Ethnic and Transnational Dimensions of Recent Protestant Conversion among the Hmong in Northern Vietnam

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

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.

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

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

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.

Reference

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization

St. Paul/Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Basch, Linda, Glick-Schiller, Nina and Szanton-Blanc, Cristina (1994). Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Post-colonial Predicaments and Deterritorialised Nation-States London and New York: Routledge.

Barth, Fredrik. 1969 “Introduction” in Fredrik Barth (ed.). 1969. Ethnic Change and Boundaries Boston: Little, Brown.

Bhachu, Parminder. 1985. Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain. Taristock Publication Ltd. New York

Bourdieu, Piere., et al. 1992. The Logic of Practices. Cambridge: Polity, 1990 Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society Oxford: Blackwell

Comaroff, Jean and John. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution. Christinity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives

London and Chicago: Pluto Press.

Julian, Roberta. 2003. “Transnational Identities in the Hmong Diaspora” in Timmothy J. Scase, Todd Joseph Miles Holden, and Scott Baum (eds.). 2003. Globalisation, Culture

And Inequality in Asia Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press,

Faruque, Cathleen Jo. 2002. Migration of Hmong to the Midwestem United States USA: Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc.

Gary Yia. 1996. “Cultural Identity in Post-Modern Society: Reflection on What is Hmong” in Hmong Studies Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 1996.

Levitt, Peggy. 1996. “Social Remitance: A Conceptual Tool for Understanding Migration and Development” http: // globalhealth. Harvard. Edu/hcpds/wpweb/96_04. Pdf

----------------. 2007. God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape. The New Press; New York/London

Ngo, Tam. 2009. Transnational Religious Broadcasting and Protestant Conversion among the Hmong in Northern Vietnam. In Lim, F. (ed.) Mediating Piety: Technology and Religion in Contemporary Asia. Brill; Leiden

Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the new America Berkeley: University of California Press

Pham Quang Hoan. 1995. “The Role of Traditional Social Institutions in Community Management of Resources among the Hmong in Vietnam” EWC Indochina Series Working Papers, No 5

Salemink, Oscar. 2003. “Enclosing the Highlands: Socialist, Capitalist and Protestant Conversions of Vietnamese Highlanders”

Http: //dlc. Dlib. Indiana. Edu/archive/00001142/

Schein, Louisa. 2002. "Mapping Hmong Media in Diasporic Space" in Ginsburg, Faye, Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin (eds.). 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain Berkeley: University of California Press.

------------------2004. “Hmong/Miao Transnationality: Identity Beyond Culture” in Tapp, Nicholas, Jean Michaud, Christian Culas, and Gary Lee (eds.). 2004. Hmong/Miao in Asia Chaingmai; Silkworm Books

-----------------. 2007. Souls, Labor, Landscapes and Loves: Hmong American Transnational Quests (paper to be presented in conference: Religion, Ethnicity and Nation-States in a Globalizing World, Vrije University Amsterdam, June 7-8 2007)

Tapp, Nicholas. 1989a. Sovereignty and Rebellion: The White Hmong of Northern Thailand

Singapore, Oxford, New York: Oxford University press.

--------------------. 1989b. “The Impact of Missionary Christianity upon Marginalized Ethnic Minorities: The case of the Hmong” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 20 (1).

Trần, Hữu Sơn. 1996. Văn Hóa Hmong/Hmong’s Culture Hà nội: Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Hóa Dân Tộc.

Vang, Timothy. (1998). Coming a Full Circle: Historical Analysis of the Hmong Church Growth, 1950-1998. D. Min. Dissertation, School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary

Van de Veer, Peter. 1996. “Introduction” in Van de Veer, Peter (ed.) 1996. Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity New York & London; Routledge.

------------------------- 2001a. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

-------------------------. 2001b. Transnational Religion (Paper given to the conference on the Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives. Princeton University, 30 June-1 July).

Http: // transcomm. Ox. Ac. Uk/working%20papers/WPTCƯ01- 18%20Van%20der%20Veer. Pdf

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

 Read More >>>