Religion in Southeast Asia: An Encyclopedia of Faiths and Cultures

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CALUNGSOD, PEDRO

Pedro Calungsod is a Filipino saint, the second to be elevated by the Catholic Church to sainthood, and is the patron saint of the youth. He was believed to have been born in 1654. He was martyred on April 2, 1672, in Guam while working as a lay catechist and assistant to the Jesuit mission engaged in preaching and baptizing native Chamorros.

Calungsod was born sometime in 1654. Historians have speculated where he was born: whether in Cebu, southern Leyte, or Ilo-ilo, all of which were part of the Diocese of Cebu in central Philippines at that time. According to records, Calungsod was trained as a catechist in a Jesuit-run boarding school in the Visayas region. Along with several boys, he was sent to Antipolo to become part of Father Diego Luís de San Vitores’ Mission to the Ladrones (present-day Guam).

On August 7, 1667, the group left the port of Cavite aboard the ship San Diego. They reached the island of Guam on June 15, 1668, after sailing first to Acapulco in Mexico to get provisions. The missionaries under Father de San Vitores established the first church and mission house in the town of Agana. The Jesuits and their young assistants labored hard due to the difficult terrain and the prevalence of typhoons in the island. The group also had to contend with native shamans/priests who opposed the Catholic missionaries. One of these was a Chinese named Choco who spread rumors that the baptismal water used by the missionaries was poisonous, implying that it was the cause of the recent rash of deaths of infants. Native shamans supported this allegation. As a result, many of the converts turned their backs on Christianity.

On April 2, 1672, Father de San Vitores and Calungsod, who was by then estimated to be 17 years old, were in the village of Tumhon looking for a runaway companion when they learned that the wife of the chieftain named Matapang had just given birth to a daughter. Matapang, who had been a Christian, was among those who believed the rumors circulated by Choco. The father refused vehemently to have his daughter baptized and shouted at Father de San Vitores and Calungsod. The two withdrew to the nearby beach where they gathered the village’s children and led them in singing hymns.

Agitated by the incident, Matapang went out and sought a friend named Hirao. When he came back with his companion, he learned that Father de San Vitores and Calungsod had been able to convince his wife to let his daughter be baptized. This sent Matapang into a frenzy, and he and Hirao attacked the two unarmed Christian workers. The village chief hurled spears at Calungsod until he finally hit him in the chest. Hirao killed him with a slash from a machete. Father de San Vitores was able to give Calungsod the last rites before he himself was killed by the two Chamorros. They carried the bodies to their boat, weighted them with large stones, and took them to the sea where they cast the bodies.

The members of the Jesuit mission started the process for the beatification of Father Diego on January 9, 1673. However, it was overtaken by major events like the expulsion of the Jesuits. In 1981, the documents of the Jesuit’s beatification were discovered as Agana prepared for the celebration of its 20th year as a diocese. Father Diego was beatified on October 6, 1985.

Work on having Calungsod beatified began in the 1980s, and on March 5, 2000, Calungsod was beatified by Pope John Paul II and was canonized on October 21, 2012, by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome. His feast day is on April 2.

George Amurao

See also: Christianity; Jesuits; Missionary Movements; Philippines; Shamanism.

CAMBODIA

Cambodia is predominantly a Theravada Buddhist country similarly to its nearest neighbors Laos and Thailand in Southeast Asia. Buddhism was introduced gradually to the early kingdoms during the first centuries of Christian era. The rulers of kingdoms known as Funan, Chenla, and Kambuja/Angkor based their right to rule on Hinduistic concepts of divine king devaraja and Buddhist notions of future Buddha bodhisattva. The French colonial era introduced Christianity, as Catholic Vietnamese colonial officials were posted to administer French Cambodia. Christianity remains a minority religion, although in recent years Christianity has been proselytized among the northeastern minority Mon-Khmer tribes by evangelical groups. The second-largest religion after Buddhism is Islam, which is practiced predominantly by the ethnic Chams, who now live in central parts of Cambodia, particularly in Kompong Cham.

Cambodia has experienced dramatic political changes during the last 100 years. From the French colonial era, Cambodia emerged independent relatively smoothly in November 1953, as King Norodom Sihanouk (1921–2012) managed to exploit the Cold War rivalries and pressure the Western powers to stop supporting the French colonial rule in Cambodia. Sihanouk himself turned out to be a devaraja-like authoritarian ruler and crushed the political opposition until the most radicalized sections of the opposition, later known as the Khmer Rouge, emerged in the capital city in April 1975 and started to violently dismantle state institutions, religion, and education. The Vietnamese invaded what was called “Democratic Kampuchea” in January 1979 and introduced their own rule for the next 10 years. The end of the Cold War witnessed the Vietnamese troops leaving Cambodia and some former Khmer Rouge and other pro-Vietnamese politicians trained by the Vietnamese took over Cambodia. Prince Sihanouk returned from his long exile and had himself enthroned yet again, reigning until 2004 when he abdicated and one of his sons Prince Norodom Sihamoni (b. 1953) was enthroned as the new king.

Novice monks worship at the giant Buddha statue at Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia. Originally built as a Hindu temple in the early 12th century, the complex at Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world. It became a Buddhist temple in the 13th century. (Anthony Brown/iStockphoto.com)

Cambodia’s highland, forest-dwelling, animist minorities—collectively known as Khmer Leou (upper Khmer)—mainly inhabit the northeastern provinces, where they have practiced rotating agriculture for generations. The absorption of Cambodia’s economy into today’s global marketplace has exposed these peoples to the risk of alienation of land. Ignoring laws protecting indigenous rights, officials have been granting land concessions to large companies and silencing local protesters. As the highlanders’ spirit forests, where their ancestors dwell, become gutted of precious hardwood trees and then cleared for various forms of exploitation, an entire cosmos is put under threat.

Alexandra Kent

Presently, the Cambodian population is about 15 million, of whom 50 percent are under the age of 25. According to the semiofficial statistics, Buddhists dominate with over 96 percent, whereas Muslims make up 2 percent. Ethnically, the breakdown is given as 90 percent being ethnic Khmer, 5 percent Vietnamese, 1 percent Chinese, and the rest consisting, for instance, of ethnic Chams. Statistics in Southeast Asia tend to be notoriously unreliable, as religious and ethnic diversity are sensitive issues in most countries.

The early kingdoms that located approximately in the region now included in Cambodia left behind some impressive temples and temple ruins. The kingdom of Funan is assumed to have located somewhere in the Mekong Delta in present-day southern Vietnam and southeastern Cambodia. Archaeologists have found some ruins of temples, which seem to indicate that Hindu gods and goddesses were known in the kingdom. These findings were interpreted by the French colonial scholars such as George Coedes and Louis Finot that the region had already before the French intervention benefitted from “Western” cultural influences from India. At its extreme interpretation, the Indianization theory suggested that whole mainland Southeast Asia and Java in present Indonesia were conquered, occupied, and colonized by Indians. These excesses are now rejected, but the fact remains that Indian religions, architectural influences, and a writing system applied to the local languages prevail. Funan is assumed to have existed approximately from the fifth century CE for a few centuries and was followed by yet another “Indianized” kingdom mentioned in the Chinese Annals as Chenla (Zhenla). The French scholars of the French School of Far Eastern studies (Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient—EFEO) assumed that these kingdoms were predominantly ethnically Khmer.

Contemporary with Funan, Chenla, and the most well-known Kambuja or Angkor at the northern banks of Tonle Sap Lake, existed the kingdom of Champa. This kingdom is assumed to have been a network of related kingdoms ruled and dominated by the ethnic Chams. Also, the Chams were well versed in Sanskrit, Hindu gods and goddesses, architecture, and ideological concepts. The Chams are somewhat of an anomaly among the Mon-Khmer speaking peoples of present-day Cambodia and Vietnam, as their language is related to the Malay languages. It was in the interests of the French colonial scholars to reconstruct a glorious Khmer empire that the French then could claim to have restored. Hence, the role and history of the Chams in the region remained marginalized, and only recently has more research been carried out about these people and their role in Cambodian and Vietnamese history.

The great monuments of Angkor are predominantly Hindu, dedicated to Hindu gods and kings. The reliefs of Angkor depict the battles described in the Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, presenting them together with the battles fought by the kings of Angkor, thus aligning them with the Hindu glories. The most important Buddhist monument in the Angkor area is Bayon, depicting the face of King Jayavarman VII 216 times in the towers of Bayon. His face is interpreted as representing the face of a bodhisattva. The bodhisattva myth indicated that the king has in his cycles of rebirths reached the highest level, where he could have entered in nirvana, but has remained in the world out of compassion for his fellow-beings. The myth is regarded as a Mahayana Buddhist myth, as the equivalent highest stage of the Theravada Buddhist is an arahat, who does not and cannot concretely help anyone, but is there as an example for others to follow. The bodhisattva myth is essential in Mahayana Buddhism as it encourages people to follow an assumed bodhisattva, who then can take along a large group of people on his “vehicle”—Mahayana is often translated as the Great Vehicle—and bring them to nirvana. The myth is so appealing that it is also followed by many Theravada Buddhists.

The French scholars who regarded themselves as saviors of the Khmer culture did not only restore the temples into their assumed earlier glory, but also started to teach the European version of Buddhism to the Cambodian people. Theravada Buddhism is known to be tolerant and inclusive, where people can, besides Buddha, pay respect to ancestors, spirits of nature, Hindu gods, and Mahayana bodhisattvas. The European Buddhist tradition, translated to European languages by scholars such as Max Müller and T. W. Rhys Davids, presented Buddhism as a philosophical, practically atheistic religion, where an individual should rely on his or her own reason and moral judgment.

The indigenous Buddhism appeared “unorthodox” if not heretic in the eyes of Western scholars; hence the French decided to send two young Cambodian monks, Chuon Nath (1883–1969) and Huot Tath (1891–1975) to study Sanskrit with the French Indologist Louis Finot in Hanoi. Both later became supreme patriarchs sangharaja. The monastic order sangha was under the French patronage. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Siamese prince Mongkut—later King Rama IV—started to reform the Siamese sangha by establishing a new royalist sect, Thammayutnikai; these influences spread to Cambodia, too. Siam was nominally politically independent, and the French perceived the Siamese influences to be destabilizing. French authorities started establishing Pali-language schools for monks in the region and established the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh in 1930, led by Suzanne Karpeles from EFEO.

The Buddhist sangha has played a crucial political role in Cambodia. One of the most famous Cambodian monks is Hem Chieu (1898–1943), who led demonstrations against the French-language policies in Cambodia. In 1942, he was arrested and died in prison. The Siamese-style division into Mahanikay and Thommayuth sects was adopted in Cambodia as well, and during Sihanouk’s political rule (1955–1970), there were two supreme patriarchs sangharaja heading their respective sects. During the Khmer Rouge regime, the monks were regarded as “parasites” living on the expense of the ordinary hardworking people, and many of the monks were disrobed and even killed. During the Vietnamese occupation (1979–1989), the sangha was revived. One of the internationally most famous monks of the era was Preah Maha Ghosananda (1928–2007), who started reviving Buddhism in the refugee camps at the Thai-Cambodian border.

While allegedly purifying Khmer Buddhism from magico-animistic and Hinduistic elements, the French ended up also “purifying” the Khmer national identity, which extended to include the idea of the purity of the Khmer race, language, and culture. These ideas of “purity” led to Khmer racial chauvinism, which was promoted by the anticolonial nationalistic policies propagated by Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot alike. This Khmer chauvinism led to discrimination and outright massacres of Vietnamese and Chams particularly during the Khmer Rouge era.

The numbers of the Chams killed during Pol Pot’s rule remain contested, but we are probably talking about hundreds of thousands. The Chams have gradually recovered from the dark period, partly with the generous assistance of fellow Muslims of both Malaysia and Thailand. New mosques have been constructed as well as madrasas, and the Cambodian Cham Muslims have been offered opportunities to study in the neighboring countries.

Marja-Leena Heikkilä-Horn

See also: Buddhism; Cao Dai; Christianity; Colonialism; Ethnicity; Ghosananda, Maha; Hinduism; Indonesia; Islam; Khmer Buddhism; Minorities; Vietnam.

CAO DAI

Cao Dai, or Caodaism, or Cao Đài Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Ph Độ (the “third great way of salvation”), is an indigenous religion of Vietnam that appeared in the 1920s under the French colonial presence. The founders are a group of both Vietnamese civil servants and Daoist masters. Encouraged by spirit-mediumship communication with deities, they rapidly constituted a canon, rituals, and a hierarchy translated literally from Catholicism (with a pope, cardinals, and other officials). Theologically, the divinity residing in the “high tower” (Cao Đài) is an avatar (incarnation) of the Chinese Jade Emperor. He undertakes a syncretistic unification into the pantheon of the Sino-Vietnamese Three Teachings (Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism), Jesus, and spiritualist figures (Victor Hugo and Joan of Arc). Before the impending end of the world, Caodaists have the responsibility to save humanity through conversion. Theology interferes clearly here with politics, and the Cao Dai texts encourage Vietnamese patriotism and the overthrow of the French colonial rule.

Caodaism emerged from distinctly Chinese-Vietnamese salvationist groups or “redemptive societies” (minh sects). This category refers to a wave of new Chinese religious movements that appeared in early twentieth-century China (including Xiantiandao, Daoyuan, and Yiguandao). Like these groups, Caodaism challenged the collapse of the imperial order and the irruption of modernity in Vietnam, by propagating millenarian expectations, the worship of the Golden Mother of the Jasper Pond, spirit-mediumship, and so forth. Compared to these Chinese groups, Caodaism drew its hierarchical inspiration from the Catholic Church and was thoroughly influenced by an Occultist colonial culture (as Western Spiritualism, Freemasonry, and Theosophical Society).

Jeremy Jammes

The members of Caodaism (highly educated and businesspeople, landowners, and peasant population) went over 500,000 in the 1930s and have sustained to rise even during the crackdown on Caodaists during the Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. The latter succeeded in dismantling the Cao Dai army, which was trained and equipped by the Japanese, French, and American states for struggling against Communism. Engaged in the country’s decolonization, Caodaism maintained a competitive relationship with other nationalistic movements from the 1930s onward. In the years after 1976 (the independence of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam), a violent repression took place against Caodaist pro-American or pro-French leaders. But since the 1986 political and economic reform, Hanoi has been aspiring to connect its ideology with a more market-based economy and a certain social and religious peace. In exchange for transparency in all its religious activities, Caodaism was granted the status of “religion” in 1995 following which building renovation permits were delivered more freely, and the “Holy See” of Tây Ninh was opened to tourists.

Currently the community is constituted by a network of holy sees and meditation centers formed during the twentieth century in accordance with political or theological rivalries inside the leadership. Caodaist “profiles” vary from the politically consensual and regional Organ for Universalizing Cao Dai teachings (Co’ quan Ph thông Giáo lý) in Ho Chi Minh City, to the local but meditative branch of Chiếu Minh. Finally, there are between one million and four million Caodaists in Vietnam, and 15,000–30,000 living abroad, mainly in the countries where boat people found asylum (in the United States, Australia, France, and Cambodia). Although Caodaist temples are much more visible in the southern part of Vietnam, they have been planted throughout the country. The Cao Dai nationalistic canon is vivacious today through international and missionary networking activities (scouting, preaching, publishing and e-propaganda, and pilgrimages).

Jeremy Jammes

See also: Buddhism; Christianity; Colonialism; Communism; Confucianism; Daoism (Taoism); Diaspora; Globalization; Nationalism; Religious Conversions; Ritual Dynamics; Spirit Mediumship; Vietnam.

CHRISTIAN CONFERENCE OF ASIA

The Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) is a regional Christian ecumenical organization in which 17 National Councils and 100 denominations (churches), spread over 21 Asian countries, are members. In total, CCA represents 55 million Christians in Asia. Councils (national councils of churches and national Christian councils) are full members of the organization along with the churches. CCA is actively involved in most of the Southeast Asian countries. The history of the organization goes back to 1957 when, at a meeting in Prapat, Indonesia, in March 1957, the East Asia Christian Conference (EACC) was constituted as a body of churches and national councils of churches in Asia. Two years later, in May 1959, the first Assembly of EACC met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In recognition of the reality that EACC represents the churches all over Asia, a decision was taken in 1973 at the assembly in Singapore to change the name of the organization to Christian Conference of Asia. The offices of CCA are located in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

On December 30, 1987, the Singapore government closed the head office of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), located in Singapore then, and deported the staff, accusing them of supporting “subversive movements” and indulging in political activities. The charges against CCA also included a “Marxist plot,” which the government claimed to have discovered in 1987. It is, however, important to note that the crackdown on CCA happened at a time when the government of the country had swung to the right. The organization, eventually, moved its offices elsewhere.

Jesudas M. Athyal

All the members of CCA are required to confess Jesus Christ as God, believe in the Scriptures, and commit themselves to the values of freedom, equality, and justice for all in accordance with the basics of the Christian faith. The organization strives to bring about unity among the churches, foster interfaith dialogue, and address social and economic problems that plague Asian society. In all its programs, CCA seeks to be the voice of ecumenical Christianity in the pluralistic context of Asia.

Since its founding, CCA has made a deep impact on the religious life of Southeast Asia. Apart from the inaugural assembly held at Prapat, Indonesia, in 1957, the assemblies held in various places in the region include the meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (in 1959); Bangkok, Thailand (1964 and 1968); Singapore (1973); Penang, Malaysia (1977); Manila, Philippines (1990); Tomohan, Indonesia (2000); Chiang Mai, Thailand (2005); and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2010). In addition to periodic assemblies, CCA organizes a number of seminars, workshops, and consultations all over Asia, in accordance with the vision and purpose of the organization.

The Christian Conference of Asia has been actively involved in upholding interreligious dialogue and also championing peace and justice concerns in the various Southeast Asian countries. The general secretary of CCA attended the Mekong Mission Forum (MMF) held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in April 2013. She appreciated and honored the invitation received from the president of MMF, who is the secretary for Papua New Guinea, Pacific and East Asia Centre for “Mission OneWorld” of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. The CCA has also been involved in the democratization and developmental work of Myanmar, where there were growing religious tensions giving rise to a situation where the military had to intervene. In all its programs, CCA works together with the national and regional churches, other religious groups, and secular organizations in building a peaceful, just, and sustainable society in Asia.

Jesudas M. Athyal

See also: Cambodia; Christianity; Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences; Indonesia; Interreligious Relations and Dialogue; Koyama, Kosuko; Kyaw Than, U.; Loh, I-to; Malaysia; Nacpil, Emerito; Papua New Guinea; Philippines; Religion and Society; Singapore; Thailand.

CHRISTIANITY

Christianity in Southeast Asia refers to the variegated forms of Christianity in the southeastern corner of the Asiatic continent. Since the emerging of newly independent churches and nations at the end of World War II, Southeast Asian Christianity has become a third main strand of Asian Christianity that has traditionally been articulated in Chinese and South Asian terms. It is marked by nuanced conversations between many ethnicities, languages, beliefs, and cultures amid contrasting nation-building experiences. More importantly, it emerges amid huge intellectual shifts in postmodern Western society, where secularism is replacing Christianity as the driving force of civilizational progress and social harmony. The plural condition of Southeast Asian Christianity, therefore, can be seen as a microcosm of world Christianity in the twenty-first century. It is an important indicator for the future of Christianity in a globalizing and post-Christendom age.

Christian faithful visit the Latin Rite Roman Catholic Redemptorist Church at Manila, in the Philippines. Catholicism is a significant religion in the Philippines. (ArtPhaneuf/iStockphoto.com)

Southeast Asia has historically been a place of convergence and a crossroad where migrant communities have largely coexisted with and enriched one another. Unlike mainland America, Europe, or Africa, Southeast Asia does not consist of a continuous land mass. Instead, it is punctuated by intervening seas and barrier mountain ranges, which make subregions able to maintain distinctive social identities. For Christianity, Catholics are traditionally strong in the northern part of Southeast Asia: the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Protestants in the Philippines and Indochinese countries have close historical ties with the United States. Malaysian and Singaporean churches keep strong intellectual and church links with Britain and America. Their Indonesian counterparts toward the south look to the Dutch. With the exception of the Catholic-dominant Philippines, present-day Christianity lives as a minority among other powerful spiritual traditions: Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia; Buddhism and Hinduism in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand; Confucianism and Communism in Vietnam. Accuracy of statistics on religious adherents varies with the state policy and the political situation. Christians roughly constitute 12 percent of the population in Indonesia, Brunei, and Malaysia; less than 2 percent in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia; 8 percent in Vietnam; 18 percent in Singapore; and over 90 percent in Timor Leste and the Philippines.

Christian demography and distinctiveness in different parts of Southeast Asia are shaped by intricate interplays between colonial policy, Western missionary strategy, and social ecology. Roman Catholics were the first to arrive in the region in the sixteenth century. The Jesuits and Dominicans came with the Portuguese to Ambon, Ternate, Morotai, and Solar in Indonesia. The Philippines became the Christendom in Asia under three and a half centuries of Spanish rule. Protestantism was introduced to the Philippines only after the Spanish defeat to the Americans in 1902. Catholicism entered Vietnam and Cambodia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The transfer of power from the Portuguese to the Dutch East India Company led to the absorption of many Catholics into the Protestant church. In the nineteenth century, Protestants used Malacca, Penang, and Singapore as staging ground for China missions. In the early twentieth century, the British collaborated with Methodist missionary societies to organize the mass migration of Fuh-chow Chinese Christians to Sibu and Sitiawan to work in rubber plantations.

Christian conversion is often an identity-certifying act for minority groups. There is a strong Christian presence among the non-Muslim Bataks in northern Sumatra, the Karens in Burmese- and Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, and the non-Thai ethnic groups in Thailand. Ethnic Chinese, as a significant minority in Southeast Asia, has played a major role in the cross-fertilization and dissemination of Christianity in the region. The Overseas Chinese Missionary Society, founded in 1929 in Shanghai, was the first Chinese-led missionary society formed with the aim to evangelize Southeast Asian peoples. The successful evangelistic campaigns of the revivalist John Sung (1901–1944) from 1935 to 1940 led to mass conversion and the strengthening of local Christian leadership. Such revivals galvanized local Christian communities to face the hasty departure of foreign missionaries and hard times during the Japanese military occupation of Southeast Asia from 1941 to 1945.

Cultural Legacy of Western Missions

The fertile and intricate cultural experiences in Southeast Asia produced some of the most outstanding linguists, culture interpreters, and ecumenical leaders. Adoniram Judson (1788–1850), Baptist missionary to the Karens, compiled the first Burmese-English dictionary. Hendrik Kraemer (1888–1965) in Java was an eminent Islamic scholar and leader in ecumenism. The Episcopalian bishop Charles Brent (1862–1929), who pioneered missionary work among the mountain people in the Philippines, organized the first World Conference on Faith and Order in 1927.

Bible translation provided an important occasion for sustained engagement, often for the first time, with canonical writings and ancient texts outside Western Christendom. Bible translation as well led to the Romanization of eastern Asian languages and the development of moveable types in printing presses, which contributed to the democratization of eastern Asia.

Systematic Bible translation began with Protestant mission initiatives. A. C. Ruyl’s translation of Bible portions into high Malay accompanied the Dutch mission to Indonesia in 1629. The translation consisted of the Gospel of Matthew and selection of Bible portions meant for catechetical and liturgical use. Before the twentieth century, Bible translation focused on the two main cultural and linguistic worlds in the territory: the Confucian-Buddhist world to the northeast, and the Malay world to the southeast. The earliest translations were mainly in classical languages. Among the earliest Malay translations was D. Brouwerious’s translation of the whole New Testament in 1668. The first Malay Bible in high Malay appeared in 1733; translation in Jawi script followed in 1758. Robert Morrison and William Milne’s translation of the Chinese Bible appeared in 1823 in Malacca. Translations in other local languages appeared as missionaries became more aware of the variety of languages in the territory. H. C. Klinkert’s translation of the Bible into “low Malay” appeared in 1863. The Bible also became available in different Indonesian (e.g., Javanese, Sundanese, Toba Batak) and Chinese languages (e.g., Cantonese, Hakka, Amoy, Fuh-chow).

The Bible, once translated into the local Asian languages, often assume a canonical status alongside other Asian classical texts. Its elevated status, however, makes further revisions difficult. This contributes to a conservative outlook among Southeast Asian Christians.

Developments from the Mid-Twentieth Century

Region-wide focused development of Christianity began only after the end of World War II, in response to two practical needs. First, the profound social, economic, and political revolutions that came with the departure of former colonial powers and the founding of independent nations; and secondly, the perceived Communist threat to the region that followed the Communist victory in China demanded concerted response. Air travel, for the first time, made intraregion exchanges viable. From the 1950s, the United States has played an important role in resourcing the infrastructural development of Southeast Asian Christianity. After all, the Asia Pacific has become increasingly important geopolitically and economically, and so the United States has huge interest in shaping Southeast Asian affairs, including the religious scene.

Southeast Asian churches held a series of region-wide conferences between the late 1940s and the early 1970s that have made a huge contribution to the modern ecumenical movement, and to regional collaboration. Region-wide Christian organizations played an important role in promoting worldwide Christian cooperation from the 1940s to the 1970s. The East Asia Christian Conference with the theme “The Christian Prospect in Eastern Asia” that met in Bangkok in 1949 was the first occasion at which newly established national councils of churches in Asia gathered together to consider their Christian task on a continental scale. In 1957, the Protestant church leaders from 11 Asian countries founded the East Asia Christian Conference (now called Christian Conference of Asia) in Indonesia. In 1963, “Situation Conferences” were held in Madras (India), Amagisanso (Japan), and Singapore to explore ways that geographically neighboring churches across different denominations can work together to strengthen local Christian witness.

Southeast Asia as well became a pioneer and experimental ground for developing regional-level theological education accreditation body and degree programs (up to the doctoral level) to meet the diverse needs of newly founded seminaries across Southeast Asia. The 1950s to the 1970s were a golden period in Southeast Asian Christian intellectual development. Shoki Coe (1914–1988) and Kosuke Koyama (1929–2009) provided pivotal leadership. Together, they helped the churches to conduct their life and witness more responsively to the urgent contextual issues of secularity, technology, and human justice in nation-building processes, while keeping faith in the Christian beliefs. Coe’s contextualizing theology became a lasting contribution to world Christianity.

Southeast Asian state authorities mainly keep religion under close watch, for fear of interreligious unrest. Christianity especially comes under scrutiny because of its international networks. Southeast Asian churches therefore mostly stay clear of political matters. Nevertheless, there are notable examples where Christians, especially among Roman Catholics, make public stands against authoritarian governments. In the 1970s, the Catholic priest Edicio de la Torre and the Christians for National Liberation opposed President Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law in the Philippines. Cardinal Jaime Sin’s support for the People Power Revolution led to the end of Marcos’s government in 1986. Several Catholic social activists were also arrested in Singapore in 1987 on the charge of subverting the country’s political and social order.

Charismatic Christianity, missionary outreach, and revivals offer Southeast Asian Christians ways to express their faith in forms that are more acceptable to the public. Singapore, Indonesia, and Sarawak have been the scene of significant revivals from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Christian practices among megachurches in the west coast of America exercise huge influence on Southeast Asian churches.

Southeast Asian Church Music

Southeast Asian Christianity can best be understood and sensed through what Christians compose, play, and sing. Hymn composition is, in fact, a profound spiritual undertaking, especially in the multicultural settings in Southeast Asia. Composers need to be sensitive to the grammar of cultures, decipher the syntax and penetrate the semantics. Shoki Coe’s student I-to Loh is the most accomplished church music composer and liturgist in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Up to the 1960s, most Asian hymn writers and composers mainly adopted Western musical style in their compositions. Churches mainly used Western hymns translated into local languages. Compositions from the 1970s showed more sensitive integration between lyrics and music. Loh was the driving force in contextualizing Asian church music. His use of monophony, scale and melodic character, nonlexical syllables, and symbolic acts in worship set a new standard of Asian church music. His innovative pan-Asian attempts in setting texts from one ethnic group to musical languages of another Asian ethnicity are a particularly significant present-day development. Most of his hymns are collected in the hymnal Sound the Bamboo that he and his colleague Francisco Feliciano edited.

Peoples in Southeast Asia traditionally associate music and musical instruments with political and spiritual powers. Gongs and drums are often regarded as the spiritual center of the ensemble. Music is imbued with religious significance, connecting peoples to the spiritual world. For example, ritual chanting (known as timang) is widely practiced among Ibans in Sarawak and Western Kalimantan. This spiritual significance is carried through to hymn singing among Christianized peoples in Southeast Asia. Congregational singing, in the form of exchange between choir or soloist and the congregation, takes on this spiritual significance.

Christians in Southeast Asia, however, have largely ignored their own intellectual and spiritual tradition. Western hymns and musical style continue to be popular in Southeast Asia, especially among the young people in urban centers like Singapore and Manila. This is not merely due to the missionary legacies, but also to the role Western Christian music assumes in the globalizing age. It allows Christians in isolated societies and politically restrictive nations to see themselves as belonging to a larger transnational community.

Michael Nai-Chiu Poon

See also: Buddhism; Cambodia; Christian Conference of Asia; Colonialism; Communism; Confucianism; Contextualization; Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences; Globalization; Hinduism; Interreligious Relations and Dialogue; Islam; Jesuits; Koyama, Kosuke; Laos; Liberation Theologies; Loh, I-to; Malaysia; Minorities; Missionary Movements; Music; Myanmar (Burma); Philippines; Religious Conversions; Secularism; Sin, Cardinal Jaime Lechica; Singapore; Thailand; Vietnam.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND

Christmas Island is a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. The island has no known indigenous people, and the place was uninhabited until the late nineteenth century. The geographic isolation of the island served for long as a natural barrier against human settlement there. Christmas Island has undergone exploration and annexation, mainly led by the various European colonial nations. Britain annexed the island in 1888, but in 1958, it was handed over to Australia. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands are located about 560 miles to the west of Christmas Island, and these two places together are called the Australian Indian Ocean Territories.

The residents of Christmas Island are a mixed ethnic group. While the majority of the people are of Chinese origin, there are smaller groups of European-Malay origin. The rich diversity of the island has helped the people there to adapt and blend, in the process creating an eclectic culture that is a mix of Chinese, Malay, Australian, and European traditions. Jan Adams and Marg Neale, who taught on Christmas Island in the 1980s, wrote a book titled Christmas Island: The Early Years, 1888 to 1958: Historic Photographs with Many Untold Tales from the Early Years of Christmas Island, an Isolated Island in the Indian Ocean that provide valuable information on the rich history of this land.

Buddhism is the religion of the majority of the people on Christmas Island. There are also sizable numbers of Muslims, Christians, and others. A Christian church, a Muslim mosque, and a Bahá’í center exist alongside a number of Chinese temples as well as Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian places of worship. Despite a vast diversity in religions, languages, and races, the people of Christmas Island work together in harmony, freely sharing and borrowing from each other’s traditions. The early Chinese and Malay immigrants to the island introduced strong religious and cultural practices; the ethnic festivals rooted in these practices are celebrated throughout the year. Major religious and cultural festivals such as Christmas, Easter, Chinese New Year, and Hari Raya are also observed by the whole community. The island is known for its religious harmony and tolerance.

From the late 1980s, refugees and asylum seekers from various countries have landed on Christmas Island. These people are often unwelcome guests and have to face tremendous hardship. In 2010, around 50 asylum seekers died as their boat crashed into the rocks near the island. Christian missionaries have been working, since 2009, among the refugees and asylum seekers. Proselytization and advocacy are not encouraged by the authorities and the missionaries are primarily involved in educational activities such as teaching English.

Jesudas M. Athyal

See also: Bahá’í Faith; Buddhism; Christianity; Cocos (Keeling) Islands; Confucianism; Contextualization; Diaspora; Daoism (Taoism); Ethnicity; Islam; Missionary Movements.

COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS

A territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands is a cluster of 27 islands. Due to the geographic isolation of the islands, they had remained uninhabited until the nineteenth century. The first settlement in the island was in 1826 by an English merchant, but even in the following decades, the residents there had little contact with the outside world. The British Empire annexed the islands in 1857, and in 1955, they were handed over to Australia. Christmas Island is located about 560 miles to the east of the Cocos Islands and these two places together are called the Australian Indian Ocean Territories. The main languages of the Cocos Islands are a Cocos dialect of Malay and English.

The total population of the Cocos Islands is only 600 people, and they live on the two inhabited islands—West Island and Home Island. The majority of the residents are of Malay ethnic background, most of whom live on Home Island, while the ethnic Europeans—the minority group—live on West Island. Islam is the religion of the majority of the people, and most of them are of Malay origin. There is an Islamic Council of Cocos Keeling Islands that oversees the welfare of the Muslims. There are also a Cocos (Keeling) Islands Muslim Small Business Association and a few mosques. The Christians on the islands are largely Europeans and Australians with a few Chinese, and they are affiliated to a number of denominations. While the Anglicans are part of the Anglican Church of Australia, the Catholics are under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Perth, Australia. Apart from Muslims and Christians, there are also small groups of Bahá’í and Chinese folk religionists.

The Cocos Islands were, for a long time, a private and commercial property, and religion there was rarely a matter of public concern. As a territory under Australia, the islands permit all residents the freedom to profess and practice the religion of their choice. While traditionally, the majority of the islanders were affiliated to Islam or mainline Christianity, younger religious groups such as the Pentecostals and Charismatics are gaining ground in the twenty-first century. The number of people who are not affiliated to any religious group is also on the rise. In general, the islanders are held together by a sense of solidarity rooted in shared cultural practices, religious beliefs, and close family ties.

Jesudas M. Athyal

See also: Bahá’í Faith; Christianity; Christmas Island; Diaspora; Ethnicity; Islam.

COLONIALISM

Since prehistoric times, the region of Southeast Asia has been influenced by external forces. Most such contacts, at least in the early stages, were at the level of trade and commerce. China and India were key players in this process, influencing not only trade but also the cultures and religions of the region. The history of colonialism in Southeast Asia in the modern times, however, is understood largely as starting with the intervention of the European nations in the region from the sixteenth century onward. The European contacts, initially for the purposes of trade and commerce, eventually led to colonization. Even as the Asian empires and kingdoms grew weaker, the Europeans consolidated their strength in the region. By the 1800s, the Europeans were in a position to exert their authority over much of Southeast Asia. The only country in the region that remained independent during the long period of colonization was Thailand.

Viet Minh troops celebrating after the transfer of power from the French in 1954. The Viet Minh, or League for the Independence of Vietnam, was formed on May 19, 1941, and sought to free Vietnam from the French. (Howard Sochurek/Getty Images)

Religion played a key role in the colonization of Southeast Asia. The “Christian” European countries provided the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, with a climate conducive to encourage the arrival of missionaries in the colonized lands. This alliance between colonialism and Christian mission, in most cases, led to the colonization of non-Christian peoples by Christian nations. In this sense, it can be argued that the modern Christian mission originated in the context of Western colonialism.

Primarily, six Western countries had colonies in Southeast Asia: France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States. Portugal, the first European colonizing nation in the region, had only a minimal impact there. The Portuguese conquered Malacca in 1511 and held it till the Dutch captured it in 1641. Other than that, Portugal was in control of only a small portion of land on the island of Timor. The colonization of the Netherlands in Southeast Asia, on the other hand, fell into two periods: the first was the 1600s and 1700s when the Dutch East India Company was active in the region. The Company’s primary interest was in trade and commerce, not political control. After the Company collapsed, however, the Dutch government came into the scene and tried to bring the Indonesian archipelago under its control. That was the second phase that culminated in the Second World War, after which the Indonesians put up a stiff resistance against Dutch colonialism. In 1949, after four years of fighting, the people of Indonesia gained their independence.

Spain has a long history of colonization in Southeast Asia. The Spaniards gained control over the Philippines in the sixteenth century, but they were defeated in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Another European power in the region, Great Britain, which had conquered India, conquered also the neighboring Burma and controlled it as a province of India. The Burmese people, therefore, had two sets of rulers—the British, who were the ultimate authorities, and the Indians, who were the intermediate power. Soon after India became independent of the British, the Burmese too gained their independence in 1948. Apart from Burma, the other areas in Southeast Asia that were under British control were Penang, Singapore, and Malacca. All these places too eventually became independent. France, yet another European colonial power in Southeast Asia, captured Saigon in Vietnam in 1859. The French subsequently moved west and north and, by the early twentieth century, completed the conquest of Indochina. After the Second World War, as the decolonization process gained momentum in Southeast Asia, the Vietnamese rejected French rule and became independent in 1954.

The United States, among the last Western powers to have a colonial presence in Southeast Asia, moved into the Philippines toward the end of the nineteenth century, as a result of its peace accord with Spain. Following the Philippine-American War a few years later, however, the U.S. government gradually started withdrawing from the region, and the Philippines attained complete independence in 1946. Not only were European nations and the United States involved in the colonization of Southeast Asia; there were also Asian nations. In particular, the role played by Japan is important. During the Second World War, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded the region and reached Burma, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. When Britain ended its protectorate of the Sultanate of Brunei in 1984, it marked the end of nearly five centuries of European colonization in Southeast Asia.

The long history of colonization in Southeast Asia eventually culminated in vibrant decolonization movements in most of the region. Nationalist movements, active in most countries in the region, imparted a considerable degree of self-respect and an urge for self-rule to the Asian nations. The Eastern spiritual ethos ensured that anticolonial struggles, while vibrant and violent at times, did not lead to excessively bloody consequences. The decolonization movements gained momentum during the Second World War, following which the United Nations was established, thus creating a platform for the erstwhile colonialists and the colonized to relate to each other as equal partners. The Commonwealth of Nations, a fellowship of Great Britain and her erstwhile colonies, is another such forum.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the process of decolonization in most of Southeast Asia was replaced by “neocolonialism,” characterized by the geopolitical practice of using the globalization of capitalism and cultural hegemony—often by Western and wealthier nations—to control a poorer nation or society. Multinational corporations that exploit the labor and natural resources of erstwhile colonies, often with the backing of former colonizers, play a key role in the neocolonization process. Of recent, “outsourcing” that involves the offshoring and relocation of a business, often from a richer nation to a poorer one, has become an important part of neocolonization. While trade and commerce played a key role in the physical colonization of a nation in earlier centuries, it is paradoxical that trade and commerce is once again the primary component of neocolonization.

The colonial era, like all other phases in history, will be scrutinized closely and judged for its contributions and shortcomings. While colonization, in general, resulted in the exploitation and marginalization of the colonized people and nations, the account is more complex in nations that had peoples who were domestically oppressed. There were cases where the minority groups of a nation who were exploited for long by the elite and the dominant classes of the same nation found the colonization by an alien nation to be a welcome change that eased their burden of oppression. However, it can safely be argued that, by and large, colonization was among the most dehumanizing chapters in human history that exploited and oppressed the poorer nations and people of the world.

Jesudas M. Athyal

See also: Brunei Darussalam; Christianity; Globalization; Humanism; Indonesia; Liberation Theologies; Minorities; Missionary Movements; Myanmar (Burma); Nationalism; Orientalism; Philippines; Timor Leste (East Timor); Vietnam.

COMMUNISM

Communism and religion have a long-standing antagonistic relationship with each other, and Southeast Asia has not been an exception to this global phenomenon. Yet, both also have factors of mutuality that are unique to the region. While religiosity is an everyday reality for most Asians, Communism offered, for the oppressed and marginalized sections of the society, relief and liberation, and a new social order that was rooted in equality and justice. Alongside religion, Communism too, therefore, took a strong foothold in several parts of the region. This entry will briefly examine the relationship between these two forces—Communism and religion—in the Southeast Asian context with a specific focus on the areas where they converge and diverge.

Religion, Nationalism, Communism

While Communism had minimal influence in Southeast Asia prior to 1940, in the following decades, the battle between Communism and anti-Communism is seen as central to the history of the region. Several reasons can be cited for this, the primary one being the Cold War during which the U.S.-led Western nations made a concerted attempt to “contain Communism” all over the world, Southeast Asia included. This move eventually led to the direct military intervention of the United States and to the prolonged and protracted conflict in Indochina—commonly called the “Vietnam War”—involving Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia that lasted for almost two decades, until 1975.

Even before U.S. intervention in the region, the Communist movement was present in several parts of Southeast Asia. The Indonesian Communist Party (Indonesian: Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) was at one point the strongest Communist party outside the Soviet Union and China. President Sukarno’s policy of “Guided Democracy” under the principle of NASAKOM (Religion, Nationalism, Communism) initially not only favored PKI, but also helped to foster a healthy relationship between the Communist Party and Islam, in the largest Muslim-majority nation in the world. However, PKI’s growing popularity, with membership running to the millions, threatened the balancing act between the Communists, the military, and Islamic groups. The ascendancy of PKI was viewed with suspicion by not only the rulers of Indonesia, but also the United States and several other anti-Communist Western powers. In the massacre of 1965, PKI was crushed and hundreds of thousands of its members systematically murdered. General Suharto, who succeeded Sukarno as president, introduced the “New Order,” which was predominantly marked by the depoliticization of Islam.

Hasan Raid, one of the members of PKI who survived the massacre, later published his autobiography, titled The Struggles of a Muslim Communist. Raid outlined the common features between Communism and Islam and affirmed that, in a social context characterized by inequality and injustice, the messages of both religion and Communism are the same—a call for radical social transformation. According to Raid, the goal of the Communist Party and the Muslims should be to fight for truth and justice on all fronts so that there is no further violence or injustice in the society.

Communism and Religion, Converge and Diverge

Myanmar (Burma) offers another context in which the forces of military, religion and Communism intertwined in the public sphere. Founded in 1939, the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) has the distinction of being the oldest existing political party in the country. The party has a long history of anti-imperialist struggles against the British Empire, and later against the indigenous military rulers of the country. The military banned CPB and also published a widely distributed pamphlet titled Dhammantaraya (Dhamma in Danger) that announced to the public that the Communists were enemies of Buddhism. The CPB met this offensive with another publication, Rip off the Mask, that reaffirmed the Communists’ support for Buddhism and also for the individual’s freedom to practice any religion.

No other country in Southeast Asia was as much in the frontline of the Cold War as Vietnam. The country had to go through a prolonged war during this volatile period. While the Americans steadfastly opposed the Vietnamese Communists, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the nationalist anticolonial movement had a symbiotic relationship with each other, and therefore, during most of its history, the Communist movement was welcomed by the public as a legitimate voice of Vietnamese nationalism.

In the postwar period, the relationship between religion and Communism took diverse forms in Vietnam. The Buddhist Church of Vietnam (or, Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam) was formed in the North with the patronage of the government, but a Unified Buddhist Church that opposed the Communist government continued to operate in the South. In general, since the war, the government has granted greater freedom for the practice of religion. The “Pure Land Buddhism” formed in 2007 is officially recognized by the government and has wide support among the public. The world-renowned Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh has been working, since 2005, to facilitate better relationship between the Communist government and Buddhism in his homeland of Vietnam. It is also important to note that unlike Burma and Tibet, where Buddhist monks took to the streets to protest authoritarian governments, Vietnam has not seen any such violent protests led by the clergy, partly due to the space that is available for communication and limited cooperation between the Communists and the Buddhists.

Social Transformation

In the Philippines, there is a long history of collaboration between the Communists and Christians. Long before the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of Cardinal Sin got involved in the protest movement against President Marcos, in the 1970s itself, several radical priests were already working alongside the New People’s Army (NPA), which was the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Inspired by the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and the theology of liberation movement, these priests affirmed the need for the Christian Church to identify itself with the oppressed and marginalized sections of the society and to work alongside them for radical social transformation. NPA also worked closely with the Basic Christian Community (BCC) movement for awareness building, especially in the rural areas and Christian parishes of the Philippines. The programs of NPA, however, often resulted in violence and bloodshed, which were not endorsed by the church.

The post–Cold War period characterized by the decline of Communism in many places around the world had a profound impact in Southeast Asia as well. Among other factors, the traditional hostility of mainline Communism toward religion too contributed to the decline of the Communist movement. Consequently, several countries in the region banned Communist parties and in other places, Communism declined for a variety of reasons. Yet, in the latter part of the twentieth century, Neo-Communist movements that function beyond the traditional Marxist framework have emerged with a willingness to work with all progressive sections including religion. These leftist groups, along with the religious sections that affirm reformation and social justice, have been involved in struggles against common threats—the militarization of Southeast Asia, the forces of globalization and economic liberalization active in the region, religious fundamentalism, and sectarianism.

Jesudas M. Athyal

See also: Atheism/Agnosticism; Buddhism; Cambodia; Christianity; Fundamentalism; Hanh, Thich Nhat; Indonesia; Islam; Myanmar (Burma); Nationalism; Philippines; Secularism; Singapore; Vietnam.

CONFUCIANISM

From within the spiritual and intellectual ferment of the sixth century BCE, which gave rise to the voices of the Buddha and Lao Tzu, emerged the teaching of “Kung-fu-tzu,” more commonly known to us today as Confucius (551–479 BCE). This great teacher drew from ancient truths in order to make them relevant to the development of order and harmony in the midst of social chaos. During a particularly turbulent time in Chinese social and political history, this quest became primary, generating several strategies for the road ahead. The most prominent philosophical voice to emerge during this period was that of Confucius, and thus “Confucianism” was born, built upon the application of age-old truths in the context of the present and the future. The Confucian focus on developing a harmonious, just, and ordered society has been influential beyond the realm of China and has made a significant impact within Southeast Asia, particularly in those areas that have had historical encounters with China, including Vietnam and Singapore.

The “Analects,” the name given to the collective teachings of Confucianism, have been one of the most influential texts in world history. The “Five Classics” of Confucius include the celebrated Yiging, or I Ching, a book that explores the ancient secrets of life and introduces the interaction of the yin (feminine, passive, Earth) and yang (masculine, aggressive, Heaven).

A statue of Confucius at the Quan Cong temple in Hoi An, Vietnam. The temple was founded in 1653 and is dedicated to Quan Cong, a revered Chinese general who lived in the 3rd century CE. (Luca Tettoni/Passage/Corbis)

A review of Chinese influence in the Southeast Asian region throughout history will naturally lead us to a study of the influence Confucianism had around the world. As one of China’s “Three Teachings,” alongside Buddhism and Daoism, Confucianism’s considerable influence, in the realm of philosophical and religious thought, ethics, and rituals stretches across Southeast Asia, penetrating deep into the culture of the Chinese diaspora. Stephen Prothero may be correct in suggesting that it is impossible to understand present-day life in Singapore or Vietnam, for example, without recognizing the “long shadow” of Confucianism.

Adrian Bird

The most effective way to overcome the chaos generated during the early period of the Chou dynasty was to return to the stability of classical virtues. Eminently rooted in a “this-worldly” approach, Confucius was more concerned with life before death than after it, more concerned with the sacred in the midst of the world rather than beyond it. Social harmony is developed through generating an effective system geared toward individual character building, which in turn allows for society to flourish. The relationship between the person and community becomes intertwined, avoiding the extremes of narcissistic individualism or exclusive communalism. In order to develop wise leaders, wisdom must be crafted and nurtured appropriately, and this is most effectively done through education. The capacity of the human to be good and to avoid evil is dependent on effective education, establishing self-disciple set within the broader confines of social relationships. The centrality of education is not reduced to the process of knowledge acquisition, but is understood more broadly as a process of character development. It is a way humans are nurtured to become fully human. While ethics is central to the teaching within Confucianism, this is not intended as a fixed set of dos and don’ts, but rather as a way of encouraging wisdom and participation in the service of greater social harmony. Becoming fully human is to become wise to the virtues of life together, and to applying these virtues to day-to-day living.

Within Confucianism there are five essential relationships central to the development of personal and social ethics, between: father and son; subject and ruler; husband and wife; elder brother and younger brother; and friend and friend. These relationships (in theory if not always in practice), are based on mutuality in order to promote social harmony. Let the ruler be the ruler, and the elder brother the elder brother; but this role must be implemented without abusing power within the relationship. Disharmony occurs when these relationships do not allow for essential mutuality and accountability. Disharmony within a society also comes when either a person does not know his or her role within society or fails to effectively fulfil that role. Conformity to social etiquette is central to Confucianism in seeking to establish personal human flourishing and a flourishing society. It begins with filial piety, nurturing relationships within the family, expanding into all aspects of life and to all social relationships.

The influence of Confucianism in Southeast Asia comes as a result of the encounter with China, which quickly became established as one of China’s “Three Teachings” alongside Buddhism and Daoism. During long periods of Chinese rule in Vietnam, one of the more welcome influences was that of Confucian teaching. Since independence in the latter part of the tenth century, Vietnam has maintained its interest in Confucian ideas, in particularly the rich Confucian emphasis on education, disciple, learning, and the respect of teachers. Though Vietnam has faced many challenges through conflict and a lack of natural resources, education is acknowledged as both a hope and source for human resource development within the country. While there have been many ideological and political influences within Vietnam, the “invisible hand” of Confucian principles remains a constant.

Confucianism has also had a significant presence in Singapore as a result of Chinese migration. Making up three-quarters of Singapore’s resident population, Singaporean Chinese highlight the merging of religious identity between Buddhism and Daoism. Though Confucianism is not given the same “religious” status within general census polls, given its association with humanism, the influence of Confucianism remains significant. Yet to dismiss Confucianism as nonreligious is perhaps more a criticism of traditional understandings of religion, prompting us to reevaluate what it means to be religious. Indeed, Confucianism comprises a range of interrelated components, including philosophy, anthropology, ethics, politics, and theology, all of which become important in a broader understanding of social order and harmony. While the impact of Confucianism in Singapore remains difficult to quantify, the role of Confucianism in providing important intellectual resources in the process of establishing Singapore as one of the four economic “Asian Tigers” remains an interesting point of debate.

Adrian Bird

See also: Buddhism; Daoism (Taoism); Education; Humanism; Lao Tzu (Laozi); Religion and Society; Singapore; Thien Buddhism; Vietnam.

CONTEXTUALIZATION

In religious studies, “contextualization” refers to the adaptation of sacred scriptures, concepts, and practices within a distinct social and cultural environment by integrating nontheological aspects of such an environment into the thus contextualized religion, and by assigning new meaning to formerly established religious ideas and customs as a means to reinterpret them within the new theological framework. As a distinct concept, contextualization is most developed in Christian missiology, although as a practice it also exists in other proselytizing world religions, particularly Islam, but also Buddhism and Hinduism. In Christianity, the term usually refers to the adaptation of church liturgy, art and music, preaching and theology to the traditional practices and ethos of an indigenous community. Notably this is not just a matter of translation, but rather one of reappropriation. It is believed that, in consequence, both the sociocultural context and the contextualized religion undergo a transformation.

When Catholics were persecuted and killed in early nineteenth-century Vietnam under Emperor Canh Tinh, an appearance of the Virgin Mary surprised them while hiding in the jungle. Wearing traditional Vietnamese clothing and surrounded by angels, the Holy Virgin appeared to teach them how to cure illness with herbal infusions. This localized miracle has, in turn, transformed some aspects of universal Catholic theology since Pope John Paul II recognized the importance of the apparition. More than a dozen churches outside of Vietnam now bear the name of Our Lady of La Vang.

Christian Oesterheld

The term “contextualization” is sometimes used interchangeably with other concepts, such as “inculturation,” “localization” (and derived from this “local theology”) or “indigenization,” or simply “adaption” and “accommodation.” Beyond the indigenization of Christian faith, contextualization in the broadest sense is presently also discussed in relation to the localization of world religions more generally; in Southeast Asia, this includes particularly Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. However, most studies on non-Christian world religions prefer to adopt the more neutral categories of indigenization or localization, since “contextualization” has become a firmly established concept of Christian (Protestant) missiology, with “inculturation” as its Catholic pendant. Nevertheless, the theological use of the two terms dates back to the 1970s only. The Taiwanese philosopher and theologian Shoki Coe is credited with having first introduced a distinct concept of contextualization during a 1972 World Council of Churches consultation (see Wheeler 2002). The exact origins of the catholic idea of inculturation remain unclear. Its first use in official Vatican documents is attributed to John Paul II in his “Apostolic Exhortation on Catechesis’ (Catechesi Tradendae) of October 1979 (see Schineller 1990), prepared by discussions during the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), particularly the influential encyclical ‘Joy and Hope” (Gaudium et Spes). Since the 1980s, both terms have been commonly used in theology and missiology and generated a broad range of research, practical application, and conceptual discussions.

Although terminologically, “contextualization” and “inculturation” appear to be fairly novel inventions, the missiological practices they refer to are as old as the church itself. They date back to the earliest days of Christian missionary work in the apostolic age, when the church expanded from the Judaic to the Hellenistic world and beyond, encountering diverse cultural traditions. This holds to be true until the Middle Ages, with St. Patrick’s mission in Ireland often evoked as a significant episode of contextualization. However, during the colonial expansion of European powers toward the Americas, Africa, and Asia, Christian missions seem to have become less adaptable to their newly encountered, exotic surroundings. As a result, more Eurocentric and dogmatic varieties of theological interpretation and liturgical life have dominated the missionary endeavor until around the mid-twentieth century. Notable exceptions to this are some of the early Jesuit missions in various parts of Asia, who engaged in a fruitful dialogue with local cultures and religions, often despite disapproval from the Vatican. Probably best known among them are Roberto de Nobili in India, Alessandro Valignano in Japan, and Matteo Ricci in China, who integrated local cultural concepts into Christian theology.

Histories of Contextualization in Southeast Asia

Historically, the region of Southeast Asia has been heavily influenced by Indian, Chinese, and Arabic cultures, and political realms in the region have, sometimes in turn, been Buddhist polities, Hindu kingships, or Islamic sultanates. All of these cultural and religious traditions have been strongly localized, leading to novel forms of “Javanese” Islam, “Balinese” Hinduism, or “Thai” and ‘Khmer’ Buddhism, among others. During the Islamization of Java, for example, animistic and Hindu-Buddhist cultural elements were often tolerated in various forms of folk Islam but have also been retained at some of the Javanese courts. This resulted in syncretic traditions like the kebatinan (“inwardness”), a localized amalgam of traditional religious ideas, mystic Hindu elements, and Islamic teachings with strong influences of Sufism. Localized Javanese Islam also recognizes a number of local saints, particularly the Wali Songa, whose graves have become destinations for local pilgrimages, historically acknowledged as a form of minor hajj.

Being the religion of colonial overlords, one would assume that Christianity, on the contrary, eluded such processes of localization and indigenization. However, belying the widespread assumption of the early Christian missions’ complicity with colonial regimes, it seems that a great number of missionaries in Southeast Asia did not attempt to “Europeanize” their converts. Like in China and India, Jesuit missionaries were the most prominent proponents of contextual Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. St. Francis Xavier (1506–1552), for example, one of the earliest missionaries to Asia, urged for a dialogue with local traditions and the use of native languages in preaching—at a time when the church in Europe still insisted on the fully Latinized Mass. He is credited with having converted more people than anybody else since the apostle St. Paul, including thousands in Southeast Asia, and was able to establish Christianity as an alternative modernity for the indigenous population formerly subjected to their regional overlords at the Hindu and increasingly Islamized courts. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a similar strategy was pursued by Francisco Blancas de San Jose, a Dominican missionary to the Philippines. In his sermons, he discussed the institution of serfdom and peonage and offered the voluntary submission to Jesus Christ as an alternative. His Sermones were published in Tagalog, making them accessible to a growing Christian community in the Philippines. The still continuing use of the old Tagalog term for local rulers, panginoon (or panginuan), as a translation for the Lord Jesus, stems from this time. Similarly, in Indonesia, the term Tuhan Yesus is based on the old Malay term for court dignitaries, tuan.

Indeed, some of the most fundamental issues of theological contextualization during the early missionary period arose from matters of biblical and liturgical translation. Concepts such as that of an “almighty God,” the “trinity” or “salvation” did not exist in Southeast Asian languages, and the most suitable correspondents needed to be figured out, often adapting Christian terminology to established religious ideas. This even included the reconceptualization of terms that had earlier been adopted from other world religions and had become part of “local” vernaculars by the time Christian missionary work began in the region. In the Philippines, early missionaries extended the denotation of the supreme god in the local pantheon, Bathalang Maykapal (from Sanskrit Bhattara Guru), to the Christian idea of God. Similarly, in Indonesia and the Malay world, Allah is (still) used in Bible translations and Christian prayers, although recently this has been outlawed for Malaysian Christians by religious state agencies. The issue of translation becomes inherently theological when considered a matter of conceptual appropriation. “Bread” in the Christian prayer Our Father, for example, cannot easily be translated into “rice” due to the variety of terms in each local language used to refer to a particular sort, state, or preparation of “rice.” Consequently, local versions of the Our Father may use more abstract terms indicating the desire for God’s basic care beyond the provision of mere nutrition (e.g. kanin in Filipino, or rejeki in Indonesian).

Matters of translation during the early missionary encounters in Southeast Asia were not limited to the appropriation of Christian concepts. There were also attempts to indigenize style and form of biblical scriptures and liturgical texts. Amid the usually more puritan and pietistic agenda of the early nineteenth century, the Protestant missionary Coenrad L. Coolen restyled the Psalms in the form of traditional Javanese poetry (macapat), made use of the form of Muslim prayer in local versions of the Confession of Faith, or accommodated biblical stories in the recitative style (suluk) of the Javanese shadow play (wayang), linking Christ to the focal point of Javanese messianic expectations, the Ratu Adil or “Just King” (Poplawska 2011, 188–89).

It should be stressed that these early visions of contextual theology were personal strategies of some missionaries and do not represent a systematic ecclesiastic approach. Many were concentrated in certain areas of Hindu-Islamic maritime Southeast Asia. On the predominantly Buddhist mainland, for example in Thailand and Cambodia, the lack of success of Christian missionaries is often attributed to their disrespect for local culture and lifestyles. An exception to this is the French Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), who successfully proselytized in Vietnam, adapting Christian theology to local concepts, and creating a Latinized version of the Vietnamese language that is still used as the official national language today (Phan 1998). In the early twentieth century, there were some missionaries, like Father Franz von Lith (1863–1926), who called for a “local, situational, or relevant theology” (cited in Poplawska 2011, 189). Yet only in 1974, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) promulgated a “dialogue of life” as the most urgent task for the church in Asia, particularly including the dialogue with Asian culture(s) as well as with the “great religious traditions of Asia” (Lambino 1987, 72).

Local Theology in Contemporary Southeast Asia

The diversity of Southeast Asian cultural and socioreligious traditions poses a challenge to endeavors of contextualization, but at the same time, it provides many opportunities and diverse possible avenues. Southeast Asian theologies seek mutual enrichment of universal Christian values and concepts and local cultures by contextualizing the Gospels both vis-à-vis traditional practices and institutions (e.g., the prevalence of healers and “wise men,” or communal rituals to celebrate spiritual differentiation), and in relation to scriptural and oral traditions of mythology (often localized forms of the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, but also indigenous cosmologies). The conceptual richness of local theologies in the region is difficult to grasp in a brief review. However, some common themes can be identified as: first, interpretations of the role of Jesus Christ; second, localizations of the ecclesiastical community and its social responsibility; and third, the indigenization of liturgy and church architecture.

The outlook of contemporary Southeast Asian Christology has been discussed during a Special Asian Synod in the Vatican, resulting in the document “Church in Asia” (Ecclesia in Asia), officially promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1999. In order to appeal to Asian cultural and religious sensibilities, this exhortation suggests “Jesus Christ as the Teacher of Wisdom, the Healer, the Liberator, the Spiritual Guide, the Enlightened One, the Compassionate Friend of the Poor, the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd, the Obedient One.” These characterizations of Jesus Christ allude to themes, which had been developed locally since the 1970s. Jesus as a “Teacher of Wisdom,” for example, corresponds to social values of respect for the experience and knowledge of the elders throughout many Southeast Asian cultures, or to the Hindu-Javanese idea of a guru more particularly. In 1977, the influential Jesuit priest J. B. Bannawiratma published his master’s thesis on Jesus the Guru, discussing Christian theological encounters with Javanese cultural traditions and comparing depictions of Jesus as a teacher in the Gospel of St. John with Javanese shadow play (wayang) stories, e.g., those where the small spirit of Dewa Ruci wisely instructs the giant Bima (see Steenbrink 2000, 2–3). The concept of “Jesus as Healer” proves to be even more widely applicable. With a still incomplete medical infrastructure in rural Southeast Asia, people continue to seek treatment from ritual specialists, and ideas of magical and spiritual healing are widespread, readily accommodating the miraculous qualities of faith. Currently, charismatic movements, both Protestant and Catholic, tend to focus on this aspect. Probably the most contentious concept for a contemporary Southeast Asian Christology is the imagination of Jesus as a “Liberator” and “Compassionate Friend of the Poor,” reflecting a quest for peace and justice in some regional (and temporal) schools of liberation theology, especially in the Philippines during the period of martial law, or in the context of West Papua’s independence struggle.

Due to the minority status of Christianity in most of contemporary Southeast Asia, contemporary ecclesiology in the region emphasizes the significance of “family networks of evangelism and homes as places of hospitality” (Farhadian 2010, 109), thereby likening Southeast Asian Christian communities to (fictive) kinship systems bound by a shared faith. This might explain the recent expansion of evangelical Christianity in the region, as well as the long-standing tradition of alternative socioreligious movements and independent churches in regions where mainstream Christianity had long taken root, e.g., the Iglesia ni Cristo, or the Aglipayan Church in the Philippines.

The indigenization of church architecture, music, and liturgy, which gradually evolved since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has presently developed into a rich and complex artistic landscape, representing the cultural diversity of Southeast Asia. Hymnals include a variety of local tunes and traditional instruments have largely replaced guitars and keyboards during church services (see Poplawska 2011). Church buildings can be remindful of Hindu and Buddhist temples, or of traditional clan houses and communal halls, ornamented with indigenous designs and often integrating pre-Christian concepts in their spatial arrangements. In Catholic churches, images and statues show Jesus and Mary with Asian faces, crowned by local regalia and dressed in traditional attire. The church liturgy often includes indigenous dances or other forms of traditional performances. A good example for this is the development of wayang wahyu, a Christian form of shadow theater using biblical characters as an alternative way of “reading” the Holy Scriptures.

As mentioned earlier, contextualization might be conceptually most pronounced in Christianity, but as practice, it can also be found in other world religions in contemporary Southeast Asia. Rural versions of folk Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia, for example, continue to acknowledge the existence of local spirits (phi in Thai, nat in Burmese, or neak ta in Khmer), and ordained monks sometimes double as shamanistic healers. In contrast to Christianity, however, such processes of contextualization in Buddhism are less institutionalized and often lack formal authorization from national Buddhist organizations. Likewise, in Indonesia, localized versions of Islam, like the kebatinan, are still popular, although a tendency toward the purification of Islamic beliefs and practices can be noted, propagated by increasingly fundamentalist organizations like the Islamic Defenders’ Front (Front Pembela Islam). With easier access to the holy sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina, due to cheaper airfares and offers of organized hajj travel packages, the significance of local sacred sites on the island of Java has been decreasing as well.

Christian Oesterheld

See also: Buddhism; Christianity; Colonialism; Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences; Hinduism; Interreligious Relations and Dialogue; Islam; Jesuits; Khmer Buddhism; Loh, I-to; Localization of Hinduism in Indonesia; Messianic Movements; Minorities; Missionary Movements; Music; Study of Religion; Wali Sanga (Wali Songo).

C

CALUNGSOD, PEDRO

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CAMBODIA

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CAO DAI

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CHRISTIAN CONFERENCE OF ASIA

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CHRISTIANITY

Cultural Legacy of Western Missions

Developments from the Mid-Twentieth Century

Southeast Asian Church Music

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CHRISTMAS ISLAND

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COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS

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COLONIALISM

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COMMUNISM

Religion, Nationalism, Communism

Communism and Religion, Converge and Diverge

Social Transformation

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CONFUCIANISM

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CONTEXTUALIZATION

Histories of Contextualization in Southeast Asia

Local Theology in Contemporary Southeast Asia

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