Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-c654p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-31T10:14:01.877Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

People are obsessed with religion: The definitional dissonance of evangelical encounters in Myanmar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2021

Michael Edwards
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article responds to recent calls to consider how religion is defined and deployed in and about Myanmar. Discussing local Pentecostal efforts to evangelise to Buddhists in contemporary Yangon, it presents the encounter with the religious other as one ground from which definitions of religion might emerge. I show that, by taking up new opportunities to share the gospel, believers entered into a long conversation between Christianity and Buddhism dating back to the colonial period. Tracing the different definitions of religion that this conversation generates, and attuning to the dissonances between them, might offer alternate ways for approaching what gets termed the religious and the secular in the study of Myanmar.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 49 - 66
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank friends and interlocutors in Yangon whose generosity made possible the fieldwork on which this article draws. Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière, Penny Edwards, Matthew Engelke, Anne Hansen, Deborah James, Ruth Streicher, Alicia Turner, and Wai Phyo Maung each contributed to improving the argument, as did three anonymous reviewers. Research was supported by the London School of Economics and the Royal Anthropological Institute.

References

1 The names of churches and people have been changed, with the exception of well-known individuals.

2 Keane, Webb, ‘Sincerity, “modernity”, and the Protestants’, Cultural Anthropology 17, 1 (2002): 65–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Alicia Turner, ‘Myanmar: Contesting conceptual landscapes in the politics of Buddhism’, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 16 (2016), https://kyotoreview.org/issue-19/myanmar-buddhism-conceptual-landscapes/ (accessed: 27 May 2018); Cheesman, Nick, ‘Introduction: Interpreting communal violence in Myanmar’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 47, 3 (2017): 335–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frydenlund, Iselin, ‘Protecting the sasana through law: Radical Buddhism and religious freedom in transitional Myanmar’, in Religion, secularism and democracy in Southeast Asia, ed. Verma, Vidhu (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 194–212Google Scholar.

4 Agrama, Hussein Ali, ‘Reflections on secularism, democracy, and politics in Egypt’, American Ethnologist 39, 1 (2012): 26–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Turner, ‘Contesting conceptual landscapes’.

6 On 1 February 2021, as this article went to press, the military in Myanmar took power in a coup. The full impact for issues discussed here is not yet clear.

7 See, for example, Smith, Donald Eugene, Religion and politics in Burma (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; von der Mehden, Fred R., ‘The changing pattern of religion and politics in Burma’, Studies on Asia 2 (1961): 63–73Google Scholar.

8 Agrama, Hussein Ali, Questioning secularism: Islam, sovereignty, and the rule of law in modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Turner, ‘Contesting conceptual landscapes’.

10 Hayward, Susan and Frydenlund, Iselin, ‘Religion, secularism, and the pursuit of peace in Myanmar’, Review of Faith and International Affairs 17, 4 (2019): 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Walton, Matthew argues that, ‘Political studies of Myanmar that have distinguished between “religious” and “secular” political figures have neglected the ways in which ostensibly secular discourses are situated within particular cultural and religious worldviews.’ Buddhism, politics and political thought in Myanmar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 12–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Asad, Talal, ‘Response to Gil Anidjar’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 11, 3 (2009): 398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Braun, Erik, The birth of insight: Meditation, modern Buddhism, and the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Houtman, Gustaaf, ‘How a foreigner invented “Buddhendom” in Burmese: From tha-tha-na to bok-da’ ba-tha’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 21, 2 (1990): 113–28Google Scholar; Kirichenko, Alexey, ‘From thathanadaw to Theravâda Buddhism: Constructions of religion and religious identity in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Myanmar’, in Casting faiths: Imperialism and the transformation of religion in East and Southeast Asia, ed. DuBois, Thomas David (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)Google Scholar.

13 Asad, Talal, Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Asad, Talal, Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L., Of revelation and revolution: Christianity, colonialism, and consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 On the entanglement of these two processes in the formation of secularism, see Mahmood, Saba, Religious difference in a secular age: A minority report (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Like scholars of Myanmar, too: See, for example, Rhoads, Elizabeth L. and Wittekind, Courtney T., ‘Rethinking land and property in a “transitioning” Myanmar: Representations of isolation, neglect, and natural decline’, Journal of Burma Studies 22, 2 (2018): 171–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 On what Yoko Hayami calls a ‘culture of evangelism’ emerging amongst the Karen as early as the 19th century, see her article ‘Karen culture of evangelism and early Baptist mission in nineteenth century Burma’, Social Sciences and Missions 31, 3–4 (2018): 251–83.

18 On this revival, see Khai, Chin Khua, ‘Pentecostalism in Myanmar: An overview’, Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 51, 5 (2002): 58–63Google Scholar.

19 Lehman, F.K., The structure of Chin society: A tribal people of Burma, adapted to a non-Western civilization (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Charney, Michael W., ‘Literary culture on the Burma–Manipur frontier in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Medieval History Journal 14, 2 (2011): 159–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Edwards, Penny, ‘Grounds for protest: Placing Shwedagon pagoda in colonial and postcolonial history’, Postcolonial Studies 9, 2 (2006): 197–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Kyaw, Nyi Nyi, ‘Islamophobia in Buddhist Myanmar: The 969 movement and anti-Muslim violence’, in Islam and the state in Myanmar: Muslim–Buddhist relations and the politics of belonging, ed. Crouch, Melissa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Than, Tharaphi, ‘Nationalism, religion, and violence: Old and new wunthanu movements in Myanmar’, Review of Faith and International Affairs 13, 4 (2015): 12–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 On the complex geneaologies of fraught categories of ethnicity, see Ferguson, Jane M., ‘Who's counting? Ethnicity, belonging, and the national census in Burma/Myanmar’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 171, 1 (2015): 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Candier, Aurore, ‘Mapping ethnicity in nineteenth-century Burma: When “categories of people” (lumyo) became “nations”’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 50, 3 (2019): 346–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 ‘Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 48/2015, Law Concerning Religious Conversion (Burmese)’, http://www.myanmar-law-library.org/law-library/laws-and-regulations/laws/myanmar-laws-1988-until-now/union-solidarity-and-development-party-laws-2012-2016/myanmar-laws-2015/pyidaungsu-hluttaw-law-no-48-2015-law-concerning-religious-conversion-burmese.html.

24 Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ‘Belief’, in Critical terms for religious studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 21.

25 Asad, Genealogies of religion, p. 1.

26 Kirichenko, ‘From thathanadaw to Theravâda Buddhism’.

27 Ibid., p. 33.

28 Houtman, ‘How a foreigner invented “Buddhendom” in Burmese’, p. 114.

29 Kirichenko, ‘From thathanadaw to Theravâda Buddhism’, p. 34.

30 Ibid., p. 29.

31 Braun, The birth of insight, p. 85.

32 Turner, Alicia, Saving Buddhism: The impermanence of religion in colonial Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

33 Amyotha-batha Thathana Saungshauk-yei Apwe.

34 Carbine, Jason, Sons of the Buddha: Continuities and ruptures in a Burmese monastic tradition (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Mahmood, Religious difference in a secular age, p. 47.

36 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of revelation and revolution, p. 26. For an analysis of how a somewhat analogous process unfolded in 19th century Siam, see Winichakul, Thongchai, ‘Buddhist apologetics and a genealogy of comparative religion in Siam’, Numen 62, 1 (2015): 76–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Iselin Frydenlund, ‘The rise of religious offence in transitional Myanmar’, in Outrage: The rise of religious offence in contemporary South Asia, ed. Paul Rollier, Kathinka Frøystad and Arild Engelsen Ruud (London: UCL Press, 2019), pp. 77–102.

38 Walton, Buddhism, politics, and political thought in Myanmar, pp. 45–6.

39 Ibid.

40 Edwards, Michael, ‘Downing in context: Translating salvation in Myanmar’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 41, 2 (2021)Google Scholar. On a comparable move and its implications in Sri Lanka, see Mahadev, Neena, ‘Karma and grace: Rivalrous reckonings of fortune and misfortune’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 9, 2 (2019): 421–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Gil Anidjar, ‘Secularism’, Critical Inquiry 31, 1 (2006): 60.

42 See, for example, de la Perrière, Bénédicte Brac, ‘Spirit possession: An autonomous field of practice in the Burmese Buddhist culture’, Journal of Burma Studies 20, 1 (2016): 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rozenberg, Guillaume, The immortals: Faces of the incredible in Buddhist Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferguson, Jane M., ‘Terminally haunted: Aviation ghosts, hybrid Buddhist practices, and disaster aversion strategies amongst airport workers in Myanmar and Thailand’, Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15, 1 (2014): 47–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDaniel, Justin, The lovelorn ghost and the magical monk: Practicing Buddhism in modern Thailand (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Lopez, Donald S. Jr., Buddhism and science: A guide for the perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Taylor, Charles M., A secular age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Schober, Juliane, ‘Communities of interpretation in the study of religion in Burma’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 39, 2 (2008): 255–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 See, for example, Kyaw, Nyi Nyi, ‘Alienation, discrimination, and securitization: Legal personhood and cultural personhood of Muslims in Myanmar’, Review of Faith and International Affairs 13, 4 (2015): 50–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elizabeth Rhoads, ‘Property in transition: Uncertainty, agency and belonging in Yangon, Myanmar’ (PhD diss., King's College London, 2019); Crouch, Islam and the state in Myanmar.

47 de la Perrière, Bénédicte Brac, ‘An overview of the field of religion in Burmese Studies’, Asian Ethnology 68, 2 (2009): 196Google Scholar.

48 Ibid.

49 ‘Myanmar pastors face prosecution for defying ban on religious gatherings amid COVID-19’, Irrawaddy, 14 Apr. 2020, https://www.irrawaddy.com/specials/myanmar-covid-19/myanmar-pastors-face-prosecution-defying-ban-religious-gatherings-amid-covid-19.html (accessed 14 Apr. 2020).

50 Turner, Alicia, ‘Religion-making and its failures: Turning monasteries into schools and Buddhism into a religion in colonial Burma’, in Secularism and religion-making, ed. Dressler, Markus and Mandair, Arvind-Pal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 226–42Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., p. 238.

52 Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L., Of revelation and revolution: Christianity, colonialism, and consciousness in South Africa, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Michael Lambek, ‘Facing religion, from anthropology’, Anthropology of this Century 4 (2012), http://aotcpress.com/articles/facing-religion-anthropology/ (accessed 27 May 2018).