Short Items

#1 – A Believer's Story

Some months ago, I was told the story of a woman who has accepted Christ but not become a Christian, and it is a story worth telling here. She is evidently a middle aged woman who at one time worked for a company in Bangkok, where her immediate superior, also a woman, was a Christian. Her boss spent some time at the beginning of each work day reading the Bible, and eventually the woman herself became curious about why. Their discussions led to the boss to giving her a Bible and explaining something of the Christian faith to her. I do not know the details, but from her reading, discussions, and through the example of her boss, the woman discovered her own faith in Jesus. She reads the Bible and prays daily, and she gives ten percent of her income to worthy causes. She speaks with conviction concerning the spiritual value of tithing, and, according to my source, the woman appears to be very knowledgeable of the Christian faith. She has read the Bible completely through twice and is on her third round; she reads it every morning to her husband, who allows her to tithe his salary as well as hers.

This woman, however, has not been baptized and does not attend any church. She actively participates in the life of a local temple, giving part of her tithe to God (as she calls her giving) to the temple. She also participates fully in the ceremonies and rituals of her temple but says that she uses the time to pray to God. She told my source that one day she will probably be baptized and join a church, but for the time being it would be very hurtful of the older members of her family, grandparents and parents, if she publicly declared herself a Christian. In the meantime, she seems to have found a good balance between her faith in Christ and her respect for her family, not allowing them to come into conflict. She even seems to be bringing her husband to a knowledge of Christ as well.

This note follows on Note #1, above. In that note, we are introduced to a woman who believes in God and Christ, who reads the Bible daily, who tithes as a conscious act of her faith, and who shares her faith with others. She is not baptized, not a member of any church, and she does not attend worship regularly. Is she a Christian?

Jonathan A. Silk has written a fascinating article analyzing how to define Mahayana Buddhism [in Numen 14, 4 (October 2002): 355-399]. He demonstrates that scholarly definitions of Mahayana Buddhism have been based on a fruitless search for a set of common characteristics shared by all Mahayana Buddhists but not shared with any other Buddhists. He concludes that the concept "Mahayana Buddhism" represent a "polythetic class." In such a class, each member of the class has an important number of traits that are considered relevant to the whole class. No member of the class, however, has all of the traits. Two Mahayana sects can thus be very different from each other and yet both belong to the polythetic class labelled "Mahayana Buddhism" because they share a number of similar traits. Although not discussed by Silk, the problem, of course, is to determine how many traits a particular

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To return to our woman, she clearly shares a number of traits with the polythetic class, "Christian." She has faith in Christ, reads the Bible, tithes, and shares her faith. Are these traits sufficient for her to be classified a Christian? Or, does receiving baptism constitute a necessary trait for all members of the class? If so, then the class, "Christian," is partly a "monothetic class," that is all members in the class must have certain common traits to be in it. In this case, however, simply being baptized is insufficient grounds for classifying individuals as Christians because many people have been baptized, even as adults, who no longer consider themselves or are considered by others to be Christians.

Christianity, like Mahayana Buddhism, is a "polythetic class." All that really means is that it is hard to define who are "Christians." Our definition depends on what traits we assign to the class and the weight we give to each trait, which leaves us a lot of room to argue about who are "really" Christians and who are not.

According to a news release from the Associated Press published on CNN.com on 30 August 2004, two international bodies that track international armed conflict report that a definite decline is taking place in international armed conflicts. Since the end of World War II in 1945, the most battlefield-related deaths took place in 1951, when some 700,000 died in armed conflict (this does not include war-related deaths from starvation, "unofficial" conflicts between ethnic or other groups, or the massacre of civilians). The 1990s saw a resurgence in armed conflict, mostly due to the break-up of the Soviet Union, but now the trend downward has resumed. In 2002, only about 15,000 people were killed in state-supported armed conflict. The number rose to 20,000 in 2003 because of the war in Iraq. These figures are still well below the figures of the 1990s, which saw between 40,000 to 100,000 war deaths annually. The article gives numerous reasons for this decline, but major credit goes to the U.N. and other international agencies that have become increasingly pro-active in intervening to prevent or end armed conflicts. The end of the Cold War, in particular, has also brought an end to proxy wars and freed the U.N. to do its job without American or Soviet intervention. The result is that the U.N. undertook 14 peace initiatives in 2003 and deployed a monthly average of 38,500 military peacekeepers around the world, three times the number for 1999.

I know it does not feel like the world is getting more peaceful with our headlines dominated by news from Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and the world feels less secure because international terrorists have become major players on the world stage. We should not, however, undersell the quiet, unspectacular advances that are being made in our world to make it a better, safer place to live. In the twentieth century, armed conflict between nations repeatedly tore apart the fabric of world peace. As we enter the twenty-first century, world public opinion is less and less tolerant of state-sponsored violence for political ends, and that opinion counts for more and more in the global village. We can only hope & pray this trend continues and expands to include other forms of violence, personal as well as governmental and ethnic.

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Don Cook's The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785 (NYC: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995) is a carefully documented and well-written history of England 's mismanagement of its North American colonies, which led to American independence. More largely, it is a description of how a governmental bureaucracy went out of its way to create a crisis, failed to deal competently with that crisis, and in the end lost far more than it could ever have gained from its original goals. Before 1760, the British government had generally left its American colonies to fend for themselves, which they did to their own benefit and that of England itself. After 1760, however, England sought to bring the colonies "to heel," creating resentments and stirring up a series of crises that eventually led to war. In the process, it turned some of its most loyal American subjects into its most determined enemies, and by 1785 it was widely recognized in England itself that the whole thing had been a enormous political mistake and embarrassing military debacle. The country did not have sufficient military resources to wage war with it far-distant colonies, and, as importantly, it did not have the bureaucratic savvy to wage that war, its best political leadership having been shoved out of power by King George III. Cook makes it abundantly clear that George's stubborn, willful, and thoroughly unimaginative insistence that the colonies pay "their fair share" of British governmental costs and behave towards England in a loyal, submissive manner was the key factor in the prolonged crisis with the colonies. He, furthermore, could not abide most of the competent politicians of the day, so he consistently put men of limited abilities in positions of authority. His machinations allowed incompetents to sit in important positions and carry out incredibly foolish policies.

If we survey international crises large and small today, how many of them grow out of or are significantly acerbated by incompetent bureaucratic mismanagement and the willful stubbornness of uncreative political leadership? To what degree does that same mismanagement and willfulness infect religious bureaucracies? One wonders, for instance, whether or not the demise of Christianity in parts of Europe and elsewhere is as much a reaction against institutionalized ecclesiastical bureaucracy as it is a rejection of the faith itself. It seems fair to say, in any event, that one of the key issues involved in creating a more peaceful world is detoxifying bureaucracies of all sorts.

The Rev. Jacob Tomlin of the London Missionary Society was one of the first two Protestant missionaries to arrive in Bangkok in 1828. In his diary entry for Christmas day 1831, Tomlin explains something of his missiological approach. Writing concerning a group of Chinese who were engaged in their own worship of God, he states, "It is indeed of great importance that the heathen be taught how to pray to, and worship, the true God, otherwise they are liable, through their old idolatrous habits, prejudices, and ignorance, to fall into great errors, and, like the Cutheans of old, to mingle idolatry and true religion together." He then gives examples of Chinese in Bangkok who engaged in such syncretistic practices and concludes, "We must therefore treat them as children, and set before their eyes a living example; take them by the hand; teach them reverently to kneel down; pray for them, and put right words into their mouths. Afterwards they will imitate us in their

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Tomlin articulates here two key principles in his missiological approach. First, syncretism is one of the great dangers facing the missionary enterprise. Two, the best way to avoid syncretism is through an intensive socialization process using the missionaries themselves as both models of and instructors in the correct way behave as Christians. Both of these principles reflect the almost universal nineteenth-century Protestant missionary assumption in Siam that the missionaries taught a God-given, biblically-based pure form of the Christian faith, which can be communicated cross-culturally in its pure form.

The Rev. Charles Robinson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) mission in Bangkok wrote in a letter dated 11 February 1836 that the ABCFM mission held what he believed to be the first public worship of God in Thai on 24 January 1836. He wrote, "The meeting was held at the dispensary, of course most of the hearers were sick, but no less in need of the Great Physician on this account. About thirty were present on the first Sabbath. It was a time of deep interest to us. We had prepared a prayer and a hymn in Siamese, and this was probably the first time that ever a prayer to the true God, or his praises, were publicly heard in that language. The people appeared very attentive." [in Missionary Herald 32, 10 (October 1836), 380-381.]

Robinson himself wrote that this was "probably" the first public Christian worship service in Thai. Catholic churches had, of course, been worshipping in Siam for centuries, but in Latin not Thai. Protestant public worship in Siam up to January 1836, so far as he knew, had been conducted in Chinese. It seems reasonably likely that Christian worship in Thai did actually begin on January 24th, 1836.

The following excerpt from the book, Progressive Men of Western Colorado (Chicago: A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905) is taken from the Delta County Historical Website (Link). It tells the story of Mary Adele Bradley (1854-1926), daughter of Dan Beach and Sarah Blachly Bradley, who married Andrew Blachly in 1877. Although not precisely a chapter in Thai church history, Mary's story complements that of her mother as told in the article, "Sophia Bradley McGilvary and Sarah Blachly Bradley: Notes Towards a Family Biography," in HeRB 8. In particular, it suggests that Mary inherited some of the same sturdy pioneering spirit that was evident in her mother and in her stepsister, Sophia Bradley McGilvary. The one curious aspect about Mary revealed in this excerpt is that her husband was also her first cousin. His father, Eben Blachly, was Mary's mother's brother, that is Mary's uncle.

In any event, what follows gives us insights into the world of the old-time missionary families. It tells us about how one of their children made her way in the world. Somehow, it gives the whole picture slightly more color to know that one of those children lost her husband in a bank robbery replete with galloping horses and pistol-packing desperadoes.

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My thanks to Mr. Jon Van of Nakhon Payap International School for forwarding this story to me.

" Andrew T. Blachly

"The late Andrew T. Blachly, of Delta, whose tragic death on September 7, 1893, at the age of forty-six, by a daring hold-up and robbery of the Farmers & Merchants' Bank, of which he was at the time cashier, awakened universal regret and horror throughout the Western slope of this state, was born in Dane county, Wisconsin, on September 22, 1847, and was the son of Eben and Jane (Trew) Blachly, of that state, both of whom are now deceased.

"The father was a doctor and after many years of general practice in Wisconsin, moved to the vicinity of Kansas City, Missouri, where he opened and conducted a school for Negro children, carrying it on in conjunction with his wife, who had, like himself, received a college education and was well qualified for the work.  They kept the school going mainly by their own endeavors and at their own expense from 1866 until 1877, when the father died and the mother sold her property and joined her son in the West. They were the parents of five sons and one daughter.  The first and second born of the sons served in the Civil war.  One was captured and confined in Libby prison and the other died in a military hospital.

"Andrew received a good education, attending the Lodi ( Wisconsin ) Academy and pursuing a partial course at Washington and Jefferson College, in Washington, Pennsylvania. He left home in 1869 and came to Colorado, where he clerked in the office of the Kansas Pacific Railroad at Denver part of the time, teaching school during the rest until 1872.  From that time until 1878 he was occupied in mercantile business for himself at Monument, Colorado, and also published a paper called the Mentor for two years.  In 1880 he moved to Salida and kept a drug store until 1881, when he changed his base to Gunnison and there carried on the same business until his health broke down in 1885.  He then moved to Delta county and took up a homestead on which he lived five years.  He planted a few acres in fruit, but sold the place before the trees began to bear much.  Locating at Delta, he opened a real-estate office and pushed his business vigorously and profitably for two years.

"At the end of that period, in company with D.S. Baldwin, he organized the Farmers and Merchants' Bank of Delta.  He served as cashier of this institution until September 7, 1893, when just after the bank had been opened for business three robbers walked into the room and ordered him to throw up his hands and turn over to them the cash.  Instead of doing this he called for help and the leader of the outlaws shot him, killing him instantly. The robbers then went behind the bars and talking all the money in sight, made their way to the back door where their horses were tied.  As they mounted their horses and passed to the rear of the post office they encountered W.R. Simpson, who had heard of the robbery.  He stepped into an alley and shot two of them dead.  The third man, who was their guard while they made the raid, succeeded in getting away with the money they had taken.

"At the time of Mr. Blachly's death he was living on a ranch he had purchased a short time before.  On this property his family resided until recently and under the wise and vigorous management of his widow it became one of considerable value and productiveness.  Mr. Blachly was married on September 7, 1877, to Miss Mary A. Bradley, a native of Bangkok, Siam, the daughter of Dan B. and Sarah (Blachly)

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"To Mr. and Mrs. Blachly eight children were born, all sons and all now living.  They are Arthur T., Fred F., Clarence D., Howard D., Harold W., Ralph R., Louis B. and Edward H.  By their help Mrs. Blachly has been able to carry on the operations of the ranch and greatly enlarge its productiveness.  She sold the one on which they were living at the time of her husband's death and bought another of forty acres.  On this she has four acres in fruit and also runs a fine herd of cattle in the hills.  She and her sons are very successful in managing the business, and she has won a high reputation as a business woman of excellent judgment.  The oldest son was fifteen years old when his father died and the youngest one year old.  The first named is now a student in the medical department of the State University at Boulder, and will be graduated there in a short time, after which he will practice his profession in the neighborhood of his home.  Mrs. Blachly has prospered in all her undertakings and made money steadily.  She is regarded as a very good manager and a lady of great industry and enterprise.  Her husband was a Republican in politics, a Mason in fraternal life and a Presbyterian in church membership. She is also a Presbyterian and she and the sons are in sympathy with the principles of the Republican party in political affairs.  Their ranch is located one mile and a half east of Delta, on the Garnett mesa."

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