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The Impact of Missionary Christianity Upon Marginalized Ethnic Minorities: The Case of the Hmong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Nicholas Tapp
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Abstract

This paper combines historical with anthropological evidence on the relationship between Christianity and messianism among the Hmong of Southeast Asia and China. The lack of literacy is a motivating factor in Hmong Christian conversions. Messianism is seen as a reaction to Christian conversion, which encourages the alienation of minority groups.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 70 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1989

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3 Fieldwork for a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, was conducted in North Thailand from April 1981 to October 1982, with the assistance of the Social Science Research Council and the Central Research Fund of the University of London. Two return visits have been made since then, for periods of three months in 1984 and 1985, partly funded respectively by the British Institute in Southeast Asia and the Walter Vella Foundation. Two research visits to Hmong communities in the United States were made in March and September 1983, in addition to various visits to Hmong communities in France. In China research was conducted in August 1985 with the help of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Kunming, in June 1986 under the auspices of the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and with the assistance of the Guangdong National Minorities Affairs Commission and National Minorities Research Institute, and of the provincial governments of the Autonomous Counties of Ruyuen and Liannan in Shaoguan, and in July 1986 as Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Kunming. I should like to thank all these agencies for their assistance.

4 I use the Romanized Phonetic Alphabet (R.P. A.) transcription for Hmong, in which doubled vowels indicate final nasalization and final consonants are not pronounced, but instead indicate tone values. One peculiarity of this system which should be remembered is that x=s, and s=sh.

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