When Jesus commanded the apostles to “make disciples of all the nations…”, he launched a program of evangelism that would change millions of lives across the globe. Christians celebrate this as the Great Commission. Critics have called it cultural genocide.
It took nearly two millennia for the Commission to reach the hill tribes of northern Thailand, but it’s arrival has proven catastrophic to ancient cultures. Indigenous societies have crumbled, spirit worship has dropped and ceremonies which once bound tribes and villages together are dying out. Meanwhile, the northern capital city of Chaing Mai has become the missionary capital of the world, offering support services to thousands of missions operating both openly and covertly through the jungles of South East Asia.
This influx is no accident, of course, since Thailand is central to the 10/40 Window. Also known as ‘the Resistance Belt’ this area between ten and forty degrees north of the equator is now the central focus of the modern Commission, containing most of the world’s “spiritually impoverished souls”.
With business-style targets and techniques refined in the evangelism universities of America, modern proselytising is a long way from the bible thumping clichés of the past. Millions of dollars are available for the Thai campaign and schools, orphanages, hospitals are cropping up at an astonishing rate. With the hill tribes among the most marginalised of the country’s ethnic groups, such development is a potent tool for conversion.
Linking development with evangelism is controversial but effective, and since Christianity arrived, indigenous villages have been split down the middle. Families have been divided between opposing beliefs and many communities have two or more competing churches. The traditional structures of authority have been eroded, and accusations of corruption, kidnap, child abuse, and human trafficking have surfaced, along with death threats to investigative campaigners and journalists.
Amidst the flurry of dollars, schools and bibles of the Great Commission, however, the indigenous people are not simple victims. They have their own reasons to chose belief. Their traditional opium farming has been eradicated in a brutal, internationally condemned Sino-US war, and resulting crop substitution programs have brought roads, electricity and television to previously isolated communities. Their entry to the modern world has been abrupt and traumatic, leaving many tempted to seek new faith.
The old rituals are complicated and costly, the disaffected say, and spirit worship is out of date. In contrast, Christianity offers a novel monotheism, not to mention free education and healthcare. Why sacrifice a chicken to the spirits when it will fetch a good price in the city market? Or pay for an expensive ancestor ritual to banish malaria, when Jesus has antibiotics?
Whatever degree of responsibility rests with the Great Commission, there is no doubt that Thailand’s tribal cultures are disappearing. The colourful costumes so beloved by the tourist industry are now only found on the very old or in villages devoted to that trade, and every year fewer young people remember the names of the ancestors.
Few doubt that Thailand’s indigenous cultures can withstand what Christianity has to offer, making it increasingly likely that the Great Commission will be a success.
The Great Commission