The rural Chin village in the mountains of Myanmar where scholar David Moe was born in 1983 no longer exists. This village of 70 Christian families has moved twice, higher and higher into the mountains.
Moe’s desire to become a pastor led him to pursue higher education outside of Myanmar, and today he is a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in Southeast Asian studies at Yale University.
Yet he hasn’t forgotten the community that raised him. His new book, Beyond the Academy: Lived Asian Public Theology of Religions, argues that highly educated theologians should dialogue with those outside the ivory tower and engage the perspectives of grassroots Christians—those without theological training. For the book, Moe interviewed 15 grassroots Christian leaders in Myanmar who hail from the Chin, Kachin, and Karen communities.
These Christian ethnic minorities live in a unique context: In Myanmar, Buddhism is the state religion, and Buddhists make up 90 percent of the population. Most of the country’s elite, including the ruling military junta, are from the Buddhist Bamar ethnic group.
After Myanmar gained independence from the British in 1948, the new Buddhist nationalist leaders argued that those who weren’t Buddhist or Bamar were not true Burmese, leading to decades of discrimination and oppression of ethnic minorities. The 2021 military coup ramped up fighting between armed ethnic groups and the military junta yet also rearranged loyalties as interracial and multiethnic groups banded together to resist the coup.
Christianity Today asked Moe about the gaps between academic public theology and the faith of Myanmar villagers, the role Buddhist nationalism plays in Myanmar, and the intertwining of religion and identity that has led to a rise in Christian nationalism among Chin refugees in the US.
Can you tell me about your journey from a small village in Chin State to the Ivy League?
I was born and grew up in a village called Khin Phong. I went to school there and served as a Sunday school teacher at the village church.
I am the first graduate from our village school to get a PhD. The school was established in 1946, two years before Myanmar gained independence from the British. My late mother never went to school, but she was a very faithful follower of Jesus Christ. She always encouraged me to be faithful to Christ and serve God. I see my mother as a role model for my Christian faith.
I started my theological journey at a seminary in Myanmar because I wanted to be a pastor. Then I had a chance to go to Malaysia for my MDiv. In Malaysia, I had a chance to come to the US for further graduate studies. When I finished my PhD in theological studies, I didn’t immediately find a job. The military coup happened in 2021, so I couldn’t go back to Myanmar.
I applied to be the pastor at two very small Burmese churches in the US, but I was rejected. Then I had an opportunity to teach at Yale, focusing on Southeast Asian studies, religion, politics, and ethnic identity.
My scholarship engages four different communities: the academic community, the Burmese Christian community, the public society, and the political state. I feel that I’m in the right place.
In seminary, you began reading Asian liberation theologians like Taiwan’s Shoki Coe and India’s M. M. Thomas. How did their ideas differ from the kind of grassroots faith that you saw in your church growing up?
I love academic work; that’s why I’m in academia. But particularly when it comes to the discipline of public theology, academics are only engaging with other academics. That is not quite relevant for real life. If we are concerned about public life, we need scholars to engage with grassroots people.
Of course, we are not endorsing everything grassroots Christians do. They also have limitations, but if we want to understand public life—the common good in society—we need to engage with grassroots Christian churches that are witnessing about Jesus Christ without knowing any theology. They are just living their lives.
Because of my background, I see myself as a theologian who bridges the academy and the grassroots church.
What are some of the gaps that you found between academics and grassroots Christians?
Theologians in the academy talk a bit too much about politics and political power while sometimes forgetting about spiritual power. This gap is especially noticeable in Africa and Asia, where people are mostly thinking about spiritual power in their daily life.
When it comes to salvation, some academics focus too much on physical liberation. But these grassroots Christians talk a lot about life after death, about spiritual salvation.
Another gap: Academic theologians focus too much on the prophetic role of Jesus Christ without sufficiently addressing his priestly life and its implication for pastoral work. Myanmar ethnic minorities relate Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to their pre-Christian cultural practice of ritual sacrifice, which is similar to what the Israelites practiced in the Book of Leviticus.
I asked one of the grassroots church elders I interviewed what his favorite book of the Bible was, and he said Hebrews because “it focuses on the sacrificial role of Jesus Christ as the priest.”
Could you explain a bit more about the religious makeup of Myanmar? Why is it that most of the ethnic majority, Bamar, is Buddhist, while most ethnic minorities are Christian?
There are two main factors. First, as I just mentioned, the pre-Christian cultural practice of rites among ethnic minorities paved the way for the gospel. The second is that ethnic minorities practiced spirit worship based on oral tradition; they didn’t have any written documents. When the Western missionaries came, they helped develop literature in the region, translated the Bible, created a Burmese-English dictionary, and started schools and medical clinics. This is how ethnic minorities came to love Christian missionaries. On the other hand, Bamar Buddhists already had literature because Buddhism is a systemic religion. They had a systematic way of thinking, so Western missionaries did not convince them to become Christian.
For us Chin people, we lived high up in the mountains northwest of India, so not many Bamar Buddhist missionaries reached us. However, in the lower regions, where Bamar and Karen minorities lived together in the same cities, some might have been evangelized.
How did Buddhism become intertwined with Bamar identity, leading to Buddhist nationalism?
That began in the colonial period under the British (1824–1948) when Buddhist nationalism first emerged as the anti-colonial movement. During that time, Western missionaries also came to Myanmar, so for the Buddhist nationalists, Western missionaries and the British colonizers didn’t seem that different.
After we gained independence from the British in 1948, Buddhist nationalism turned into an anti-ethnic minority movement. Many Buddhist nationalists believed that ethnic minorities easily embraced Western Christianity. That’s why they faced discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country.
Growing up in the village, did you ever hear of the term Buddhist nationalism?
I did not. I only heard about this term after I entered the academic community. However, I did experience it. We understood Buddhist nationalism as lumyo-gyi wada, which means the “domination of the majority race.” The leaders promoted Burmese as the national language at the expense of ethnic minority languages, nationalized Buddhism as the state religion, and privileged the Bamar majority Buddhists.
When I was in the village, we felt it was natural that the majority had control over the minority. I knew that ethnic minorities faced discrimination based on their identity. The idea was that to be Bamar is to be Buddhist, and to be Chin is to be Christian. Even if ethnic minorities changed their religion to Buddhism, they couldn’t change their ethnicity, so they would still face discrimination.
When you asked grassroots Christians about their thoughts on Buddhist nationalism, some said they thought it was a myth, as they had only had positive experiences with Buddhists, while others said it was reality. Were you surprised by the answers?
I was a little surprised, but I understand their response is based on the people they encounter. It’s fair, because when we say “Buddhist nationalism,” we are not saying that all Buddhists in Myanmar are bad. I approach Buddhism paradoxically: There is the moral rule of Buddhism and the amoral rule of Buddhism.
In the West, the common perception of Buddhism is the Dalai Lama version of Buddhism, which is filled with peace and compassion. But they have not look at the ugly side of Buddhism, where Buddhism is misused as a political tool for violence, identity-based discrimination, and nationalism. This is more apparent in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka. We need to look at both the beautiful and the ugly sides of Buddhism so we can fairly engage with moral Buddhists who also hate Buddhist nationalism.
Due to ongoing fighting between the military and armed ethnic-minority groups, 70,000 Chin refugees now live in the US. How have they brought over this idea of blending religion and nationalism?
Many Chin refugees hate Buddhist nationalism back home in Myanmar, but when they come to the US, they really love Christian nationalism. Some display flags in their churches and homes. I ask them, “You say Buddhist nationalism is a problem in Myanmar, but how come you don’t think Christian nationalism is a problem?”
I think they justify this by arguing that Christianity is above all other religions. They also say that the US is built on Christian principles. They think Democratic presidents are anti-Christian.
Do many support Donald Trump for president?
Absolutely. They really love him because they believe he can make America’s economy great again and that he will protect Christian identity. They also view Trump as powerful and think that he has accomplished what he promised to do.
In your book, you note that Kachin Christians often justify their fight against the Bamar military by pointing to the Bible. Could you explain more about that?
After the coup, I interviewed a couple of Christian activists who say they love the Old Testament because it is explicit about evil and how God’s chosen people fought against their enemies. Because they believe the coup is evil, they like passages in Psalms—for instance, Psalm 1:1–2—that call God’s people to fight and resist evil. Moses is their role model.
Your book also includes a quote from some Kachin Christian who said they “would not go to heaven if there are Bamar there.”
Even before the coup, Kachin Christians faced a lot of discrimination. For them, being Bamar, being Buddhist, and being part of the army are inseparable. They don’t like Bamar people. It’s as if the anti–Buddhist nationalists have become the anti-Bamar people.
This is a radical view that shows how much Kachin people hate Bamar Buddhist nationalism. That’s why they say if there are Bamar in heaven, they would choose another place because they would not want to live together with them in the future. Of course, this is not the correct view for Christians, as we have to love Bamar even if we hate some policies or Buddhist nationalism.
You did a round of interviews before the 2021 coup began, then another round almost a year after the coup. Did you find that your interviewees’ answers had changed in that time?
The leaders I talked to still saw the military junta as the same—evil.
However, the way some Christian minorities saw Buddhists became more positive after the coup because there was an opportunity for interreligious resistance to the coup.
As I said earlier, Buddhist nationalism first emerged as an anti-colonial movement, then as an anti–ethnic minority group movement. But after this coup, Buddhist nationalism turned into an anti-democracy movement, which opened up the opportunity for some ethnic minorities and Bamar people to work together as they resisted the coup.
Are you seeing more people from grassroots backgrounds going into the academy and helping bridge academia with what is happening on the ground?
I think it’s growing in that direction, especially in my community. There is a paradigm shift among the younger generation. But we need to push the boundary of contextual theology and engage with the grassroots people. Engaging grassroots Christians and including them in academic writing is very difficult. It’s easier to engage with another academic book than with the people. I think many people know it’s needed, but I think many people are lazy.
Many scholars of world Christianity celebrate how Christianity moved its center from the West to the Global South. I don’t think they pay enough attention to how Christianity is flourishing particularly among the ethnic minorities and poor people living in the Global South. It’s not just a demographic move but a socioeconomic move toward the poor, the marginalized—people who are similar to Jesus’ disciples in the first century.
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