Ethnic and Transnational Dimensions of Recent
Protestant Conversion among the Hmong in Northern Vietnam
Ngo Thi Thanh Tam
ANCR Workshop “Human security and religious certainty in Southeast Asia”, Chiang Mai
15-17 January 2010
Abstract
This paper argues that ethnic and transnational
dimensions are crucial to understand the conversion of the Hmong to Protestantism
in Northern Vietnam. Although a number of scholars have proposed to incorporate
the study of religion into the study of transnationalism, the ‘transnationalization
of religion’ is still rather understudied, and there are only few scholarly efforts
to analyze the transnational aspects of the conversions to world religion of marginalized
ethnic minority groups in sending countries. This paper examines the transnationalization
of religion via the case of the Hmong conversion to show that the impact of missionization
is twofold as not only the habitus of the Hmong in Vietnam changes through massive
conversion but also the subjectivity of the Hmong missionaries. The paper proposes
to conceptualize the evangelical mission of the Hmong diasporas to Vietnam in particular
and to Asia in general as a form of ‘remittance of faith, and modernity’.
Key words: Religious transnationalism, missionary
encounters, conversion, Hmong, remittance of faith and modernity
1. Introduction
This contribution explores the massive conversion
to Evangelical Protestantism of the Hmong in Northern Vietnam. One third of the
nearly 1 million Hmong population has converted from animists and ancestor worshipers
to Evangelical Protestants over just two decades, from the mid 1980s to the present.
This conversion was initiated by a transnational Christian Broadcasting programme
of the Philippines-based Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) Instead of by actual
contact with Protestant missionaries. From the beginning, this conversion with its
ethnic and transnational aspects, and especially its suddenness and magnitude have
subjected it to strict
Political surveillance by Vietnamese government
as well as special attention from international religious and political parties.
I began my research with the aim to understand
the nature of this conversion and how it, as a local transformation, can be linked
to global movements of Christian mission and conversion in the second half of the
20th century1. Locally, being the ‘poorest of the poorest’ in Vietnam, the Hmong
have experienced only increasing difficulties, especially when it comes to the question
of continuing to practice their costly traditional religious and healing rituals.
Doi
Moi, the transformative economic reform programme
started in 1986 has deregulated many subsidized programme to mountainous region
while imposing stricter regulation on Land Law and has prohibited slash-and-burn
farming and opium poppy cultivation. The consequences of these changes combining
with population increase, dislocation and migration, environmental degradation have
only increased poverty and intensified the socio-political and cultural marginality
of the Hmong. This has directly and indirectly created a fertile ground for conversion
among this group. More importantly, on the global scale, the dynamics of global
religious revivals has activated transnational religious networks, which make use
of ethnic affinities overseas, and of the organizational and communicative strength
of Protestant Churches, to facilitate the Hmong conversion by circulating religious
symbols and goods, financing and using evangelical transnational radio broadcasts
in vernacular languages (the FEBC). The study’s objective is to contribute to our
understanding of how globalization enables the socio-cultural and identity transformation
of marginalized ethnic minorities and non-state people.
Maintaining that one can hardly understand this
conversion if one neglects its transnational aspects, this contribution aims to
shed light on the nature of the relationship between the Hmong
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1 In order to do so, I didn’t conduct single-location
based ethnography but carried out fieldwork research for 15 months in Vietnam and
6 months in the US, along with 8 short fieldtrips to the other side of Chinese border,
one visit to Chiangmai, Thailand, and one trip to several provinces in Laos. In
Vietnam, a preliminary research was conducted in three months (11/2004-02/2005),
follow up by two one-month long trips (January 2006, and January 2007), and a long
intensive 10 month research (09/2007 – 06/2008). The research in the US started
with a three weeks visit to Minnesota in March 2006 (initially planned to attend
the first International Hmong studies conference. Summer 2006, I return to the Midwest
to attend Hmong language course at Madison, Wisconsin, while taking various trips
to visit Hmong communities in Milwaukee, Sheboygan, Wassau, St. Paul, and Minneapolis.
The contacts established in this year formed the morphology of my fieldwork networks
in summer 2008. The major methodology employed throughout the fieldwork is participant
observation and personal in-depth interviews. Information that I aimed to collect
is mainly qualitative. It includes personal narratives, life stories, description
of relation, behaviour and interaction that I observed in the field. A considerable
number of scholarly works in and outside Vietnam are analyzed to provide understanding
and different perspectives of Hmong conversion. In Vietnam, three times I attempted
to use questionnaires to gather quantitative data, three times I failed, the reason
for which is explain in more detail in the ethnographic section. The quantitative
information needed for the argument is mainly second-hand data and government census.
Converts and their overseas Hmong missionaries.
In the following, I shall briefly discuss some theoretical aspects of the connection
between current conversion of ethnic marginality communities in the world to Christianity
as a world religion. In section 3, I argue that ethnic ties and double transnationality
are two crucial aspects to the understanding of the relationship between Hmong converts
and Hmong missionaries. In section 4 I suggest that the impact of missionization
is twofold as not only the habitus of the Hmong in Vietnam changes through massive
conversion but also the subjectivity of the Hmong missionaries. In section 5, by
way of conclusion, I propose to conceptualize the evangelical mission of the Hmong
diasporas to Vietnam in particular and to Asia in general as a form of ‘remittance
of faith, and modernity’.
2. Religious Conversion and Transnationalism
Religious expansion is entwined with migration,
particularly with transnational migration. Although a number of scholars have proposed
to incorporate the study of religion into the study of transnationalism, the “transnationalization” of religion is still
mainly studied in the case of immigrant communities (the diaspora), at the receiving
contexts (the host countries), and of the cosmopolitan middle class. Despite of
some recent initial effort (Salemink 2003a, b; 2005), there is still a gap in the
body of knowledge on the transnational aspects of the conversions of marginalized
ethnic minority groups in migrant-sending countries.
Modernity is inherently globalizing and so is
Christian conversion. The history of Christianity is a history of expansion of the
religion across national and cultural boundaries and at the same time a history
of maintaining the bonds between Christian organizations across the globe. Transnationality
is indeed a fact and important characteristic of this world religion. Although a
number of scholars have proposed to incorporate the study of religion into the study
of transnationalism, the ‘transnationalization of religion’ is still rather understudied
as it is mainly restricted to the case of immigrant communities (the diasporas),
in the receiving contexts (the host countries), and of the cosmopolitan middle class.
There are only few initial scholarly efforts that analyze the transnational aspects
of the conversions to world religion of marginalized ethnic minority groups in sending
countries (Tapp, 1989b; Salemink, 2003b).
To understand a conversion like that of the
Hmong, one cannot afford to overlook issues involving national and regional histories,
the impact of states, and the power of religious institutions in imposing orthodoxy
while taking into account transnational and global processes
And recognizing the pervasiveness of religious
flows and creativity. Various forms of religious networks, operating on a global
scale play an important role in the widespread conversion to Christianity of people
in many places in the world. For the recently converted Hmong in China, Laos, and
Vietnam, most of their conversions to Evangelical Protestantism are not (yet) Officially
approved by state authorities and some Protestant worship therefore remains illegally
operated within the realm of underground house churches, and informal religious
networks are the main channels of missionization. This very much resembles what
Castells (1996) Sees as being a result of the network society in which movements
and flows are more important than formal organizations and in which transnationality
is an element of globalization. Although, in this case, informality is primarily
the result of government restrictions on religious organizations, one can see a
process in which under changing government policies informality may change into
formal structures. However, behind this process of formalization transnationality
plays itself out in informal networks, whatever the government policy may be.
3. Ethnic Ties and Double Transnationality
There are multi-motivational causes as well
as consequences of Protestant conversion of the Hmong (Ngo, 2005). It is important
to pay attention to the current marginalized situations of the Hmong, but it is
equally important to investigate the particular history of the Hmong which is perceived
as meshing well with Protestant doctrine. This history is typified by messianic
tendencies, which are fed by myths about the loss of writing, and prophesies about
a Hmong King who will come down to redeem the Hmong script and literacy and restore
the lost Hmong kingdom which they had to leave behind in China (Tapp,1989a). More
importantly, there are various transnational links between the Protestant conversion
of Hmong (as a marginalized ethnic minority) And global religious movements. In
the case of the Hmong in Thailand, Tapp’s (1989b) Pioneering work has identified
the importance of these linkages. However, the majority of the Christian missionary
networks that Tapp studied are directly or indirectly connected to and sustained
by European or American churches, whose strength in the past was boosted by their
relation with colonial governments in the colonized world. In the conversion of
the Hmong in Vietnam that this contribution deals withn, these types of networks
are still important, yet they are no longer the majority. They are increasingly
replaced by networks that are connected to and
Sustained by the transnational connection between
ethnic and diasporic communities. In the case of the Hmong, it is the networks forged
by Hmong refugees in the United States and their perceived ‘homeland’ that give
support, financially, operationally and politically to the Hmong conversion.
The relation of Hmong Americans with Vietnam
and with the Vietnamese Hmong is not simply that between diasporas and homeland
communities. Many American Hmong do not come from Vietnam but from Laos which complicates
the notion of diaspora. Nevertheless, in my view the Hmong communities in the US
and in Vietnam can be brought together in a “single
field of social relation” (Basch et al. 1994: 5) Given the powerful effects
of transnational media and the existence of the diasporic public sphere (Appadurai
1996). The Hmong in Vietnam and the Hmong in the US not only currently live in two
different countries (indeed, in two different continents) But also the Hmong diasporas
in the US did not come directly from Vietnam but via Laos. Yet, they are bound together
by a shared ethnic identity, i. E., being Hmong. In one way, this ethnic tie is
inherent in the basic nature of the Hmong kinship system. This system is well described
in a number of studies which show how the Hmong structure their social relations
around kinship relations (Trần, 1996; Phạm 1995; Lepreecha, 1996; Tapp, 1989a; Cooper
1984; Lee, 1996; Julian, 2003). Regardless of wherever they come from, whichever
region or country they inhabit, all Hmong who bear the same clan name are supposed
to consider each other as brothers and sisters. Also, ethnic ties are reinforced
by the shared situation of being marginalized ethnic minorities in all the countries
in which the Hmong live, and wherein they are all well known for their persistence
in resisting cultural assimilation and preserving their ethnic identity. This resembles
what Eriksen (1993) And Bath (1969) See as the configuration of ethnicity by locally
interactive relations between different ethnic groups. In the Hmong case, however,
the configuration of ethnicity occurs not only in a local, but also in a transnational
context. Transnational connections between various groups that reside in various
countries transcend the locally constructed ethnicity in response to a global Hmong
identity (Julian, 2003; Lee, 1996).
It is important to identify the ethnic ties
between the two groups as this can explain most of the encounters and transnational
linkages between them, one of which is the Christian encounter and conversion that
we focus on here. It is also important to identify the nature of what
Might be called ‘double transnationality’ in
this case. 2 Being also a part of an older Southeast Asian Diaspora, the Hmong in
Vietnam share with their Laotian, Thai, and Burmese Hmong counterparts a history
of southward migration from China and a memory of an historic ‘homeland’ situated
in China which influenced/influences messianic tendencies (as mentioned previously)
(Tapp,1989a and Tran, 1996). This characterises the ‘first transnationality’ of
the Hmong in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
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The ‘second transnationality’ began after the end of the war in Laos in 1975 as I mentioned above, when hundreds of thousands of Hmong have left the country to seek refuge in the West. The result of this ‘double transnationality’ is the ambiguity of homeland. In fact, as Schein (2004) Notices, there is a strong tendency among American Hmong to imagine and create a double homeland - in both Laos and China. Similarly, although these people came mainly from Laos, the notion of national boundaries does not converge with the Hmong’s notion of ethnic boundaries. As various form of global connections have been emerged in the past decades thanks to the availability of communication and the increasing affordability of travel, the imagination of geographical homeland has been enlarged to include other locations in Southeast Asia where there are Hmong residents such as Thailand and Vietnam. Many Hmong in the US whom I encountered told me that they or their relatives were born in Vietnam, then moved to Laos, and that often they still have relatives who live in Vietnam. This is the reason why in many encounters with Vietnamese Hmong converts, American Hmong missionaries could claim having the same place of origin. There are other interesting connections between overseas Hmong groups and those left behind in Southeast Asia. For example, in the First International Hmong Studies Conference held at Concordia University in St. Paul 2006, one paper was given on Hmong population in Vietnam by a Hmong high school teacher who had led a group of Hmong students on a school tour to Vietnam. Although it was not really an academic paper, her paper was among best attended in the entire conference with the number of audience exceed the seat capacity of the room. The school teacher proudly presented general background information on the socio-economic and cultural life of her ‘Hmong brother and sisters’ in Vietnam despite she could not manage to visit any Hmong area during her visit but just stayed in Hanoi. The materials she used to illustrate her talk were pictures and printed materials about Hmong
2 See Bhachu, Parminder. 1985. Twice Migrants:
East African Sikh Settlers in Britain. Taristock Publication Ltd. New York
Population in Vietnam which she gathered in
Hanoi bookstore and at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. Even more interestingly,
the main part of her talk was to praise of how authentic and how traditional the
Hmong in Vietnam are. During the discussion, several young Hmong audients made remarks,
not so much about the presenter, but about the Vietnamese Hmong on how admirable
it is for them to be so poor and still be able to preserve ‘our’ beautiful Hmong
culture.
According to Julian (2003), Schein (2002,2004)
And Lee (1996), the Hmong diaspora in the West tends to reconstruct its identity
by erasing cultural and linguistic differences and by reclaiming a common identity
for all Hmong and Miao in the world. This diaspora is closely associated with Christian
evangelical broadcasts, such as those of FEBC, which in turn are closely linked
to the conversions of the Hmong in Southeast Asia3. The CMA Hmong district
Every year organizes its annual church conference
which often attract a massive crowd of several to fifteen hundred people like the
one organized in 2008. In the last few years, missions among Vietnamese Hmong have
increasingly become the major theme of the conference. In the 2008 conference, a
section call ‘prayer for mission’ was organized in a large hall in the ground floor
of Denver’s Renaissance Hotel, with at least 500 participants. Four large maps of
the world were put on the walls of the hall. The section started with long prayers,
several speeches by missionaries who are working mainly in China, Thailand, Laos
and Vietnam, and a video film made for fundraising purpose about a mission among
the Dahua Miao in Guizhou China. At the end of the section, all attendants of the
section were called to group themselves and to stand under the part of the map which
has the country or region where they either are doing mission or wish to go to do
mission. After several minute of chaos with people running from one side to another
in the room, the groups were formed. Because the maps were rather small and the
groups were formed very unequally, someone came up with the idea that one person
of each group should write the name of the country that his/her group is intending
to go on a paper and hold it up. All participants started praying for each group.
It was interesting that the two largest group were formed for missionization in
Vietnam and China. After the long murmuring of prayer, the crowd dismantled and
I started wandering around the hall and tried to take as many photos as possible
of the displayed exhibition of object, photos and stories about missions in Vietnam
of CMA Hmong members, Tswj (an acquaintance I made during the conference) Came with
several
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3 Ngo, 2007
Young missionaries to whom he introduced me
as tus muam Hmong nyab laj (sister Hmong Vietnam). As we engaged in a conversation,
these missionaries told me that their ultimate wish is to go to Vietnam and do missionary
work among the Hmong there. One of them, a young man full of self confidence and
a proud holder of a MA degree in pedagogy actually spoke flirtatiously: “nkauj ntsuab, will you be my private guide there?”,
showing a somewhat improper attitude for a future missionary.
Ethnic ties are also recognized by missiologists
as important factor that bring Hmong people to Christianity. Vang (1998), for example,
points out that the third major factor that contributes to the fast growth of Hmong
Christian population was that Hmong who evangelize the other Hmong. He explains
it in the missiological term “homogeneous
units principle”, a principle that comes from the idea that “people became Christian most rapidly when the
least change of race or clan is involved” (McGavran 1955: Cited in Vang 1998:
129). That is, people are more likely to convert to Christianity, presumably, if
they do not have to deal with ethnic, racial, linguistic and other social differences
during and after their conversion. Quoting McGavran, Vang writes “people like to become Christians without crossing
racial, linguistic, or class barriers” and “they want to join churches whose members look, talk, eat, and dress like
them” (1998: 166). In conclusion, Vang argues, that the Hmong CMA’s application
of this principle has contributed “significantly”
to the growth of Hmong CMA in Laos from the 1950 to 1990’s.
In encounters between missionaries and Vietnamese
Christian Hmong I was told, Hmong overseas missionaries often made the promise that
they and the Hmong diasporas would do their best to stop the persecution of Vietnamese
government of the Hmong. In fact, perceiving themselves as guardians for the right
to religious freedom of the Hmong in Vietnam is another way the American Hmong connect
with their Vietnamese Hmong counterpart. The reasons for this self attributed guardian
role are twofold, one that has to do with the antagonism between the American Hmong
and the Communist Vietnamese state which is reinforced by the general rhetoric of
American Christianity about worldwide religious freedom. Given the history of the
war and the Hmong exodus to the west mentioned above, many Hmong immigrants in the
US are still inflicted by the pain and rawness of bitter memory about communist
Vietnamese. During the war in Laos, it was said that there were many Vietnamese
troops who took part in the battles. As the Lao Pathet and the Vietnam troops advanced
at the end of the war, many Hmong villages in northern Lao territory were under
occupation by Vietnamese army and the suffering of many
Hmong villagers during this period and after
the war was blamed on the Vietnamese. It was said that the Vietnamese army wanted
to punish the Hmong as a retribution for their corporation with CIA. During my fieldworks,
sometimes in the mid of interview, my informants got carried away with his (sometimes
her) Emotion that emerged in the course of recalling memories of the past and made
angry remarks about Vietnam and Vietnamese. Then quickly realizing that I am a Vietnamese,
some of my informants would feel awkward and apologised. In the end, to take things
light, sometimes when I arrived to an interview or gathering wearing a red shirt,
my arrival would be jokingly announced ‘Nyab Laj liab tuaj os! (So here comes a
red Vietnamese).
4. The double impact of the missionary encounter
Examining various transnational ties between
the Hmong diaspora and the Hmong in Laos and China, Schein (2007: 10) Observes that
Hmong Christianity generates a transnationality that departs from the sensibility
of much of the other transnational practices. Whereas importing costumes, seeking
homeland women, touring and returning to Asia are premised on desire and nostalgia
for the intact culture and authenticity of the homeland, the proselytizing impulse
is fundamentally about changing the homeland. “It is about designating the country of resettlement as unequivocally superior
in its religion and therefore as a legitimate base for impacting the rest of the
world. This perspective on the resettlement country intersects interestingly with
the economic perception of transnational relations. Both remittances and conversions
are premised on improving the homeland rather than consuming it as is. Likewise,
the seeking of homeland women, much as it is about the romance of their traditionality,
is often driven by the desire to remove them or their families from poverty. All
of these relations not only recognize but are also premised on political economic
asymmetries. It is precisely because of their material resources that Hmong Americans
can initiate activities that impact their homelands, and not vice versa”. (2007:
10)
Schein points to something quite important,
namely the desire to reshape the homeland, but seems to miss some of the ambiguity
and ambivalence in this desire. While there is a desire to remake the homeland,
develop it and so on, there is also, like elsewhere, nostalgia for its authentic
purity. It is this ambivalence that is at the heart of the impact of the Hmong homeland
on Hmong immigrants in the US. Moreover, while Hmong Americans can initiate activities
that
Impact their homelands thanks to their material
resources, they are themselves also deeply affected in the missionary encounter.
The power to influence others is not an exclusive privilege of the American Hmong.
At least in missionary encounters, the identity of the diasporic Christian Hmong
are under transformation as well. This is similar to what Van der Veer (1996 and
2001) And the Comaroffs (1991) Have been arguing about conversion and missionary
encounters elsewhere in the world. Van der Veer (1996: 7) Suggests that in order
to understand the interactions between the developments in the colonizing and the
colonized worlds, which he later named Imperial Encounters one should avoid the
commonsensical simplicities of theories of modernization and secularization in which
modern Europe unilaterally modernizes its Others, whose role is limited to reaction,
both in the sense of weak response and retrograde action.
“The immense creativity in colonial encounters,
both on the part of the colonizers and the colonized, is often done little justice
in account of rather stress failure than innovative practice. The colonial era makes
new imaginations of community possible, and it is especially in the religious domain
that these new imaginations take shape. In that sense, conversion to another faith
is part of a set of much larger transformations affecting both converts, non-converts,
and the missionaries themselves. Conversion is an innovative practice that partakes
in the transformations of the social without being a mechanical result of it. And
again, this is true for the colonizer and the colonized, the missionaries and the
converts.
Referring
to the history of Christianity in Europe, Van der Veer also points out that while
conversion of others is gradually marginalized in modern Europe and transported
to the non- Christian colonized world, the rise of missionary societies, accompanied
by intensive fundraising and missionary propaganda, deeply affects Christianity
“at home”. For many Hmong Christian communities in the
US the situation is similar, namely that the missionization of other Hmong in the
US proves increasingly difficult and missionization is shifting its aims to their
Hmong fellows in Asia. During these missions, the encounters between American Hmong
missionaries and the Vietnamese Hmong converts are two side processes in which not
only the converts but also the non-converts, and the missionaries themselves are
equal actors who also bear equal
Consequence of their action. As the rest of
my project4 shows the impact of missionization on the converted and non-converted
Vietnamese Hmong, here I would like to give some examples of what kind of impact
missionary encounter has on the American Hmong as well.
The first and foremost impact one can observe
is the unsettling confrontation with Hmong culture in Vietnam for American Hmong.
During the coffee break after the presentation about Vietnamese Hmong in the conference
I mentioned above, I had a conversation with several college students who were among
the audience. One female college student was particularly interested in the fact
that I am from Vietnam and am doing research among Hmong people there. She said
that hearing this talk made her feel ashamed of herself for failing to do her part
in preserving Hmong culture despite of all the opportunity she has for being Hmong
American, since living in a rich society like America, one has all the material
means to preserve Hmong culture such as to learn and research about Hmong folkloric
song (kwv thiaj) And to take lesson to learn to play qeej (the Hmong flute). While
we were talking, a Hmong gentleman cut in. As I learned later, this gentleman was
a Protestant missionary who made occasional trips to visit Hmong villages in Vietnam.
The missionary had overheard our conversation and wanted to share his view on the
topic of how traditional the Hmong in Vietnam are. In his observation, the Hmong
in China and Lao have been, to considerable extent, assimilated to larger societies
and their culture has become less traditional due to the influence of modernity
brought about by economic development. The Hmong in Vietnam, on the other hand could
still preserve their culture and traditional lifestyle due to economic poverty and
isolation. They are by far, stated the missionary, ´the most traditional Hmong in
Asia´. He then went into details about how the Hmong in Vietnam still wear Hmong
traditional clothes (with elaborate embroideries on handmade indigo clothe) Daily,
not just during festive occasion like the American Hmong do. He described Hmong
markets and the way Hmong youngsters are still singing passionately to each other
during courting and how warm and kind people are one to another. “They are truly amazing, so different from us
here in America,” he added.
The admiration of this missionary for the Hmong
people in Asia for their ability to keep Hmong culture alive perhaps also has something
to with the way he feels sorry about the loss of Hmong culture among the Hmong in
the US. In fact, it is interesting to look at the extent to
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4 My larger project deals with Protestant conversion
among the Hmong in Northern Vietnam. See Ngo (2005) And Ngo (2009)
Which the narratives of being an immigrant,
marginal ethnic minority in a pluralistic society like America are used by many
Hmong missionary as rhetorical repertoires in their preaching programmes. Just like
what happened in church community wherein raw memories of the past are made alive
by the practice of public confession, the sentiments of the Hmong diasporic community
in the US which help to create social and cultural resources that many Hmong missionaries
can draw on for funding and political support that back them up when they operate
evangelical missions in Asia, has also reinforced many missionary’s sentiment of
being marginalized immigrants. Several missionaries I encountered whose backgrounds
implicitly or explicitly show that the reason why they became missionaries has something
to do with their socioeconomic marginalization in the US. It is also interesting
to note that the patriarchal structure of Hmong culture and society is reflected
in the outnumbering of male Hmong over female Hmong who have the wish to travel
to Asia to be missionary. In encountering with several male missionaries, I have
the impression that they, more strongly than their female colleagues, feel that
they were received in a respectful way and that they feel their position is more
honoured among their Hmong fellow in Asia than among those back home in America.
This might explain Schein’s (2004) Observation that the Hmong’s choice to travel
seemed to be one of their best hopes for empowerment. She argues that Hmong people
resist their socioeconomic marginalization within the societies in which they live
by forging transnational ties that yield economic advantages, political alliances
and even mobility for home (2004: 286).
The second impact of the missionary encounter
on the American Hmong is the formation of the self-perceived role as guardian of
religious freedom and human right for the Hmong in Asia. In one encounter I was
told, a missionary made a promise that he and many others in the US will do their
best to make influence on Vietnamese government to stop persecution of the Hmong.
By making such promise, the missionary attributed a greater sense of power and ability
to the Hmong diasporas to make a difference in the life of their powerless Vietnamese
Hmong brothers and sisters. At the same times, it was this kind of idea that has
driven the participation of the Hmong in the American public sphere. Hmong medias
devote huge attention to religious freedom issues and thus driven many Hmong individuals
in the US to subject themselves to the idea of freedom fighters and protestors.
If it is true that immigrants can only truly look forward to building a future in
the country of residence once they are able to let go the wish to return to the
country of origin, being bound to the idea that they need to fight for either political
or
Religious freedoms for their Hmong fellows in
Asia may not be a good idea for many American Hmong for it distracts them from putting
all their efforts in building a new life in America. However, one could just as
well argue that precisely their fight for the religious freedom (and conversion)
Of their fellowmen in Asia makes them into real Americans.
5. Conclusion: Remittance of faith and modernity
In this contribution, I have sketched out the
ethnic and transnational dimension of the Hmong conversion. I have argued that these
dimensions are crucial in understanding this religious transformation that is simultaneously
uniquely Hmong and shares various characteristics with Christian conversion among
other marginalized ethnic groups in Asia. I would like to use this conclusion to
open up a discussion about the relationship between global religious movement and
local transformation in the world today. The Hmong case offers us an excellent opportunity
to raise this discussion, and here I would like to stress one of it aspects, namely,
what I, drawing on migration and transnational studies’ literature, would like to
call “remittance of faith and modernity”.
The impact of migration on sending communities
is more than just economic in nature, as Levitt (1996) Has pointed out. ‘Social
remittances’ which encompass flows of ideas, behaviours, identities, and social
capitals between transnational communities, she argues, play a key role in bringing
about multi-level changes for communities that stay behind (2005: 6). In this paper
I want to suggest that the evangelical mission carried out by the Hmong diasporas
to Christianize the Hmong in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia can be seen as a type
of social remittance, in particular as a ‘remittance of faith and modernity’. It
is commonly found that Christianity often appears as a modernizing culture to non-Christian
Hmong immigrants who have arrived in the US in the last few decades (Ong, 2003;
Faruque, 2002). In the encounters with the Hmong in Vietnam, the portrayal and presence
of the Hmong missionaries, as Hmong Americans coming from a modern country with
a certain lifestyle and perceptual frameworks, may present a vision of modernity
in itself. Thus, in the missionary encounter with Vietnam, not only do they bring
motivation and inspiration but also some peer pressure to the Hmong who are re-positioning
themselves in the historical narrative of modernity. Some of the Hmong missionaries
I spoke with tended to emphasize the humanitarian side of their work and see themselves
as developmental agents. They also tended to speak of their religious teaching as
the teaching and
Sending back to their Hmong brothers and sisters
in Asia of the ‘new way’ (in fact Christianity in Hmong is translated as ‘kev caiv
tshiab’ or new way). The narrative of ‘new’ versus ‘old’ in missionary narratives
is often featured as a zeal for a break with the traditional past and progress into
a better future. Like immigrants who send remittances and wish to make a change
in their homeland, the Hmong missionaries hope by sending Christianity to their
Hmong fellow, they can bring about change and development in the life of their Vietnamese
Hmong fellow. In a sense, this remittance of Christian faith to the Hmong in Vietnam
and elsewhere in Asia by their co- ethnic Christians from the US can also be seen
as a ‘remittance of modernity’. Since an obsession with authenticity is also found
in Hmong modernity and conversion narratives, the desire to develop their fellow
Hmong in Vietnam has put these Hmong missionaries in a dilemma of how to accomplish
their religious mission (which is to help the Hmong convert to make a radical break
with the past) On the one hand, and reconcile this with their desire for the preservation
of Hmong identity on the other hand.
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Ngo Thi Thanh Tam is a Ph. D. Candidate at VU
University, Amsterdam and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious
and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. Her research focuses on Transnational
Religious Networks and Protestant Conversion among the Hmong in Northern Vietnam.
For her doctoral research, she has conducted fieldwork among the Hmong population
in Northern Vietnam and in Midwestern America. She obtained a MA in Cultural Anthropology
and Development Sociology at University of Leiden (2006), a Msc in Comparative Asian
Studies from the University of Amsterdam in 2004, and a BA in Philosophy in 2002
at Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam.
Email: Ttt. Ngo@fsw. Vu. Nl and ngo@mmg. Mpg.
De Contact address: Tam Ngo, Doctoral Research Fellow Department of Religious Diversity
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious
and Ethnic Diversity
Hermann-Föge-Weg 11
37073 Göttingen
Fon: + 49 (551)4956 - 222
Fax: + 49 (551)4956 - 170
