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 Mäkelä,
Jaakko. Khrischak Issara: The Independent Churches in Thailand,
Their Historical Background, Contextual Setting, and Theological
Thinking. Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi University
Press, 2000.
Mäkelä's
Khrischak Issara is an important contribution to understanding
the complex and little studied phenomenon of Thai Protestant independent
churches and lays the foundation for an historical understanding
of the independent church movement that emerged in Thailand after
World War II. Mäkelä estimates that as of 1998 the independent
churches accounted for just over 10% of the total Protestant membership
in Thailand and roughly 25% of all Protestant church members in
Bangkok. The independent churches, that is to say, are an increasingly
significant segment of the total Protestant church community in
Thailand. By their very nature, however, the independent churches
are fragmented and hard to bring together under one interpretive
umbrella—which fact makes this book a significant venture.
Chapter
One introduces the reader to the topic of the book, which is actually
the final, printed version of Mäkelä's doctoral dissertation.
Chapter Two comprises the requisite background chapter, including
an introduction to Thai society, the history of Thai Protestantism
up to World War II, and the development of the Protestant churches
in Bangkok. Although the author has surveyed independent churches
throughout the country, his attention is focused on the independent
churches of Bangkok. In Chapter Three, he describes the pre-history
of the independent churches and then recounts their histories,
according to four categories. In his final chapter, Chapter Four,
the author considers the independent churches' understanding on
a whole range of theological issues. The book includes numerous
lists and statistical tables and a sizeable, important bibliography.
The
study's accomplishments. Independent churches are not always
easy to locate or contact, and sometimes they are unwilling to
cooperate with outside researchers, so that simply bringing together
so much information on such a confusing subject is in and of itself
an important accomplishment. Beyond that, one of the book's most
important contributions is that it puts the independent churches
in their larger context. Mäkelä urges the importance
of American evangelicalism (along with
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Finnish Pentecostalism and the Korean mega-churches) to the development
of the independent churches. He also reminds his readers on numerous
occasions that "mainline" agencies including especially
American Presbyterian missions and the Church of Christ in Thailand
(CCT) have also been important to the history of the independent
churches. The independent church movement began as a protest against
the CCT and the Presbyterians, and many of the earliest leaders
of that movement began their journey of faith in the CCT. At the
same time, Mäkelä is sensitive to church history themes
and patterns going back to the first century. Overall, then, he
is able to show that the independent church story in Thailand,
fragmented and intricate as it is, is still one story and has
clear connections to the total Thai Protestant historical experience.
Mäkelä also makes some progress in bringing order to the chaos of independent
church fragmentation. He provides a useful classification of the
churches based on their origins and historical development (page
46). He relies on their membership in the Evangelical Fellowship
of Thailand (EFT) to further underscore the fact that these churches
share a certain commonality. The author also identifies common
patterns and themes and a general structure of historical development
that further strengthen the sense that the many stories of these
churches can be told as one story (pages 78-79).
The study
also sets the historical record straight on important matters.
This is particularly the case regarding the relationship of the
independent churches to the famous Chinese evangelist, Dr. John
Sung, who conducted a series of revivals in Thailand in 1938 and
1939 that have had an impact on the course of Thai Protestant
church history down to the present. Mäkelä demonstrates
that the independent churches are not as historically tied to
Sung as they have thought, especially in Pentecostal circles.
He argues that Ach. Boonmark Kittisarn, the virtual founder of
the independent church movement, is a figure of far more consequence;
Song's influence has been mediated through Boonmark and a few
other key church leaders (see page 152).
The book
contains many insights. Two example will have to suffice here.
First, Mäkelä observes that the theological position
that Wan Phetchsongkram, a key Pentecostal figure, holds regarding
the church shows strong parallels to the Catholic
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understanding of the church. The church, Ach. Wan
thinks, plays a key role in the divine plan of salvation (page
187). Second, another intriguing insight is the author's contention
that the development of the independent church movement in Thailand
shows parallels with developments in Thai Buddhist revivalist
and reform movements, such as Dhammakaya and Santi Asoke (pages
138-139). Unfortunately, he does not make the parallels as clearly
as we might have wished. It is an insight that deserves a great
deal more elucidation.
Problems & Issues. The most pressing problem facing the reader
of Khrischak Issara is the lack of an overall, unifying
historical chronology. One does not gain a clear sense of the
historical development of the independent churches as the author
tells their stories in distinct, unrelated sections, church by
church. The book does much better in dealing with the historical
background to the independent church movement than it does with
the churches themselves. Although Mäkelä makes it clear
that the many individual church stories comprise one greater story,
he himself has not integrated those stories into the single story.
As one example, the study introduces the founding of the EFT in
1969 and carries its story into the 1980s before the
author discusses the founding of the earliest independent churches,
which were established well before the EFT. The text, more largely,
skips back and forth across the decades so that the reader cannot
see how the individual histories relate to each other. In Section
3.3 (pp. 88-107), for example, the study treats the individual
histories of one category of congregations, called "Evangelical
Free Churches." It is not clear from these histories why
the selected churches fit into this category or what common elements
of historical experience they share. It should be added, however,
that the presence of three tables listing the independent churches
in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and the rest of the country does help
somewhat because they include the founding dates for each congregation.
This approach to the history of the independent church movement
also means that one of the key events in post-World War II history,
the T. L. Osborn revival campaign of 1956, receives much less
attention than it deserves. That event sparked the first serious
growth of Pentecostalism in Thailand, and while this study mentions
it in passing it does not describe either the event itself or
its impact on the independent church movement.
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One other
point at which Khrischak Issara needs some further re-working
is in its treatment of the CCT. Throughout the study, the CCT
receives considerable attention although it is not a part of the
independent church movement. While Mäkelä does at times
relate his discussions of CCT issues to the independent churches,
at other points there is no apparent connection at all. As one
example, he starts his section on theological education (pages
159-162) by describing the McGilvary Faculty of Theology, Payap
University, the CCT's "flagship" seminary. It is not
clear why. In that same section, he goes on to discuss several
other seminaries that are not formally related to the independent
churches, also without making any connection between the seminaries
and those churches.
To return
for a moment to the strengths of Khrischak Issara, one
of those strengths is its fair-minded critical assessment of the
independent church movement. By-and-large, that assessment is
cogent and helpful. As is almost inevitably the case, however,
at some points Mäkelä's comments are not as helpful
as is generally the case. His claim, for example, that the CCT
constitution's use of the word khrischak (church) demonstrates
a weakness in Thai ecclesiology is unsubstantiated, and it is
not clear why he thinks so. (pages 167-168) The proposition seems
doubtful in light of his own repeated statement that the independent
churches, using the term khrischak, focus much of their
theological concern on the nature and the life of the church.
There are
only a few points at which one would take active exception to
the author's analysis. One of those few bears mentioning. The
author claims, "Within the CCT, contextualization has especially
meant dialogue with Buddhists." He then cites the example
of the Sinclair Thompson Lectures as proof of his statement (pages
209-210). One could only wish that Mäkelä is correct
on this point; but so far as I can tell he is not. The Thompson
Lectures have generated little interest among members of and had
very little impact on the CCT outside of a small circle of theologically
trained individuals. The contextualization of the Gospel by CCT
churches and agencies, rather, has been a largely unconscious
effort to adapt the Western religion of the missionaries to the
social and cultural realties of Thailand. CCT churches have generally
eschewed overt inter-faith dialogue, and those individuals who
engage in it are looked upon with suspicion. CCT contextualization
has much more to do with the
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hidden
process of taking what has been received from the Western church
and reworking it locally.
On balance,
we return to the conclusion that Khrischak Issara is
an important addition to the study of Thai church history and
theology. Although it does not put all of the pieces of the independent
church puzzle together, it does give us a framework for assembling
that puzzle. It is a generally readable, insightful start towards
a standard history of the independent church movement in Thailand.
Walls,
Andrew F. "From Christendom to World Christianity: Missions
and the Demographic Transformation of the Church." The
Princeton Seminary Bulletin 22, 3 (New Series, 2001: 306-330.
I've chosen
to review this article because it provides a cogent analysis of
perhaps the most important trend in the history of twentieth-century
Christianity. Walls' subject is what he terms the "demographic
transformation of the church" from a religion dominated by
Europe to one that finds the majority of its adherents located
in Africa, Asia, and South America. He terms this change, "the
greatest demographic change within the Christian faith since the
conversion of the Western barbarians." (page 315)
Walls opens
his analysis by describing two key moments in Protestant missionary
history; the first is Dr. James S. Dennis' lectures on missions
at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1893 and the second is the
World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, 1910. Walls notes that
Dennis' 1893 discussion of Christian expansion was generally upbeat,
and he takes particular note of Dennis' statistics comparing church
growth in the United States with churches in Asia and Africa.
Those statistics show the Asian and African churches, taken together,
were growing much more rapidly than the churches in America. Of
the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA),
Walls summarizes Dennis as saying, "And not a single American
presbytery could come anywhere near the rate of growth of the
Presbytery of Laos [northern Thailand]. Laos was the 'banner presbytery
of the whole Presbyterian church.'" (page 310) That is to
say, a demographic trend away from the West was already apparent
before the turn of the last century. Walls makes it clear that
Edinburgh, 1910, shared Dennis' optimism of two decades earlier
and planned for
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an even greater expansion
of the Christian faith throughout the world; the conference was
not aware, however, of the significance of growth of churches
outside of the West. The importance of that growth did not become
apparent until after World War I, an event that marked the true
beginning of the end for Western domination of the Christian religion.
The rest of the twentieth century, Walls observes, was marked
by a "great recession from the Christian faith in the West"
and "an equally massive accession to that faith in the non-Western
world." (page 322). He notes, for example, that, "A
century ago there were hardly any Christians among the aboriginal
peoples of North East India, and Nepal was a land closed to Christianity
even fifty years ago; now a vast belt of actively Christian peoples
extends from Nepal and North East India into South West China,
Myanmar, and Thailand—a great unnoticed Asian Christian constituency."
(page 323). In the course of his presentation, Walls throws out
tantalizing tidbits such as, "There are now far more Muslims
in England than there are Presbyterians in Scotland." (page
323)
The author
attributes much of this vast change in world Christian demographics
to the Western missionary movement, arguing that it could not
have taken place apart from that movement. He concludes, "In
other words, there has been a century-long process of cross-cultural
diffusion of Christianity with the Western missionary as a connecting
terminal; and the most curious feature of the process is that
during the period in which the Christian faith crossed cultural
frontiers into African and Asian communities it lost its hold
on much of the West." (page 324) Walls argues that we should
not be surprised that this is the case as it reflects a long-standing
characteristic of Christian expansion, namely that, "The
process by which Christianity spreads is not progressive, but
serial." (page 324). It does not, that is, proceed from a
single center outward; rather, it has constantly been moving its
demographic center and is doing so again.
From its
inception, the church has grown through a process of "cross-cultural
fertilization" by which that geographical center and location
has shifted from the Middle East to the Mediterranean to Europe
(and, by extension, North America)—and now has shifted to regions
outside of Europe and North America. The process began, he contends,
in the earliest church, which was a Jewish church. Judaism generally
received Gentiles only as proselytes, meaning that they had to
remove themselves
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from Gentile culture
and turn themselves into fully practicing Jews in order to "be"
Jewish. The Jewish church, however, decided to accept converts
who did not make themselves over into Jews (see Acts 15 and Galatians
2). Converts to Christ remained Greek even as they became Christian.
Thus, Walls sums up his argument by observing, "Issues of
culture are at the heart of Christian faith." (page 326)
There is
a growing body of statistics from around the world that confirms
Walls' contention that a global Christian demographic shift southward
and eastward is taking place ever more rapidly. His article, furthermore,
encourages us to pause for a moment's reflection. Many of us here
in Thailand are still in the habit of associating "the church"
with Europe and North America—even if we are consciously aware
of the fact that only a minority of practicing Christians live
on those two continents. That's a habit we have to break. Many
of us are also in the habit of thinking of Thai Christianity as
being peripheral to the world Christian movement. We have to break
this habit, too. It is striking to consider that Thailand falls
within what Walls terms, as we saw above, "a vast belt of
actively Christian peoples."
There's
still another thought that we must necessarily entertain. Many
of us have long been inclined to pay attention to the anti-cultural
attitudes and behavior of the nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries,
the assumption being that their mission must have been a failure
because of their narrow-mindedness. But Walls argues otherwise.
He all but celebrates the Western missionary movement's success
in transporting the faith beyond the shores of Europe and North
America. Does the history of Protestant missions in Thailand warrant
such celebration?. Has missionary evangelism successfully delivered
the Christian faith to Siam/Thailand? Is Thailand in the process
of successfully receiving the faith? Was there a successful receipt
of the faith in spite of an inept delivery? Or, does Thailand's
apparently successful reception of Christianity reflect the Protestant
missionary movement's competent delivery of the faith? Although
the history of Protestant evangelism in Thailand has received
some attention, no one so far as I know has tried to answer these
questions in light of the global statistics highlighted by Walls.
Finally,
what does it mean for the Thai Protestant church to see itself
as an Asian participant in the contemporary demographic transformation
of the Christian faith? For one thing, such a perspective suggests
that the Thai churches will do well
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to stop being overtly dependent on Western theologies and ecclesiastical
ways of doing things. "Subterranean" Thai theologies
and covert strategies for a variety of church activities already
exist, and it is incumbent on the churches to shape the subterranean
and the covert into the explicit and articulate. I remember, for
example, a paper presented to a seminar on Thai theology on the
subject of "making disciples" (saang sawok)
that took exception to the generally positive, biblically informed
treatment of the topic among Thai church educators and leaders.
The paper argued, rather, that in a Thai context the term "making
disciples" can be taken to mean something like "creating
a personal entourage." Discipling in the Thai context can
be a dangerously self-serving activity, and pastors should be
warned away from making disciples in this cultural sense rather
than commended for doing so! There are dozens and hundreds of
questions that need to be asked anew from within the cultures
of Thailand, using the languages and the thought-ways of Thailand
to seek answers to them.
If the Thai
church is one of the churches of the future, it would seem to
be only wise for it to begin to work out concretely and theologically
where it is and where it wants to go. Being the church of the
future is not a privilege or a matter of self-congratulations.
It is a matter of making good on the movement of the Spirit, which
seems bent on this journey eastward and southward for many decades
to come.
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