Bautista J 2014 Christianity in Southeas PDF

Christianity in Southeast Asia Colonialism, Nationalism and the Caveats to Conversion
Oxford Handbooks Online

Christianity in Southeast Asia Colonialism, Nationalism
and the Caveats to Conversion
Julius Bautista
The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia
Edited by Felix Wilfred
Print Publication Date: Jul 2014 Subject: Religion, Christianity

Online Publication Date: Sep 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199329069.013.0014
Abstract and Keywords
Chapter 14 shows how Asian Christianity played a major role in inspiring major social
and political change in Asia. It first discusses Christian missionary activities in the
context of the European colonial enterprise in Southeast Asia and then proceeds to a
discussion of how the people of Southeast Asia leveraged conversion in light of existing
social, political and economic conditions. Colonialism and missionary objectives became
so intertwined that one could hardly distinguish one from the other. As such, conversion
to Christianity was considered by many as simply a means to participate in colonial
society and gain political favor. Therefore, although conversions in many Asian regions
were mainly successful, one must look at them based not only on doctrinal persuasion but
on the broader sociopolitical circumstances of the time.
Keywords: political change, European colonial enterprise, Southeast Asia, colonial society, political favor
CHRISTIANITY is the world’s largest religion, having quadrupled in number over the last
century to 2.1 billion adherents.1 While there are no indications that this number will
decrease, much academic discussion has placed emphasis on the signs that the global
distribution of the faithful is shifting rapidly from the global North to the global South.
While over the last millennium two-thirds of Christians lived in Europe, about 70% of
Christians now live in the non-West—in Africa, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific—thus
constituting a “southern shift” of Christianity that shows no signs of abating.
Although some might use examples from Southeast Asia to corroborate this demographic
redistribution, on a purely statistical level it is misleading to think of the region as an
exemplar of this southern shift. The 124 million Southeast Asian Christians make up only
5.6% of the total world population of Christians, and even in the region itself, are but a
small proportion of the religious mosaic.2 A deeper analysis of the statistics is even more
telling. Around two-thirds of Southeast Asian Christians are Catholics, about 90% of
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whom live in only two countries: the Philippines and Indonesia. While most Christians in
the world (90%) live as religious majorities in their countries, in Southeast Asia only in
the Philippines and, very recently, in East Timor, do Christians make up the biggest
faith.3 The statistical minority of Asian Christians is remarkable given that European
missionaries have been engaged there for over thirteen centuries since Nestorian
missionaries arrived in China in the early part of the Tang Dynasty. This may give
credence to the assumption that the influence of Christianity has never been formidable
enough to disrupt the overall preeminence of other world religions, Buddhism, Hinduism,
and Islam, which are the dominant faiths in the Asian region.
(p. 216)The situation has never been that simple, however, and statistical profiles, while
telling, reveal only part of the story. Demographics will tell us little about the texture and
contours of Christian belief in the region, and about the historical circumstances under
which the faith exerts considerable cultural, social, and political influence on Asians more
broadly, regardless of their creed. A portrait of Asian Christianity must be drawn by
depicting the persistence and vitality with which the purveyors of Christianity sought to
spread the faith, often under the most tumultuous of circumstances. The various
strategies of resistance, negotiation, and acquiescence that were exerted by Asians
themselves in ways that numbers alone cannot adequately reflect must also be taken into
account. On this score, it is worth quoting Moffett whose observation about the
population of Asian Christians in the 1900s still holds true today: “Add all the Christians
together and in 1900 still they were little more than a scattering of sand along the
beaches of Asia’s then 950 million people. But they were not sand; they were ‘the salt of
the earth,’ and on any plate or planet a little salt goes a long way.”4
The story of Asian Christianity, particularly in Southeast Asia, is an important chapter of

the larger story of world Christendom. While numerically small, the faith has inspired
major social and political change in the region, both in the colonial and postcolonial
period. The objective of this chapter, then, is threefold. First, I shall discuss Christian
missionary activities in the context of the European colonial enterprise in Southeast Asia
from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Second, I discuss how Southeast Asians
negotiated the experience of conversion in light of prevailing social, political, and
economic conditions. I conclude by giving an account of how the faithful in the
contemporary period have responded to the mandates of citizenship within the nation-
state, by seeing Christianity as an integral part of their identity politics.
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The Colonial and Missionary Apparatus

The early propagation of Christianity in Southeast Asia can be thought of in three waves
of European and American colonialism. In the first wave, the Portuguese brought Roman
Catholicism from the early 1500s to Malacca and parts of Eastern Indonesia, and then by
the Spaniards to the Philippine Islands from the mid-1500s. In the next wave, the Dutch
missionaries propagated Protestantism in the East Indies (Indonesia), thanks also to the
fact that Malacca was conquered by Dutch colonial military forces from the Portuguese in
1641. The third wave saw British missions in Malaya and Burma in the 1800s, and the
Americans taking over from the Spaniards in the Philippines toward the turn of the
twentieth century.
A key feature of all three is the entanglement of clerical agendas with the military/
administrative and mercantile mandate of colonial missions. Indeed the earlier colonial
forays in Southeast Asia were subject to the Papal Bull of Tordesillas (1494), which (p.
217) demarcated and codified the exploratory and imperial parameters of Spain and
Portugal. Clerics were included in expeditions as a matter of policy, particularly when

doing so had been found to be conducive to facilitating smooth local relations. French
trading companies sought financing from the religious orders, who in return sought the
capacity to proselytize beyond the trading ports. Clerics even took on administrative and
military duties, as was the case with Spanish clerics in Mindanao or Portuguese
missionaries in Timor. Clerics were instrumental in the transition from largely trade-
focused expeditions to a full-fledged colonial regime, as was the case with the French in
Indochina.5 As a result, Christian identities in Southeast Asia were frequently subject to
the strong influence of colonial policy.
On the other hand, while there was a great degree of collusion between the colonialists,
traders, and missionaries, one also has to be aware of the limits of collaboration, and
indeed of the conflict between them. In Portuguese Malacca, for example, early Jesuit
missionaries such as Francis Xavier were often critical of the social and moral excesses
and depravities perpetuated by soldiers and colonial officials. In the Dutch East Indies in
the early colonial period, the conversion of native populations was relegated to secondary
priority when it was thought to impede commercial trading relations with local Muslim
elites. As opposed to their French and Spanish counterparts, who were intent on
spreading actively the Christian message in the local vernacular, the distribution and
translation of the New Testament was forbidden by the Dutch at one point so as not to
offend the Muslim majority in Java.
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In spite of the variation in colonial policies toward the spread of the Christian message,
from the local perspective, colonialism and missionary activities were so intimately
entwined that it was difficult to specify, or even differentiate, the colonial trading and
administrative mandate from the religious. In this respect, conversion to the Christian
faith came to be seen in many parts of Southeast Asia as a conduit toward one’s
participation in colonial society, whether through trade, political favor, or military
support as I will show later in this chapter.
Intrepid Missions and Localization

Persecutions of missionaries and their expulsion from the “Great Empires,” particularly
China and Japan, presented some formidable challenges to all missionary orders. Having
said that, the hostility toward missions in East Asia also had a somewhat positive effect as
a spillover of missionaries from those places would direct their efforts to Southeast Asia,
as was the case with the first Jesuits in Annam in Vietnam in the sixteenth century. As the
faith became more established in places such as Malacca and the Philippine islands,
proselytizing missions were sent from there to Japan and China, and also to Vietnam.
Missionaries had to face volatile and hostile situations in the proselytizing endeavors.
These required missionaries to maintain an intrepid zeal combined with adaptive and
creative strategies in their engagement with local communities, particularly given the
limited manpower and scarcity of resources.
In this vein, customary laws and local cultural beliefs were seen as elements
(p. 218)
toward a “contextual ecclesiology,” which was a means of conveying the message of

Christ in a way that corresponded, at least allegorically, to indigenous life worlds.
Preaching in the vernacular, for example, was not just a contingency measure but an
explicit strategy toward effective conversion. Among the missionaries who took on this
approach was Francis Xavier (1506‒1552), who played an important role in spreading the
gospel all over Asia, most notably India and Japan. His missionary activity also brought
him to Malacca and parts of eastern Indonesia of Ambon, Ternate, and Morotai, where he
laid the foundations for a permanent mission. Using the local vernacular, either through
translation or by some language guidance, was a crucial aspect of his evangelism,
whether in Japan or in the Malay world. After his departure, there was an estimated
300,000 Christians in Japan by around 1600, while the 10,000 Catholic converts in
Southeast Asia in the 1560s increased to five times that number by 1590.6
Following in the footsteps of Xavier was Alexander de Rhodes (1591‒1660), a French

Jesuit missionary who labored in Vietnam. He also placed emphasis on linguistic
proficiency and is reported to have preached in the local vernacular within the first few
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months of his arrival. The Vietnamese use of Romanized script is largely attributed to his
influence. Wary of his progress, however, the Vietnamese imperial regimes expelled
Rhodes, first from Nguyen lands, and then from the Trinh-controlled north. Returning to
Rome in 1649, Rhodes continued to lobby for sending missionaries to Vietnam. Although
he failed to convince the Portuguese rulers and the Pope, he was supportive for the
formation of the first secular missionary society in 1659, which engaged in missionary
activity throughout French Indochina including today’s Cambodia and Laos. In addition to
this, the written output of Rhodes—particularly the Histoire du royaume de Tunquin
(History of the Kingdom of Tonkin) and the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et
Latinum (Vietnamese‒Latin‒Portuguese dictionary) published in Rome in 1650 and 1651,
respectively—meant that he had a lasting influence on the propagation of Christianity in
the region. In the same vein, missionary Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix (1805–1862, bishop since
1838), authored historical works on Siam and worked on a dictionary of Thai‒Latin‒
French‒English.7 The production of early written texts, such as the Lagda and Doctrina
Christiana in the Philippines, was likewise testament to a written vernacularization of the
Catechisms and the Bible itself.8
Protestants also demonstrated the same approach of spreading the word in a way that
related to local culture and customs. Great effort was expended in the localization of the
Christian message itself in order for it to penetrate into worlds often hostile to the
imposition of foreign ideas. The Dutch missionary Joseph Kam (1769‒1833), for example,
went to Batavia (today’s Jakarta) with the support of the London Missionary Society,
which placed him as a minister for the Moluccas. Arriving in Ambon in 1815, Kam
adapted native cultural patterns to the Christian message. He is known to have given
instruction and said prayers in traditional Malay, and organized the integration of native
sounds and rhythms into church services. From Ambon, he sent out missionaries to
evangelize in the Minahasa peninsula and West Papua, laying the foundations for the (p.
219) establishment of a heartland for nearly half of the Christians in the Dutch East
Indies. By 1837, Moluccan Christians numbered 35,000 baptized converts.9
Similarly, Ludwig Nommensen (1834‒1918), a German Lutheran missionary arrived in

Sumatra in the middle of 1862, determined to preach in the Northern inland territory of
Silindung, which was still independent of Dutch administration. A medical practitioner,
he gained favor with Bataks on the coast and committed himself to learning their
language. In the immediate years of his arrival, and in defiance of resistance from datu-
priests and local shamans, Nommensen was largely successful in winning the trust of the
Bataks through establishment of schools and medical facilities. He also translated the
New Testament into the Batak language in 1878. By the time of his death, the Batak
Church had more than 150,000 members, with 34 indigenous pastors and 788 teacher-
preachers. As the “grandfather of Batak Christianity,” Nommensen is credited as having
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laid the foundations for the Huria Kristen Batak Protesten (HKBP) church, one of the
largest church denominations in Asia.
In no other place in the Far East has the establishment of the faith been as
comprehensive as in the Philippines, which remains to this day the numerically largest
Christian nation in Asia. Since the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries in the 1520s,
the numbers of converts grew from around 100 baptized Filipinos in 1569 to as many as
250,000 converts out of a total population of 700,000 in the early 1590s. Spanish Roman
Catholicism in the Philippine Islands had God at the apex of an institutional edifice in
which temporal and spiritual authority emanated down to the Spanish king and onto the
Spanish priest as “agents” of that authority. The Spanish were effective in instituting a
system of geographical organization which made conversion to Christianity a prerequisite
to being allowed residence within the pueblo, where converts could benefit from colonial
protection and patronage. It was within the pueblo that the authority of God’s power was
constantly emphasized as being above and superior to that of local sorcerers and spirits,
who nevertheless persisted throughout the entire duration of the colonial period.
Timor which became a Portuguese colony has had just as long a legacy of Christian
missionary work as the Philippines. As early as 1515, there was considerable trading
activity there due to the abundance of sandalwood resources. The Church in Timor
effectively functioned as the administrative arm of Portuguese colonial power. This was a
foundation which, over the next 250 years, saw the establishment of over fifty churches in
the Solor-Timor region.10
Caveats to Conversion
Colonial and missionary sources will attest to success stories in the effort to spread the
Word. For example, in 1532, the Moluccan King Tabarija was accused of treason and
exiled to Goa by the Portuguese. There, he was acquitted of the charges, but was
nevertheless prevented from returning to the islands. Yet in spite of this kind of
treatment, (p. 220) after long discussions about the faith, Tabarija reportedly accepted
the Christian faith, changed his name to Dom Manuel and took on the trappings of a
Portuguese nobleman. So committed was he to the new faith that he bequeathed one of
his possessions, the island of Ambon, to his Portuguese benefactors and, upon his death,
to the King of Portugal.
There are other similar examples of what would seem to be “genuine,” conversions like
this throughout the region. Successful conversions, however, cannot be seen in terms of
doctrinal persuasion alone but must be placed in the context of the broader sociopolitical
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circumstances of the time. At least in the initial period, the majority of conversions
occurred not because of dissatisfaction with their former faith but because Christianity
offered material benefits that could enhance one’s social, political, and economic
position. Two examples, from the Philippines and Indonesia, are particularly
demonstrative of these caveats to conversion.
In the Philippines, the landing in Cebu of the Spanish expedition of Portuguese explorer
Ferdinand Magellan is typically depicted in artwork and literature as the event that
brought about the first baptism in the archipelago. The memoirs of the expedition’s
chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, depict a tearfully solemn and moving ceremony in which
the local ruler, Rajah Humabon, and his wife, overwhelmed to tears, accepted not only
the faith but the icon of the Santo Niño (Infant Jesus), the very same one that is enshrined
in Cebu’s basilica today.
A reading of the event in the context of the political-geographic situation at that time,
however, reveals a more nuanced picture. Pigafetta narrates clearly that Humabon and
his court had earlier been given a demonstration of European armory and firepower.
Along with this was a declaration from Magellan himself that Humabon would enjoy the
military assistance of the Spanish against his rival, Rajah Lapulapu, in nearby Mactan
Island. After that mass conversion, Humabon and his men watched from the sidelines as
Magellan, who was convinced of Spanish military superiority, brought about sixty men in
an attack against Lapulapu’s thousands of warriors. Magellan himself was killed on
Easter Sunday, April 27, 1521, while the remaining survivors were then invited by
Humabon to a banquet, only to be ambushed and killed for their failure to deliver on their
promised victory.11
This incident frames “conversion” to the faith in Southeast Asia in a new light. Was
Humabon’s acceptance of Christianity sincere, given that it was made in the context of
immediate political and material gain? For Humabon, baptism was, rather, a ceremony
that consummated a politico-military alliance for temporal dominion over his rivals; not
ultimate salvation of his soul. Just as Europeans intervened in the machinations of local
politics to gain an economic and political foothold, so too did local rulers manipulate the
process of conversion to their own ends.
This kind of situation was not peculiar to the Philippines. As in Cebu and Mactan, the
kings of Ternate in Eastern Indonesia, who had established an Islamic sultanate from the
fifteenth century, sought to enforce centralized control over the islands against rival
chieftains. The arrival of Black Portuguese ships, while often seen with some trepidation
among the local population, was welcomed by the ruling chiefs who were aware (p. 221)
of the prospect of co-opting outsider’s military and economic might toward their own geo-
political interests. Sultan Hairun of Ternate, in spite of having clashed with Portuguese
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traders in his economic and political dealings, had befriended the missionary Francis
Xavier and even expressed a willingness to convert to Christianity. However, the prospect
of conversion, like that of Humabon, was not unconditional. It was premised upon the
caveat that he would be able to maintain his harem of many wives. Yet this was not
because Hairun wanted to maintain a life of indulgence and vice. The harem was a sign of
his prowess according to native Moluccan custom, and which enabled him to form
alliances with neighboring influential families.
The example of Hairun and Humabon encourages us to consider the caveats to

conversion to the faith. While it is true that conversion to Christianity could offer an entry
point into more powerful sociopolitical positions, it was in some respects also
disempowering. Some of the faith’s fundamental requirements—such as monogamy, non-
retribution for killing, humility, monotheism, and the rejection of idols were all at odds
with traditional methods of acquiring power and maintaining social status. But it does
suggest that those among the local ruling elite who did convert were pragmatists
weighing up the potential benefits with the possible losses in social status, rather than
passive acceptors of the Christian message. In this respect, conversion was perceived as
a political act, made to foster favorable relations among consenting peers, each of whom
presented the other with material and temporal advantage. To see it simply as an internal
subjective transformation would be an underestimation of this very crucial motivation for
conversion.
Conversion did not always mean actual apostasy. Conversions were entry points into
colonial society, offering with it the opportunity to engage in trade and/or the acquisition
of political and military favor. This was not an altogether unreasonable expectation, given
that missionaries and colonial administrators drew very definitive geographical
boundaries to demarcate the converted from pagans and heathens. In the Philippines,
conversion was often the prerequisite for residence within the Spanish pueblo, where
locals were able to benefit from the protection and patronage of the colonial
administration. Similarly, many Javanese thought of Christianity as the religion of
Europeans, and conversion provided a way that one could masukbelanda, or enter
productively in commercial, social, and even political intercourse with Dutch colonial
society. Becoming Christian was synonymous not only with entry into colonial society, it
meant being modern and civilized, along with its symbols and trappings—medicinal
hygiene, clothing, European comportment, and association with colonial commercial
agents.
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Caveats to Indigenization
The fact that conversion was often not complete and total was not lost upon the clergy.
They were acutely aware of the weakness of conversion and did in fact consider it a
testament to their continued mandate in the region. However, their efforts were often
hampered by problems of manpower and resources. The shortage of clergy in
(p. 222)
some of the more far-flung regions of the colonies, like in Timor in the East Indies or the
Visayas in the Philippines, meant that the Church was not able to institute a surveillance
regime that ensured the “pure” adherence to the faith. Often this meant that expressions
of conversions were only made in the context of formal sacramental participation or in
the presence of clerical authority. In most parts of Southeast Asia, this necessitated the
establishment of a corps of indigenous clergy. Just as we should appreciate the caveats to
Christian conversion in the region, we should also rethink and expand our notions of
indigenous clergy.
To be sure, the establishment of a corps of lay catechists was an important aspect of

spreading the gospel, particularly under conditions in which ruling elites were
increasingly resistant to the spread of the faith. When De Rhodes was evicted from
Vietnam for a final time in 1646, he remained adamant that the future of the faith in the
region lay in the missionary capacity to train local clergy toward self-sufficiency. His
efforts led to the appointment by Pope Alexander VII of Francois Pallu as the Apostolic
Prefect of Tonkin and Pierre Lambert de la Motte as his counterpart in Cochin-China.
Ordination of local converts occurred in Vietnam, in the context of their success in spite
of great odds and persecution, as early as 1669 under de la Motte who, with Louis
Deydier, ordained seven Tonkinese catechists to the Priesthood. By the end of the
seventeenth century, De Rhodes reported that there were 300,000 Catholics in Tonkin,
increasing by as many as 15,000 every year.12 This contrasts with the relatively late
ordination of local clergy in the Philippines. Only a very small number of locals, including
Mestizos were accepted in mission-run seminaries for ordination during the first 200
years of Spanish colonialism.
But this does not mean that locals did not act as proclaimers of Christian knowledge and
practice. It was not just the message itself that was significant but also the charisma of
those who took it upon themselves, legitimately or not, to proclaim the Word and offer
themselves as alternatives to the clerics as interlocutors to divine authority. There were
movements that focused on extraordinary “holy men” throughout Southeast Asia, whose
utterances, sermons, prophesies, and proclamations resonated equally strongly with
traditional animist beliefs as they did with the Old and New Testaments.
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One such holy man was Dios Buhawi in the Philippine island of Negros who in 1887 had
attracted a significant following when word of his prophesies and special powers spread.
While he was not officially endorsed by the religious authorities, there was every
indication that Buhawi was a pious and devout member of the faith, who partook in the
sacraments, and who directed his efforts primarily at the Catholic faithful. Buhawi
pointed to the onset of a new era, heralded by natural calamities, epidemics, and famines.
In many cases, holy men such as Buhawi had powers of healing, invulnerability, and
command of the elements, and in that respect wielded a power that was far more potent
than that of the priest or cleric.
Like Buhawi in the Philippines, men such as Sadrach in Java could be thought of as
traditional holy men trained in Javanese and Islamic traditions in pesantren (Islamic
boarding schools) in the countryside of central Java. A charismatic figure Sadrach
encountered Christianity through the preaching of Dutch missionaries, and in 1867 (p.
223) he was baptized in Batavia by the famous lay preacher Frederik Lodewijk Anthing.
By the late 1800s, he had successful amassed a following by propagating his brand of
Christian piety, which would not merely be a blind following of doctrine, but a thoughtful
integration of the gospel with local Javanese customary beliefs and practices. He
established a Christian center in Karangjoso, in the southwest, from where he headed an
independent church. This church, however, was one in which Christian teachings were
taught alongside ngelmu, or local knowledge/wisdom. The 5,000 or so members of his
church considered him to be a powerful teacher, who wielded powers of healing with the
use of Christian incantations and formulae. On that score, it was considered by some
Protestant missionaries as heretical, and even threatening to the colonial order.
Locals did in fact have the capacity to act as conduits to the divine in a way that was not
necessarily premised upon ordination by religious orders. One side effect perhaps of the
influence of local gurus and holy men, coupled with the pragmatic and selective way in
which Christianity was adopted by the local populations, was the notion that traditional
culture and Christian conversion could exist side-by-side. Once implanted in Southeast
Asia, the universalizing faiths became incorporated with preexisting belief and practice
systems, such as ancestor worship, propitiation of spirits, healing, veneration of deities of
the natural environment, and ideas of material power and potency.
Resistance to Mission
Christianity in Southeast Asia faced formidable resistance as missionaries began to make
progress in gaining converts. French missionaries had been successful in converting as
many as 68,000 Vietnamese by 1848, and in that sense presented a significant shift in
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loyalties, and this aroused the ire of the Confucian courts. The situation had already been
tense as early as the 1704 when Pope Clement XI decreed that Chinese Rites, such as the
veneration of Confucius and of the ancestors, were not to be accommodated by
missionary orders as they were idolatrous acts, incompatible with the Christian faith,
which in effect reiterated the ultimate authority of the Papacy in foreign European
shores.
As an ardent Confucianist who believed in veneration of the ancestors, Nguyen Emperor

Minh Mang stridently counteracted Roman Catholic missionary activity in the mid-1800s.
The Emperor recruited “canton teachers” from among local scholars to reiterate the
fundamental tenets of Confucianism as opposed to the potentially subversive aspects of
Christianity. Along with this were decrees to eradicate traces of Catholicism as well as
their institutions. In 1825, Minh Mang forbade any further entry of missionaries into
Vietnam, and less than a decade later, decreed the profession of the Catholic faith an
offense punishable by death.
Official condemnation of Christianity gave impetus to a number of persecutions,

(p. 224)
harassment, and even execution of priests between 1833 and 1838. This persecution was
part of a larger isolationist policy borne out by such facts as the closing of Vietnamese
ports to European shipping in 1836 and official opposition from the court. Such having
been the situation, understandably, there was a lot of pressure to inculturate the faith.
In Indonesia, Christian mission expansion faced competition from the growing influence
of Muslim kingdoms and traders along the coasts of Sumatra and Java from the thirteenth
to the early sixteenth centuries. Anti-colonial sentiments found fierce expression in the
Batak lands where alternative access to Christian authority was offered by the locals, not
part of the European clerics. In 1890, a Toba Batak healer and magician named Guru
Somalaing organized the Parmalim movement that emphasized local indigenous beliefs
and practices in a land that was coming under the increasing influence of Christian
missionary activities particularly from the German Rheinish Missionary society. After
several previously unsuccessful attempts at overt resistance against Dutch rule in the late
1880s, Somalaing became inspired through visions and dreams to think of Christianity as
a vehicle toward the propagation of traditional Batak notions of piety, purification of the
soul, and regard for the ancestors. In fact, the Parmalim movement preached that
traditional, pre-Christian modes of piety offered a superior means of access to the
Supreme deity, Jehovah.13
Later proponents of this movement would propagate a faith that was indigenous in
orientation but Christian in idiom. Na Siak Bagi, a prominent leader of the later stage of
the Parmalim, preached the revival of the Toba High God, Muladji Na Bolon, as their
ultimate deity. Yet even this message was heavily couched in terms of Christian moral
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injunctions and millenarian expectations. Permalim followers were taught that the meek
and humble would bear witness to God’s power, and even that Sisinga Mangaraja XII
(1849–1907), the last priest king of the Batak people, would return. Amulets, purification
rituals, and incantations were part of this millenarian expectation and by the early
twentieth century Na Siak Bagi had attracted a considerable enough following to be
perceived as a threat by the Dutch authorities, leading to his arrest in 1910.
In the Philippines, anti-colonial protest was sparked by long brewing dissatisfaction with
perceived abuses of clerical authority, which came to a head with the execution of three
native priests in 1872, and then later of the most celebrated Filipino nationalist and
writer Jose Rizal in 1896. The executed priests and Rizal himself were projected as
martyrs who, in dying for the cause of freedom and reform, became remembered by
Filipinos through the redemptive narrative of Christ’s passion. Filipino, “Kristos” became
potent exemplars of a wide spectrum of groups, from revolutionary underground
movements to charismatic leaders of new religious movements. The relevance and
potency of the biblical narrative extended to the twentieth century, not merely in the
context of anti-colonialism, but in the varied aspirations of liberation and nationhood.
Socialist and Communist parties built up their ranks by adapting their principles in ways
that communicated with Roman Catholic idioms of Christian liberation. The “Red
Passion,” propagated in the mid-1930s by the likes of Lino Dizon, evoked the allegory of
Christ’s call to humility as an indictment on the excesses of wealthy landlords (p. 225) and
the governmental bureaucracy. Correspondingly, the influence of liberation theology led
to the politicization of native clergy, which formed the seeds of the Church-led overthrow
of the regimes of Presidents Marcos and Estrada through the “People Power” revolutions
of 1986 and 2001, respectively. In the Philippine case, it can be said that the role of the
Church has been the most crucial in bringing about major political upheaval in more
recent times.
Nationalism and Independence

If anti-clerical sentiment was the initial spark for the struggle for independence in the
Philippines, in East Timor it was precisely the activism inspired by the Church clerics that
galvanized the struggle against Indonesian occupation in the 1970s. Portuguese
colonialism and missionary activities were only mildly successful in East Timor, both in
creating any significant infrastructure or in converting more than a quarter of the
population in the three centuries of their tenure. When the political conditions in Portugal
led to the severing of its colonial ties in 1974, East Timorese political parties began to
take control of their nation’s fate, with one political party, FRETILIN, declaring
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independence in July 1975 amidst domestic internal contestation. However, in 1975,

Indonesian intervention, both clandestine and overt, prevented the consummation of East
Timorese aspirations for self-rule. In November of that year, Indonesian forces invaded
resulting in the deaths of approximately 60,000 East Timorese in the first two months.
The occupation that ensued brought forth a climate of terror and fear perpetuated by the
deployment of death squads. Serious human rights violation and atrocities occurred in
their bid to subdue the population.
In the years following Indonesian occupation, spiritual authority became increasingly

vested in the Catholic Church, whose growing activism became seen as a catalyst toward
the development of a common resistance against Indonesian atrocities. With the tacit
support of the Vatican, the East Timorese Church became not merely a safe haven for
people and an outspoken and vehement vocal critic, but also the proponent of the idea of
a nation free from foreign oppression. As a result of this “Timorization” of the Church, as
Lyon observes, Catholic conversions quadrupled to nearly 60% of the total population in
the 1970s, and have increased even further.14 Today, Christians form 85.5% of the entire
population. The driving force of conversion to Christianity was the Indonesian policy of
Pancasila, which mandated every citizen to choose one of the five official religions. East
Timorese, encouraged by the support of local parish priests who were critical of the
regime, naturally opted against the religion of the aggressor that is Islam and chose
Catholicism.
The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines and East Timor inspired by influential
clerics such as Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo,
have been an active catalyst of political and social change. Given the roles the Church has
played in the nation-building process itself, its leaders have been invested in the (p. 226)
formation of governmental policy, particularly where issues of reproductive health,
education, and corruption and public morality are concerned.
As discussed earlier, Christian churches have had to withstand official pressure and
persecution in Vietnam. In spite of this, there have been moments in that country’s
history, when Christian advocates, if not the institutional church itself, have been able to
exert significant influence on the political and social landscape. The regime of Ngo Dinh
Diem in the mid-twentieth century, for example, instituted pro-Catholic policies, which at
the time caused great strain with the majority Buddhist community, and had greatly
conditioned international perceptions of the Vietnam War. In recent times, controversies
over church property have strained the relations between church and state. This involves
a historic Buddhist site that was bequeathed to the Vatican by the French colonial
government for use as its Apostolic Nunciature. The grant was then revoked by the North
Vietnamese government in 1959. In 2008, following sustained campaigning by the
Catholic faithful in Ho Chi Minh City and Ha Dong, the Vietnamese government agreed to
Page 13 of 19

return the property to the Catholic Church only to later change their position in favor of
creating a public park. While many Catholics saw this as yet another instance of
governmental repression of religion, there has been in recent years a gradual re-
establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, with the belated appointment of
some Bishops, and granting of permission for younger men to enter the seminary. In
2011, the former Apostolic nuncio to Indonesia and Timor Leste, Archbishop Leopoldo
Girelli, was appointed as the Vatican nuncio to Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei, as well
as the non-resident pontifical representative to Vietnam—the first papal representative
appointed since relations broke off in 1975.
As British, Dutch, and American colonial administrators were relatively lukewarm to the
missionary endeavor, Protestant churches were, on the whole, less successful than their
Roman Catholic counterparts in gaining converts in the region. There is merit to the
suggestion that the influence of Protestant Christianity has been particularly significant
among ethnic minorities, who struggle to negotiate their social, economic, and political
positions within the nation-state. Where identification with a world religion is a
prerequisite of one’s state identity—as is the case in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore
—there is an incentive for ethnic minorities to be receptive to Christian proselytization. If
only in name, conversion to Christianity gave ethnic minorities an administrative identity
which helped them negotiate state-sanctioned harassment or communal violence. As
Salemink puts it, the adoption of Christianity was in many cases more than just
converting into a religion but was, in crucial respects, a negotiated complicity with state-
imposed mandates of citizenship.15 Beyond this, membership in a Christian community,
which offers a strong institutional and organizational infrastructure, enables a minority
group to facilitate connections with broader, transnational linkages with diasporic ethnic
networks, thus helping them reach beyond their immediate vicinities and tap into wider
community identities. This observation can be made for ethnic minorities across a wide
cross-section of Southeast Asia, such as the Karen in Burma and Bidayuh Christians in
Sarawak and Borneo. For these groups, adherence to the faith is a significant part of (p.
227) their identity politics, particularly in the face of pressures exerted by dominant
ethnic communities and state apparatus.
By no means should it be assumed, however, that Protestant Christianity is restricted to

marginal ethnic communities. In more recent years, church groups have become an
increasingly distinct presence in the religious landscape in Southeast Asia, particularly
among the urban middle class. Java, Malaysia, and Singapore are home to among the
fastest growing Christian groups in the world. Charismatic Christianity in these places is
becoming increasingly associated with upper class values and aspirations, notably among
ethnic Chinese populations for whom Christianity is less about reiterating their ethnic
affiliation as it is about the egalitarian access to the gifts of the Spirit. In many instances,
Page 14 of 19

Christianity offers the forum for morality in the context of commercial behavior,
managerialism, and the pursuit of prosperity. In the Philippines, meanwhile, there is a
Protestant Church with enough critical mass, the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) that is rapidly
expanding as a global church and wields formidable influence as an electoral bloc. Mega
churches in urban areas around the region are becoming increasingly influential.
Conclusion
The Asian engagement with Christianity can be seen as a heuristic tool in understanding
how Asians have historically dealt with the encounter with foreign ideas and practices. In
this chapter, I have sought to encourage seeing beyond the numerical status of
Christianity in the region by focusing discussion on three themes. First, the adoption to
Christianity, though propelled by missionary zeal, was typically met with pragmatic and
calculated reception by Southeast Asians. While the missionary sources may depict a
solemn, heartfelt, and seemingly complete submission to the faith, missionaries and their
beliefs were often seen by the people in terms of the potential benefits of association with
European colonial regimes. In that respect, the cases of conversion to the faith should be
considered with significant caveats, given the prevailing geopolitical conditions. Second,
the articulation of Christianity in the context of the colonial encounter was not always
premised upon clerical and institutional sanction. In the examples I have discussed
above, Southeast Asians had understood and practiced Christianity in ways that were
made to correspond with traditional and customary belief systems. While there were
some documented cases where imposed Christian belief and local practices were in
conflict, it was not uncommon to find instances in which the latter was expressed through
the idiom of the former, particularly if this provided the benefit of colonial patronage,
protection, and privilege. On the other hand, Southeast Asian conversions did not always
mean that the Christian message was accepted in ways that colonizer or missionary could
expect. In fact, Christianity often provided the vocabulary for anti-colonial sentiment.
Third, while colonial regimes have passed, the Christian legacy in the region remains
today in the ways the faithful have expressed their aspirations of nationhood, or in the
way they negotiate the experience of living within the specter (p. 228) of the nation-state.
While it does not constitute the majority faith in Southeast Asia, it would be a folly not to
consider Christianity in the region as a crucial part of the story of world Christendom,
given that it is tied so inexorably to the politics of identity of a fast-growing number of its
flock.
Page 15 of 19

Further Reading
Andaya, Barbara Watson. “Christianity in Southeast Asia: Similarity and Difference in a
Culturally Diverse Region.” In Charles E. Farhadian, ed., Introducing World Christianity,
108‒21. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. (p. 229)
Aritonang, Jan S., and Karel A Steenbrink. A History of Christianity in Indonesia. Leiden:
Brill, 2008.
Bautista, Julius. “The Rebellion and the Icon: Holy Revolutions in the Philippines.” Asian
Journal of Social Science 34, no. 2 (2006): 291–310.
——. Figuring Catholicism: An Ethnohistory of the Santo Niño De Cebu. Quezon City:
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2010.
Brocheux, Pierre, Daniel Hémery, et al. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858‒

1954. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009.
Carey, Peter. “The Catholic Church, Religious Revival, and the Nationalist Movement in
East Timor, 1975‒98.” Indonesia and the Malay World 27 (June 1999): 77–95.
Chua, Liana. The Christianity of Culture Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship, and the Matter of
Religion in Malaysian Borneo. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Fox, James. “Tracing the Path, Recounting the Past: Historical Perspectives on Timor.” In
James Fox, ed., Out of the Ashes: Destruction and Reconstruction of East Timor, 1–27.
Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2003.
Gunn, Geoffrey C. First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500 to 1800. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Hirosue, Masashi. “The Parmalim Movement and Its Relations to Si Singa Mangaraja XII:
A Reexamination of the Development of Religious Movements in Colonial Indonesia.”
Jurnal Antropologi Sosial Budaya ETNOVISI 1, no. 3 (2005): 113–22.
Ileto, Reynaldo. “Religion and Anti-Colonial Movements.” In Tarling, Nicholas, ed.,

Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol. 2, part 1, From c.1800 to the 1930s, 193–240.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Page 16 of 19

Koning, Juliette, “Singing Yourself into Existence: Chinese Indonesian Entrepreneurs,

Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and the Indonesian Nation State.” In Julius Bautista
and Francis Khek Gee Lim, eds., Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and
Conflict. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Lyon, Alynna. “The Activist Church in Independent East Timor: ‘The Church is not a
Political Institution.’” Porto, 2011. http://www.wiscnetwork.org/porto2011/
getpaper.php?id=721.
Moffett, Samuel Hugh. A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 2, 1500 to 1900. Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 2005.
Phan, Peter C. Christianities in Asia. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
Pigafetta, Antonio. “First around the World: A Journal of Magellan’s Voyage.” In Emma
Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493‒1898. Cleveland, OH:
A. H. Clark Co., 1903–1909.
Ricklefs, Merle C. A History of Modern Indonesia, c.1300 to the Present. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1981.
Salemink, Oscar. “Is Protestant Conversion a Form of Protest? Urban and Upland
Protestants in Southeast Asia.” In Julius Bautista and Francis Khek Gee Lim, eds.,
Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and Conflict. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Sanneh, Lamin, and Joel A. Carpenter. The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the
West, and the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Scott, William Henry. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society.

Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994. (p. 230)
Tapp, Nicholas. “The Impact of Missionary Christianity upon Marginalized Ethnic

Minorities: The Case of the Hmong.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 20, no. 1 (March
1, 1989): 70–95.
Tran, Nhung Tuyet, and Anthony Reid. Viet Nam: Borderless Histories. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
Page 17 of 19

Notes:
(1) . “Global Christianity—A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian
Population,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, December 19, 2011, http://
www.pewforum.org/Christian/Global-Christianity-asia-pacific.aspx.
(2) . For details for each country in South East Asia, see the statistical table in the
appendix of this volume.
(3) . Ibid.
(4) . Samuel Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 2, 1500 to 1900
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 2005), 636.
(5) . See Pierre Brocheux, Daniel Hémery, Ly-Lan Dill-Klein, et al. Indochina: An
Ambiguous Colonization, 1858‒1954 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2009).
(6) . Merle C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, c.1300 to the Present

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
(7) . Peter C. Phan, Christianities in Asia (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 144.
(8) . William Henry Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society
(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994).
(9) . Jan S. Aritonang and Karel A Steenbrink, A History of Christianity in Indonesia

(Leiden: Brill, 2008), 387–88.
(10) . Peter Carey, “The Catholic Church, Religious Revival, and the Nationalist
Movement in East Timor, 1975‒98,” Indonesia and the Malay World 27 (June 1999): 77–
95.
(11) . See Julius Bautista, Figuring Catholicism: An Ethnohistory of the Santo Niño De
Cebu (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2010).
(12) . Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, 45; and Phan, Christianities in Asia, 133.
(13) . See Masashi Hirosue, “The Parmalim Movement and Its Relations to Si Singa
Mangaraja XII: A Reexamination of the Development of Religious Movements in Colonial
Indonesia,” Jurnal Antropologi Sosial Budaya ETNOVISI 1, no. 3 (2005): 113–22.
Page 18 of 19

(14) . Alynna Lyon, “The Activist Church in Independent East Timor: ‘The Church is not a
Political Institution,’” Porto, 2011, http://www.wiscnetwork.org/porto2011/getpaper.php?
id=721.
(15) . Oscar Salemink, “Is Protestant Conversion a Form of Protest? Urban and Upland
Protestants in Southeast Asia,” in Julius Bautista and Francis Khek Gee Lim, eds.,
Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2009).
Julius Bautista
Julius Bautista is an anthropologist and cultural historian whose research interest is
in religion in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity in the Philippines. He teaches
courses in religious studies, politics and culture at the Department of Southeast
Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore where he is a Senior Lecturer.
Concurrently, he is an Associate at the Asia Research Institute's Religion and
Globalization in Asian Contexts Cluster. Dr. Bautista is author of Figuring
Catholicism: An Ethno history of the Santo Nino de Cebu (2010) and co-editor (with
Francis Lim) of Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and Conflict (2009).
Page 19 of 19

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Christianity in Southeast Asia Colonialism, Nationalism and the Caveats to Conversion

Oxford Handbooks Online

Print Publication Date: Jul 2014 Subject: Religion, Christianity

Abstract and Keywords

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

The story of Asian Christianity, particularly in Southeast Asia, is an important chapter of

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

The Colonial and Missionary Apparatus

Portugal. Clerics were included in expeditions as a matter of policy, particularly when

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Intrepid Missions and Localization

toward a “contextual ecclesiology,” which was a means of conveying the message of

Following in the footsteps of Xavier was Alexander de Rhodes (1591‒1660), a French

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Indies. By 1837, Moluccan Christians numbered 35,000 baptized converts.9

Similarly, Ludwig Nommensen (1834‒1918), a German Lutheran missionary arrived in

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

The example of Hairun and Humabon encourages us to consider the caveats to

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

To be sure, the establishment of a corps of lay catechists was an important aspect of

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

As an ardent Confucianist who believed in veneration of the ancestors, Nguyen Emperor

Official condemnation of Christianity gave impetus to a number of persecutions,

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Nationalism and Independence

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

independence in July 1975 amidst domestic internal contestation. However, in 1975,

In the years following Indonesian occupation, spiritual authority became increasingly

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

ethnic communities and state apparatus.

By no means should it be assumed, however, that Protestant Christianity is restricted to

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Brocheux, Pierre, Daniel Hémery, et al. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858‒

Ileto, Reynaldo. “Religion and Anti-Colonial Movements.” In Tarling, Nicholas, ed.,

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Koning, Juliette, “Singing Yourself into Existence: Chinese Indonesian Entrepreneurs,

Phan, Peter C. Christianities in Asia. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Ricklefs, Merle C. A History of Modern Indonesia, c.1300 to the Present. Bloomington:

Scott, William Henry. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society.

Tapp, Nicholas. “The Impact of Missionary Christianity upon Marginalized Ethnic

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

(6) . Merle C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, c.1300 to the Present

(9) . Jan S. Aritonang and Karel A Steenbrink, A History of Christianity in Indonesia

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 05 December 2016

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