Christianity in Myanmar

Filipe de Brito, Portuguese mercenary and governor of Syriam

In the 17th century, Portuguese missionaries arrived. 1925, there were two priests. Several Catholic missionaries arrived in the 1830s from Europe, and by 1841, there were 4500 Catholics. The first nuns arrived in 1847–52. By 1862, the Catholics had one bishop, 11 missionaries, one native priest, one college, and about 6000 members. 1992. Membership was about 27,000, with 66 missionaries, and 12 native priests. The Catholics operated two seminaries and 73 schools with 3900 students. Today there is a small Roman Catholic element.[5] The Catholic element reached 121,000 population by 1933.[6]

Adoniram Judson

The Protestant churches of Burma were begun in the early 19th century by Adoniram Judson (1788–1850), an American Baptist missionary. It took years of intensive preaching before he reached his first convert, but the numbers grew rapidly, reaching 10,000 by 1851. He translated the Bible into Burmese in 1834.[7]

In 1865 the Myanmar Baptist Convention was established and in 1927, the Willis and Orlinda Pierce Divinity School was founded in Rangoon as a Baptist seminary. It is still operating as the Myanmar Institute of Theology, catering to students of many Protestant denominations. The majority of converts came from the Karen's ethnic group in the mountainous areas, and not from the Buddhists. By the census of 1921 Christians totalled 257,000, or two percent of the total population. This included about 50,000 Christians of Indian, English or Eurasian heritage; and 69% were Karens.[8]

After 1914, the Buddhist element became much more nationalistic, and highly resistant to Christianity. There was hostility toward the Christian Karens, and toward Indian immigrants as well. The Protestant population reached 192,000 in 1926, with the Baptists in the forefront, with over 200 missionaries. Increasingly, the native community took control of the Protestant organizations.[9]

When the Japanese seized Burma in 1942, the British and American missionaries fled, but they returned in 1945. Independence from Britain came in 1947, and for years there was simmering tension and sometimes military action by the government against the Karens. This strengthened the Christian religiosity of the Karens minority, and deepened the hostility of the majority Buddhist population toward Christianity. In 1959 the Catholics numbered 184,000, and Protestants were 225,000; most of the Protestants were Baptists. The Catholics began transferring control from the missionaries to local elements in 1959, with the appointment of the Archbishop of Mandalay who is a descendant of Portuguese who arrived in the 17th century. Likewise, the Protestants transferred control to locals in the 1950s.[10]

There is a small Armenian Orthodox Christian minority in Burma[15] centred on St. John the Baptist Armenian Apostolic Church in Yangon.[16]

In 2023, the country was scored 1 out of 4 for religious freedom;[17] it was noted that the authorities do not allow proselytizing or building work.

In the same year, the country was ranked as the 14th worst place in the world to be a Christian.[18]

• Religion in Myanmar
• Armenians in Burma
• Cathedrals in Myanmar

• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, Vol. V: The twentieth century outside Europe: the Americas, the Pacific, Asia, and Africa : the emerging world Christian community (1962) pp 339–42
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A history of expansion of christianity. 3. Three centuries of advance: A.D. 1500-A.D. 1800 (1939) pp 293–94
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A history of the expansion of Christianity. 6, The great century in Northern Africa and Asia: A.D. 1800 - A.D. 1914 (1944), pp 225–35
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A history of expansion of Christianity. 7. Advance through storm: AD 1914 and after (1945), pp 319–23
• Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions (Penguin Books, 1986), pp 293, 347, 417, 477–8.