Philippines for close to 400 years until 1898, when the islands were ceded to the Americans. While the Americans also brought Protestant missionaries who were keen to convert the locals to their own form of Christianity, they were hardly as hostile to Catholicism as were the Dutch, and initially made little headway against the long-entrenched Catholicism of the Filipinos. The Portuguese also introduced Catholicism to Myanmar and Cambodia in the sixteenth century, as they consolidated their control of trade routes east of India and north of the Straits of Malacca. However, as with most of the other Portuguese settlements in Asia, the religious influence declined sharply with the contraction of the Portuguese empire in the...