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Contents' List for 1999
 One of the things I'm asked most frequently is how the Laos Mission acquired its first piece of property, where Chiang Mai First Church is now situated. The story is a bit complicated and will take several HeRDs to explain.
The Daniel and Sophia McGilvary family arrived in Chiang Mai in April 1867. The Jonathan and Kate Wilson family followed some months later, reaching the city in February 1868. From the first the two families wanted to acquire a prime piece of property, both to live on and to demonstrate that the permanence of their mission. Even before they moved North, Chao Kawilorot, the "Prince" (Chao Muang) of Chiang Mai, had promised them land. He renewed that pledge when they arrived, and even showed them a good site between the city's eastern gate and the Mae Ping River. In May 1868, however, he withdrew the site from their consideration. A few months later, McGilvary raised the issue again with him, and this time Chao Kawilorot responded immediately and presented the mission with an excellent site, placed right on the river about a half mile from the city proper.
The Wilsons built a temporary dwelling and moved on to the property at some point before June 1869, and in a letter to the Board of Foreign Missions dated 7 July 1869, Wilson wrote almost poetically about the natural beauty of the site with its view of the river, the city walls, and Doi Suthep looming in the background. The property was rich in trees and other greenery. Wilson also praised the property because it was strategically placed where many walked past every day. He wrote, "Many of them enter our house voluntarily, and others we lure into our presence, and before they leave, we can tell them about the blessed Saviour."
It should be noted, however, that Chao Kawilorot didn't deed this piece of property over to the mission. Although a gift for their use, he retained legal ownership for himself. We should also note that in the process he took the property away from its previous owner, without compensation, as was his right. Needless to say, that person was none too pleased with all of this and eventually found ways to express his displeasure.
Chao Kawilorot, as we saw in HeRD #671, didn't exactly keep his word about giving the Presbyterian missionaries in Chiang Mai a piece of property. He did, indeed, hand over for their use a beautiful, prime river site. What he did not give them was legal title to the property, and he also left them with an angry, bothersome neighbor who was the previous and uncompensated owner of part of the property. One suspects that Kawilorot was playing something of a double game in all of this. By the time he gave this property to the missionaries some time around September 1868, he was already disenchanted with them; and it's entirely likely that he didn't want to encourage their permanent presence. It's also likely that he didn't want them to feel too secure in their situation on the river. Whether this was the case or not, it was certainly the result. First, he seems to have made it clear to the two missionary families that they didn't have legal title, a matter that bothered them a great deal. Second, he probably intentionally reinforced their sense of insecurity by leaving them with an angry, bothersome neighbor.
Chao Kawilorot himself died on 29 June 1870, and the Chao Uparat (the so-called "Second King") of Chiang Mai and heir apparent was Chao Intanon, son-in-law of Kawilorot. The missionaries may have had some small hope that the change in political leadership would lead to a change in the legal status of the land they occupied, and not long after Kawilorot's death Chao Intanon did come to look over the property. He refused, however, either to acknowledge their ownership of the property or to allow the missionaries to enlarge it. He also refused their request to be allowed to purchase the property. There matters rested for some months.
In a letter to the Board dated 1 October 1870, Wilson reported on a court case he had brought in early August against one of their neighbors. Wilson described him as a disagreeable, contentious man who'd been the chief of Chao Kawilorot's boatmen and a man well liked in government circles. He also had a grudge against the missionaries because part of the land they occupied had belonged to him, and he'd received no payment for it. Wilson branded him a "confirmed drunkard." At some point, this obnoxious neighbor began to openly harass the missionaries, hurling "foul curses" at them and making loud noise at night. Wilson finally complained to the authorities, and they promised to investigate. We should remember that at this point the Wilson family was living on the site, while the McGilvarys had just started building a house there and were living elsewhere. The neighbor responded to Wilson's complaint by physically attacking the Wilsons' servants and threatening Wilson's life. The whole matter went to court, where the neighbor lost the case and was punished in a manner Wilson doesn't explain.
Wilson's October 1st letter went on to observe that in spite of the fact that he won the court case, he failed to obtain his main objective in bringing the whole case to court. The Chiang Mai government again refused to let the missionaries buy the land they occupied, and the court ruled that the former owner had given the land to Kawilorot for the use of the missionaries. He wrote, "They refused to let us pay for the ground & they made it a serious crime for any one to sell [to] us." And, that, "The lot was made over to us for our use, but the deed was careful to state that the ground was royal property." While Wilson, thus, clearly felt that he'd failed to achieve his goal of obtaining clear title to the river property, it's interesting to note that he did get a deed. It evidently stated that the mission was given use of the property. This seems to have been something of a concession to his wishes and a step towards full ownership.
And there matters rested again.
HeRD #673 told the story of how Wilson took his neighbor to court for abusive behavior. It's clear from his letter to the Board of 1 October 1870 that Wilson acted as an individual and not on behalf of the Laos Mission. That's strange. The issues at hand involved mission property, and Wilson evidently hoped that the case would lead to an opportunity for the mission to buy the property. Why did he act as an individual, and why is it he makes no mention at all of McGilvary? McGilvary, in fact, never comments on the case in his official correspondence with the Board.
It's possible, perhaps likely that McGilvary didn't support Wilson's action, for reasons we can only guess at. Over the years, McGilvary proved him self less abrasive and "hot-hearted" than Wilson in his relationship with northern Thai society. Wilson was more confrontational and more judgmental. McGilvary may have thus advocated a more patient approach. If there was a difference of opinion, McGilvary would surely have preferred to keep that difference private. He most especially wouldn't have discussed the matter in correspondence with the Board. One reason for my suspicions is that in later years, Wilson and McGilvary had some rather sharp differences of opinion on mission policy, differences that Wilson complained about in correspondence with the Board. McGilvary never did. The long-held tradition that the two were old and dear friends needs to be tempered, and it's possible that there were undercurrents of feeling between them that aren't clearly reflected in the historical record. We could even speculate that some of those feelings began in mid-1870 when Wilson was trying to deal with a contentious, perhaps dangerous neighbor in ways McGilvary refused to support. Wilson could well have been disappointed in McGilvary. And McGilvary may have felt that Wilson was as much the cause of the tension with his neighbor as was the neighbor.
It must also be said, however, that the only hard fact we have is that Wilson acted on his own behalf and there's no mention of McGilvary being involved in the case. The rest of my thoughts here are only "informed speculation." Fun, perhaps informative, but to be taken with a grain of salt.
As of early October, the Laos Mission continued to be frustrated by the fact that it couldn't obtain a clear title to the property it was occupying. McGilvary wrote about the issue to the Board in a letter dated 7 October 1870, in which he provided both a theological and a political analysis of the situation. McGilvary wrote this letter just five days before his family moved onto the property.
Theologically, he noted that he was sure that the Laos Mission would become a permanent presence in the North. He wrote, "We believe that it is the Master's Holy will that it shall be so established. We may have to wait long and lay the foundation slowly as in most mission fields. But God is not slow concerning his promises as some men count slackness. One day with him is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day." One reason why McGilvary might not have supported Wilson's court case--if in fact he didn't (HeRD #674)--could have been because he felt patient trust in God would get the mission further than open confrontation. One of the things that made McGilvary such a formidable opponent to those who wanted to rid the North of his presence was that he truly believed his cause must one day win, and he was willing to act in ways commensurate with that faith. His faith translated into a stubborn, non-confrontational patience that was determined to find ways beyond every obstacle.
McGilvary's report of October 7th went on to analyze the political situation the mission faced. He wrote, "We think that the attitude of the new government towards Christianity will be one of indifference so far at least as outward persecution. The real animus I think will be the same. Their decided preference would be that we should leave and we need not expect any FAVORS...They will probably not dare to interfere with us, or openly thwart us. But it will be a far more popular government with the people than the late one." [emphasis in original] He went on to observe that it would be some time before the new government's policies would become settled on many issues. The mission's land, thus, was a political football and as such demanded patience of the mission. For McGilvary at least, his faith in the ultimate triumph of his cause gave him reason to be patient.
The resolution of the mission's property problem, when it came, was a clever one. Chao Intanon, we'll remember, appeared to follow the policies of Chao Kawilorot concerning the mission's request to purchase and own property. He refused that request, surely for political reasons. Chao Intanon was designated to become the next Prince of Chiang Mai, but he inherited a situation in which Kawilorot's adopted son, Chao Buntawong, exercised considerable political influence. Chao Buntawong was an avowed enemy of the missionaries and worked persistently to have them removed. Open support of the missionaries would have brought Intanon into conflict with Buntawong at a time when Intanon was still consolidating his own position. The truth is, he was quite happy to resolve the land issue in the mission's favor. He just had to find a way to do so, and his solution was an elegant one.
In a letter dated 31 December 1870 to the Board, McGilvary explained what happened. He wrote, "When the present acting prince and future king returned from Bangkok it appeared for a time as if he intended to pursue the same policy towards us, so far as buying lots is concerned. But he has virtually yielded the point by leaving it optional with our neighbors to let them GIVE us as much of their lots as was necessary for filling out our place with the privilege of making them such return as would satisfy them. It is in fact a virtual purchase though the words buy and sell have not been insisted on. The same thing is true too with regard to the original lot given by the King. the original owners were driven off and we were forbidden to give and they to receive any remuneration. Its effect on the mind of themselves and others was bad. We have since the accession of the new prince remunerated them for their places so that we have now a place that we can feel is by right as well as in fact our own." McGilvary put the total amount the mission expended on its land at between about $250 to $270.
The solution was elegant, simple, and delightfully northern Thai. Officially, the owners of the various plots pieced together by the mission into one site each gave their land to the mission. The mission, in return, gave them a sum of money. No buying or selling. Nothing Chao Buntawong could object to. Everybody was happy, except those who wanted to be rid of the missionaries. And so the whole matter was settled by this civilized and clever stratagem. Or was it?
The story about how the Laos Mission acquired its land is a delightful one. It suggests the compromises that both the missionaries and the political authorities had to make to accommodate themselves one with the other. There's left just one question, however. By this "virtual purchase," as McGilvary termed it, did the Laos Mission acquire legal title to its property or not? It doesn't seem so. Indeed, I have to confess I'm not sure just what constituted a "legal title" to property in Chiang Mai in the early 1870s. The missionaries believed that it was possible to own property legally and that legal ownership was withheld from them for political reasons. That being the case, did they acquire such title through Chao Intanon's stratagem? Again, it doesn't seem likely they did since there was no formal purchase of the property. In other words, their virtual purchase left them virtual owners and nearly everybody was satisfied with the virtual reality created by Chao Intanon. The question is, when, if ever, was this virtual reality transformed into a legal one? When did the mission become legal owners of the property First Church, Chiang Mai, now stands on?
One further note. So far as we can tell, the fact that the mission actually paid for its property doesn't seem to have made any difference legally. Yet, McGilvary clearly FELT much more secure in the mission's ownership of its property because money had changed hands. Does that feeling reflect actual practice in Chiang Mai in the 1870s? In other words, was that how people acquired virtual ownership of land, through informal buying and selling of it? Or do McGilvary's feelings reflect a more Western attitude about owning property? If you pay for it, it belongs to you. There aren't any clear answers to these questions.
Not feeling satisfied with where we left things in HeRD #677, I called Dr. Ratanaphorn Sethakul, one of the leading historians of northern Thailand, about land laws in Chiang Mai in the 1870s. She kindly permitted me to share with you her comments.
The problem we face is that no one has studied the issue of 19th century land ownership in Chiang Mai in depth, so we don't know that much about it. Dr. Ratanaphorn said that most historians think that all of the land in the Chiang Mai State legally belonged to the Prince. He could parcel it out as he chose. No one else "owned" land, except the temples. There couldn't be buying and selling, although there may have been some ways around this restriction as land did change hands without going through the Prince. Concerning the case of the missionaries, she stated that even after they had paid over money for the land they "purchased" they couldn't have owned it in a legal sense. And a close reading of McGilvary's letters to the Board indicates that he never claimed that the mission had obtained a clear title to the land. On the other hand, it seems clear from missionary correspondence that, whatever the theory involved, people other than the Prince did own land, in fact if not in law. Certainly Wilson's troublesome neighbor thought he had a right to compensation for the land Chao Kawilorot took from him to give to the missionaries. Perhaps, then, McGilvary's concept of "virtual ownership," whatever the legal formalities, is a useful one. We saw in HeRD #673 that the mission actually did get a deed for its property, although the owner was specified to be the Prince. Was that a common practice? Did such a deed give the holder any prerogatives or rights concerning the property so deeded? We don't know.
It appears, in sum, that Chao Intanon's stratagem at the end of 1870, whereby the Laos Mission obtained "virtual ownership" of its property did put the land in its hands. The mission was satisfied that it had a full right to the land. Yet, the property apparently didn't actually change hands in a legal sense and remained the property of the Prince.
In September 1868 Chao Kawilorot, the Prince of Chiang Mai, initiated a brutal suppression of the Christian religion that resulted in the death of two Christians. His action successfully halted the spread of Christianity for a decade. In a conference with the missionaries some months later, Kawilorot stated clearly his reasons for suppressing the new religion. Jonathan Wilson, in a letter dated 24 January 1870, quoted Kawilorot as stating, "Siam is ONE government. Chiang Mai is another. The King at Bangkok may permit his subjects to become Christians. I will kill every one of mine who forsakes Buddhism for the religion of Jesus. Those who embrace Christianity are rebels against me & will be treated as such. If the missionaries teach their religion & continue to make Christians I will banish them from the country." [emphasis in the original] At least two issues were at stake. First, the Chao Muang's political power was associated with his religious role in conducting certain animistic rites. He was also the chief patron and defender of Buddhism in his territories. Hence, conversion to Christian meant denying him one of the pillars of his own power and Chiang Mai's political stability. Second, his power and the political stability of his state depended on the maintenance of Chiang Mai's corvee labor system whereby a patron could call on the labor of his or her clients at any time. The fact that Christians were forbidden from working on the Sabbath undermined the rationale behind that system. Without defending his bloody act, we should understand that Kawilorot shed Christian blood for what he considered to be fundamental issues of state.
When told in early 1870 that the two missionary families would be permitted to stay in Chiang Mai only if they refrained from teaching religion, Daniel McGilvary replied,
"We were willing to do all we could for the bodies of the people and to advance their temporal interest. But still all the king's money would not have induced us to come here for any other purpose than to teach Christianity."
From the Records of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, McGilvary to Irving, 24 March 1870, v. 3.
HeRD #296, sent out in November 1996, generated more discussion than any other single HeRD. It raised the issue of "crypto-Christians" in the early church, that is the role and place of secret believers, people who believed in Jesus but refrained from broadcasting their faith in public. The issue of secret believers is relevant to the Christian experience in northern Thailand as well. In fact, the missionaries may have made no one decision more significant to the future of the northern Thai church than their decision to reject secret discipleship.
Nan Inta, the first baptized northern Thai Christian, at first asked to be allowed to believe in secret. He felt that the political situation in early 1869, at the time of his baptism, was dangerous. McGilvary and Wilson rejected his request out of hand, saying that he had to leave the consequences of his faith in God's hands. At least one other convert in 1869 also asked to be allowed to convert secretly, and he met with the same answer. He too decided to take the risk of public profession. In September of that same year, the infant northern Thai church experience brutal oppression. Chao Kawilorot rejected the idea of public discipleship, as we saw in HeRD #678.
The question of secret discipleship came up again in 1871. In a letter to the Board, dated 24 October 1871, Wilson reported on the case one potential Christian who claimed to have ceased participation in Buddhist ritual and said that he trusted in Christ alone. He told the missionaries, however, that "an open profession of Christianity would cost him his head." He wanted to be a secret disciple. Wilson said that they'd had several cases of this type, and while it saddened the missionaries to have to refuse them they felt compelled to do so. They seem, in fact, to have given little actual reflection on the matter, believing apparently that only a public profession of faith could lead to salvation.
I'd like to pursue the question of secret discipleship, or crypto-Christianity, for a few of the following HeRDs.
In HeRD #680 we saw that in the political environment of the early 1870s a number of potential Christian converts wanted to become secret believers. It was too risky to become a Christian otherwise. McGilvary and Wilson rejected this option and demanded public profession as the only way to conversion. I'd like to suggest that one facet of this difference had to do with differing conceptions of "boundaries".
Tongchai Winichakul's excellent book, SIAM MAPPED, makes the point that prior to the 20th century Thailand conceived of its political boundaries in a way radically different from that of Europeans. For Europeans a boundary was a fixed, clear line between two pieces of territory. One knew precisely when one crossed a boundary. For Thais, however, a boundary was a vague region of inter-mingling loyalties. The petty rulers of frontier states often owed fealty to two different major states, and their loyalties shifted and varied with the winds of political change. Crossing a border took time as one traveled out of one region of fealty through a region of mixed fealty into that of a different fealty. The only people bothered by this supposed vagueness were Europeans.
McGilvary and Wilson, rigid dualists in the Western sense, certainly conceptualized conversion as the crossing of a clear boundary. It seems likely, however, that some northern Thais tried to redefine this Western conception of conversion. They wanted to live in a "region" where personal faith in Christ was possible without having to declare open adherence to the Christian religion. They too may have understood themselves to be crossing a boundary between Christianity and traditional faith, but they conceived of that crossing over in a different, less dualistic and less clearly defined way. Such a difference in conception is worth pondering,
HeRD #681 theorized that the Presbyterian missionaries in Chiang Mai and potential northern Thai converts conceived of conversion in different ways. The missionaries saw it as a crossing over a clearly marked boundary. The northern Thais thought of it as traveling through a region where mixed loyalties were acceptable. IF I'm correct in this , it has some important implications for our understanding of northern Thai church history.
This theory, among other things, reinforces the impression that the missionary conception of conversion was culturally bounded. It was a Western, dualistic conception that one could argue didn't fit either the northern Thai religious consciousness or the particular political situation in the early 1870s. Based on its rigidly dualistic conception of conversion, the Laos Mission required potential converts to cross a clear, sharply drawn boundary for reasons that the missionaries found compelling. Most northern Thai potential converts, however, surely found those reasons less than compelling and probably perceived them as unreasonable and naive. Thai religious conscious doesn't deal in such sharply drawn boundaries at any rate.
This difference in perception of what it meant to convert, to the extent it existed, was of crucial importance to the future of the northern Thai church. It determined who could join the church and who couldn't. Only those who were willing to make a sharp break with their religious heritage were allowed to cross over into Christianity. There's no way of knowing, but one has the impression from missionary correspondence that only a minority of potential converts were willing to make that kind of change. The missionary conception of conversion, thus, created a church that was radically separated from its social and cultural context. It probably also unintentionally reinforced the church's dependence on missionary patronage. The secret believers, if allowed to join the church surreptitiously, would have continued to live in the midst of society according to their own means. They wouldn't have been socially and economically dependent on the mission.
Over the last three HeRDs, I've been arguing that the Laos Mission's understanding of conversion as crossing over a sharp boundary had a major impact on the life of the northern Thai church. I'd like to add a further thought here about indigenization.
In spite of its alien appearance, the modern northern Thai church is no less northern Thai than the rest of its society. Little is presently understood about the process by which it adapted Western, missionary Christianity to its own thought-ways and folkways. but it did adapt itself. It seems likely, in any event, that the fact that the missionaries forbade secret conversions and the formation of a hidden church must have had a determinative impact on that process of indigenization. Indigenization had to take place more covertly, because the missionaries also rejected the possibility of building a northern Thai church from within northern Thai society. Indigenization, that is, had to take place in the context of overt Western structures, methods, and theologies put in place by the mission. Indigenization, furthermore, couldn't consciously avail itself of indigenous religious structures and consciousness, again because missionary ideology rejected the value of these things out of hand.
Let me stress that I'm playing with ideas here. But, if I'm anywhere near correct, what happened was that the northern Thai church had to construct itself without recourse to the full religious and socio-cultural resources of its society. And it had to do this where the missionaries couldn't really see what was going on. In a sense, it even had to deny to itself that any indigenization was taking place, because the Christian ideal the churches held (and still hold) was their image of the Western, specifically the American church. The impact of all of this on indigenization was, in the aggregate, negative. It denied the church conscious access to many of the strengths of its own society. It left the church feeling ambivalent about its identity, insecure in its northern Thainess.
When McGilvary and Wilson rejected the possibility of a northern Thai crypto-Christianity, they determined the future course of northern Thai Christianity. We have no way of knowing, of course, what shape a hidden northern Thai church might have taken. But we can speculate. It obviously would have been a more overtly Thai church. Being quietly lodged in the midst of its neighbors it would have had to be. It would have brought a greater appreciation for its own cultural resources to bear on the process of indigenization. It may even have functioned like the earliest church, participating in the religious life of its community AND worshipping Jesus in the privacy of its homes. It would probably have been a larger church; and it may even have taken on the aspects of an almost underground religious movement, again in a way similar to what happened in the earliest church. We tend to forget that as the early church moved into Greco-Roman cities such as Antioch, the surrounding society only gradually became aware of its existence. It was quietly hidden away for many decades in a growing abundance of house churches.
There's one other consideration that we have to take into account here. We will recall Chao Intanon's solution to the missionary desire to own their own property (HeRD #676). He created a virtual reality, by which the missionaries could feel confident in their right to their property without "really" owning it. Now, everyone understood the ploy involved, but because nothing was done officially it was as if nothing was done. I assume that a hidden northern Thai church would have existed in much the same way. It would have had considerable freedom and latitude, just so long as didn't claim to be "real". In our modern cyber-speak, it would have been a virtual church quietly hidden away, again not unlike the earliest church. All of this sounds terribly ambivalent, but then northern Thai society has an impressive tolerance for just such situations and a happy way of avoiding much confrontation.
There never was a virtual church, however. Perhaps there couldn't have been. The very fact that the missionaries were so visible and so visibly attacking traditional religion may have made it impossible. Chao Kawilorot might have been suspicious in any event and taken steps to suppress the underground church. Nineteenth-century northern Thailand wasn't 1st century Palestine, and suggesting that the northern Thai church could have grown in a way similar to the earliest church could be entirely wrong. I would argue, however, that rejecting the idea of a virtual northern Thai church requires as much speculation as does proposing it, and the idea has the merit of suggesting that they way the church WAS founded was only one of a number of options. Given what followed, my own personal sense is that there were better options.
Daniel McGilvary lived his missionary life between two realities. The first was the political and social reality of northern Thailand. The prospects of the work at any given moment had a strong impact on him, as his letter to the Board dated 4 December 1872 shows. It wasn't a good time in the history of the Laos Mission. As a consequence, McGilvary admitted that he hadn't written as much as in past years. He felt like writing only when there were good results to report. He stated, "I have always been careful not to hold out false encouragement's of success and not to give a righter coloring to the field than the strictest adherence to the truth would justify." When things weren't going well, he found it "not pleasant" to write about discouragements, esp. as such reports might adversely affect other peoples' attitudes about the mission. The past months had been just a time, a time when the missionaries worked hard and met with little results. He wrote "Our harps have been hung on the willows." (Psalm 137:2).
That's one reality. The other reality was faith in God's intentions for the North. Having admitted to a number of discouragements, McGilvary went on to avow, "Yet our faith has seldom wavered as to the early triumph of the gospel among this interesting people." Later in the letter, he stated, "God's Holy Spirit has been present with us but not to that extent that we have longed and prayed to witness. It is yet a day of SMALL THINGS with us - VERY small - yet we are taught not to despise it. We praise his Holy name for what he has done for us while we look for far greater things. The little one shall become a thousand and the small one a mighty nation & the Lord will hasten it in his time." [emphasis in original] He concluded, "Our martyrs are dead but the spirit of the martyrs still lives in Nan Inta and some of the old and the new converts. God is not leaving us in doubt as to his purposes of mercy to this people."
A superficial appreciation of these two realities will lead the unwary to fulsome praise of McGilvary's strong faith in the face of adversity. And he does deserve such praise. There is a downside, however. This confident trust that God will one day triumph allowed missionaries to continue about their business uncritically. They could feel that any failures were only momentary and that perseverance would lead to triumph. One didn't need to question one's methods or attitudes. Just wait. Just keep on. God will triumph. McGilvary may have been less guilty of this heedless reliance on God than others; but there was a tendency among missionaries to perpetuate ineffective methods and hold to destructive ideologies decade after decade, avowing the whole while in their faith that God would one day fix things.
In HeRD #686 we saw that McGilvary's letter to the Board of 4 December 1872 reveals the fact that he lived with two distinct realities, one mundane and the other transcendent. We also saw that he didn't like to write to the Board unless things were going well.
This second point underscores one of the difficulties we face in studying the history of the northern Thai church. It wasn't just McGilvary that kept bad news to himself. The missionaries, with a few notable exceptions, seldom discussed their more serious problems with the Board. They especially kept their personal differences and tensions out of public view. This makes it very difficult to get at the actual texture of events, because we don't know the full story behind even major mission decisions. We have trouble discerning negative influences on the mission and problems the missionaries faced in their work. We see only the public face, the squeaky clean, bright-eyed image the Laos Mission projected for reasons of propriety and policy. Now, sometimes things got so entirely bad that the folks on the field had to tell the tale to the Board. And there were a few missionaries who almost relished the gossip they forwarded overseas. We also have the private family correspondence of a few missionaries, which sometimes told things to the relatives that weren't told to the Board. These sources reveal that sometimes life in some of the stations was almost a living hell of suspicion and mistrust. They reveal, on occasion, the highly politicized nature of decision-making in the mission.
Historians are generally aware of the fact that the human past is filled with brutality, oppression, suffering, and warfare. Even the best of stories have their tragedies. And, indeed, the true value of historical knowledge is precisely in its exposure of the unhappy reality of the past. The past never really was what our later loss of memory would like it to have been. The problem the historian of the northern Thai church faces is cutting through the bright facade to uncover the more dingy and depressing reality.
Believing as he did that God intended "great things" for the northern Thai, McGilvary was more than a little sensitive about those who disagreed, especially if they were other missionaries. He particularly took exception to the view expressed by his colleague, Dr. Charles Vrooman, that the Board should send reinforcements to China and Japan rather than to the Laos Mission. Vrooman felt that the need for missionaries was much greater in those nations.
In his letter to the Board of 4 December 1872, McGilvary protested. He vowed his support for the Board's work in the great nations of Asia, but he asked bluntly if the Board was going to deliver the Gospel only to those nations. He asked if the Board thought that the smaller kingdoms and tribes needed it less. "Has any other remedy been found for them!" He pointed out the great success of the missions to the Sandwich Islands and the Karen. He asked if there was any "more interesting" people than the northern Thai (the "Laos," as he calls them) and marshaled an array of arguments to urge their cause. He asked the Board to consider the fact that if it didn't reinforce the Laos Mission, the mission and its work would surely die. He concluded yet again with his confident assertion that God intended great things for the northern Thai. He also had too much confidence in the good judgment of the Presbyterian Church to believe that the work in the North would be allowed to lapse.
Eventually, the Laos Mission was to become one of the larger Presbyterian missions, though not among the very largest (see HeRD #210). Yet, throughout its existence one of the more important limitations on its resources was the Board of Foreign Mission's commitments to more prestigious Asian missions, including those in China, Japan, India, Korea, and somewhat later, the Philippines.
Just in case you ever wondered, the first Christian marriage ever performed in northern Thailand took place on 7 March 1871. For the record, McGilvary wrote in an 11 March 1871 letter to the Board that, "I performed the ceremony of the first Christian marriage ever celebrated in Chiengmai on the 7th Inst. The parties are not as yet baptized members of the church though they are not idolaters and profess their faith in the true God and desire at no distant day to be recognized as true followers of Christ."
Another question I'm asked now and again is when the first missionary hospital in northern Thailand, was founded. It sounds like a straightforward question, and there should be a precise answer. The trouble is the actual past has a way of not being so straightforward and precise. It all depends on what one means by "hospital". The first record of a hospital in Chiang Mai that I'm aware of is found in Daniel McGilvary's letter to the Board dated 10 April 1872. After Dr. Charles Vrooman, the first trained Western physician to work in the North, arrived in early 1872, the Laos Mission quickly moved to start what McGilvary called a "temporary hospital." It was located on the mission compound where First Church, Chiang Mai is now located and consisted of eight huts where patients and their families could live. Whatever the medical consequences of this first hospital, McGilvary was delighted with the evangelistic opportunities it offered the mission. He noted that because of the hospital more people than ever were visiting the mission compound, and most of them accepted the invitation to attend daily morning worship and/or Sunday worship. Two patients had already shown a "deep interest" in Christianity.
We don't have a firm date on this one. The hospital was started sometime between February and early April 1872, probably in March. We should still wonder whether Vrooman's little collection of huts in the back yard constituted a hospital in any meaningful sense of the word. It had none of the facilities, departments, staff, orderliness, or equipment that we would normally expect of a hospital. Is a "temporary hospital" a hospital? Hospital or not, in any event, it does constitute an answer of sorts to the original question of when the first hospital was founded. I should add that this rude and primitive first attempt at a hospital had no institutional connection with the later McCormick Hospital. It's existence was brief, and when the next doctor came a few years later, he had to start over.
While we're on this little run of firsts, here's one more: the first mission building dedicated solely to the worship of God. In his letter to the Board, dated 12 August 1876, McGilvary reported that, "About two months ago I built a small bamboo worship center or chapel on one corner of our lot on the public road. It has been a very successful experiment so far." He noted that the chapel was filled with worshippers on several occasions to the point that some were left standing. This is the only mention of this first chapel that I've come across, and we could wish for some more details. How big was it? Which corner was it on? How long was it used? Were there seats or did they sit on mats on the floor? If the experience of other churches is any guide, it was almost certainly a modest, bamboo hut and didn't last very long. At least we can pin the date down to the month. The Laos Mission started using its first chapel in June 1876.
As we saw in HeRD #691, the Laos Mission started using its first chapel, a temporary bamboo structure, sometime in June 1876. It saw this little chapel as but the first step towards a larger, more impressive church building, and put in a bold request to the Board for funding to that end. Board officials in New York were quick to complain that it sounded like the mission wanted a building well beyond the means of the native church. They also noted that the permanence of the mission was still in question, which fact made investment in large buildings unwise. McGilvary responded in a 6 December 1877 letter that the mission expected that ultimately the church would have to build its own buildings, find its own pastors, and establish its own schools. He went on, "But in the meantime we do not think it wise to here have no better church built than our little handful of Christians could aid in building. We need one good church in every place of sufficient importance to establish a mission." McGilvary concluded that building such a chapel as the mission envisioned would in and of itself promote its permanence esp. in the eyes of the populace.
In the 1870s every important mission decision had to weigh a number of factors, public relations and political considerations being prominent among them. Building a chapel was no exception. Temporary, little bamboo ones sent the wrong messages, that is that the mission and the church faced an uncertain future. A bold, big building would prove otherwise. The mission gave due importance to self-support issues, but put them off to a future date when the church was larger and more secure. In hindsight we can question this ordering of priorities, esp. since it persisted throughout the history of the mission, but in doing so we must take into account the murky, uncertain situation facing the mission and its converts in the 1870s. The search for a more secure future weighed heavily on the missionaries' minds.
Daniel McGilvary's letter to the Board of 4 December 1872 will one day feature prominently in the first chapter of a history of the role of women in the Laos Mission. Surveying the situation of the mission at that time, he urged in the strongest terms the need of the mission for more women workers. McGilvary took particular note of the role several powerful northern Thai women played politically, notable among them Chao Tipkesorn, daughter of the late Chao Kawilorot and wife of Chao Intanon, the new Prince of Chiang Mai. He went on to observe the that northern Thai women lived under "no great restraints" and that socially they were nearly the equal of men. "So that while there may not be that peculiar call for female labor that there is where females are kept in seclusion and are not seen by males, there is still that advantage that enlightened woman ever exerts over her own sex." He has hesitated in requesting single women, however, only because of the isolation of the North. It would depend on the individual woman's ability to be content with very little society and, thus, with just her work.
A few observations: First, not all male missionaries took McGilvary's relatively enlightened attitude towards women on the mission field. Second, however, it's also clear that McGilvary expected that women missionaries would work and influence would be limited to other women. Third, his words also seem to imply that being a young, single women was in and of itself a potential handicap to joining the Laos Mission. It's unlikely he would have written similarly of young, single male missionaries. Fourth, it's also worth noting that even after living in Thailand for 14 years without a furlough, McGilvary still thought of Chiang Mai as being "socially isolated." It's as if, socially, the tens of thousands of northern Thai who lived in close proximity to the mission didn't even exist. McGilvary, in sum, took what we would now call a fairly open attitude for his day towards the role of women missionaries, but he was still very much a man of his own times. For the record, however, we should note that he was instrumental in getting the Laos Mission's first single women, Edna Cole and Mary Campbell, to the field. They arrived in 1879.
The northern Thai church's past encompasses dozens and hundreds of events and themes just waiting for someone to come along and turn them into histories. One could write a respectable, scholarly tome on the history of missionary printing alone. The story began well before the mission was founded as McGilvary planned and schemed to get a press into the North. In the early 1870s, it looked for a time like he might be successful.
Jonathan Wilson, apparently, brought the very first press, a small lithographic press, with him in 1868, but in spite of much tinkering he couldn't make it work. No mention is made of it in the missionary correspondence after October 1868. In late 1870, however, references to another and much larger lithographic press do begin to appear. In December 1870, McGilvary expressed regret that the boxes containing the press were so large and heavy no one was willing to bring them up river. Then in April 1871, he reported that the mission sent a special boat down just to get that press. And, finally, after almost another year of silence, McGilvary informed the Board in February 1872 that Wilson was unpacking the press and setting it up. It wasn't until September, however, that Wilson reported his frustrations with the press. He had endless problems with the ink. It either wouldn't dissolve sufficiently or it dissolved to the point of being useless. Then, there was the manual. It was in German, and Wilson couldn't make heads nor tails of it. Eventually he even tried to make his own ink, but again to no avail.
The Board heard nothing further about the press until a full year later, September 1873, when Wilson mentioned in passing that since the hot season he'd been either too sick or too busy to give the press any attention. His strength was esp. drained by the burdens of mission work because his family was on the field alone. His health, in sum, was just too broken to work on the lithographic press. After this brief reference, that press too passed into the great graveyard of historical silence. From 1874 onwards, the mission began to lay plans for obtaining a regular press.
As we saw in HeRD # the Laos Mission's first concerted effort to import a press into Chiang Mai ended in failure. We can't help but wonder what happened to the press itself. Did it collect rust in some shed or under a grass roof on a back corner of the mission compound? Was it cannibalized for parts? We don't even know where Wilson set it up in the first place.
There are some obvious points to be made from this failure concerning the difficulties in importing major Western technologies into Chiang Mai in the 1870s. A press, even a lithographic one, couldn't stand alone. Aside from supplies and spare parts as well as a shipping system able to handle heavy equipment, it required a certain level of technical expertise that was beyond Wilson and McGilvary. Dr. Marion Cheek made just that point in a 21 August 1875 letter to the Board, noting that what it came down to in the end was a matter of finances. Establishing a working press in Chiang Mai would be very costly, and he implied that the only thing it would be good for was printing Bibles. He felt that it would be a long time before the Bible would be translated. Cheek argued that the money could be better spent in something over more value to the people of Chiang Mai, such as a school taught in central Thai. Events proved Cheek correct about the press and about the translation of the Bible into northern Thai, which was never completed.
On the other hand, we can't just simply say that the lithographic press was doomed to failure. IF the ink had worked, or IF one of the missionaries could have read German, or IF one of them had more technical expertise in printing things might have worked out differently. The prospects weren't good, again, as events proved. But that doesn't mean a different outcome was impossible, just unlikely.
In September 1869 Chao Kawilorot took effective, if violent, steps to bring the Christianization of northern Thailand to a halt. Although he failed to throw the missionaries out of Chiang Mai, he was otherwise successful. It took the Laos Mission a decade or more to recover, if it really ever did. Prior to Bloody September, McGilvary was already discussing ordination for at least one member of the fledgling church founded just a year earlier. In a 1 November 1875 letter to the Board he returned to his concern to establish a "native" leadership as quickly as possible. He wrote, "No burden weighs so heavily on my own mind now as the prayer that God will raise up laborers among the Laos themselves. From our distant and isolated position we cannot hope to have a large reinforcement of foreign laborers."
McGilvary, given the era, was relatively enlightened concerning the question of opening up leadership opportunities to converts. It's not clear, however, that he was so enlightened about empowering that leadership with full authority. He went on to state, "The substantial character of the Laos as a race will I have no doubt enable more to be accomplished through native assistants than in many other heathen lands." This sentence requires a close exegesis. First, it deals with future, expected native leadership as a matter of race, rather than individuals. This suggests that there exists an objective set of leadership skills, necessary everywhere and everywhen, and the northern Thai most likely had a better than average grasp of those skills. For heathens. The concept of "heathenism" is an important qualifier here because it suggests limitations on those skills not shared by enlightened peoples. Hence, McGilvary used the words "native assistants" quite naturally and innocently. His words assume that the mission itself would continue to exercise leadership, but do it through the agency of native assistants. They would form a middle level between the mission and the church.
The image of "native assistants" is a powerful one in the Laos Mission's correspondence, one that lingered for several decades. It was, in effect, mission policy to limit the power of its native leaders and retain for itself final authority in the oversight of all church and institutional work. That policy sprang from ethnocentric prejudices about heathenism that helps to explain some of the weaknesses northern Thai churches have experienced right down to the present.
Missionary records, naturally, highlight evangelistic successes and tend to pass over failures. In a letter published in the FOREIGN MISSIONARY, February 1870, however, Daniel McGilvary reports on the case of one inquirer who backed off from his interest in Christianity. This unnamed individual first made contact with the missionaries while he was in Chiang Mai working on one of several public works projects ordered by Chao Kawilorot, the Prince of Chiang Mai, and carried out in 1868-1869. He seemed very close to conversion at that time, but then he returned to his home village and nothing more was heard from him. The missionaries sent Nan Inta, their first convert, out to investigate, and he reported back that the man declared that he had decided he would never worship Jesus. He would be saved or lost with his own people.
This is one of only a few instances in the missionary record where we hear through them the voice of those who rejected Christianity. It seems, in this case, that McGilvary failed to understand the reason for that rejection. He observed that, "Some, of course, have real doubts as to the entire falsity of Buddhism; some hold back to see if the authorities will make any opposition, while others cannot storm the opposition of their own families." The failed converts' point was different: Christianity was not the religion of his own people. His decision had nothing to do with doubts, political pressure, or family opposition. As he understood it, he couldn't any longer be a part of his own people if he became a Christian. We can only speculate how many others might have felt the same way.
What's interesting is that McGilvary could hardly admit that rejection of Christianity might be a positive act of conscience. For him it amounted, mostly, to cowardice or weakness, or at the very most a failure to see the "entire falsity" of Buddhism. He and his colleagues in the Laos Mission lived in a very different cognitive world from the people they were trying to convert, and I'd suggest that that fact in and of itself was a major obstacle to their desire to convert the North to Christianity.
Pa (Aunt) Kammool deserves special attention in the history of the northern Thai church, not only because she was one of the first two baptized women converts so much as for the price she paid for conversion. Baptized in January 1876, she soon thereafter fell into problems with her family. McGilvary related the story to the Board in a letter of 12 August 1876. In July 1876, Pa Kammool's brother, who was the kamlang (patrician) of her family asked her to make a contribution to the "demonolatry of the family." She refused, and the brother then called her and her husband, Nan Inta, to a family conference. During that meeting, he spoke harshly to the couple and threatened specifically to take her case to the Chao Muang (Prince) of Chiang Mai. McGilvary went on to write, "She told him that as to that he might do as he pleased but that she was never going to worship the spirits. She was willing to redeem herself for life by paying to the FAMILY a small sum, but that she could not again join the family directly or indirectly in their worship. The brother somewhat calmed down and said he would consider that proposition, though insisting still that his sister should be an alien to the family." (emphasis in original)
This episode deserves a book's worth of commentary, but just a one thought will suffice here. We glimpse again the northern Thai genius for creating realities to fit necessities. In effect, Pa Kammool proposed to pay off her animistic obligations in one lump sum. It's just that she didn't CALL it that. She stated that she was compensating the family, implying that the family could do what it wanted with the money. The distinction between contributing to animistic rites and compensating the family instead is a fine one at best. McGilvary, however, approved of this gambit, suggesting that perhaps nearly a decade in Chiang Mai had somewhat softened his attitude about compromises with "heathenism". Compromises could be accepted so long as they just weren't labeled "compromise".
More on Pa Kammool in our next HeRD.
HeRD #698 reported on Pa Kammool, one of the first baptized women converts in northern Thailand. Some months after her conversion, she went through a trying time with her family, a time when she risked being virtually exiled for her refusal to participate in its animistic practices. Her courage in the face of family pressure deserves a further comment.
In the context of her times and culture, taking such a risk was surely unusual and impressively brave. She was willing to cut herself from significant parts of her former life for the sake of her new religion. Why? There were probably several factors involved including, among others, personal faith. It's also possible that her big brother's attitude galled her, and she felt she didn't have to take this sort of nonsense from him. Conversion meant accepting missionary patronage, so her desire to affirm her new loyalties over her old may also have been at work. Her husband was the first baptized Christian in the North and had himself paid a considerable price in anxiety and persecution for his conversion. Pa Kammool might have also desired to affirm her willingness to share in her husband's burdens. All of this is speculative, of course, but not unreasonable for that. Although pious myth-makers might want to transform Pa Kammool into a Heroine of the Faith, it's much more likely that she had to consider a number of factors in her resistance to her older brother's rage. These included religious, social, and patronage issues as well as her relationships to her spouse and children. It may well be, for example, that she also wanted to liberate her own nuclear family from an oppressive situation and set her children on a course that she deemed better for them. There were surely other factors at work that we have no knowledge of.
It's important to remember, however, that some northern Thai's found in Christianity a faith worth taking substantial social risks for and worth suffering for. Families such as that of Pa Kammool and Nan Inta had to reconstruct family life in a new mode, a Christian mode. We don't understand very well at all how they went about doing it.
In November and December 1876, the Laos Mission baptized five converts, including one woman and four men. In a 4 December 1876 letter to the Board, Daniel McGilvary reported that all of them had spent more or less time in the mission's makeshift hospital. That experience had an important impact on their lives.
Of one of them, the 70 year-old Nan Panya, McGilvary wrote, "Nan Panya after being in the hospital a month, was dismissed and returned to his home ? but it was not the same home to him again. Previous to this, he had spent his sacred days in the temple making merit being even more religious than Nan Inta had been. That had lost all its interest to him. The scales had fallen from his eyes. To use his own words - he found on his return that his HEART was no longer here. He had caught a glimpse of the beauty of him who is altogether lovely. The villagers wondered what spell had come over him to keep him from the temple and his idols. There was a general mourning over his defection. That HE should give up all his store of merit, the accumulation of a devotee of three score years and ten and become crazy over the notion of the foreign teachers was surely a sad comment on human stability [?] from their stand point. He was THE one man of the village of whom all of this would not have been expected." (Emphasis in the original).
As always in such accounts, we have to make allowance for McGilvary's pious interpretation of events. We don't know how Nan Panya himself would have explained his conversion. All we can be sure of is that he placed himself under the medical care of the mission for a month and then converted. Yet, McGilvary isn't too far wrong in suggesting that Nan Panya experience a significant shift in his religious world view. To those who didn't share in that shift, he surely appeared to be some combination of crazy, perverse, or stupid. It's also likely that his old way of life did become suddenly alien to him. Like Pa Kammool (see HeRDs #698 and 699), he too had become an alien in his own home.
The experiences of Pa Kammool and Nan Panya (HeRDs #698-700) point to central issues in the life of the northern Thai church, particularly the issue of the relationship of the church to northern Thai culture and society. There are two issues involved here, and they aren't always as carefully distinguished as they should be. The first is the change in one's way of thinking and acting that not infrequently follows conversion. If these two cases are any gauge, it seems inevitable that conversion would lead to a certain amount of social alienation, sometimes a significant amount. In the cognitive world of the North in the 1870s, traditional religion wasn't just "traditional". It was all there was. It was taken to be as true as any physical reality, perhaps even more true. Rejection of it could be taken as a sign of mental illness. A scandal. A moral evil. A stupid, wasteful act that introduced unwanted tension among family members and between neighbors. It's possible that the missionary demand that the converts make clean breaks with traditional religion accentuated social alienation. On a deeper level, however, changing one's religion, however gradually or circumspectly, was going to change one's social relationships. Some degree of social alienation seems inevitable. This seems to have been the case, frequently, in the church in New Testament times. Converts felt constrained to change their social relationships, which act involved them in social tension and alienation.
There is a second issue, however, one that has to do with the more difficult issue of cultural alienation. Pa Kammool and Nan Panya joined what was becoming a distinct counter-culture whose ways are overtly, obviously different from the larger culture. The early church generally didn't experience alienation from its cultural surroundings. Social structures, cultural life-ways, and moral values remained the same within the churches as they were in the larger society, something not true of the northern Thai Christian counter-culture. As described in earlier HeRDs, early Christians were frequently "single aliens" from their social surroundings. Northern Thai converts, on the other hand, experienced a "double alienation." (see HeRDs #357 and #369, May 1997). I'd only add here that Christian faith frequently involves a degree of alienation from one's surrounding society. Cultural alienation, however, isn't inevitable. Or even desirable.
Last March, I learned how to pound rice. The technology is simple, but the skills involved aren't, at least not for someone who comes to it later in life. One has to dispense with academic "learning strategies" and fancy theory and enter into a very basic learning process. Shigeharu Tanabe calls this type of learning "familiarisation," the transfer of knowledge related to farming. He writes, "Farming technology...is taught and transmitted rather non-discursively, mainly through a pattern of bodily postures and movements. Its associated knowledge is also conveyed through verbal and bodily forms such as sayings, songs, dances, and in some cases involves more complicated ritual practices. In the most simple case, mastering such a skill means learning how to handle a tool so that through rhythmic movements that flow naturally from human physiology it bestows an extension to human powers." Tanabe continues, "The mastery of any sequence of farming is attained almost exclusively through watching, imitating and incorporating the bodily prescriptions given in a discursive form." (ECOLOGY AND PRACTICAL TECHNOLOGY, p. 11). All of us, of course, are past masters at familiarisation else we couldn't have learned to function in society. Elements in our formal education are also taught through familiarisation, such as writing. Musicians are particularly adept at this style of learning.
If we think back to the 1870s, the Laos Mission found itself in a society in which familiarisation was the dominant learning strategy. Even formal education depended on rote learning, which we can take to be a form of familiarisation. The mission, on the other hand, was an Old School Presbyterian mission that believed that faith began in the mind, in rational reflection. True piety had to be rational before it could be warm. It depended on the mastery of a body of knowledge associated with a book. It's not that these missionaries didn't understand familiarisation. Not a few of them were creative practical technologists themselves, but their faith was not one to be acquired by familiarisation. One of the central challenges they faced, then, was finding ways to teach their religion that melded into the ways the vast majority of northern Thais were used to learning. The way they chose to do this was by introducing Western education along with Christianity. They, in other words, decided to fit northern Thais to their teaching strategies rather than their teaching strategies to northern Thai ways of learning. Whether or not this was the "right" thing to do, it was an extremely difficult thing to do. It meant importing and popularizing an array of Western educational techniques.
Laos Mission correspondence is filled with instances where the ill turned to missionary medicine to find cures that traditional medical practices failed to provide. We should note, however, that this particular road wasn't just one way. Wilson's letter to the Board of 15 March 1875 provides a rare glimpse of the reverse process. An inquirer, who had lived with the Wilsons for a time and had shown a serious interest in Christianity, became ill. Wilson told him that his case was probably terminal, and the man at first seemed resigned to accept "what God had in store for him." But, then, he left the mission compound and returned to his home where he had the "spirit-doctors" visit him. They performed their rituals and tied strings on him. He got better, and Wilson reported with clear disappointment that the man later lied to him that this was all done while he was too ill to know what was going on. His friends did it to him. Wilson didn't believe a word of it. There's no indication, in any event, that he ever became a Christian.
Western medical knowledge and practice in northern Thailand in the mid-1870s was still rudimentary at best. It could effect what seemed to be miraculous cures in some cases, but not in others. The first two missionary doctors in the North, Charles Vrooman and Marion Cheek, both complained of a lack of patients. Traditional practices more than held their own for several decades in the medical war the mission had declared on them from its inception in 1867.
Recent HeRDs indicated that the Laos Mission faced considerable obstacles in importing Western printing into Chiang Mai in the 1870s. It was partly a matter of infrastructure, or rather the lack of infrastructure that was the problem. But, in some cases, the political situation of the 1870s also worked against importation. In a letter to the Board dated 15 March 1875, Wilson complained about Chao Intanon, the Prince of Chiang Mai, and his brother, Chao Buntawong, the Chao Uparat or so-called "Second King". Chao Intanon told Wilson that the people of Chiang Mai weren't interested in Western-style education. He didn't seem to want Western schools for them. Wilson grumbled that, "The King & this brother are both ignorant of reading & writing. Unable to read themselves why should they wish the common people to know the advantages of a school?"
In Bunthawong's case, it wasn't just a matter of ignorance. He was strongly anti-missionary and anti-Christian, and he surely didn't want to see missionary-sponsored education established in Chiang Mai. Chao Intanon, as we've seen in earlier HeRD's, was a friend of the Laos Mission. We've also seen that in the 1870s he faced a difficult political situation because Chao Buntawong was very influential. Chao Intanon more probably simply couldn't be seen as too soft on the missionaries, hence his apparent lack of enthusiasm for Western education. It's also possible that he really didn't see the value of missionary education.
Dr. Marion Cheek is the most infamous Presbyterian missionary to have served in northern Thailand. After a few years with the mission, he turned to business and is reputed to have kept a stable of minor wives. His wife left him. His former colleagues in the mission all but disowned him. And the truth is he never really accomplished very much as a physician. The following may be a reason, or an excuse, for why that was so.
Writing in August 1875, some months after his arrival in March, Cheek explained to the Board the difficulties of his situation in Chiang Mai. He wrote, "...I have done no work. I have been studying the language a part of the time; but I have not had an opportunity of doing any medical work since I came here. And, indeed the prospect in the future, I must say, is not cheering. Unless I have a hospital here, my medical work will be a failure. I may give out medicine to any who come for it and visit as many as I can; but this will do little good except to relieve suffering to a slight extent. I would be able to reach only a very few in this way. I could visit only a small number, and my practice would be very unsatisfactory both to the patient and my self. The people are scattered and few in number." The people of Chiang Mai, he urged, were small in number and scattered. He emphasized that, "A hospital is NECESSARY if a medical man is expected to do enough work to justify keeping him here."
McGilvary must have been sorely disappointed in Cheek, even before Cheek left the mission. Indeed, McGilvary had himself shown that "merely" dispensing medicines had relieved more than a little suffering and had gained him an active lay medical practice. McGilvary, furthermore, never saw medical missions as an end in itself. It was a key weapon, rather, in the fight against northern Thai "superstition". Cheek's words and his actions suggest that he wasn't much interested in the evangelistic aspects of his profession. They also show that he wanted to practice medicine in Chiang Mai just as he would have in his home state of North Carolina. So, perhaps we should conclude that, in addition to other obstacles to Westernization we've mentioned in recent HeRDs, the persons of the Westernizers themselves could be an obstacle to that process.
In HeRD 705# we saw that Dr. Marion Cheek took a somewhat narrow view of how he should proceed in establishing a missionary medical practice in Chiang Mai. Although a trained physician, he seemed less able to doctor the people of Chiang Mai than did McGilvary, the experienced lay practitioner. In all fairness, we should also note that Cheek faced a very basic problem, esp. in his first year. He wrote in September 1875 that he hadn't been able to dispense any medicines since May because his general supply had run dry. This brings us right back to that problem of a lack of infrastructure to support missionary attempts at modernization.
Why did northern Thais convert to Christianity? A McGilvary letter dated 22 October 1877 offers some insights into the complexity of this question. He reported on four recently baptized converts. The first, Pa (Aunt) Kwang, had a son-in-law who converted in 1876. McGilvary writes, "She was interested at that time but could not make up her mind to resist the opposition of her friends. She again went to the temple but her eyes had been opened and she could not enter with her [illegible]. She is happy now in having made a final decision on the Lord's side." The other three all first came to the missionaries looking for medicine. McGilvary continues, "One of them belongs to a family in which there is leprosy and there is some fear that he may ultimately become a victim. He has been under a course of treatment and it is to be hoped that the symptoms may be at least mitigated."
Pa Kwang's conversion seems to have been for largely religious reasons. Contacts with Christianity, if McGilvary is correct, led her to feel dissatisfied with her former faith. In spite of social pressure, she ultimately converted. The potential leper patient, on the other, may have been more interested in non-religious benefits from conversion. We can't be sure, but he may have calculated that it was wiser to ingratiate himself with the missionaries, even if he didn't have to convert to get medical care. We know nothing about the remaining two, except that they'd received missionary medical care.
The results of these cases and many others reported in the missionary literature don't add up to a single conclusion, although medical care is frequently mentioned as a catalyst for conversion. It's important, however, to highlight this lack of conclusive data as a caution to those who would rush to judgment concerning the reasons people converted. The data we have, for example, doesn't prove that most converts were rice Christians. On the other hand, it's clear that relatively few converted for "purely" religious reasons. It needs to be stated yet again that conversion was a complex process involving any number of factors depending on the persons involved.
Daniel McGilvary was an Old School Presbyterian and a "scholastic Calvinist." He put great store in rational expressions of the faith and in learning as the avenue to obtaining faith. It was quite natural for him, thus, to emphasize scientific and cosmological themes in his evangelism because he firmly believed that the solid, scientific world revealed its Creator. Creation, scientifically understood, was as sure a witness to God as was the Bible. Supposed contradictions between science and the Scriptures were due to incomplete data or faulty interpretations of the data. Thus, in the mid-1870s McGilvary entered into a scientific dialogue with Chao Rat Lamkan, a man of high rank who McGilvary considered to be by far the most intelligent man in the North. McGilvary taught him the rudiments of geography and astronomy, and together they studied the stars with a small sea glass belonging to McGilvary. At first Chao Rat Lamkan refused to question northern Thai cosmology, which put the great Mt. Meru at the center of the universe. Eventually, however, he admitted to McGilvary that either the Buddha or his disciples had been mistaken about cosmology, and he event worked out for himself further "proofs of the Copernican system." (McGilvary to Irving, 4 December 1876, Board of Foreign Missions Records).
The historical study of northern Thailand has paid little if any attention to the significance of encounters such as these. The Laos Mission seems to have been a significant importer of new ideas, and it was the only agent of Westernization that systematically engaged northern Thais in debates on cosmological and religious questions. McGilvary, in particular, evidently invested many hours to such discussions as these with many different individuals. He was the first science teacher in the North, the purveyor of a powerful new way of interpreting reality that has long since driven traditional thinking of the field and out of the schools of northern Thailand. That process began with him.
In HeRD #708 we saw how McGilvary entered into an extensive dialogue with a number of northern Thais about cosmological and scientific questions. He seemed quite adept at convincing learned northern Thais that their former beliefs about reality were incorrect. He hoped that he could show them that both their cosmology and their religion were false. The Bible and science were true, and therefore they should accept the findings of both science and Christianity. In later years, however, sometime after the 1870s, this theme disappears from his correspondence entirely. He seems to have given up on the dialogue about science. The reason almost surely was that, except for an exceptional case or two, people didn't convert because of his arguments. Indeed, it seemed to make no difference to northern Thais that traditional Buddhist cosmology turned out to be wrong. They could accept that Buddhism was wrong in some ways, but still not wrong in the ways that mattered. The same pattern was played out in Bangkok, where even King Mongkut had fully accepted the Western, scientific world view. He remained, at the same time, a committed follower of the Buddha.
The Presbyterian missionaries of the 19th century, didn't understand that it was possible to give oneself to a religious path that didn't claim to know the whole truth. They put ultimate store in their faith in a perfect Scriptures revealing a Perfect God and God's Perfect Son. For them, ultimately, Truth must be perfect, without blemish. Which is to say that they didn't understand the religious genius of the Thai people, a religious genius that equates perfection with a calm, peaceful praxis. It's a genius that seeks truth primarily in practice rather than cosmology and theology.
For those who may not know of him, Davy Crockett was an American frontiersman of the earlier 19th century. Although a historical figure, numerous legends and tall tales grew up around him. Among the most cherished of those tales is the story of how he died in 1836 in battle along with a small force of hardy fighters defending the Alamo during the Texas War of Independence. A whole generation of Americans grew up on Walt Disney TV episodes that culminated with Davy swinging his rifle against the horde of Mexican troops swarming over the parapet. Now, it appears that this final episode in Davy Crockett's life never happened. José Enrique de la Peña, an officer in the Mexican army, kept a diary in which the storming of the Alamo is detailed. According to the diary, Crockett was captured alive, along with six other men. He didn't die fighting. He surrendered, only to have the Mexican general, Santa Anna, order him tortured and executed.
De la Peña's diary has caused something of an uproar in Texas. There's a feeling that Crockett's heroism is diminished and called into question by the diary. There are numerous charges, as a result, that it's a fake, especially because it surfaced suddenly in the 1950s with no indications of where it had been for the previous century. Those academics who defend it have come in for abuse, and the whole matter has caused enough stir to find its way into the popular press and on-line. One scholar, in an effort to calm the waters of controversy, has subjected the diary to rigorous scientific testing. Those tests show that the paper and ink are authentic and that the diary could not have been written in more recent times. Still the controversy rages. Some people, evidently, don't want their Disney Davy tampered with. If there's a point here, it's simply to highlight once again how important to us our images of the past are--whether or not they do have much to do with the actual past.
In December of last year, some twenty individuals attended a three-day consultation on church-related research in Thailand (Dec. 15-17) sponsored by the Office of History, Church of Christ in Thailand. Dr. Philip Hughes was our chief speaker and consultant. It was held primarily in English, and most of the participants were expatriates working in Thailand, many of whom have research experience. Some are currently involved in research. Several Thai participants, however, kept us firmly rooted in the Thai church. The consultation was loosely structured and not aimed at any so-called practical ends, except to allow the participants an opportunity to share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. The consultation focused not on the results of research but on the research process itself, and for several HeRDs to come, I'd like to share themes and insights from that consultation with you.
To begin at the end, one of the central tensions the consultation revealed was between past and future foci on research. For the most part, our vision for research was firmly fixed on past and present issues, especially the ever fascinating and perplexing issue of indigenization or contextualization. Philip Hughes brought to us, however, a different perspective, one based on his years of research in Australia and his knowledge of social and religious trends in other countries. He is convinced that young people in their 20's and under are moving in new religious directions that will render the question of indigenization meaningless. This is a global trend. Young people look on religions more as providing a set of resources for life and less as being communities for living life. They pick and chose from each religion things that are useful to them, such as Buddhist meditation or Christian concepts of service. In Australia, thus, "religiosity" is on the rise. More people than ever feel themselves to be religious. Church attendance and participation, however, are on the decline. Even the rate of growth among the Pentecostals has declined significantly.
Philip's comments suggest an obvious shift in the focus of research, from past issues to future ones. The issue is no longer how the Christian community contextualizes itself into the Thai scene, but what types of resources it will provide Thai people and how it will structure itself to provide those resources. To a degree, answers to that question depend on the church better fitting itself to Thai contexts, but the shift in focus is crucial. And I have to confess that we didn't seem to know quite what to do with it.
The consultation on church-related research sponsored by the Office of History in December '98 featured two panels of three persons each. The first panel spoke to the experiences that have been gained from past research. The second looked towards future directions. Nearly all of the panelists set the stage for their presentations with biographical remarks that one of them summed up best when he stated that, "My research process is part of my personal journey." It was clear that biography played an important part in both the subjects people choose for research and the methodologies they pursue in their research. There was a tendency, however, to see all of this in a negative light, as if personal perspective and commitment necessarily introduced a distorting bias into the research process. It corrupts the data. My own feeling, shared with the consultation, is that we make too much of the inability of humans to know the Truth. We spend too much time lamenting our inability to attain Truly True Truth and escape the poison of our biases. Perspectives can help us see things that others might not see. Commitment drives us towards the truth as frequently as it does away, for right commitment seeks to ground itself in clear seeing.
The consultation, in any event, seemed to be very conscious of the person of the researcher as integral to the research process. It raised questions about the relative merits of outside researchers, as opposed to researchers who come from within the context of research. Some participants were esp. sensitive to power issues, particularly the power research gives to the researcher. There was genuine concern that research not be intrusive and that it be built on a certain level of mutual trust between the researcher and those being researched. At least one participant felt that foreign researchers weren't likely to achieve an adequate level of trust or of objectivity needed to collect quality data.
The consultation on church-related research sponsored by the Office of History felt that one of the greatest obstacles to church-related research is its lack of organization. There's little sense of who's doing what. It's difficult to locate materials or to know what's been done on any given subject. Several participants agreed that church-related researchers need a regular forum for coming together and regular means for sharing information. It was generally agreed that there's a need for a web site. Beyond that, the participants seemed to disagree on how organized church-related research in Thailand should become. Some called for a formal association or for a "Christian Research Center" that would serve as a channel of communication for church-related research. Still others suggested that Thailand should have a Christian Research Association, such as is found in Britain, New Zealand, and Australia. Further discussion, however, revealed a sense that Thailand isn't ready for such formal structures. In the end, there was a general agreement that there is a need, at least, for a regular meeting, perhaps every other year if not every year, at which church-related researchers can meet. The consultation itself seemed to be a possible format. Various participants pointed to the need for indexes and bibliographies and the need to sensitize the larger church to the need for research.
The final session of the consultation articulated a five-point plan for the building of a church-related research infrastructure in Thailand. First. Establish an independent research agency, possibly along the lines of the New Zealand Christian Research Association, which has a governing board but no regular employees. Other models were also proposed. Second. Hold annual or biennial consultations. Third. Initiate useful projects while at the same time publicizing the idea that research is important. Fourth. Set up a web site as the core mechanism for promoting networking among researchers. Fifth. Begin to train church people, esp. church leaders, to be capable information users. In all of these discussions, the consultation staggered between visionary possibilities on the one hand and perceived limitations on the other. The most difficult obstacle facing us in these discussions was that we have little sense of who is doing what and where at the moment.
The December research consultation had two invited guests, Philip Hughes (see HeRD #711) and Mr. Mark Henman. Mark is a doctoral student with the Melbourne College of Divinity doing research in Kanchanaburi Province on the religious relations between two closely related villages, one Catholic and one Buddhist. Both villages migrated from the Northeast some years ago. In the course of his research, Mark has come to emphasize the importance of non-verbal forms of communication in inter-religious relations. Mark reminded the consultation that humans communicate significant amounts of meaning non-verbally, but students of inter-religious dialogue have entirely ignored the non-verbal aspects of dialogue. A careful observation of those aspects has revealed to Mark the fact that people convey religious meaning through the way they conduct themselves in their daily, mundane lives. In the case of the two villages he's studying, Mark has found that while there is little or no verbal discussion of religious subjects, both have strong perceptions of the beliefs of the other, based on perceived actions as well as participation in each others' festivals.
Mark has hit on what seems to be a potentially very useful research tool for the study of church life in a number of ways, not just inter-faith dialogue. What would we discover, for example, if we subjected local church worship services to this type of study? What do our services communicate non-verbally? It would be fascinating to study congregational forms of non-verbal communication. Is it possible, for example, that low attendance at worship is related partly to non-verbal messages that leave people uneasy or downright unhappy? There seems to be a lot of fruitful potential here.
One of the participants in the December research consultation, from the Philippines, raised the question of foreigners doing research in Thailand or with Thai churches. He asked if Thais, esp. in the villages, aren't suspicious of the intentions of foreign researchers. He suggested that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the foreign researcher to obtain accurate data. Indeed, he argued that in general outsiders aren't going to get good data from villagers. Since most of the participants in the consultation are Westerners, these questions and observations struck home in an important way.
One of the Thai participants, however, disagreed that local Thai people would deny a foreign researcher good data out of an inherent suspicion of the researcher. He suggested that quite the opposite is the case. He stated, "We admire farang and the scientific approach, so having foreigners do research is quite acceptable." He thought that in some cases the foreign researcher would be perceived as a less of a threat and would be easier to talk to. People, that is, could share things with an outsider that they wouldn't open up about to other people in their own community.
Further discussion suggested that the issue involved in one of intrusiveness. How intrusive is the researcher? Does the researcher build trust? Do people sense that they might get some benefit from sharing the truth as they see it with the researcher? The general sense of the consultation was that in Thai research contexts the context itself doesn't impose inherent limitations. There are, however, questions about the language capabilities of the foreigner, the use of translators, and how sensitive the foreigner is to imposing foreign meanings on Thai data. The initial question concerning the relationship of the researcher to those being researched was important, however, as it promoted reflection on a whole range of issues that any researcher should be sensitive to. It also opened up the further question of power relationships, which we'll look at in the next HeRD.
Power issues are among the most difficult ones facing a researcher. A number of participants in the consultation seemed particularly conscious of these issues in terms of church research in Thailand. One person raised the question of who conducts research and the purposes of their research. He urged that church-related research needs to be integrated into the life of the churches. Churches need to learn how to read and use research data.
That sounds right on, but one of the Thai participants immediately responded that the whole question of using data in the church is a murky one. Research and its data can be an avenue to power, and people in the church know this. They often feel ambivalent about or outright distrustful of researchers, and they fear the power that research knowledge gives to the researcher. Another participant noted that the decisions of who does the research and decides what subjects are researched are made outside of the churches themselves. Church-related research, thus, seems to point to the powerlessness of local Thai churches. It's not clear how relevant research is to them, nor is it clear whether or not the data and knowledge that result from research actually empower the churches or aid them in strengthening their life and witness. Still another participant, however, took a different perspective. She noted that power isn't just one thing. There are different types of power, including the power of the Cross. Power, indeed, can be a positive thing and in some situations can open doors to new possibilities. She argued that research can actually be prophetic, that is exercise power in a way that channels God's message into human situations.
Although there was no single conclusion concerning research and power, it seemed to me both important and hopeful that the consultation raised power issues early and remained sensitive to their importance. Whether we draw on the prophetic tradition or a theology of incarnation, it's clear that Christian researchers can't avoid wrestling with their role in relationship to the churches. Motivation. Intention. Methodology. Subjects. Confidentiality. Use of Data. The uses and abuses of power by researchers impact all of these subjects and any others involved in the research process. It's helpful, for me at least, to see these questions as presenting opportunities as well as posing problems.
Dr. Pradit Takerugrangsarit spoke to the consultation on church-related research concerning the potential role of such research in the life of the church. He urged, first, that the church needs to use research to discover its role in society and to make the church itself more aware of the world around it. Where the consultation generally had been thinking of the church as the object of research, Dr. Pradit was proposing that it also must become an agency for research. He wondered, for example, how the church could possibly respond to contemporary issues, such as government corruption, apart from research. Second, he lamented the fact that the church and its educational institutions don't put enough emphasis on research and that churches rarely use research to assist in decision-making. This needs to change. Third, Dr. Pradit spoke more generally to the churches' needs for information and for systems of information-sharing. Based on these three points, he called for the establishment of an independent Christian research center, for the training of more Christian researchers, for an informal network of Christian researchers, and for more cooperation between church researchers and researchers in general. He urged on the consultation a concept of "theological research" that will relate church life to the larger world and that will give theological reflection an empirical grounding.
Dr. Pradit brought to the consultation yet a different dimension to the issue of church-related research. He was proposing that we use research as a tool for the indigenization of the church into the real world that it now lives in. This isn't a "classical" form of indigenization that wants to make the church "more Thai" so much as a call for the church to be more fully engaged in the turn-of-the-century Information Age. Dr. Pradit envisions research as an important tool for that indigenization.
Dr. Esther Wakeman spoke to the consultation on church-related research immediately after Dr. Pradit and brought a strikingly different vision for church-related research. She argued for a form of research that would address more personal issues of faith. How does it help us as individuals to be more loving and Christ-like? How can it help us engage in conflict resolution? Such research would be more focused on human relationships within the church. It could, for example, study patterns of conflict within congregations, seeking to understand the sources and the possible solutions to that conflict. She explained that at heart the question was that of grace and how we can understand grace within our social and cultural contexts. How, for example, can we understand and explain grace in a Thai context? Dr. Wakeman summarized her presentation by observing that church-related researchers should conduct their research in a spirit of love for the church. They should be Christ-like individuals.
This presentation sparked a lively discussion. The consultation reflected on the relationship between the internal search of the researcher and the external search carried out in the research. It raised questions concerning the relevance of transcendent goals to the research process. Dr. Wakeman's presentation reminded us that research in the context of the church should be conducted in accordance with the church's concerns and values. It should reflect theological perspectives. Research, thus, isn't just ABOUT the church. It participates in the church's life and journey.
The consultation on church-related research in Thailand sponsored by the Office of History last December concluded with a discussion on future directions for research. This was a topic that deserved more time and reflection than the consultation ended having up to devote to it, but three specific suggestions were made for future research.
FIRST, the churches need to have a clearer picture of how labor migration affects the churches themselves and what they might do to respond to labor migration. Although the current economic crisis has witnessed significant reverse-migration, we have to expect that the future holds a return to in-migration of rural people, including Christians into the cities. The churches have largely failed to address this issue, important as it is to the future demographic shape of the nation and the church. SECOND, the Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT) needs to better understand the role of its tribal churches in its life and future. Tribal churches will soon comprise half of the CCT's membership, but there is a clear reluctance to allow these churches a voice or a role in the CCT's life. THIRD, we need more study of the relationship of local churches to their communities. How do they relate now, and in what ways can we improve those relations?
Northern Thai church history is replete with the most improbable characters. Chao Fa Kolan is one of my favorite. In a 24 March 1870 letter to the Board, Daniel McGilvary reported on the activities of this "prince of the Northern Shans" who had caused trouble in the North for some three years. Chao Fa Kolan had ruled a Burmese tributary state, but he had lost favor in Burma and fled into Chiang Mai territory. Burma entered into negotiations with Chao Kawilorot, the Prince of Chiang Mai, to get him returned to Burma, and in the process presented him with some gifts. Rumor of these negotiations and gifts reached Bangkok, and Kawilorot was summoned to Bangkok to explain charges that he was about to shift his loyalty to Burma. Whatever the truth of the matter, Kawilorot talked his way out of any trouble. We should note that it was during this trip to Bangkok in 1866 that the McGilvarys obtained permission to take up residence in Chiang Mai.
When Chao Kawilorot returned to Chiang Mai, he actually passed up an opportunity to capture Chao Fa Kolan who then turned bandit prince and began to raid northern Thai communities. He eventually became such a threat that Kawilorot raised an army of 10,000 men to chase him down. This army set out in November 1869. McGilvary observed, "There was a time when it was feared the Chaw Fa Kolan might have a force too strong for the Laos and that he might slip around and take the city." The fear proved unfounded. Kolan had only a few hundred men, who were easily routed by the Chiang Mai army. Kolan himself fled back into Burmese territory. A short time later Kawilorot started on his final journey to Bangkok. Kolan took this opportunity to establish himself on Chiang Mai's northwest border, where he again posed a threat to the city. McGilvary concludes by reporting that Chiang Mai's acting authorities acted quickly to form yet another army. Chao Fa Kolan was once again defeated and this time wounded as well. He again fled to Burma and passes out of northern Thai mission records.
Chao Fa Kolan's role in northern Thai church history is a secondary one, but possibly not unimportant. McGilvary's letter indicates that Kolan created a state of anxiety and sense of external threat in Chiang Mai. It may not coincidental that it was during one of the periods when he appeared to threaten Chiang Mai that Chao Kawilorot initiated his bloody suppression of the embryonic Christian movement. Kolan's depredations and the threat of a new, possibly disloyal religious movement would have contributed to a sense of instability that Kawilorot couldn't ignore. In September 1869 he suppressed the Christians. In November his army defeated Kolan.
Although McGilvary had no intention of "contextualizing" the Laos Mission's work in our late 20th century concept of the term, he was keenly aware of the difficulties of communicating Christianity cross-culturally. In its early years the mission couldn't charge for its medical services. People wouldn't have paid. Dispensing free medical care, however, turned out to be a problem, not only because of the costs involved to the mission but also because the recipients assumed that the missionaries were giving free care to make merit. In a letter to the Board dated 5 February 1872, McGilvary discussed mission plans to begin charging fees to those who could afford to pay them. Doing so would show that the missionaries weren't just trying to "lay in a store of merit." He stated, "It will teach them the difference between the benevolent and the meritorious nature of our work." McGilvary's concern highlights themes that played a key part in the formation of Presbyterian work in the North, particularly the contrast between benevolence and merit-making. "Benevolence" in 19th century American Protestant parlance meant any act that brought people closer to God. It combined notions of evangelism and humanitarianism. [See HeRDs #127-29 and #180] Merit-making conjured up a deeply held Protestant antipathy to humans trying to buy their own way to salvation.
All of this provides yet another example of the strategy the Laos Mission followed in bringing Christianity to northern Thailand. It looked upon indigenous religious ideas and beliefs as threats. No thought seems to have been given to packing merit, a deeply meaningful Thai religious concept, with new meaning. McGilvary, rather, wanted to communicate the concept of benevolence, a deeply meaningful American religious concept, to the people. Given the realities of the situation, there was little hope, none in fact, that the Laos Mission could carry off this feat of replacing a fundamental, northern Thai complex of religious meaning with an American one.
Chao Kawilorot's execution of two of the first seven northern Thai Christians in September 1869 quickly gave rise to a mythic interpretation of that event that has persisted down to the present. Drawing on early church parallels the Laos Mission claimed that the "blood of the martyrs" give rise to the northern Thai church. It didn't. That period of persecution killed the embryonic church that was coming to birth in 1869. It was reborn until several years later. The story of Nan Inta's return to the mission fold in 1872 helps us understand that process.
Nan Inta, you will remember, was the first baptized Christian in northern Thailand. When the bloody events of September 1869 exploded on the church and the mission, he fled for safety. Some 2 and 1/2 years later, in April 1872, Jonathan Wilson wrote the Board that Nan Inta still keep his distance from the missionaries. He stated, "Whether his heart has become indifferent to the gospel, or whether the fear of his master keeps him away from our worship, we know not. We have long hoped for his return, but disappointment & sorrow are all that his present course brings us." In late April, however, Nan Inta attended a little meeting with Wilson, another convert who had fled the September Persecution, and two other men who weren't Christians. It was a stormy night, dark and gloomy as only nights before electricity could be. This small huddle of men talked and shared tales by the flicker of a lantern or two. They also prayed. Wilson reported that Nan Inta prayed a touching prayer that was "full of love for souls and of Christ." This event marked his return to the mission and one step towards the rebirth of the northern Thai church.
Even before the founding of the Laos Mission in 1867, Daniel McGilvary gave thought to translating the Bible into northern Thai. The task proved a long, arduous one, and the mission never did succeed in translating the entire Old Testament. McGilvary wrote a letter to the Board, dated 22 February 1876, that provides some insights into two of the difficulties the Laos Mission faced in translation. He wrote, "I have been devoting all the time I could to finishing and revising my translation of Matth. It is still not all done but I will have it in time for [?] to polish it." He also asked that the "advance sheets of the new Engl. Bible translation" be sent to him as soon as possible. He was referring to the American Standard Version, which he felt was based on the latest textual criticism. Further comments by McGilvary suggest that he was translating from the English Bible rather than from a Greek text.
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