tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62565557472025008332024-03-13T14:19:55.393-04:00A Resources Blog herbswanson.comHerb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-13374080755015311212015-06-03T05:51:00.003-04:002015-06-03T05:51:30.998-04:00"New" Content at herbswanson.com<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNq8pHoy733dxZ7WzaYmM-8BVkUwY0IRBZkbjVLiTHZToyvUN2uBSTtByo9F1ZVNXp7r0l8K6Z0jXPs5sI82Zegtr5bl_-cHmrVUs8cHW48Q46I95ovk04LcWQyYC9xC4JzCSuHGbg3dEI/s1600/herbswanson.comlogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNq8pHoy733dxZ7WzaYmM-8BVkUwY0IRBZkbjVLiTHZToyvUN2uBSTtByo9F1ZVNXp7r0l8K6Z0jXPs5sI82Zegtr5bl_-cHmrVUs8cHW48Q46I95ovk04LcWQyYC9xC4JzCSuHGbg3dEI/s1600/herbswanson.comlogo.jpg" /></a>In the last few days, I have added two additional items to <a href="http://herbswanson.com/">herbswanson.com</a> both of which date from 2004, the last year that I was a full-time researcher in Thai church history. The first item is an edited and slightly revised version of an essay entitled, "<a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_docs/Presbyterians_on_Buddhism.pdf">Laying the Foundations: Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes towards Thai Buddhism</a>. It describes the ideological/theological sources of Presbyterian missionary attitudes towards Buddhism as well as changes that took place in their attitudes over time. Most notable, I think, is the impact the missionaries' negative attitudes about Catholicism had on their attitudes concerning Buddhism. I had just finished this essay not long before returning to the U.S. for a research project that has never been completed.<br />
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The second item is an article I submitted to the <i>International Bulletin of Missionary Research</i> entitled, <a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_docs/HRS_Said_IBMR.pdf">Said’s <i>Orientalism</i> and the Study of Christian Missions</a>, which was published in July 2004 issue of that journal. While it is not about Thai church history directly, this article reflects my ongoing interest in the work of Edward Said in particular and the concept of "orientalism" more generally.<br />
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Both items are PDFs. Both, in a sense, are also extensions of my master's thesis and doctoral dissertation and reflect my foundational thesis that Presbyterian missionary behavior in Siam from 1840 to roughly 1920 makes a great deal of sense if we understand their intellectual heritage and the attitudes that were a consequence of that heritage—and much less sense otherwise. More largely, they also grow out of my contention that one cannot understand the Christian experience in Siam/Thailand down to the present apart from an understanding of the two great streams out of which it flows, Asian-Buddishm and Western-Christian-ism.<br />
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The missionary attitudes essay is also linked to the <a href="http://herbswanson.com/bibliography_english.php">bibliography of English-language resources</a> on herbswanson.com, and the Said article is linked to the <a href="http://herbswanson.com/bibliography_orientalism.php">Orientalism bibliography</a> on the website, which bibliography also dates back to 2004. There also links to both on the home page.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-48850773217593519292015-02-06T11:55:00.003-05:002015-02-06T11:55:46.969-05:00Surviving Titanic: the Caldwell Family's Story<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The <i>Titanic</i></td></tr>
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The study of Thai church history takes its practitioners into sometimes unexpected places. "Surfing the Web" for entries for my <a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/bibliography_english.php">Bibliography of materials related to Christianity in Thailand</a>, I recently came across a citation that was very much unexpected. It is a book by Dr. Julie Hedgepeth Williams entitled, <i>A Rare Titanic Family: The Caldwells Story of Survival</i> (NewSouth Books, 2012), which tells the story of Albert and Sylvia Caldwell and their infant daughter. The Caldwells were appointed by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. to serve as missionaries in Bangkok. They arrived in 1909 where they took up their duties at the Bangkok Christian High School (BCC today). Sylvia, however, soon became ill, and they resigned from the Siam Mission at the end of 1911. The Caldwells and their infant daughter travelled home via Europe and booked passage on the <i>Titanic</i> for their Atlantic crossing. And the rest, as they say, is history.<br />
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The publisher has made available a <a href="http://www.newsouthbooks.com/pages/2012/03/27/podcast-of-titanic-survivor-albert-caldwell-free-from-itunes/">podcast</a> of an interview done with Albert in the early 1970s. It is 22 minutes long and provides fascinating insights into the sinking of the <i>Titanic</i>.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-22923959894375400582015-02-01T16:53:00.003-05:002015-02-01T16:53:58.303-05:00"A Missionary in Siam" - A Digital Exhibition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.ohio5.org/omeka/archive/files/fa65ab0638468728912a6530c90a4c4a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ohio5.org/omeka/archive/files/fa65ab0638468728912a6530c90a4c4a.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a><a href="http://www.ohio5.org/omeka/">The Five Colleges of Ohio Digital Exhibitions website</a> is currently hosting an exhibit by Genevieve Senechal of Oberlin College entitled, "<a href="http://www.ohio5.org/omeka/exhibits/show/contextualizingobjectsinocec/a-missionary-in-siam/introduction">A Missionary in Siam</a>." The subject of the exhibit is the life and word of the Rev. Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, the premier Protestant missionary in Siam in the nineteenth century. The exhibit includes photographs, including the unique family portrait on the life (taken in 1864 and including Rev. Daniel McGilvary), documents, historical sketches, and historical notes not only on Bradley but also on the nation of Siam during his lifetime.</div>
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The exhibit provides a good introduction to Bradley, to Protestant missions in Siam in his time, and to Siam generally in that era. It is worth spending a little time.</div>
Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-31515356624882202014-12-31T09:37:00.001-05:002014-12-31T09:37:41.913-05:00Difficulties in Evangelism in Thailand—A Recent Take<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>Writing in the <i>Huffington Post</i>, Jim Stiller, a Global Ambassador for the World Evangelism Crusade, published an article that I have just come across entitled, "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-c-stiller/the-difficulty-of-evangelizing-in-thailand_b_3237160.html">The Difficulty of Evangelizing in Thailand</a>," which is not particularly insightful in one sense but does provide a general orientation to the reasons usually given for the lack of evangelistic numerical success in Thailand. It is particularly interesting to note the sense of optimism about future success conveyed to Stiller by some in Thailand. That, too, historically has a common theme in many commentaries on the evangelization of the Thai people. Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-71165533403168311812014-09-12T07:52:00.000-04:002014-09-12T07:52:55.808-04:00Dr. Carle Clark Zimmerman<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a>One way that I build on the entries in "<a href="http://herbswanson.com/bibliography_english.php#Z">An English-Language Bibliography of Materials
Related to Christianity in Thailand</a>," is by selecting authors of current entries and searching online for additional citations by that author. Sometimes all I get is nothing, but sometimes the Web contains fascinating new sources. Such is the case with Dr. Carle Clark Zimmerman (1897-1983), a Harvard sociologist who spent time in Siam back in the 1930s working with the American Presbyterian Mission. He seems to have worked primarily with Bertha Blount McFarland, a former member of the mission who married George Bradley McFarland. She remained very active in Christian work in Bangkok after her marriage. Zimmerman conducted sociological studies for the mission, and the most important result of his work was the book, <i><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/siam-rural-economic-survey-1930-31/oclc/799705927&referer=brief_results">Siam: Rural Economic Survey, 1930-31</a></i>. That book does not appear in the bibliography because it is about Siam generally and not about Christianity in Siam at all.<br />
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Zimmerman, however, did produce some unpublished work relevant to Thai Christianity that he co-authored with Bertha McFarland. It turns out that the University Archives & Special Collections division of the University of Saskatchewan Library contains a manuscript collection of Zimmerman materials (<a href="http://library.usask.ca/archives/collections/manuscripts-and-collections/pdf/MSS%2021%20FA.pdf">finding aid</a>) that includes a couple of interesting items regarding his work in Siam: the first is a diary that Zimmerman kept of a trip to Chiang Mai in December 1930-January 1931; and the second is a 271 page unpublished manuscript entitled, "Christian Missions in Siam: A Study in Oriental Culture." I haven't included the diary in the bibliography because I'm not sure of its contents, but the unpublished manuscript is obviously relevant and an unexpected find.<br />
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Knowing the quality of Zimmerman's work, it is very likely that his study of the missions in Siam is a very helpful document. It could be valuable in a couple of ways. First, the missionary sources and other English-language sources for the study of Thai church history are relatively meager for the 1930s; second, Zimmerman brought an academic expertise to his research, which is rare for that era.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-89328557333733354902014-08-15T09:35:00.002-04:002014-08-15T09:35:27.255-04:00Thoughts On Conversion, Ancient and Historical<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It was just ten years ago that I did a small HeRB piece (<a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/_get.php?postid=27.php#items">here</a>) on the insignificance of Thai church history in the larger scheme of things. I also noted that, "What is endlessly fascinating to me, however, is that from the 'inside' the field seems huge. Even Protestant history in Thailand has more to it than any one or two scholars can possibly encompass; and, of course, the issues involved in the study of Thai church history are as broad in many ways as the global church itself."<br />
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Peter Brown's <i>The Rise of Western Christendom</i> (10th Anniversary Revised Edition, 2013) offers a number of fascinating cases making that last point concerning the breadth of the history of Christianities in Thailand. According to Brown, one of the most fascinating and significant similarities is the question of the relationship of converts to their pre-Christian past and how that relationship is understood by those in positions of ecclesiastical power. In his discussion of the 6th and 7th centuries, Brown observes that in the Eastern Roman Empire church leaders tended to dismiss "paganism" as something that had been defeated and thus was inconsequential. They treated remaining traces of the pagan past with a degree of tolerance.<br />
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Such was not the case in the disintegrating Empire in the west. There traditional religions remained more influential and ecclesiastical authorities tended to think that the pagan past was powerful and dangerous. That is, "each believer had to continue, even after conversion and baptism, to battle with the tenacity of evil customs with himself or herself." Thus, "paganism was now seen to lie close to the heart of all baptized Christians. It was always ready to re-emerge in the form of 'pagan survivals.'" (p. 150)<br />
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In early Thai church history, the missionaries including esp. the Presbyterians clearly shared the western view rather than the eastern. It would be fascinating, in fact, to see if a direct line could be traced through the centuries linking 6th century western European views on paganism to 19th and early 20th century American Presbyterian missionary views of Buddhism. I suspect there is a link, but even if there is not a direct one the two eras shared a general concern over the influence of the past on converts. Conversion was never complete. For the Presbyterian missionaries, this was not so much a matter of moral behavior (although at times they did worry about convert morals as well) as it was a question of beliefs and religious practices. Converts, for example, had a troubling habit of continuing to rely on traditional medical practices when missionary doctors weren't readily available—and sometimes even when they were. If Brown is correct, the eastern churches would have tended to dismiss such a reliance as nothing more than an inconsequential leftover from the pagan past—or, in this case, the traditional religious past of the Thai convert. The missionaries, however, saw convert reliance on traditional medicine as a clear indication that they had not fully converted to their new religion. They were still in danger of slipping back into their "heathen" past.<br />
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In other words, the missionaries could not entirely trust converts because they showed clear evidence of not having made a full change from the past. Traditional village Buddhism and animism remained potent in them. My own study of Thai church history in northern Thailand early on led me to the conclusion that this lack of trust between the missionaries and converts had devastating consequences for the churches that emerged from missionary efforts. At the close of, <a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/_get.php?postid=46#c9" style="font-style: italic;">Khrischak Muang Nua</a> (1984), I wrote, "The summary of everything that I read [in Presbyterian missionary records] is this: the Laos Mission [in northern Siam] persisted in demeaning, decapitating, dismembering, and ignoring the church it was supposed to train <i>up</i>, to raise <i>up</i>." A little harsh, perhaps, but that was 30 years ago! The larger point that mistrust was a fundamental element in missionary-convert relations remains true.<br />
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What is fascinating is to find in Brown a couple of insights. First, this kind of mistrust of conversion and converts goes back a long, long way in Christian history. Second, "back then" not every corner of the larger church shared that lack of trust. One point that is different is that in the 6th century those who were in positions of power shared the culture and ethnicity of those they mistrusted. Ultimately, every body was in the same boat. Such was not the case in earlier Thai church history. In their own thinking, the missionaries did not share in the dangers of conversion because they weren't converts. They came, in their own thinking, from a fully Christian culture and society. That difference has injected a major complexity into Thai church life that continues to have an impact on it down to the present, esp. since most of the missions that entered Thailand after World War II exhibited much the same basic orientation to missionary-convert relations that marked earlier Presbyterian work.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-8000073814579091452014-07-31T15:56:00.002-04:002014-07-31T15:56:46.155-04:00Layers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the "Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Revised Edition" of his book, <i>the Rise of Western Christendom</i> (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), historian Peter Brown makes the point that the emergence of Western European Christendom out of the Roman Empire was marked as much by continuities as discontinuity. He notes that traditionally it is the kings, warriors, bishops, and missionaries who have been the focus of historical interest. They have dominated the story of the emergence of Medieval Europe. Many historians have told the tale, furthermore, as if it was a steep decline into social and cultural darkness marked by catastrophe. Brown makes it clear that it wasn't really like that. The transformation of Europe in the centuries from AD 200 to 1000 was a slow long process. Common people making uncountable numbers of small daily decisions played as important a part as did kings and bishops, warriors and missionaries. Significant elements of the secular Roman past persisted quietly into an age that we usually considered to be entirely dominated by the church. Brown doesn't put it this way, but it is as if there were layers of change, some obvious and on the surface, others more subterranean and unseen even by those living through the time.<br />
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Brown offers a potentially valuable way of re-imagining the history of the Christian faith in Thailand. Given the fact that almost all of our source material for the study of Christianity in Thailand comes from missionaries until well into the twentieth century, it is only natural to focus on them as the core of the story. Brown challenges historians of Christianity in Thailand, however, to find creative ways to refocus our attention on the people in the pews—to see, for example, how family culture and traditions influenced the reception and practice of the Christian faith by the early generations of converts. In what ways, then, did the Christian faith that emerged in northern Thailand differ from that in Bangkok and how did southern Thai Christianity differ from them both?<br />
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Changing focus in this way is not easy when our records are in English and written by individuals who were mostly distant from the day to day practices esp. in the rural churches. They, furthermore, intentionally sought to instill as western a form of the faith in the converts as possible. Still, it is part of the historian's task to read between the lines, ferreting out hidden implications in the record that we have. And, compared with the sources that historians of early Medieval Europe have to work with, we can hardly complain. Our is by most any measure a resources-rich field of historical study. The layers of change are there, if only we have the wit to see them and interpret them in a way faithful to the past that actually happened.<br />
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Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-41759118298580579392014-07-19T02:42:00.001-04:002014-07-27T07:24:59.302-04:00Dissertations & Theses - Two Lists<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Since Paul Fuller, a Presbyterian missionary, wrote a B.Th. thesis on Christian approaches to Buddhism in 1929, there has been well over 150 dissertations and theses written on subjects related to Christianity in Thailand. The next thesis after Fuller wasn't written until 13 years later, 1942—by Helen McClure, another Presbyterian missionary. Hers was the first master's thesis. In 1961, Ach. Pisnu Akkapin was the first Thai to write a thesis, and the first doctoral dissertation was completed just six years later by another Presbyterian missionary, Jay Johnson. By the 1990s, this trickle of academic treatments of Christianity in Thailand became something of a flood, which has continued down to the near present. All of this and more is revealed in two lists of dissertations and theses related to Christianity in Thailand, which I have recently uploaded as pdfs to <i>herbswanson.com</i>. One <a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_docs/Dissertations_&_Theses.pdf">(here</a>) is an alphabetical listings, and the other (<a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_docs/Dissertations_by_Year.pdf">here</a>) lists the dissertations and theses by year. The source for both lists is, of course, my ongoing "<a href="http://herbswanson.com/bibliography_english.php">An English-Language Bibliography of Materials Related to Christianity in Thailand</a>."<br />
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While the alphabetical listing is probably the more useful on for researchers, the chronological list is the more interesting because it gives a sense of the ebb and flow of various subjects investigated by academic researchers. The great majority of those researchers are missionaries and Thai Christians investigating a variety of subjects important to them and to the church in Thailand including numerous works on church growth and evangelism. Far fewer are the work of secular scholars, the first being Donald Lord's very useful 1964 Ph.D. biography of Dan Beach Bradley, which Lord later published as <i>Mo Bradley and Thailand</i> (1969).<br />
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The most recent items on the list were completed in 2011. I can only guess that at least some dissertations and theses written in the last two-plus years haven't been cataloged into the online data bases, and I haven't yet come across any of those that have. Recent rates of production suggest that there should have been about a half dozen or so new works since 2011.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-45398116356832178022014-05-23T08:04:00.000-04:002014-05-23T08:04:32.871-04:00Missionaries & Science: The Context<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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American missionaries played an important role in the introduction of modern western science into nineteenth-century Siam, especially during the first stages of that process. It is a story that remains to be told in an organized, scholarly fashion, and when it is told the introductory chapter will necessarily deal with the relationship of science to religion in the United States in the nineteenth century. The reason why the missionaries played the role they did was <i>because</i> they were committed to their religious faith. Unlike today, science and the Bible were then widely understood as two books each revealing God in their own way. These two revelations were believed to reinforce each other; they were not at odds. The early generations of Protestant missionaries brought this understanding with them and sought to teach it to "the Thai," from such royal figures as King Mongkut right down to local people including their own converts. Daniel McGilvary, one of the two towering figures of Protestant missions in Siam (along with Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, his father-in-law) repeatedly used scientific instruction as a weapon in his evangelistic arsenal.<br />
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Daniel Walker Howe provides an excellent overview of the American historical context in which the Protestant missionaries operated in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, <i>What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848</i> (Oxford, 2007). Howe understands the importance of religion, particularly evangelical Protestantism, to the age that he writes about and devotes considerable attention to, among other things, revivalism and the relationship of science to religion. For those who are interested in the historical context of the first generations of Protestant missionaries, this is an excellent introduction. It is well-written and impressively researched. If and when that book on the missionary role in the introduction of western science in Siam is told, <i>What Hath God Wrought</i> should certainly appear in its citations and bibliography. And let the people say, "Amen."Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-11447303537085751062014-05-16T14:35:00.000-04:002014-05-16T14:35:10.452-04:00Presbyterian Missionaries Biographical Data Online<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>One of the most useful resources available to me as a researcher into Thai church history remains a set of biographical data sheets of Presbyterian missionaries prepared in the early 1950s by the Rev. Paul Eakin and contained in his papers at the Payap University Archives in Chiang Mai. If I remember correctly, Eakin was in the process of writing a history of Presbyterian missions in Thailand and compiled these data sheets partly to that end. There is no evidence that he ever actually wrote that history, unfortunately. In any event, the <b>Payap University Archives</b> has entered Eakin's data into a data base, which is available online (<a href="http://archives.payap.ac.th/web/archivespyu/detail.php?bnID=238">here</a>). Only selected portions of the data has been entered, and it appears that the archives is still "in process" as not all of the entries in Eakin's files appear (as yet) in the data base. Still, it is good that this information is available more generally, and the archives is to be commended for making the effort to put it online.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-75829982999207690802014-05-02T12:48:00.000-04:002014-09-12T15:44:39.341-04:00WELS History in Thailand<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>One of the great challenges that will face the historian who tackles Thai Protestant history after World War II is the proliferation of foreign mission agencies working in Thailand. They come from around the world and their personnel speak a diversity of languages, represent a variety of cultures, and run the gamut of theological persuasions, though they tend to be theologically conservative, although not exclusively so. Recently, I came across information on the <a href="http://www.wels.net/">Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod</a> (WELS) mission in Thailand, a mission that I personally have been only vaguely aware of. There is little historical information on this mission widely available, and I have taken the liberty of turning two relevant pages into a four-page pdf, which is available (<a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_docs/Wisconsin_Evangelical_Lutheran_Synod.pdf">here</a>) and cited in the <a href="http://herbswanson.com/bibliography_english.php">bibliography of materials related to Christianity in Thailand</a>. If you are interested in the links to the information, they are cited at the end of the pdf.<br />
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This is the first time, as far as I can remember, that I have actually created a somewhat artificial document and placed it in the bibliography. I don't plan to make a habit of it. However, the goal here is always to facilitate access to information about the church's past in Thailand, and this "artificial" document from the WELS mission does that.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-42628127734206413302014-03-01T04:56:00.001-05:002014-06-18T15:26:01.174-04:00Slow and not even Steady<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>Being a full-time pastor seems to fill most days with the variety of duties associated with the office, which has meant that I have little time or energy for Thai church historical work at this point. And that, in turn, means that my translation of <i><a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/_get.php?postid=70">A History of Pastoral Care in the Church of Christ in Thailand</a> </i>is proceeding at an almost tortuously slow pace. Yet, the pace does continue, and this morning I reached page 95 (out of 130 total pages). As histories go, it is rather sparse, no citations, no bibliography, and the translation is not the best English I've ever written, but I am convinced that it is an important "contribution" to the historiographical literature on Thai church history. First, its focus is the churches rather than the missionaries, although they obviously figure prominently in the story it tells. Second, it explores territory that was new for me when it was written nearly 20 years ago, namely the history of the churches outside of the North and of other denominations. It thus has the virtue of including, however briefly, something of the history of the Karen Baptist churches in northern Thailand.<br />
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I only mention this here to remind the extremely modest readership of this blog that the translation of the <i>History of Pastoral Care</i> is proceeding and, since it is nearly three-fourths complete does already include a goodly portion of the history of Protestant pastoral care up to the year 1960. [Update: as of June 18th, I have reached page 108 of the 130 pages - still slow, but a little steadier than previously!]Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-6472229009299100442014-02-04T08:31:00.000-05:002014-02-04T08:31:50.757-05:00North Carolina Presbyterian online<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNq8pHoy733dxZ7WzaYmM-8BVkUwY0IRBZkbjVLiTHZToyvUN2uBSTtByo9F1ZVNXp7r0l8K6Z0jXPs5sI82Zegtr5bl_-cHmrVUs8cHW48Q46I95ovk04LcWQyYC9xC4JzCSuHGbg3dEI/s1600/herbswanson.comlogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNq8pHoy733dxZ7WzaYmM-8BVkUwY0IRBZkbjVLiTHZToyvUN2uBSTtByo9F1ZVNXp7r0l8K6Z0jXPs5sI82Zegtr5bl_-cHmrVUs8cHW48Q46I95ovk04LcWQyYC9xC4JzCSuHGbg3dEI/s1600/herbswanson.comlogo.jpg" /></a></div>
The last posting on a 1904 article in the <i>Boston Evening Transcript</i> (<a href="http://herbswanson3.blogspot.com/2014/02/boston-evening-transcript-article.html">here</a>) concerning the state of Christianity in Siam noted the importance of the religious and secular press as a source for the study of the church in Siam up to the 1920s. That thought inspired me to see if the <i>North Carolina Presbyterian</i> is available online, and it turns out that it is. The <i>North Carolina Presbyterian</i> was a nineteenth-century publication that is a key source for the study of the Laos Mission from it inception in 1867 into the 1890s. The Rev. Dr.<a href="http://herbswanson.com/dictionary.php#mcgilvary_daniel"> Daniel McGilvary </a>was from North Carolina and sent numerous letters and quite a few articles back to the publication over the years, which thus contains data available nowhere else about the mission, its churches, and its personnel. The paper is also an important source for the study of northern Thai history generally.<br />
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It turns out that almost all of the issues of the <i>North Carolina Presbyterian</i> are available online at the Internet Archive. They are not listed there in order, however, and I have taken the liberty of listing them chronologically beginning with the first available year 1861 until the paper ceased publication in 1898. Linked to <a href="http://herbswanson.com/bibliography_english.php#per">An English-Language Bibliography of Materials
Related to Christianity in Thailand</a>, you can access the list (<a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/_get.php?postid=72">here</a>).Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-59638626745142757392014-02-01T08:50:00.002-05:002014-02-01T08:50:33.450-05:00Boston Evening Transcript Article<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Boston_Evening_Transcript_-_Nov_5,_1903.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Boston_Evening_Transcript_-_Nov_5,_1903.png" height="199" width="189" /></a></div>
In its Last Edition for Saturday, 21 May 1904, page 28, the <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Evening_Transcript">Boston Evening Transcript</a></i> published an article entitled, "<a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2249&dat=19040521&id=xhc0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=xuAIAAAAIBAJ&pg=1464,3068760">Christianity in Siam,</a>" which provides commentary based on a "report to the American Bible Society from its agency in Siam." In the summary sub-headings the contents of the article are described as including: "The Present King Favorable to Missionaries—Bible Circulation Helped by Railroad—New Protestant Church to Be Built at Bangkok." This article appeared on the second page of a Google search, "siam protestant."<br />
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A few random thoughts:<br />
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<ul>
<li>For those trolling the Web for sources relevant to Christianity in Thailand, it is important to use as many different combinations of search terms as one can think of. I've spent many hours in the last couple of years doing just that and continue to come up with new sources nearly every time. Obviously, there is still a large amount of primary material unavailable online and most more recent publications are unavailable, but even so the Web is a rich source of data—if one can find it.</li>
<li>This article appeared in a "secular" newspaper, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Evening_Transcript">Boston Evening Transcript</a>,</i> at the turn of the 20th century at a time when the press, secular and religious, was still an important source of missionary and foreign church news. For the nineteenth century, that press provides an immense amount of crucial data for mission and church work in Siam.</li>
<li>Much of the focus of this particular article is on "the Laos people," meaning the people of Bangkok's northern dependencies, which in 1904 were being increasingly integrated into the Siamese state. It documents on the ongoing need, as seen by the ABS, for translating the whole Bible in northern Thai, a task that in fact was never completed.</li>
</ul>
I should note, finally, that I won't include this source in this website's "<a href="http://herbswanson.com/bibliography_english.php">English-Language Bibliography of Materials Related to Christianity in Thailand</a>," because it is not significant enough for inclusion. It is too brief, and it is a secondary source. Including all of the article on Christianity in Siam is simply not an option for the bibliography, but I did want to mention it here as an example of what is "out there" on the Web.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-59974912560209102912013-07-20T16:16:00.000-04:002013-07-22T05:10:18.810-04:00Statistics of Church Growth in Thailand<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZlicBV7gQSCXsWuXrbp0Gm9GbyAWMrNlFYFfyDPyteetWWFCmJwiJlxzfG5A_My9Zz5wNiAaFNhGnWZ48a602eE8gpCOasVBu3DjLhp-F3KPOAR3yYsq9Trs7fETDa9J0ffZBJLYgwH8R/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-07-20+at+3.24.58+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZlicBV7gQSCXsWuXrbp0Gm9GbyAWMrNlFYFfyDPyteetWWFCmJwiJlxzfG5A_My9Zz5wNiAaFNhGnWZ48a602eE8gpCOasVBu3DjLhp-F3KPOAR3yYsq9Trs7fETDa9J0ffZBJLYgwH8R/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-07-20+at+3.24.58+PM.png" width="240" /></a>Last month, June, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, release a report entitled, "<a href="http://wwwgordonconwell.com/netcommunity/CSGCResources/ChristianityinitsGlobalContext.pdf">Christianity in its Global Context, 1970–2020</a>." The report presents a statistical picture of the changing nature of global religiosity, which among other things finds atheism and agnosticism on the decline worldwide even as they grow in Europe and North America. For our purposes here, the report presents a snapshot of the growth of the Christian religion in Southeast Asia generally and Thailand in particular, which puts Thai church growth in both historical and global context.<br />
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According to the report (p. 40), Christianity in Southeast Asia has grown from 50.4 million adherents in 1970 to an estimated 153.2 million by 2020, a three-fold increase in fifty years. As a percentage of the total population of Southeast Asia, Christianity will have increased from 17.7% in 1970 to an estimated 23.4% in 2020. The figures for Thailand show 240,000 Christians in 1970 and 946,000 estimated for 2020. As a percentage of the total Thailand population, Christianity will have increased from 0.7% of the population in 1970 to an estimated 1.3% in 2020. That is an average annual growth rate of 2.78%, which ranks 7th of the 11 nations of Southeast Asia. Cambodia had the highest annual growth rate (5.87%) and Vietnam the lowest (2.03%). It should be noted that Thailand has by far-and-away the smallest percentage of Christians (1.3%) of any nation in Southeast Asia. Laos (3.3%) and Cambodia (3.6%) are the next lowest in total numbers of Christians as a percentage of the total population.<br />
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No one familiar with the church in Thailand will be surprised by these figures. If they could be adjusted to include ethnic Thais alone, factoring out the tribal churches, the difference between Thailand and the other nations of its region would be even greater. It remains true today as it has for centuries that Thai culture is quietly and impressively resistant to Christianity. For as long as Christianity in Thailand remains essentially alien to Thai society (that is infected with Western dualist and exclusivist ideologies) there is not likely to be any change in the level or effectiveness of Thai resistance to it.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-29873266711526545862013-06-17T06:52:00.000-04:002013-06-17T06:52:08.772-04:00McGilvary in America and Siam<a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_photos//McGilvary_Half-Century.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_photos//McGilvary_Half-Century.jpg" width="175" /></a>I am currently working through David Bebbington's, <i>Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts</i> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), and plan to eventually do a book review on it. It is an excellent study in revivalism, and anyone interested in the history of revivals in Europe, North America, and Australia would do well to get a copy. The book contains a series of case studies arranged chronologically beginning in Texas in 1841 and ending in Nova Scotia in 1880. The fourth study is of a revival led by Daniel McGilvary in the Union Church, Moore County, North Carolina, in 1857, not long before he sailed to Bangkok to take up his life's work in Siam and "Laos" (today's northern Siam). Bebbington's chapter on this revival is, thus, an important addition to the literature on the history of Presbyterian missions and Protestantism in Thailand.<br />
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As one example of that importance, Bebbington notes that one of the marks of the revival at Union Church as a distinctively Presbyterian revival was the dominant role of McGilvary as pastor. Bebbington writes, "To a large extent McGilvary personally shaped the revival. Despite often involving able elders, Presbyterian life was dominated by ministers." Bebbington goes on to note that Presbyterian revivals thus depended upon the character of the clergy involved and the quality of their pastoral leadership (p. 156).<br />
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In the opening chapters of Protestant church history in Siam, one of the most noticeable and significant characteristics of Presbyterian missions was the way in which its missionary clergy dominated local congregations. Whereas the first generation of Baptist missionaries took a more collegial approach to church life, Presbyterian mission churches were wholly dependent on their missionary pastors for the quality of their congregational life. It is one of the key themes of my research into the 19th and early 20th century history of the Thai churches that the overwhelming dominance Presbyterian missionaries exercised over Thai and northern Thai church life hampered the emergence of a truly indigenous Protestant movement in Siam and its northern principalities. Indigenization of the gospel took place but mostly in subterranean ways and in spite of church (missionary) leadership.<br />
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If Bebbington is correct, the dominance of Presbyterian missionary clergy over the Thai church said far more about the cultural practices of American Presbyterianism than it did about the people of Siam and the northern states. In both North Carolina and in the North of Siam, in sum, the personality, beliefs, attitudes, and values of the Rev. Daniel McGilvary were an important factor in the events that transpired in both of those places. Bebbington's chapter on the revival at Union Church provides us with important details on the origins of McGilvary's approach to ministry and the baggage he brought with him to Siam.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-12465908413391877712013-05-31T09:04:00.000-04:002013-05-31T09:04:10.840-04:00McFarland Dictionaries<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>Still another story waiting to be written in Protestant missionary history in Thailand is the impact the earlier generations of missionaries had on the modernization of the central Thai (Siamese) language. They produced the first dictionaries and were among the first Westerners to study the language. In the 19th and 20th centuries, two of the key figures in this story were the Rev. S. G. McFarland, a Presbyterian missionary, and his son, George B. McFarland. Some of the work that they produced can be found online. These include:<br />
<ul>
<li>McFarland, George Bradley. <i>English-Siamese Dictionary.</i> Bangkok: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1903. Available online at the Internet Archive (<a href="http://archive.org/stream/anenglishsiames01mcfagoog#page/n10/mode/2up">here</a>).</li>
<li>McFarland, George Bradley. <i>English-Siamese Dictionary.</i> Bangkok: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1916. Available online at the Internet Archive (<a href="http://archive.org/details/abn4718.0001.001.umich.edu">here</a>).</li>
<li>McFarland, George Bradley. <i>English-Siamese Dictionary.</i> Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1944. Available online at the Google Books (<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=h3lb3jZaYI4C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=mcfarland+siam&source=bl&ots=rg6BPyLxc6&sig=56waeVw4OY_SCntAJN11Ikw-bpA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9KuNUdWdLtTd4APW-IHwCA&ved=0CFkQ6AEwBQ">here</a>).</li>
<li>McFarland, George Bradley. <i>An English-Siamese Pronouncing Hand. </i>2nd ed. Bangkok: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1900. Available online at the Internet Archive (<a href="http://archive.org/details/anenglishsiames00mcfagoog">here</a>).</li>
</ul>
Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-26173509020575998372013-05-03T14:54:00.001-04:002013-05-03T14:56:46.072-04:00McGilvary & Presbyterian Revivalism<a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_photos//McGilvary_Half-Century.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_photos//McGilvary_Half-Century.jpg" width="175" /></a>Often seen as a hero of the international missionary movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, <a href="http://herbswanson.com/dictionary.php">Daniel McGilvary</a> has remained largely unknown in scholarly circles generally. That is a loss for those engaged in the study of Thai church history and the study of the missionary role in Westernization in Siam. It means we are left to our own devices to piece together his background and its relationship to his long missionary career in Siam. Thus, David Bebbington, <i>Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts</i> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) comes as a very pleasant surprise. Bebbington devotes a whole chapter (Chapter Six, “Experience and Good Order: Presbyterian Revival in North Carolina”) to the 1857 revival that took place in Union Church, Moore County, North Carolina, which McGilvary was serving as pastor while waiting to be commissioned as a missionary to Siam. He especially highlights the differences between Presbyterian revivalism and that of other more enthusiastic styles of frontier revivalism. The Presbyterians were more restrained and put a strong emphasis on orderliness in their revivals. The Union Church revival was certainly of that kind.<br />
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It is also good to see Bebbington making use of one of the key sources for 19th century Presbyterian missions in Siam's northern dependencies, <i>The North Carolina Presbyterian</i>. McGilvary stayed in close touch with that publication even though it was published by the Southern Presbyterian Church, from which he had withdrawn at the beginning of the American Civil War. As a result, it contains an invaluable record of northern Thai church history in the 19th century.<br />
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In sum, it is good to see the larger world of scholarship studying important figures in the history of the church in Thailand from other perspectives and in other contexts. Their work can only enrich our understanding of the history of the church in Thailand.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-62224769772492675842013-04-05T20:50:00.000-04:002013-04-05T20:50:26.269-04:00The Vinton Book<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>One source of brief biographies for the first generation of Protestant missionaries in Siam is found in the "<a href="http://ia600208.us.archive.org/17/items/vintonbookafrica01vint/vintonbookafrica01vint.pdf">Vinton Book</a>," a description of which is copied from the introduction to the book, below. The biographical sketches cover only missionaries connected with the Siam Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and contain just dates and events. These sketches, however, provide information for missionaries who served only briefly in Siam and for whom there is little biographical information. I discovered this source by searching the Web for "congregational missionaries siam."<br />
<br />
"Reverend John A. Vinton, then of South Boston, later of Winchester, Massachusetts, compiled in 1869 brief biographies of missionaries of the American Board from the beginning of the Board's history till 1869, writing them in longhand in a blank book.<br />
-<br />
"Mr. Vinton died November 13, 1877<br />
The biographies were brought down to 1878 by Dr. Alfred 0. Treat.<br />
From 1878 to 1886 the notices were prepared by Miss A.M.Chapin.<br />
In copying the Vinton Book, we have divided it into [four] volumes.<br />
Volume 1 covers the Missions in:-<br />
AFRICA<br />
ASIA: Eastern, China, Japan<br />
ASIA: Southern, India and Ceylon<br />
PAPAL LANDS"Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-71373468649178331252013-02-28T15:43:00.003-05:002013-02-28T15:44:12.751-05:00Interconnected Baptist Missions: Siam, China, & Burma<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>In her 1913 book on Baptist missionary history entitled, <i><a href="http://ia600500.us.archive.org/4/items/followingsunrise00mont/followingsunrise00mont.pdf">Following the Sunrise: A Century of Baptist Missions, 1813-1913</a></i> (Philadelphia, 1913), Helen Barrett Montgomery observes in a brief introduction to early Baptist work in Siam that, "The story of American Baptist missionary work in China, strangely enough, does not begin in China, but in Siam, where it is interwoven with the story of missions in Burma." (p. 146) Her observation highlights one of the most fascinating challenges facing those who "dabble" in the history of the Christian movement in Thailand, namely the way in which it connects to so much else in so many other places. Leaving aside whether or not the history of Protestant missions in China actually begins in Bangkok or not, the history of 19th century Baptist missions in Siam is tied to the development of Baptist missions in Burma and profoundly influenced by the opening of China to Protestant missions. In my own research on the Presbyterians, I have found myself repeatedly drawn into the orbit of other histories including even that of<br />
British India, which bordered the northern Thai states in the era of the Presbyterian Laos Mission ("Laos" here referring to those northern states that were tributary to Siam, <i>not</i> modern-day Laos). For me, one of the most fascinating "cognate" fields of study for the history of the church in Thailand is Protestant missions history among the American Indians. Many of the themes are the same, the experiences are similar, and there was even at least one Presbyterian missionary, Jonathan Wilson, who first served out on the plains of the American West before he became a missionary in Siam and then in the North.<br />
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In an almost paradoxical way, then, the field of Thai Christian historical studies is an incredibly minor and modest field of immense, nearly global proportions. What fun!Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-28389434788212285032013-02-15T08:45:00.000-05:002013-02-15T08:45:16.359-05:00Siam Repository<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIeOIsxR9DTVg8_cPrZThDMIZCJ-ejxfyd2xYBoCLR6N6qFvUfC2j6oic-nVIJsk61DLM1mYki1XbeOjHse4B3jpQT6krHMz2GiUFZVQ-vnavUN_Yz1aljshHxopibdtE3OB8cio-ZIEkH/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>The <i>Siam Repository</i>, published by the Baptist missionary Samuel J. Smith, is one of the key sources for earlier church history in Siam. According to Patricia M. Herbert and Anthony Milner, <i>South-East Asia: Languages and Literatures : a Select Guide</i> (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=-EqbeRzdDrsC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=siam+repository&source=bl&ots=LQiHwOQEOD&sig=rasyBM5CWSVs0qpYgWjEdpmQx7k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XTQeUejbLaa50QHNkoDQAg&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q=siam%20repository&f=false">page 30</a>, it was published from 1869 to 1874. Most of the volumes are available online on the Google Books, Internet Archives, or the Hathitrust websites. It does, however, take some patience to sort out the results of a Google search of "Siam Repository." That is pretty much the story for searching any of the 19th century missionary serials.<br />
<br />
It turns out that all five volumes of the <i>Siam Repository</i> are also available in hard copy and PDF formats through Rare Book Clubs (<a href="http://rarebooksclub.com/search.cfm?q=Siam+Repository">here</a>) for a charge, of course. Purchasers are warned, "Books marked 'PDF/scan' may have notations, faded type, yellowed paper, missing or skewed pages, etc. Paperbacks marked 'OCR' may have numerous typos, missing text, with no illustrations or indexes." The PDFs can be downloaded from the book club website, but hard copies have to be purchased through other sellers. They are available at Amazon (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Siam+Repository">here</a>). The hard copies are not reprints. The originals were scanned, and anyone who has used scanned material knows what a mess the results can be. There are also two or more versions for some volumes, and it is not clear what the differences in the versions are.<br />
<br />
In any event, chalk the availability of the <i>Siam Repository</i> in various forms and formats as one more example of how Internet has radically transformed the study of Thai church and missions history. It has made a great variety of 19th and early 20th century sources available online. While finding what is on the Web is a real hassle, the fact is that large amounts of published historical material are there waiting to be found—and when found then always immediately available thereafter.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-17575792640147724892013-01-26T07:34:00.001-05:002013-02-08T13:12:25.602-05:00Remembering Carl Blanford<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>The <a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/dictionary.php">Rev. Carl Blanford</a> (1922-2012) was a member of that special generation of Presbyterian missionaries who worked in Thailand after World War II. They helped the church recover from the devastation of the war, which saw Thailand occupied by the Japanese and forced into an alliance with Japan. They not only engaged in restoration but also created new institutions, programs, and sometimes even sought new directions for the church. They deserve study in their own right, but they also pose serious obstacles for that study. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, missionary correspondence was valued, preserved, and frequently published. That was much less the case for missionaries working in the last half of the 20th century. They are, thus, less likely to show up in online searches than those earlier generations of missionaries whose works are to be found in the growing online archives of 19th century books and other publications.<br />
<br />
Still, there are online sources for some of the "new time" missionaries as well. In working on a Dictionary entry for Carl Blanford, I came across a Youtube video (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx4RMhMJPRM">here</a>) prepared by the Sapanluang Church, Bangkok, where Blanford served for many years. It is worth viewing here (for as long as it stays "up") and is another one of those cases of "you never know what you'll find" online. Blanford, by the way,wrote one of the minor classics of Presbyterian missionary writings, <i><a href="http://www.herbswanson.com/post/_docs/Blanford_Chinese_Churches.pdf">Chinese Churches in Thailand</a></i>.<br />
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งานรำลึกอาจารย์แบลนฟอร์ด ณ คริสตจักรสะพานเหลือง เมื่อวันอาทิตย์ที่ 3 มิถุนายน 2555</div>
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Memorial Program for Acharn Blanford, Sapanluang Church, 3 June 2555 (2012)
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Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-51920056179471680562012-12-29T08:47:00.001-05:002012-12-29T08:47:30.284-05:00Seventh-Day Adventist Beginnings in Siam<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>At the moment, almost all of my library on Thai church history is still in Thailand while I'm in the U.S., so my resources for things like dates and names and events are mostly limited to what I remember or can find online. According to Wikipedia (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church_in_Thailand">here</a>), Seventh-day Adventist work began in Siam in 1919. If so, that makes a long article written in 1918 on the potential of the mission field in Siam of some historical significance. The article is entitled simply, "<a href="http://docs.adventistarchives.org/docs/ADO/ADO19180801-V07-14-15__B.pdf?q=docs/ADO/ADO19180801-V07-14-15__B.pdf">Siam</a>," It is found under the heading, "Unentered Regions," in the publication<i> Asiatic Division Outlook</i> 7, 14-15 (1 August 1918): 2-4 and is followed by a second article entitled, "Facts Concerning Siam," pages 4-6. The main article is primarily a summary of Protestant church history in Siam that ends with a rosy picture of the evangelistic opportunities of the Siam field. The article in and of itself is not particularly noteworthy other than its connection with the beginnings of Seventh-day work in Thailand.<br />
<br />
Researchers interested in Seventh-day Adventist beginnings in Siam should note that the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference Archives online has a set of pdf files for <i> Asiatic Division Outlook</i> for the years 1912-1930 (<a href="http://docs.adventistarchives.org//documents.asp?CatID=41&SortBy=1&ShowDateOrder=True">here</a>) as well as a long list of other historical resources. I don't know what all is in there, but a very quick look did produce an article (<a href="http://docs.adventistarchives.org//docs/ADO/ADO19230901-V12-17__B.pdf#view=fit">here</a>) by V. L. Beecham, "Siam, the Land of the Yellow Robe," <i>ADO</i>, 12 17 (1 September 1923): 7.Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-14748398467961619902012-12-27T07:09:00.000-05:002012-12-27T07:09:33.168-05:00Baptist Magazines<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNq8pHoy733dxZ7WzaYmM-8BVkUwY0IRBZkbjVLiTHZToyvUN2uBSTtByo9F1ZVNXp7r0l8K6Z0jXPs5sI82Zegtr5bl_-cHmrVUs8cHW48Q46I95ovk04LcWQyYC9xC4JzCSuHGbg3dEI/s1600/herbswanson.comlogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNq8pHoy733dxZ7WzaYmM-8BVkUwY0IRBZkbjVLiTHZToyvUN2uBSTtByo9F1ZVNXp7r0l8K6Z0jXPs5sI82Zegtr5bl_-cHmrVUs8cHW48Q46I95ovk04LcWQyYC9xC4JzCSuHGbg3dEI/s1600/herbswanson.comlogo.jpg" /></a></div>
One of the richest sources of information on 19th century Protestant missions in Siam is found in the American religious press. Every denomination had its flagship publication dedicated to publishing articles on overseas mission work and letters from missionaries serving "on the mission field." Many states had their own denominational magazine or newsletter that provided coverage more focused on local missionaries. Every year, more and more of these publications are becoming available online, if in often confusing combinations of websites, some here and some there, some have this year and some have that.<br />
<br />
For those interested in 19th century Baptist missions, including the one in Siam, one source for relevant mission publications is a list of "<a href="http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/baptist.magazines.html">Baptist Magazines and Journals from Google Books</a>" found at the <a href="http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/">Baptist History Homepage</a>. The list includes publications dedicated to reporting on missions, and researchers will also do well to check out the general publications as well, which often contain news from the mission fields. Herb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6256555747202500833.post-38755680119590375622012-12-26T06:39:00.001-05:002012-12-26T06:41:35.546-05:00Reader Statistics<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAydNb4KlzhWfsVKljdW5X7myx0t4xDKr2LOPlXpthfjW4KC_f9CH-xqbECPX9F-wRyzDSiWTw2a8j8c0_PvUP-N9yYCrdFw7Q4AhzSjtbNL84Yg64zHiVV8zFbTyF2w-WF_aV6Ouhr3ue/s1600/sign.blue.jpg" /></a>The year isn't quite over, but nearly enough so that looking at some of the statistics for <i>herbswanson.com</i> is worth a gander. As of this morning, December 26, 2012, a total of 6,035 individuals stopped by for visits ranging from less than 30 seconds (87.8%) to 15 minutes or more (6.4%). The modest number of those staying more than 15 minutes reminds us of something we already know: Thai church history is not one of your big ticket fields of study. Still, while I'm glad to have folks drop in for any length of time, the website is "here" for that 6.4% who are finding something here worth lingering over. Otherwise, as I look at the various stats available for this website, it is clear that my frequent visits for updating and adding to its contents seriously skews the results. Nevertheless, it is also clear that this website is being sufficiently used to encourage me to keep on keeping on with it. I don't expect to set the world on fire with what has become my avocation, the ongoing study of Thai church history and making the results of that study available to others. <b>So, to those who share my interest in the church's past in Thailand, I wish you all a happy 2013</b>. Blessings, HerbHerb Swansonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16476687037344226758noreply@blogger.com