Short Notes

#1-Le Pantalon Rogue

In 1912, on the eve of World War I, the French Minister of War, Adolphe Messimy, attempted to modernize the French army's uniforms, which since before 1830 had been a combination of bright reds and blues set off by flashy red trousers. The British and the German armies had already switched to uniforms of browns and grays more fitting to the necessities of modern warfare with its rifles that could shot accurately over many hundreds of yards. The French military, however, bitterly resisted Messimy's attempted reform. It felt that the army's prestige and honor were at stake. One witness at the parliamentary hearings on the matter, a former Minister of War himself, exclaimed, "Eliminate the red trousers? Never! Le pantalon rouge c'est la France!" Some years later Messimy observed, "That blind and imbecile attachment to the most visible of all colors was to have cruel consequences." (Based on Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, 55. The quotations are taken from Tuchman.)

Ninety years later, it is easy to smile at this "quaint" story taken from an era when war and honor were still synonymous terms, but one cannot help but observe how frequently churches and their leaders adhere to the outmoded ways of thinking and behaving, crying out with fervor, "Le pantalon rouge c'est la France!" Religionists, indeed, are even more prone to a "blind and imbecile" attachment to the past because they assign eternal consequences to every word they utter and belief they cherish.

#2- What's Happening with the Lahu Churches?

This past hot season, 11 Lahu students from the Lahu Bible Institute, District 18 of the Church of Christ in Thailand, carried out a project studying local church histories. They spent some two weeks in five churches, doing interviews and collecting data. At the end of the project, we reviewed the results of their research, and I asked them to briefly evaluate whether the churches they studied were weaker or stronger than they had been ten years earlier. Four of the five teams replied that their churches were definitely weaker. Only one team thought their church was stronger. On a whim, I asked the students about their homes churches. They belonged to ten different churches. Only one student felt that his church was stronger now than it had been ten years ago. That is to say, in the opinions of these students 13 of 15 Lahu congregations are weaker now than they were a decade ago. (It should be noted that among these 15 churches is one independent Lahu church not associated with District 18).

This sample is entirely unscientific. The students' judgments may be way off the mark. On the other hand, they had received some training in historical research methods, including the evaluation of historical data. Perhaps, their estimations of the direction of church life have some merit. What if they are correct? A worrisome thought, that.

#3-Conservative in Theology, Liberal in Spirit

In June 1927, the Ladies Home Journal published an article on Siam, which contained negative comments about Presbyterian missionary attitudes. In a letter to

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the Board of Foreign Missions, the Rev. Paul A. Eakin explains that the reporter, a Unitarian, based the article's comments on a sermon delivered by the Rev. Paul Fuller, a young and spirited missionary. The sermon, Eakin reports, was a passionate and uncompromising defense of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Eakin describes it as being very fundamentalist. The reporter asked Eakin if Fuller's views represented those of the majority of Presbyterian missionaries in Siam. Eakin reports his reply as being, "...I should say that almost all of our Mission, both old and young, are conservative in their Theology, and liberal in their spirit." (Eakin to Brown, 6 September 1927, in the Maen Research Papers, Payap University Archives)

The late 1920s was an awkward time theologically for the Presbyterian Church USA. The denomination was slowly shedding its conservative, biblicist Old School heritage and moving to a more moderate theological orientation that sought to leave room for liberals and conservatives while avoiding the rancor of theological debate. Thirty years earlier, in the 1890s, a sermon like Fuller's would not have been cause for comment, and a reporter from the United States would have found nothing offensive in it. Thirty years later, in the 1950s, the moderates would be in general control of the denomination and such sermons simply were not preached on the field. A Reporter from the United States probably would not have bothered to go to a church anyway. The year 1927, on the other hand, was a good year for fence sitting, for trying to "be" conservative and "act" liberal. Eakin, who in later years was himself accused of being a closet-liberal, read the spirit of his own times and denomination aptly and did just that—sat on the nearest, widest, safest fence.

#4-Seeking a New Center

Meeting in Chiang Mai in November 1930, the American Presbyterian Mission in Siam passed a motion, numbered Act. 30/211, to accept a set of recommendations put before the mission. Among those recommendations was the following, "That all Mission work should become Church-centric instead of mission-centric, which in Siam will mean the formation of a National Church." Six years later and two years after the founding of the Church of Christ in Siam, the mission's field secretary, Paul Eakin, reaffirmed that commitment, writing, "The establishment of a strong, self-supporting and self-governing and self-propagating Church is the goal of all our work. The goal of the Presbyterian Mission is to establish such a national church."

In 1940, however, a young missionary, Horace W. Ryburn, wrote to Eakin observing that the Presbyterian missionaries needed to stop acting like patrons and put themselves under the "National's leadership." He called on the missionaries, this is, to behave personally and professionally in ways that would actually implement the mission's stated "church-centric" policy. It appears from what records we have from the 1930s that the great majority of Presbyterian missionaries were genuinely committed to devolution. It also appears that Ryburn's plea was justified. Individual missionaries in their particular situations were not practicing what they preached.

Sources: "Minutes of the Mission Meeting at Chiengmai, November 21-27, 1930"; Eakin to Bentoon Boon Itt, 14 August 1936; and, Ryburn to Eakin, 14 January 1940. All in the Records of the American Presbyterian Mission, Payap University Archives.

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Source: Roger Gaikwad, "Issues in Christian Relationships with People of Other Faiths in Asia," Journal of Theology and Cultures in Asia 1 (February 2002): 52.

#6 - Headwaters of Thai Revivalism & Pentecostalism

It is often assumed that Thai Pentecostalism is a relatively new phenomenon, beginning no earlier than the John Sung revivals of 1938-1939. There has been a strong tendency, thus far, to ignore the Presbyterian missionary and ecclesiastical sources of Thai revivalism, which go back to earlier revivalistic movements that began in 1930 and 1925, respectively. Several key Thai figures in the early days of Pentecostalism in Thailand, notably the Revs. Boonmark Kittisarn and Suk Pongnoi were products of those Presbyterian revivalistic movements. Thai Pentecostalism represents, it can be argued, a logical outgrowth of earlier Presbyterian (and Baptist) church life in Siam.

While so much is clear, what has been unclear thus far is the earliest origins of Presbyterian revivalism in Siam. An undated item written by the Rev. Paul A. Eakin in about 1940 sheds some light on at least one source of that revivalism. Eakin was the Field Secretary of the American Presbyterian Mission in Siam at the time. He writes that in roughly 1903 an American revivalist by the name of Dr. Johnston visited and preached in the churches in Bangkok. Dr. George B. McFarland served as his translator. Eakin claims that McFarland felt a quickening of his own spiritual life and, in response, made a definite commitment to Christian service at that time. Not long afterwards, McFarland visited the United States where he came under the influence of the enthusiastic revivalist, Billy Sunday. When he returned to Bangkok in 1905, according to Eakin, McFarland held the first Conference of Christian Workers, which was to become an important program for leadership training and church renewal in central Siam. Eakin closes his comments with the observation that McFarland was a good imitator and took on some of Sunday's "eccentricities."

McFarland's "conversion" to revivalism as early as 1903 is the earliest instance of revivalistic influence in Siam that I have come across so far. It is difficult to prove, but it is almost certain that his revivalism influenced some church members and leaders towards a revivalistic bent of their own. He was the son of veteran Presbyterian missionaries, and he himself became an important figure in public life in Bangkok to the extent that the Thai government awarded him several orders of merit and the King honored him with the title of Pra Ach Vidyagama, or "First Councilor." He was even more influential in Christian circles, and the Conference of Christian Workers conferences he held in Bangkok and Phet Buri appear to have been well-attended and widely appreciated. Johnston's Bangkok sermons and McFarland's revivalism, thus, are one the earliest sources of the Presbyterian revivalistic movement, which movement contributed to the emergence of post-World War II Thai Pentecostalism

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#7 - The Luxuries of Life

The following quotation from Daniel McGilvary, writing in the North Carolina Presbyterian in 1870, is a gem. It summarizes and confirms the fact that the 19th and early 20th century Presbyterian missionaries did not intend to simply evangelize Siam by starting churches. They also sought to Christianize every aspect of northern Thai social, cultural, economic, and political life. McGilvary is explaining to his readers that his family and the Wilsons had successfully transplanted wild raspberries to Chiang Mai. They also had plans to experiment with transplanting plums from a "Shan town" (location not given). He then comments,

"We do not think that it is an object unworthy of missionaries to do all they can to improve the varieties of fruits and other luxuries of life—to cultivate the taste of the people and stimulate them to all those pursuits that tend to improve their social as well as their moral condition. The two are more closely allied than we might at first suppose. The introduction of the comforts of life will not make men Christians. Yet, it is equally true that Christianity tends to render men dissatisfied with the living as well as the morality, of half civilized nations. If men live like savages, it is difficult to make anything else out of them than savages. And the comforts and blessings of a temporal nature that attend the introduction of the Christian religion constitute a very tangible, and therefore no mean argument of its truth."

Source: Daniel McGilvary, "For the Little Folks," North Carolina Presbyterian New Series 3, 113 (2 March 1870): 4.

#8- Forgetting the Past

"We can forget the past, but the past, most assuredly, will not forget us."
Source: Eric Foner, Who Owns History? (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002), 108

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