Short Notes

#1 - Locating the "Thai" in Thai Theology

In a provocative and cogently argued article published in 1993, David Streckfuss contends that the concepts of the "Thai race" and "Thai-ness" are recent inventions. He claims that in the era around 1900 France was engaged in an aggressive program aimed at incorporating as much of Siam as possible into its colonial sphere. The French argued that Siam was a multi-ethnic state in which the Siamese illegitimately dominated its subject peoples. The "real" Siam extended only as far as the Chao Phraya River valley. Anything else was fair game for the French, who presented themselves as the protectors of these subject peoples. According to Streckfuss, the Siamese government eventually learned to speak this European race-speak and justified its control of its outer provinces by redefining their inhabitants as "Thai." A prime example he cites is the "Lao," by which he apparently means the northern Thai. That is to say, up until around 1900 the Siamese government habitually spoke of the central Thai as "Siamese" and the northern Thai as "Lao" and did not consider the two as being the same race. In the years immediately afterwards, it began to insist that both were actually "Thai" and that the Thai government had every right to rule over all of the people in "Thai" territory.

In the review of Tongchai Winichikul's paper, "Writing at the Interstices: Southeast Asian Historians and Post-National Histories in Southeast Asia." in HeRB 2, I questioned the validity of the unitary concept of the "Thai church" in the light of local diversity in Thailand. Streckfuss' article raises similar doubts about the concept of "Thai theology." What implications does his argument that "Thai-ness" is a political, artificial, and relatively recent construct have for Christian theological reflection in Thailand? Is there such a thing as "Thai theology"?
Source: David Streckfuss, "The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam: Origins of Thai Racialist Thought, 1890-1910," in Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in Honor of John R. W. Smail (Madison, Wisconsin: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1993), 123-153.

#2 - The World is Not a Happy Place

An international poll conducted last year by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press on global attitudes surveyed opinions on a range of issues in 44 nations. While the article reporting the polls findings in the online edition of the Washington Post, 4 December 2002, focused on issues related to the global role of the United States, it concluded with the troubling observation that those surveyed in nearly every country and global region are "unhappy with the state of their nation." The article reports that, "In only three of the 44 countries surveyed did a majority of residents say they were generally satisfied with the state of their country: Canada (56 percent), Uzbekistan, (69 percent) and Vietnam (69 percent). In the United States, barely four in 10--41 percent--expressed satisfaction." The article quotes the Pew report as stating, furthermore, "As 2002 draws to a close, the world is not a happy place. At a time when trade and technology have linked the world more closely together than ever before, almost all national publics view the fortunes of the world as drifting downward. A smaller world, our surveys indicate, is not a happier one."

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The Thai TV equivalent of the American soap opera, airing in the early evening rather than during the day, is generally about as semi-mindless and ridiculous as anything seen on U.S. television. Part of its appeal is the very fact that viewers needn't invest much brainpower in the plot development, such as it is. Still, viewed from another perspective these TV shows provide fascinating insights into current Thai values and offer fuel for theological reflection "in the Thai context." "Madam Yee Hub," a generally popular offering, which ran for several months at the end of 2002, provides a case in point.

The story centered on the promise two men, who are old friends, had once made to each other that their granddaughter and son, respectively, would one day marry. That day has come, the problem of the plot being that the granddaughter is a country girl, smart, mouthy, but unrefined while the son is an up and coming diplomat slated to become the Thai ambassador to London. His mother and younger sister vehemently oppose any liaison with the country hick, whose accent is appalling to them. A jilted ex-girl friend and her scheming mother add zest to the story.

While the hero of the tale is the country girl, it is interesting to note that all of the "bad guys" in the story are loud-mouthed, emotional, narrow-minded, selfish women. The main "good guys" are mostly men, including the two fathers and a gay younger brother of the future ambassador. Yet, the male lead is portrayed as an arrogant and repressed city boy, who only gradually falls in love with the country girl—and even after he falls in love is totally inept at expressing his feelings. Yee Hub, the country girl, ultimately wins the heart of the male lead and his noisy, obnoxious mother and sister by becoming the model daughter-in-law, submissive, kind, and self-denying. A woman who knows her role and plays it well, that is, wins out. The male lead, however, has to learn to be less self-involved and more adept at showing affection.

The values: [1] country is better than city; [2] quiet males are better than mouthy females; [3] "real" Thai (again, country) is preferable to Western (again, city); [4] non-confrontational servanthood is better than aggressive, emotional confrontation; [5] rural wisdom is better than urban sophistication (a refinement of #1 and #3); [6] goodness is the ultimate victor over hate; [7] being gay is funny but OK; [8] truth will out in the end; [9] women can be as brave and resourceful as men; and, [10] romantic love overcomes all jealousies and misunderstandings. Embedded within the nearly mindless plot, finally, was the ongoing search for Thai democracy symbolized by the name of the show and the experience of Yee Hub, the country girl, who became "Madam" Yee Hub, the wife of the Thai ambassador to Britain. She is, at once, a "real Thai" country girl who proves that the country wisdom of the demos is best. The whole show was a Thai celebration of the democratic "fact" that you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl.

One motivation for constructing Thai theologies is that contemporary Thai values value Thai-ness and the rural, democratic wisdom of local peoples. Christian theologies that fail to share in these values will (continue to) be irrelevant to what moves and shapes contemporary Thai culture(s).

#4 - The Counter-Intuitive Life

The Christian life is by definition counter-intuitive.

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The Bangkok Post edition of 28 January 2003 (page 8) carried the following headline concerning the threatened U.S. invasion of Iraq: "Washington looking for full compliance" and the sub-headline, "If 'answer is partially yes, then [the] answer is no.'" The quotation is from a statement made by a White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, who is quoted as saying, "The United States will read the Blix report to see one thing, one thing very simple. Is Iraq complying, yes or no?" Iraq, he said, "must comply in all regards. Not in some regards, not in half regards, not in some areas but not other areas. Yes or no, are they or aren't they?"

While this all or nothing view of Iraqi compliance does sound simple, it is also nonsensical. Simply trying to define a term such as "total compliance" in a complicated case such as the arms inspection of Iraq is impossible. The statement leaves no room for honest differences of opinion, mistakes, an occasional local official who refuses to go along with stated Iraqi government wishes, a forgotten pile of something that ostensibly could be possibly used to manufacture a weapon, or even just a locked cabinet for which the key is missing. Fleischer's uncompromising concept of compliance is simply not humanly possible under the best of circumstances. Anyone who stops for even a moment's reflection will realize that such absolutely either-or demands do not reflect the world of shades of gray we all actually live in.

So, why is the demand framed in this way? As one reads the news article itself, it is clear that the U.S. government has already decided the case. Iraq is guilty of a hidden weapons program. The "full compliance" demand is, thus, not so much a statement of policy as it is a public relations' ploy aimed at the American public and, possibly, America's Western allies. As such it cannily uses a dualistic, either-or rhetoric comfortable to the Western mentality since the days of Athens and Rome. Western consciousness is driven by a hard and fast distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, God and Satan. Fleischer, thus, is not appealing to American public reason but rather to subliminal Western dualism—a dualism that is the source of many prejudices and is geared to shutting down rather than facilitating reasoned, real world reflection. In Iraq's case, it would be more helpful and realistic to look for is an honest effort, a clear intention to comply as fully as possible. Such a scaled down expectation, however, does not satisfy the Western ideological attachment to the rhetoric of either-or, which rhetoric far more accurately reflects American public-political consciousness.

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