From Yunnan to Northern Thailand: The Transition of China Inland Mission’s Lisu Evangelical Work in the 1950s
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Yao, Yi-Deh
Abstract
Established in 1865, China Inland Mission was one of the most important and far-reaching mission in China. One group of missionaries in particular has been hugely successful in proselytizing the indigenous Lisu people to Christianity in northwestern Yunnan province since the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, due to the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power in the 1950s and the state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement which sought to purge foreign influence, the missionaries were forced to make a full withdrawal from China. Having heard of the Lisu diaspora in northern Thailand, the missionaries at Yunnan exiled there with the hope that their Yunnan experience would benefit their new life in northern Thailand.
Based on the archives of the China Inland Mission and the autobiographies by Isobel Miller Kuhn (1901-1957)—missionary and chronicler of this particular history—this thesis investigates how the missionaries re-established themselves and their mission works in northern Thailand. After a brief review of China Inland Mission’s achievement in northwest Yunnan, the thesis traces the reasons why the missionaries turned to northern Thailand instead after their retreat from Yunnan and canvasses how the veteran missionaries braved the new obstacles in northern Thailand. On one hand, their Yunnan experiences help familiarize the missionaries with the indigenous cultures of the mission field and offer invaluable lessons in running mission societies and improving their methods of preaching gospels. On the other hand, they must tackle fresh challenges in Thailand including missionaries’ difficulty in adapting themselves to the mission field, the lack of support from local people, the ethnic diversity of the Lisu diaspora across borders and the discrepancy of the mainstream culture between China and Thailand. This case in point allows us to ruminate further the role Christianity plays in the cultural and socio-political network of the mission field and to reappraise the indigenization of the Christianity.
Subjects
中國內地會
楊宓貴靈
傈僳族
本色化
泰北
Type
thesis
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