Chapter 3

Expansion (1890-1900)

From the time the McGilvarys arrived in Chiang Mai, the central dynamic of the Laos Mission's presence was geographical expansion. The ideology of expansion called the missionaries to the borders. The necessity of expansion worked on their consciences. They exhibited the traits of their cultural heritage as Americans with that nation's strong, consistent urge to move westward, to expand, and to bring the "benefits" of "civilization" to 'uncivilized" regions. The Laos Mission went through three phases of geographical expansion. Chapter 2 described the first phase, one that began in 1872 with McGilvary's first trip of exploration and ended in roughly 1890. The second phase opened a period when the mission's expansionist ideology became more articulate and aggressive but still concentrated on expansion within Siamese territory. In the final phase, the Laos Mission began to push expansion beyond Siamese boundaries into French Indochina, British Burma, and China. We will deal with the third phase In Chapter 7.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine Laos Mission territorial and institutional expansion in its second phase with special emphasis on territorial expansion.

In 1854, more than a decade before the founding of the Laos Mission Dr. Samuel House of the Siam Mission expressed the rationale for missionary expansion into northern Siam. He urged that the accession of King Mongkut to the Siamese throne provided an excellent opportunity for the Presbyterian Church to expand into the North. He wrote that, "...it will be a reproach on the enterprise of the Christian Church if she leaves the moral darkness of the region ...much longer uncheered by a single taper of divine truth. "(1) This was only the first in a long line of trumpet calls to expand the frontiers of Presbyterian missions into and beyond the North.

According to the mission, the northern states were not only land of

39

Since the missionaries believed that Satan ruled northern Siam, they felt that their Christian duty demanded they invade the land, occupy it, and defeat the forces of evil currently in control. Mission literature contains a wealth of military allusions and parallels: seize the land! conquer the land! take the land! In short, the Laos Mission believed that it was conducting a military-like campaign against the forces of the devil in his own territory. Thus...

• the church was called God's militia or soldiers in the war with Satan...
• the missionaries represented the generals leading the troops...
• the missionaries and their assistants who went off to open a new station represented a smail army going to war against darkness...
• winning converts in a new village meant that the village had been invaded, the mission had gained a hold, but it also meant fighting for every inch of ground...
• the training of converts won in a period of rapid growth paralleled consolidating the church's lines...
• tours of exploration spied out the land...
• those who reverted to Buddhism had been recaptured by Satan...
• and Buddhist revivals meant that Satan was marshalling his forces while an anti-Christian monk stood as a rallying point for the forces of the Devil. (4)

The signs of darkness and the Devil in northern Thailand took physical shape. Missionaries saw these evil forces and signs in the temples, the priests, and in the festivals of traditional religion. More generally, the society itself manifested evil because it clung to an "idolatrous religion" and because it persecuted the church. When they went into a new village, missionaries could feel that the people displayed a cold hostility to them. From the beginning, the political structures of the region generally resisted them and made life difficult for the converts. Even geography and climate reminded the missionaries that northern Siam was a hostile land: heat, disease, and the distance from "civilization" were problems severe enough to even cause death in some cases. (5)

40

As House stated in 1854, the Laos Mission felt that it had a moral obligation to expand as rapidly as possible into all parts of the region and beyond. The missionaries believed that only Christ could save the northern Thai from eternal damnation, and that God called on the mission to "rescue" as many "sinners" as possible. A deep sense of duty lay at the heart of the expansionist ideology by which the mission believed itself called to bring light to the region. Stated another way, the missionaries sometimes thought of themselves as being like Paul hearing the call to come over, come over to Macedonia. Only "cowards" ignored such a call! This sense of duty bred the mission to a battlefield mentality in which it refused to compromise with any obstacles, physical, cultural, or bureaucratic. In the war with Satan, there could be no compromise. (6)

Enter the Rev. William Clifton Dodd. Dodd arrived in 1887 and established himself as the chief proponent and apologist for mission expansion. A letter he wrote to the Board in January 1891 stands at the gateway of the second phase of mission expansion and provides a ringing rationale for the events of the next decade. In that letter, he argued that the Presbyterian missions in Siam must expand and to do otherwise would be both sinful and cowardly. His watchword was trust in God, and he cited the example of McGilvary, "Our Missionary Father," as the model to follow. (7) Dodd himself pursued the dream of distant shores through some thirty years of mission work and participated in the opening of new stations at Lamphun, Chiang Rai, Kengtung, and Chiang Rung.

This expansionist ideology was not simply a cherished ideal. It had power... power to shape the activities of the Laos Mission in a radical way; and as the dominant theme of missionary activity in the 1890s, it also strongly influenced the northern Thai church. In the end, missionary expansionism became a problem for the church as it scattered Christian churches extensively throughout the North in little pockets and as it drew mission attention and resources away from the needs of the churches already created.

Even more fundamentally, the militant/militaristic perspective of mission expansion and its battlefield mentality placed a particular burden on the churches It threw down a rigid battle line across northern Thai culture and society demanding that each convert "cross over" into the culture of the "faithful" Effectively, the church could not witness in society or locate itself in the world. The mission demanded that it totally remove itself from the world.

41

William Clifton Dodd

This was a strangely monastic "tactic" considering the aggressive evangelistic emphasis of the mission. The expansionist-militarist ideology of the Laos Mission tried to cut off the church from its cultural and social roots.

Lamphun Station. Nowhere were the limitations of the expansionist ideology more clearly obvious than in the drive to open and maintain a mission station In Lamphun, just a few miles distance from Chiang Mai. In the days when Dodd and others pushed for its establishment, they billed the Lamphun Station as absolutely necessary to the growth of the church. But, within a few years most of the mission even doubted if it needed a sub-station at Lamphun.

Evidently, the first family baptized In the Lamphun region was that of Nan Chaiwan who lived at Ban Paen. The family had been accused of witchcraft and fled, but when some of the family converted in 1885 they were able to

42

In the letter of January 1891 mentioned above, Dodd, now Interested in Lamphun, urged the opening of a mission station there. He claimed that the situation was just right and that the time had come. It was urgent to go into Lamphun immediately or the opportune moment would be lost. Within a few months the mission did, indeed, begin to make plans for a Lamphun Station, and the Lampang Station transferred $2,400 to help get things going. Naturally, the mission appointed the Dodds to the new station along with Elder Noi Lin as assistant. The station opened In September 1891. (9)

The Christian community In the Lamphun hinterland began to expand quite rapidly, and on 25 December 1891 the presbytery formally established its seventh congregation, the Lamphun Church, with 121 members living in eighteen villages. Although the work continued to prosper numerically during 1892, by 1893 the new station entered into a period of uncertainty. In that year, the Dodds left on furlough and the Rev. Robert lrwin, a relatively new missionary, took their place. At the same time, various members of the mission realized that Lamphun was too small and too close to Chiang Mai to warrant a full station. Some doubted that it even needed a missionary. Nevertheless, the Lamphun Church continued to grow rapidly enough that two daughter churches, the Bethel Church (106 members) and the Wang Mun Church (101 members) split from her in 1895. (10) The uncertainty of missionary leadership over the Lamphun churches continued. In 1895, the mission transferred lrwin to Nan and appointed the Briggs' to Lamphun. More than ever, some in the mission questioned the need for a family at Lamphun, and in 1897 the mission reached a compromise whereby Lamphun became a sub-station of Chiang Mai Station. (11)

Lamphun marked the beginning of the new phase of expansion of the Laos Mission. It was the first station opened on the basis of expansionist concerns entirely, making it quite different from the Lampang Station where the mission followed the lead of the King and his brother, Although the Lamphun Station proved a failure the rationale for later expansion into other areas did not change nor

43

It did not get permission for three stations, but it did for one...

Phrae Station. The first convert In the Phrae region was a blind man, Noi Wong, who visited the mission hospital at Lampang to see if the mission doctor could restore his sight. Even though his eyes were beyond treatment, he returned to Phrae a believer in the new faith, and on 16 February 1890 McGilvary baptized him in Phrae. (13)

In 1893, the entire region around both Lampang and Phrae suffered from a severe famine. Peoples from Lampang spent a month in Phrae during the earlier part of the year distributing food and carrying out relief work. He observed a new receptivity to Christianity there and took it upon himself to initiate plans for a station. Yet again, mission letters echo with the demanding, pleading requests to the Board for permission to open a new station: it is urgent! the time is now! the moment will be lost! (14)

Dr. William Briggs, a young missionary doctor, spent the months of May and June 1893 in Phrae making further preparations for a station even though permission had not yet come from the Board. Briggs found about twelve Christians around Phrae, all of whom had heard about Christianity in Lampang, and another two dozen or so inquirers. Permission for the new station finally came in July 1893, and the mission appointed Briggs to open the station. (15)

The Phrae Church was started with twelve members on 22 March 1894, and by August the new congregation numbered 27 members and had elected its first two elders, both employed by the station as full-time evangelists. Education work began in about July 1894 when Anabelle Briggs started a literacy class for women and girls. Soon thereafter Lillian Shields, another new missionary, started a class for small children.

The small Christian community in Phrae experienced repression from the beginning. Government officials in the city moved to prevent conversions

44

Buildings and property proved to be another important distraction as the small two-family station sought to establish itself. As in the case of Lamphun, in the critical years of creating a new congregation the Phrae Station had trouble giving the church the leadership necessary for encouraging the new community. At the same time, it did not have time to prepare leaders for the church itself, nor did it encourage the emergence of lay leadership. The Phrae Church was further weakened by a number of discipline cases; by the transfer of the Briggs' to Lamphun in early l896; and by a severe reduction in the station's budget in 1897. (17) One bright spot at Phrae in this period was the work of Julia Hatch. She engaged in women's work in the villages and emphasized practical matters of hygiene and home economics. She promoted the economic growth of Christian families in order to encourage self-reliance among village women. She also seems to have been the first missionary to dress in northern Thai style In order to identify with and be close to the people. (18)

The Phrae Church was a poor congregation plagued with dissension and discipline problems. In spite of the hoopla raised to convince the Board to open this station, the people in the region showed very little interest in Christianity. Thus, the poverty of the Christian community coupled with its social isolation and unpopularity resulted in a congregation that by 1898 displayed increasing dependence on the station. In fact, Christians from outside of the city started, in some cases, to move into Phrae in order to be closer to the source of their economic livelihood. The missionaries in Phrae felt frustrated with the church because it showed almost no interest in regular study or in education for Christian children. (19)

Both the church and the station in Phrae remained small and their situation difficult. At various times, dissension between mission families further weakened the work. The church did grow slowly in numbers, but the station just barely held on so that by 1900 only one missionary still resided in Phrae. (20)

45

Nan Station. From his first visit to Nan in 1872, McGilvary showed a special fondness for Nan and long hoped to open a station there. However, the move to establish a mission station in Nan did not begin until 1893. In that period of international tension, the mission feared an imminent takeover of Nan by the French, which would close the area to the Presbyterians and pave the way for a Catholic "occupation" of Nan. The mission appointed Dr. Peoples to visit Nan, which he did in 1894. Unwilling to allow the Laos Mission to over extend itself, the Board refused permission for a permanent station in Nan. However, at its 1894 annual meeting the mission decided to risk Nan anyway, hoping for its eventual permission. Work began in Nan in I895 under the Peoples', and the station developed a reputation as the most distant, difficult, and unhealthy station of the Laos Mission, one in which disease and isolation sapped the strength of those assigned to it. (21)

The Nan Church was officially established in September 1896 with sixteen members. Again, we see the pattern in which frequent changes in personnel due to ill health, furloughs, and absences for meetings resulted in a situation of unstable station leadership. The development of the newly formed church received insufficient attention. (22) Yet, the style of leadership that the church received in its early years differed from that of the other station churches. As "moderator" of the Nan Church, Robert lrwin emphasized self- government and self-support, and he tried to gear all of the church's activities to those ends. He involved church members in decision-making and left it to the Session of the church to solve congregational problems. In one startling departure, he put the little Nan school entirely in the hands of the church and purposely left it small so that by running and funding the school the church might learn something about self-government and self-support. (23)

lrwin also attempted to introduce an evangelistic scheme that provided immediate leadership for newly emerging Christian communities and reduced the role of the missionary. He wanted to place Christian families in eleven sub-regional centers around Nan. These families would then be responsible for developing churches in each center; lrwin initiated the program by sending Kru Wong to Muang Thoeng and Nan Moon to Chiang Kham with one supported by the church and one by lrwin personally. They received money to buy homes and land, and the station expected that after the first year they would support themselves. Irwin's plan worked particularly well at Muang Thoeng until the mission unexpectedly transferred that community to the closer Chiang Rai Station in 1898. (24)

46

In 1899, the mission also transferred Chiang Kham to the Chiang Rai Station. Amid the shambles of his dream for evangelistic growth based in Nan, lrwin reported that the Nan Church felt angry and upset with the mission for transferring both places to Chiang Rat Two factions emerged in the small Christian community at M. Thoeng. Kru Wong, founder of the community, led the pro-Nan faction. Chiang Rai Station sent its own elders to M. Theong to settle matters, but the hostility between the two groups grew so intense that one member of the pro-Nan faction murdered another Christian. Briggs, now at Chiang Rai, said that Kru Wong had fallen in with a group of criminals. (25)

Nan Station repeated the pattern of Lamphun and Phrae: the mission started a small station with insufficient personnel to set up the station and concentrate on church work. The Nan Church may have been initially more active and self-reliant than other stations' churches, but in the long run it developed only slowly. It remained a conglomerate of separate Christian individuals, families, and groups scattered across Nan Province.

Chiang Rai Station. In one sense, the founding of Chiang Rai Station broke the pattern of the three previous stations. Whereas none of those stations had churches before the founding of the station and only Lamphun showed any serious potential for growth, the Chiang Rai Station opened well after the first churches securely based themselves in the region. Those three churches - Chiang Saen (1888), Chiang Rai (1890), and Wiang Pa Pao (1892) - were all in good condition in spite of persecution at Wiang Pa Pao and had 234 members, all gained entirely through the efforts of the churches themselves. (26)

The initial discussions regarding a Chiang Rai station started in 1892, but the Laos Mission literally ran out of people to open yet another station. The man eventually chosen to go, the Rev. Stanley K. Phraner, fell ill and died, and the mission could not make concrete plans for Chiang Rai until 1896. Finally, in early 1897, the Dodds and the Denmans arrived in Chiang Rai and began setting up the station. They spent much of their first months in building and property matters, but they did report that the churches seemed more active after they arrived. (27)

The Chiang Rai area churches had a more independent spirit than other Laos Mission congregations. The Chiang Saen Church was well known for its active program and competent leadership. The Chiang Rai Church, still centered on Mae Kon, demonstrated its independence by resisting Denman's

47

Although a small station, the Chiang Rai churches under it exhibited considerably more strength than those in Phrae or Nan, and they continued to expand more rapidly both In numbers and geographically. The opening of the Chiang Rat Station brought to a close the second phase of mission expansion; however, some expansion had also taken place in the older stations, and we need to scan that expansion as well.

The Older Stations. Chiang Mai Station, heart of the Laos Mission, fully shared in the expansionist dynamic that drove the mission into new regions and opened up her own new area in the Chiang Dao-Muang Phrao region. Interest in Christianity first emerged in Chiang Dao in 1888 and led to the persecution of Noi Sali in 1889 (see Chapter 2). The Rev. D.G. Collins made the first missionary visit to Chiang Dao in 1890, and Christianity spread quickly enough so that the North Laos Presbytery established a church there on 5 November 1893. Like many churches of the time, this congregation was scattered over a considerable area with some members living as far away as Muang Phrao.

After this initial success, problems arose in Chiang Dao, and the congregation lost a significant number of families who reverted to traditional religious practices. Missionaries seldom visited these Christians, and not until 1899 did the mission, in the person of McGilvary, make an effort to recover the situation. McGilvary visited the church and took action to reclaim some who had drifted away and clean the church rolls of the rest. At the same time, he made plans for a separate congregation at Muang Phrao where the Christian community had remained stable and grown quietly under the gentle leadership of Kru Chai Ma, a semi-retired clergyman. (29)

A year after the founding of the Chiang Dao Church in 1893, the Chiang Mai station organized two more congregations: the first at San Sai (21 March 1894) and the other at Mae Pu Kha (1 July 1894). (30) Throughout the period, the under-staffed Lampang Station showed relatively little growth, and the only significant community that developed there in the 1890s grew up at Chae Hom, where in 1891 a Christian girl with some training at the Chiang Mai Girls' School began teaching her neighbors about Christ. By 1894, over forty Christians lived in several villages scattered about the neighborhood. (31)

48

Ten years made a remarkable difference, at least statistically, when one looks back to 1889 from the perspective of 1899. At the end of 1899, the Laos Mission had fifteen churches (from Chiang Mai with 821 members to Wiang Pa Pao with 45 members) and 2,257 communicant members. In that year alone, it received 210 new members on confession. The churches had one hundred elected elders and nearly 1300 students in Sunday schools from all of the congregations. (32)

Tribal Expansion

In the late 1890s and early 1900s, the Laos Mission articulated a doctrine of expansion that theoretically focused upon ethnic rather than geographical concerns. As the mission became embroiled in attempts to expand its work beyond the borders of Siam, it asserted a claim over the "Tai" peoples wherever they might be found. (33) Nevertheless, within the boundaries of northern Siam the mission felt called to work with all peoples. Therefore, its concern to spread the Gospel into every corner of northern Thailand involved it with ethnic minorities as a matter of course.

The Lahu. As early as 1886, the mission had some contact with the Lahu peoples of the Chiang Rai region, and in 1891 McGilvary and Phraner met with Akha, another tribal group, and even took one boy along with them to teach him reading. (34) The following year, 1892, McGilvary returned to the area with Dr. James W. McKean, at which time the mission developed its first sustained contact with the Lahu A significant group of Lahu showed interest in Christianity, and by the end of their stay the two missionaries had baptized thirteen La h us. The following year two more families received baptism. At this time, the Christian Lahu groups lived only about four miles from Mae Kon, and they became members of the Chiang Rai Church and participated in some of its activities. By 1899, yet another four Lahu families became Christians, and the leader of the Lahu Christian community was reputed to be a man of some influence in Lahu circles. (35)

In 1904, the Laos Mission started to spread Christianity among the Lahu on the French side of the Mekong River. In 1905, missionaries spent three weeks each with groups on both sides of the river, and the work on the French side seemed to be especially promising. Lahu on the Siamese side suffered from opium addiction and showed much less interest in Christianity because of the mission's insistence that they give up the drug. (36) In 1910, Lahu church membership was transfered from the Chiang Rai Church to the Nang

49

The Kamu. Kamu work did not begin until a few years after the Lahu, but at one time it looked as though it would become a major concern of the Laos Mission. As one might expect, McGilvary again made the first contact, this time in French territory in 1897. The prospects among the Kamu so excited him that he returned in 1898 to spend several months with the people, and things came to the point where McGilvary expected a mass movement to begin at any moment. Ten villages showed a serious interest In Christianity. In one of those, the headman converted while in the others headmen were near conversion. But, the Chao Muang of Luang Prabang, subject to the French, complained to the French authorities about American missionary work from across the border. He feared unrest among the Kamu, and the French immediately ordered McGilvary to cease his work with the Kamu. (38)

The mission refused to give up such promising work and decided to make the Kamu into a major mission project for the northern Thai churches. If missionaries could not go into French territory... then send "native" evangelists! The mission also sought to involve the churches in financial support of the Kamu work In 1899, elders went over to work with the Kamu, and things went so well that when they left 87 Kamu were ready to receive baptism. The Lampang Church became interested in the Kamu and proved to be a good source of funding for that work. (39)

The mission decided to send one of its clergymen, Kru Chai Ma (not the same person as the pastor at Muang Phrao) and two elders into French territory. These men left in early 1900 and soon baptized 41 more converts. Four more villages announced their intentions to join the new faith. But, just when things seemed to be going well again, the mission had to recall its three men in Kamu territory for (unspecified) serious errors. A mission investigation of the behavior of Kru Chai Ma and the elders revealed that they had been in the wrong and that the Kamu Christiana remained "faithful." (40)

The mission tried to maintain some contact with the nearly one hundred baptized Kamu, but when two American missionaries again crossed over

50

The Laos Mission had brief contact with other tribal groups, such as the Yao in the Chiang Rai area, but virtually nothing came of these contacts. The mission faced a number of fundamental problems in its attempt to establish tribal missions: it lacked both the personnel and the funds to sustain any kind of continuous work. The missionaries involved in tribal outreach had other regularly assigned d duties that kept them from spending more than a very few weeks per year with tribal peoples. Furthermore, the tribal peoples lived in places difficult to get to and spoke languages very different from northern Thai. Thus, the Laos Mission had to "reach" across the gulf of administrative, geographical, and linguistic distance to tribal peoples when it did not even have resources to adequately cope with its primary responsibility, the lowland northern Thai.

Mission work in northern Siam divided into two general categories: church-evangelistic work and institutional work. Theoretically, the institutions began and developed as mechanisms for supporting church and evangelistic work, but they actually developed quite apart from the church.

Schools and Hospitals. In 1899, the sum total of mission institutions amounted to the two schools in Chiang Mai, one small school in Lamphun, and the only recently reorganized mission hospital in Chiang Mai. Over the next ten years, the situation changed dramatically, and institutional expansion became yet another expression of the Laos Mission's fundamental drive to expand.

By the end of the nineteenth century, both Chiang Mai and Lampang

51

In short, during the decade of the 1890s the Laos Mission began to seriously establish its institutional base of schools and hospitals. In order to maintain this growing institutional establishment, the mission invested nine of its members in medical (4 individuals) and educational (5 individuals) work another four members took the mission press or translation and literary work as their primary activity. In comparison to these thirteen, nine members of the mission engaged primarily in evangelistic and church work. (42) Clearly, the Laos Mission began to make a major investment in its institutions during the 1890s.

The Mission Press. The most important single departure in institutional development during the 1890s was the founding of the Chiang Mai Mission Press in 1892. Even before their arrival in the 1860s, McGilvary and Wilson wanted a press. However, their numerous attempts to obtain one were thwarted until Dr. Peoples finally secured a northern Thai font of type in 1890. The press opened in early 1892 under the capable direction of the Collins' with its primary purpose being to produce evangelistic literature in northern Thai. The press also made possible the publication of the Bible in northern Thai.

From the beginning, the Mission Press faced two serious problems that limited its effectiveness as a mission institution: first, only a very few missionaries could give time to writing and translation, which meant that it produced relatively little Christian literature for publication. Second, since the press had to support itself, it emphasized commercial printing. The bulk of its business came from the Siamese government. (43)

Nevertheless, the Mission Press did print material useful to the churches. Although the range of biblical materials translated in the 1890s was limited mostly to some books of the New Testament, the press produced large numbers of scripture portions as well as Wilson's northern Thai hymnal, first published in 1894. McGilvary claimed that Wilson's hymnals provided the best Christian education instruction that many converts would ever receive. (44) The Mission Press also printed Sunday School/Christian Endeavor lessons (beginning in 1898),

52

The Mission Press produced only a very modest body of Christian literature, and I have argued elsewhere (46) that the press had a much greater impact on the processes of change in northern Siam than in either evangelism or church work. From the perspective of modernization, the Mission Press played an impressive role in introducing new ideas throughout northern Siam. From the perspective of this study, the church, it played a much more modest role.

The most important programmatic change during the 1890s as far as the church itself was concerned was the introduction of Christian Endeavor Societies into the local churches. The mission's experience with Christian Endeavor indicates the problems the mission and the churches faced in developing vital congregational life in the churches.

Young missionaries fresh from the United States, where the "C.E." movement was sweeping the nation, first Introduced Christian Endeavor In 1894, and it eventually became an important part of the mission's total Christian education program. Robert lrwin organized the first local C. E. society in the Lamphun Church early the next year and also set up C.E. societies at Chiang Rai, Mae Kon, Nang Lae, and Chiang Saen In 1895. The mission then sponsored the first Christian Endeavor convention to be held in the North in December 1895. The next year the movement spread to the other stations, and eventually many churches and a number of local Christian communities had their own societies. (47)

The Christian Endeavor societies were established as part of the life of the local congregations and carried out quite varied activities including Bible study, prayer meetings, and evangelism. The missionaries generally tried to use C.E. as a training ground for developing leadership and congregational self-government. They also tried to have local church members take charge although missionaries often had effective responsibility for the local C.E. societies themselves. The Chiang Mai Church developed the strongest of the C.E. societies. (48)

53

From the perspective of mission history or from the perspective of the mission's involvement in modernization, the decade of the 1890s was nothing short of remarkable. This handful of men and women, foreigners facing grave climatic limitations in a land not noted for its transportation facilities, opened four new Stations and laid the foundations for numerous institutions. Never numbering more than fifty, they virtually initiated the movement towards "modern" education, medicine, and printing in northern Siam. As they opened each new station, they introduced new technologies into new areas and supported the modernizing efforts of the Siamese government in those regions. (50)

Yet, from the perspective of the churches, it is more difficult to be as enthusiastic about the results of mission expansionism. While that ideology of expansion drove the Laos Mission to extreme efforts in scattering the seeds of its religious faith and developing institutions that it believed would strengthen the Christian presence In the North, that same ideology left the church with a difficult historical and geographical heritage. For, the Laos Mission constantly reached beyond the churches to expand numbers, territory, and institutions. It did not give sufficient concern to the nurture of the churches that already existed because of its incessant need/urge to keep moving on into new territory and new activities. The situation might not have been so serious if the Laos

54

The geographical heritage of the northern Thai church is indicative of the historical issues at stake. By constantly emphasizing territorial expansion, the Laos Mission created a widely scattered set of small church groups only loosely attached to organized congregations. These groups were generally separated from each other by great distances and were left in social isolation. Thus, many Christians in the 1890s suffered a dual isolation: from other Christians and from the larger society around them.

In effect, the Christian church in northern Siam resembled a balloon, large territorially but without the solidity or substance that a less widespread, more integrated Christian community would have had. In the next three chapters, I will explore the weaknesses of the mission's relationship with its churches in m ore depth. The point I want to emphasize here as an introduction to those chapters is that the expansionist ideology of the Laos Mission lies at the heart of the communal weakness of the northern Thai church in the 1890s and beyond. It was that ideology, which distracted it from nurturing the churches that it established.

55