THE IMPACT OF CHRISTIANITY Christianity impacted the Hmong community quite early in China. Not only were Roman Catholic missionaries from the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) working in the areas of Guizhou, Yunnan, and northern Vietnam where the Hmong lived, but also Protestant missionaries, particularly from the Methodist churches and from the interdenominational China Inland Mission began working among the Hmong and A Hmao peoples from the last quarter of the nineteenth century in both Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. They were not as successful in Guizhou, but in Yunnan several mass conversions were made by one of the first missionaries, Samuel Pollard from Cornwall, attached to the Bible Christian movement that later merged into the United Methodist Mission. Pollard (and his son Walter) left several accounts of his work in China at this time and the deprived and desperate position his Hmong and A Hmao converts were in after the failure of their various uprisings against harsh Chinese rule. In some case he interceded for them against wicked or corrupt Chinese landlords and magistrates. It was Pollard who, with A Hmao helpers, designed the first script for any Miao language, a form of writing that is still being used by the A Hmao of Yunnan province. There can be no doubt that converts at this time were in a desperate economic and political position and welcomed the teachings of Christ as a beacon of hope in their history. However, from the start there were confusions and misinterpretations of understanding, which, according to Pollard’s own writings, caused him considerable grief and upset. Many of the converts took the words of the Bible too literally, believing that the Day of Judgement was already at hand, and that the Messiah, whom they identified as a Hmong one, was shortly to be born. The pronunciation of Jesus as “Yesu” sounded a little like the name of the Hmong deity Yawm Saub, so they became confused. In one case a Miao woman claimed to be the sister of Christ and went around winning converts. And it is more than probable that, hearing that Pollard had bought a Book that was specially for them, as he put it, and coupled with the fact that he was designing a form of writing for their language into which the Bible could be translated, many converts believed that this was the fulfillment of the prophecy that one day the lost form of Hmong writing would be restored to them. Without going too much into history here, these movements and mass conversions of Hmong to Protestant forms of missionary Christianity have continued to occur at regular frequent intervals in Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand up until the present day. In the midst of the unhappy wars in Laos in the 1960s, for instance, three Hmong men traveled about the country claiming to be the Holy Trinity and seeking to convert other Hmong. Around the same time the Communist Party of Thailand tricked many Thailand Hmong into leaving their villages and fleeing to what turned out to be a communist base in Chiangrai province by spreading rumors of the birth of a Hmong Messiah there. The impact of Christianity on the Hmong has been dramatic, unlike the slow adoption of Buddhist values and practices, and it has differed somewhat between different churches and sects. In general the Catholic missionaries have taken a more long-sighted view of Hmong culture and custom and in many cases actively encouraged or sponsored the documentation of traditional Hmong practices such as the death rituals and shamanic ceremonies. Protestant missionaries such as the Presbyterians who worked in Thailand have generally adopted an approach that is much more culturally intolerant, often burning household altars and forbidding any kind of ancestral or funeral practice. And different sects have adopted different approaches; for example, the Seventh-Day Adventists were known for not allowing

even the consumption of pork in northern Thailand. In the last two decades further changes have taken place in the spreading of Christianity, because most pastors now are Hmong themselves, unlike tthe fairly recent past when the missionaries were almost all American, French, or from other Western nations. In Vietnam, and to a lesser extent in Laos, Christianity is still disapproved of by the socialist authorities, and in Vietnam the increasing Hmong adoption of Christianity in recent years has been seen as a sign of their wishes for subversion and has been savagely repressed with the slaughter of household animals belonging to Hmong Christians, their arrests, and even their executions. The Chinese government, too, keeps a very careful watch on mass adoptions of Christianity by the Hmong in its border provinces. The Hmong response to this persecution has been in some cases flight (several families disappeared into Burma from Yunnan for this reason in the 1990s), and particularly in Vietnam, even suicide. The Christian faith has a very strong appeal, partly because it originated from Western missionaries, whom the Hmong have traditionally identified as powerful advocates who would deliver them from oppression by other local dominant groups. Christianity also teaches about the second coming of Christ, which meshes with Hmong mythical belief about the coming of a Hmong king to unite all Hmong under his rule as it did with the converts made by Pollard. In such cases Christianity may be seen by converts as a part of their culture and traditions, an aspect that offers them hope in the face of oppression. The kinship-based clan or lineage is important in Hmong society at every level and there is a customary need to perform ancestral and shamanic rituals at times of life crises and at particular points in the annual calendar to affirm and maintain that identity. However, once an individual or even a family or group of families converts to Christianity, it becomes virtually impossible for communal social activities, such as those at weddings, funerals, or even the New Year, to be performed together any more. Villages in Thailand and elsewhere have become severely fragmented by these issues. It is fair to say that families, lineages, and whole communities have been riven by divisions between Christians and non-Christians. There are cases of shamans converting to Christianity, or of fathers whose sons refuse to follow them, or of children converting for reasons of strong faith against the wishes of their parents. Many younger Hmong also convert on the pretext that the Hmong traditional rituals that each married male has to perform for his family are too difficult to learn, or are not relevant to their modern needs. However, in many cases these conversions are matters of genuine faith and belief and arise from a feeling that the older Hmong beliefs are superstitious or based on fear, as pointed out by Dowman. Often a succession of unfortunate events such as illness or crop failure is pointed to as the result of the conversion, or refusal or failure to convert. In Canada, the United States, and elsewhere conflicts over the adoption of Christianity have become endemic. In these countries it was often local churches that sponsored the arrival of Hmong refugees after 1975 and some converted out of a sense of obligation to the sponsors, while others came into conflict with their sponsors as occurred with the sponsorship of Hmong families by the Mennonites in Canada. In Australia the conversion to Christianity of a Hmong shaman who had been sponsored to come to the country owing to the shortage of shamans caused deep resentment as the individual concerned was seen as reneging on his commitment and using the conversion to avoid his community obligations. For a Christian, perhaps the most serious issue is the inability to take full part in the funeral rituals for the soul of a deceased relative or parent. However, debates and disagreements have also centered on other ritual events and practices such as

customary weddings and the traditional practice of bridewealth payments. An important contributing reason to the rifts that have developed within the Hmong community over the adoption of Christianity has been that some Christian denominations, especially in the United States, are so rigid in their teachings that they dismiss all Hmong traditional practices as paganism, so that their Hmong converts are forced to cut off all ties with their relatives and clan members who remain faithful to the Hmong traditional system. Some sects see all traditional rituals as tainted by demons, and converts are not allowed to join in any feasts arising from these rituals. This kind of cultural intolerance further erodes mutual obligations between family and clan members, because the more fundamentalist Christian Hmong may refuse to provide help with family celebrations or community events that involve some religious activities. Despite this, some of the bigger Hmong churches are active with their own missionary work among fellow Hmong in China and Southeast Asia, both through conversion in the field and through missionary radio broadcasts from the United States and the Philippines. One must not forget the agony of individual decision-making that the adoption of Christianity involves in many cases, besides the communal conflicts drawn attention to here. Cases of conversion back and forth several times are very common. Many Hmong may wish to become Christian or leave their ancestral belief system behind, but feel constrained by the presence of an elderly parent or relative for whom the absence of a traditional funeral would be a calamity. Where a girl from a traditional family marries a Christian Hmong, or a brother converts against the wishes of his father, the personal traumas caused can be tremendous. At Hmong New Year in the United States, Christian Hmong also hold a family feast but combine it with Christian songs and blessings, while some hold the feast in a restaurant or hotel. It has become more of a private, family celebration than a public event, and may not be held on the exact date. The issue in the wider sense comes down to one of Hmong identity and how being Hmong is to be defined in the future. The introduction of Christianity often challenges this very identity, the traditional leadership structures and often the traditional authority of men in the family, so that it involves not just relations between men and women, but also relations between the younger generation and their elders, and the traditional aspect owed by wives to their husbands as by youth to their elders. So the issue of the adoption of Christianity becomes conflated with other changes in the relations between genders and generations that are taking place in the new lives of the Hmong today, not just in the United States or other advanced economies, but also in the rapidly modernizing society of Thailand and the more urbanized parts of Asia where Hmong families and individuals live. Many members of the older generation may feel that the younger generation are losing their Hmong culture and therefore their “Hmong-ness” by not being able to speak Hmong, adopting ways seen as non-Hmong and turning their backs on traditional customs. But others, not only among the younger generation, feel that it is possible to remain Hmong while adopting new ways and customs, and that being Hmong may and indeed should be defined in different ways from those of the past. Besides membership of the Catholic Church, many Protestant groups, including the Christian Missionary Alliance, the Assembly of God, the Baptist, Lutheran, and Pentecostal churches, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, there are small groups of messianic Hmong who seek to revive the traditions of their people in new and unexpected ways, such as a group of four families in Australia who have retreated to the mountains of the Atherton Highlands to practice a new faith with newly designed rituals that they see as traditional and

as a way of remaining Hmong in the face of pressures to become Australian. And there is a small community of Hmong in Portland, Oregon, who converted to the Baha’i faith in Laos, where some believers still remain. Despite these conflicts and divisions, the overwhelming majority of the Hmong today remain attached to some degree or other to the more traditional beliefs of their ancestors, and even those in Western countries often try to maintain traditional practices of ancestor respect and shamanism as best they can. Behind these beliefs there is a strong substratum of wisdom and belief in the harmony of nature and the need of humans to live in appropriate accord with the natural world that remains an encouragement and inspiration for many Hmong people. Gary Yia Lee and Nicholas Tapp, 2010, Culture and Customs of the Hmong