Abstract
Present-day Christianity in Cambodia is less than thirty years old; virtually all traces of its earlier history were eradicated by the Khmer Rouge. The article offers a portrait of this young church and introduces mission patterns, growth factors, and challenges for this emerging church. It critically discusses the entanglement of global and local factors, as well as the diversity of mission agents engaged in Cambodia. The article concludes that churches successfully present themselves as a training ground for emerging global citizens, attracting young people to a faith movement that connects them with a global network.
Keywords
It’s Sunday morning in downtown Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. New Life Fellowship attracts a few hundred worshipers, most of them locals, mostly young—but with half of Cambodia’s population under 24.5 years old, 1 this is hardly surprising. Among the numerous foreigners, one notices young adults on a short visit, families with children, and a good number of elderly people; most of the long-term residents turn out to be involved in one of the numerous mission or development projects. The worship could be from any international church in the Global South: modern praise songs from Hillsong, testimonies, a charismatic sermon offered by a young American pastor with simultaneous on-stage translation into Khmer—simple, effective, and reflecting a global worship culture. A week later, at a rural church in a village twenty kilometers outside the capital, the Christian community is smaller. Foreigners are largely absent; the band on stage is even younger than the one in Phnom Penh, and the preacher is a local woman. Looking below the surface, however, the similarities are evident: the atmosphere and worship style of both congregations are reminiscent of a generic church culture that is nowhere and everywhere at home, connecting with every context without belonging to anyone.
Christianity in Cambodia is young, both demographically and historically. The story of Phalla, a young pastor in the Tree of Life church network (established by Hong Kong missionaries), may stand for others. Phalla grew up in abject poverty and spent most of his childhood barefoot on a garbage dump. His parents were too poor to care for him, and one day, after stepping on a nail, he found himself infected and in growing pain. In his desperation, he cried out to a heaven he did not know. In this state he was found by a missionary who brought him to a Christian child-care center. There he found shelter, healing, a sense of belonging and even education, and gradually he became a Christian. As a teenager, he was baptized and soon became an important pillar of the Christian community that grew up around the center. He was intellectually and pastorally gifted, a good communicator, and passionate in his spiritual life. As a seventeen-year-old, he conducted his first baptism; he became a pastor and attracted a growing number of converts. The mission organization supporting the child-care center and the church he served recognized his significant spiritual gifts and sent him to Hong Kong for further theological training. After his return to Cambodia he was put in charge of a network of churches with around two thousand members, from which he continued to plant churches. Now in his mid-thirties, he has, according to his own estimate, baptized over 500 people.
Christianity in Cambodia today is a church in its infancy. It illustrates vividly how a church develops in a context of global religious exchange and how global mission activism and local context interact. This article offers a portrait of this emerging church; asks about growth factors, mission patterns, and challenges for this segment of emerging Christianity; and discusses the unique entanglement of global and local Christian factors. Because of the young age of the Cambodian church, only a small number of studies exist. This article is largely based on interviews with students, local church members and leaders, foreign missionaries, and leaders of mission organizations. In all, twenty interviews were conducted. They were semistructured and varied depending on whether the interviewee was a convert, a church or organization leader, or an individual missionary. The questions included the following: How did you become a Christian? What factors attract people to Christianity? What are your experiences with, and how do you perceive the role of foreign missions? What challenges do you experience in your faith life? How do Christians in general, and specific churches in particular, contribute to individuals and society in Cambodia?
History of Christianity in Cambodia
Present-day Christianity in Cambodia emerged in the early 1990s and is thus only slightly older than the median age of its people. 2 As the Khmer Rouge were killing an estimated 1.5–2.5 million people, or around 20–25 percent of the population, 3 Christians did not escape the terror. The genocidal massacre effectively wiped out almost every trace of earlier Christianity and cut most links to its history.
Christianity was first brought to Cambodia by Dominican missionaries in the sixteenth century and grew mainly among the Vietnamese and Portuguese and, to a lesser extent, among Japanese immigrants. The first fleeting encounter with Protestantism came in 1897, when Walter James, a missionary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, visited Cambodia. 4 It was another twenty-six years until the arrival of the first resident missionaries, David and Muriel Ellison and Arthur and Esther Hammond, from the Christian and Missionary Alliance. 5 In the seven decades after the two C&MA couples arrived, Protestant Christianity experienced constant hardship and was never able to fully develop. Christianity was rejected by the left and the right—by progressive groups because they saw Christianity as an ally of colonial power, and by the political and social elite, whose power and status was linked to traditional Buddhist faith, because it jeopardized their status. In 1932 King Monivong banned all evangelistic activities; in 1941 the Japanese army occupied Cambodia and interned all missionaries. After the war the growing movement toward decolonization was ill-disposed to Christian missionaries, and the small number of local Christians were widely seen as allies of colonialism. Finally, in 1965, all Western missionaries were banned. The pro-Western Lon Nol government, coming to power in 1970, brought a short reprieve and allowed a small number of missionaries to reenter the country, among them the Overseas Missionary Fellowship in 1974. Yet, this opening was short-lived. The Pol Pot regime came to power in 1975 and imposed a radical ban on all religious activities, even on Buddhists. All missionaries left the country, and only a few hundred local Christians survived the genocide that followed.
Reemergence of Christianity after the Khmer Rouge and under a new constitution
The Khmer Rouge terror came to a halt when the Vietnamese army entered the country and overthrew the regime in early 1979. During the 1980s the country was still racked by violence and made only a slow recovery from the years of trauma. During this period, Christianity spread mainly in refugee camps in neighboring Thailand, where many mission and development agencies continued their work after their forced departure from Cambodia. In 1991 the Paris Peace Accord finally ended two decades of violence. The few surviving Christians—and the even fewer surviving pastors—resurfaced from their underground existence, from refugee camps or from overseas, to start rebuilding the church.
The reemergence of Christianity is usually linked to the adoption of a new constitution in 1993, which guaranteed freedom of belief and religious practice but also declared Buddhism the state’s official religion. This meant its support through public holidays, education, and financial assistance. Although the traditional and officially promoted link between national and religious identity—to be Khmer is to be Buddhist—does result in occasional hostility against Christianity, the government is overall friendly toward religious groups. It has imposed only minor restrictions aimed at maintaining peaceful relations, among them the requirement to register places of worship with the Ministry of Cults and Religions. Officials commonly express appreciation for the social and educational contributions of Christian groups. Religious minorities experience no discrimination, and only few local incidents of religious conflict have been reported. Political stability and a clear constitutional framework have been crucial factors for the reemergence of Christianity and its present growth. Tax exemptions for religious groups and liberal visa policies are further institutional factors supporting overseas missionary groups. Since 1993, many overseas NGOs and Christian mission organizations have established a presence in Cambodia, and Christianity has experienced considerable growth; 99 percent of today’s churches were founded after 1993. 6
Growth of Christianity since the 1990s
The National Institute of Statistics claims that 97.9 percent of the population is Buddhist (Theravada), 1.1 percent Muslim (mainly among the Cham minority), 0.6 percent tribal and other religions, and 0.5 percent Christian. 7 Detailed statistics of Mission Kampuchea 2021 (MK2021), a missionary organization dedicated to church planting and mission research, estimated that in 2017 there were 171,000 Protestant Christians, or 1.29 percent of the whole population, 8 with the highest concentration in the eastern and northeastern provinces of Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri. The World Christian Database (WCD) estimates 86.4 percent Buddhist, 4.36 percent ethnoreligionist, 2.28 percent agnostic, 2.56 percent Christian, and 1.42 percent Muslim. A study by a residential missionary researcher estimated that an even higher percentage of Cambodia’s people were Christian: 2.9. 9
A critical reading of various statistics shows tendencies of both over- and under-estimation. While the government may prefer a more conservative assessment, churches and missionary organizations may tend to inflate their numbers in order to attract more support or simply to suggest their success. An example of such practice is the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which, according to WCD, has a membership of 140,000. There is no on-the-ground evidence of such a number; it results, according to local information, simply from an inclusion of every person who receives care from the church. Several people interviewed for this article regarded MK2021 as offering the most reliable results. However, its percentage seems to be based on a 2008 census, that is, when the total population was smaller. This means that the actual numbers should actually be adjusted upward. Noting these different factors, and including the number of Catholics, I estimate that Christians account for between 1.5 and 2.0 percent of the whole population.
Since 1993, all major denominations have entered or reentered the country. The Roman Catholic Church counts around 25,000 believers, many of them of Vietnamese origin. The most important Protestant denomination is the Christian and Missionary Alliance, known in Cambodia as the Khmer Evangelical Church. Until the 1970s it was, aside from a small number of Anglicans (since 1955) and Seventh-day Adventists (since 1930), the only Protestant group active in Cambodia. Other important denominations, each with several thousand members, are Assemblies of God, Baptists, Methodists, and (mostly from Korean missionary backgrounds) Presbyterians. Many churches are nominally independent but are linked to denominational networks. The Anglican Church (under the Diocese of Singapore) consists of only a few hundred members in less than ten congregations and a few preaching points. MK2021 counts 3,205 congregations for the whole of Cambodia. The most important group outside mainstream Christianity is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), which claims thirty congregations, with around 13,300 followers.
Parallel to this growth in membership, congregations, and denominations, several institutions and religious bodies have emerged, forging connections within the diversity of Christian groups and activities. The most important is the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia, founded in 1996 and comprising 75–80 percent of Cambodian Christians. Another is the Kampuchea Christian Council, founded in 1998 and linked to ecumenical networks such as the World Council of Churches and the Christian Conference of Asia. 10
Mission, evangelism, and ecumenical relations
Cambodian Christianity is intensely local and at the same time a reflection of global Christianity, with missionary and evangelistic agents from virtually all over the world having set up bases in Cambodia. The strong presence of international mission agencies and NGOs responds to an obvious need for rebuilding the country after the destruction of the Khmer Rouge, and it receives support from the government through liberal immigration policies. As an example, the Assemblies of God (AG) alone have missionary personnel from thirteen or fourteen countries active in Cambodia. Most come from the United States and the Philippines, but there are also a significant number of AG missionaries from Korea; others are from Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, France, Sweden, Finland, El Salvador, and Canada.
Missionaries from South Korea are estimated to number over 700, or around one Korean missionary for every 300 believers. 11 Many of them do not speak the local Khmer language and rely on local interpreters. Another significant group of missionaries comes from affluent churches in nearby areas such as Singapore and Hong Kong. A long-term resident missionary from Hong Kong estimates that there are around 100 Hong Kong missionaries (both short- and long-term) in Cambodia. In addition to these cross-cultural missionaries, many Cambodians who moved abroad as refugees and became Christians overseas now visit their motherland for evangelistic purposes.
A common mode of evangelism in rural areas combines care ministry with the propagation of the gospel. Missionary teams and local coworkers jointly visit villages; the teams offer educational and medical services for impoverished local people, while the locals engage in evangelism. This combination is said to be successful in a context of rural poverty, where many adults and young people from secondary school onward have moved to the city for studies, for better professional prospects, and for a higher income, leaving behind only the elderly and primary-school children.
Churches and missions in the urban context aim at this group of highly receptive young people who have moved to the city. One of the most popular strategies in urban evangelism is offering free or subsidized dormitory accommodation for poor students as a basis for evangelization. Another important strategy is language or computer courses. Among a group of ten young students from a small Bible seminary interviewed for this article, half had made their first contact with Christianity through education, particularly by studying English. To be clear, all the interviewees emphasized that English was not their reason for a conversion to Christianity but simply their first point of contact. Churches’ connections to overseas sponsors and personnel allow them to contribute significantly to equipping the young generation for participation in the global market and to find access to a network of global relations. The frequent reception of mission teams from abroad also helps local churches present themselves as globally connected. Cambodian English speakers, whether Christian or not, are frequently used by NGOs for translation services; in fact, non-Christians have even come to the Christian faith by serving as translators.
Many missions are engaged in church-planting, usually initiated through existing bridges of relationships with friends and family members. A typical strategy is accompanying young converts from the city to their rural home and sharing the gospel with their families or supporting young converts to return to their hometowns for church ministry.
The labor and financial contributions from foreigners and returning Cambodians have been crucial in a context of abject poverty and have been recognized even by non-Christian government administrators. Yet, the influx of missionaries and foreign funds has brought fragmentation and manifold problems, including unsustainable projects planned abroad but unsuitable for the local context and with little regard for locals’ needs, churches planted without consideration of or in competition with already existing churches, an attitude of dependency nurtured by an abundance of foreign funds, a confusing proliferation of churches and denominations lacking unity, and conversions encouraged by material incentives. The tension of global involvement and local needs was expressed by Rev. Heng Cheng from the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia: We were starting from the darkness and people wanted to help. . . . They tried to do quick development in a community, but they did not understand the hearts and minds of the Cambodian people. People had suffered so much. They had seen so much violence. It was as if their hearts were in prison; they were still living in fear of the Khmer Rouge. They were hungry for God. And they needed everything. But the organizations did not understand that they had to develop themselves. They wanted to develop for them. But that does not change anything. When the project is finished, everything is gone. There is no sustainability.
12
Indeed, the confusing variety of Christian expressions, with little concern for cooperation, weakens the witness of Christianity in the Cambodian context. Despite gratitude for the missionaries’ significant contributions, there is a growing sense that the mission agencies have made Cambodia a battleground. As one interviewee said, “There is a lot of division in the church because of payments from mission societies. Many missions do not focus on gospel ministry. They try to influence church members by using their resources. They come with money and try to win over the people. I want foreign missions to make the local church, not themselves, visible.”
The division of Cambodian Christianity is also reflected in the multitude of networks that are designed to unite Christians of different denominations (see above). Still, out of this charity- and mission-centered Christianity, a number of sustainable projects and churches under local bivocational leadership and with growing local support are emerging. According to a 2012 survey, only 12 percent of leaders do full-time church work; 60 percent are farmers; 13 others are employed in NGOs or elsewhere or have their own businesses. Such bivocational leadership, independent of mission agencies, is a contextually appropriate form of ministry.
Growth factors
Among the pull-factors that attract Cambodians to Christianity is the strong connection of local groups to a global faith movement. Churches successfully present themselves as a training ground for emerging global citizens. Young people are attracted to Christianity because it connects them with a supportive global network and provides them with resources that equip them for the future and give them a new perspective on life. Several interviewees expressed thanks for staying in a church- or mission-sponsored hostel and learning something for free. Similarly, recipients of educational and medical services offered by the numerous mission teams or Christian NGOs easily adopt the faith of those who have served them. Put more simply, churches and missionaries respond to basic needs, and people respond in gratitude.
But there are other reasons why Christianity attracts new converts. Some of those interviewed echoed a common experience of coming to Christian faith in the Global South, namely, deliverance from evil spirits through the power of prayer. Others had experienced relational healing, deliverance from destructive familial dynamics, or solidarity and caring relationships in the community of Christian fellowship. One respondent said: “Christianity attracts through being a good community, a helping community, a sharing community. This is the most important factor that makes Christianity grow.”
Another reason, less spoken of in interviews but lurking in the background, is spiritual liberation from the ghosts of the past. The trauma inflicted by the Khmer Rouge regime on every family in the country remains largely unhealed. Even though a majority of Cambodians have been born since this disastrous period, the wounds of their parents are still hurting. Conversion to the Christian faith signifies a clear and liberating break with the past, not only for victims but also for perpetrators, as indeed several former Khmer Rouge leaders have converted to Christianity. While many, both Christians and non-Christians, are understandably skeptical about such conversions and regard them as attempts to skirt responsibility for the atrocities committed, they reflect the wish to wash away the shame of having been part of a murderous regime.
Related to this factor is an element of disillusionment with Buddhist belief, 14 particularly the belief in karma. Considering the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and the extent of suffering, the framework of karma offers little comfort or meaningful interpretative help. In other words, it is hard to imagine that the colossal suffering of those terrible years could be part of a karmic circle. Father François Ponchaud, a Jesuit priest who has lived in Cambodia since the 1960s, put it this way: “There is an idea that Buddhism has failed, that the key Buddhist precept that those who do good get good in return while those who do bad are punished has been proven false by the realities of modern Cambodian society.” 15 .
In comparison with Christianity in other Southeast Asian contexts, Christianity in Cambodia experiences less resistance from the majority religion. Although Cambodian ethnic identity is—as in Thailand, Myanmar, and, to a lesser extent, Laos—linked to Buddhism, the social destruction of the 1970s and 1980s undermined the religious status quo and enabled the growth of alternative religious movements. The Buddhist tradition, like Christianity, was seriously disrupted by the genocide. Furthermore, Cambodian Buddhism is permeated by Hinduist and popular religious elements (animist belief in neak ta spirits and ancestor veneration). This socioreligious situation, both the popular-religious nature of Cambodian Buddhism and the disruption experienced by all religious groups, points to potentially high receptivity for religious change. Periods of radical social and political change have long been seen as moments ripe for religious change. 16
Theological and practical challenges
As an emerging church, Cambodian Christianity faces multiple challenges. One problem occasionally mentioned is the occurrence of multiple baptisms. One church leader put it pointedly: “People receive baptism until the fishes recognize their faces.” While opinions differ about the extent of the problem, it reveals an interesting attitude, with several interpretations possible. Partly it may simply be a popular belief that more frequent baptisms may more effectively cleanse a person of his or her sins. As such, it is similar to the traditional cleansing ritual, popular in Buddhism, that washes off curses and offers special protection. 17 It may also, however, reflect the diversity of Christian groups active in Cambodia and their lack of regard for other Christians. One group comes, preaches the gospel, makes converts, and invites people to receive baptism; after they have left, another group comes and does the same. Baptisms thus establish the group’s or denomination’s presence. People willingly undergo multiple baptisms because they may have gone through a period of abandoning the faith, and they regard a new baptism as a sign of a renewed faith commitment. In a relationship-based (i.e., less rule-based) social context, it also signifies allegiance and honor given in gratitude to visitors from afar. Sometimes people switch from one church to another, as another church may offer better conditions or more benefits, and the change in affiliation may then be realized through a new baptism. This combination of factors reflects the entanglement of global and local interests.
A theologically more fundamental problem is that many people raised in a context of karma belief find it difficult to accept the teaching of God’s unconditional forgiveness and grace. They may agree to it on the surface, but underneath they assume that Christianity is similar to other religions, simply teaching that by doing good one will be blessed and by doing bad one will be punished. 18 Christian faith is thus simply a belief in a better and more loving God and a better moral teaching, with a love that transcends traditional limitations and individual moral requirements. Yet, the basic structure remains the same as in traditional religion—God as the highest moral authority rewarding and punishing according to human behavior. This view contradicts crucial elements of Christian teaching, such as belief in God’s forgiving grace and in God’s power to intervene in history and offer new beginnings. Such Christian faith remains subject to a cyclic view of history, where nothing radically new is expected. This is a problem not just for Cambodian Christians but for Christians in Buddhist contexts in general. As one interviewee admitted, “I think that deep inside I still believe in karma; I believe that we will reap according to what we sow and that everything we do will fall back on us. What attracts me in the message of Christianity is simply the centrality of love. I believe many of my Christian brothers and sisters believe similarly to me.”
In only twenty-five years, Christianity in Cambodia has come a long way. After the devastation of past decades—the Pol Pot regime, the civil war in the 1980s, tremendous economic hardship during the period of rebuilding, and present social ills caused by past turmoil—many converts report that they find love, purpose, and a sense of belonging in the Christian community. Christianity plays an important role in supporting Cambodians as they cope with globalization and modernization. Yet, divisions imported from global Christianity and inequalities spread by the global economy have deeply shaped Cambodian Christianity. It remains to be seen whether, out of this Christian body strongly dominated by global players, a contextual form of Cambodian Christianity will grow and flourish.
Footnotes
Notes
Author biography