(ASIA) In Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Laos, it’s because we felt compelled to help people put their lives back together after the terrible suffering of war. We work to make life more like God created it to be: with abundance instead of scarcity, with babies and mothers living in health and children thriving mentally and physically, with both women and men overcoming fear and able to express their decision-making voices, and with people coming to know that the source of their blessings is the Lord. In working with them, we come to know their stories, and that’s a blessing.
I’d like to share one of those Asia stories with you. This one is about Christian church history by young Christians from Cambodia. You can see the story in the timeline they sketched for a World Renew and CRWM evaluation team a few weeks ago. Here are a few highlights.
The story of the Christian church in Cambodia is a story of colonialism, persecution, war, refugee camps, and missionaries. It’s about a young church with young leaders in a young country. It's a story with some questioning and some wonder in it: How has God been working in times of colonialism, persecution, and a traumatic war in which millions of people felt the sting of the “Killing Fields of Cambodia”? Yet amazingly, it’s a story with thanksgiving to God in it.
In the 1500s, Roman Catholic missionaries came to Cambodia. In 1923, the first Protestant missionaries came. There were only about 2,000 Christians in the whole country during much of the French colonial period, and in 1965 the missionaries were driven out.
The Bible was translated to the Cambodian language in the 1960s. Note: Theary Seng, whose family was welcomed as refugees by a CRC congregation in the U.S. in the 1970s, relates that this old translation has no punctuation, with verse numbers used instead of commas and periods as pause points for the readers. (Theary has been fixing this problem!)
Lon Nol’s rule began in 1970. Lon Nol's regime was supported by the U.S. government during the Vietnam War era. This was a time of religious freedom, before the 1975 withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Vietnam. After the 1975 withdrawal, chaos ensued.
In 1975, Pol Pot’s “Reign of Terror” began. Business and professional people, and “people who wear glasses” (intellectuals) were disdainfully called sympathizers of Vietnamese ethnic rivals, Americans—and Christians. Many were killed. Others fled to refugee camps. The remaining Christians became an underground church in Cambodia, and in the camps, many refugees became Christians. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to put a stop to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime.
UN peace keepers brought both a wave of international funds and the HIV virus with them to Cambodia from 1991 to 1993. Here’s a striking thing: the Christian Church grew rapidly during this time. However, there was an evangelistic crusade around 1995 or 1996 that promised people “healing miracles.” When people sold their land or animals to pay for the promised “healing miracles” that did not happen, the name of Christ and Christians were shamed. Still, the rapid increase in the church and in mission work continued, including new work in 1996 by World Renew and many other organizations. Later CRWM also sent missionaries.
From 2008 until now, the growth of the Christian church in Cambodia has slowed. There are several reasons for this, including internal divisions and materialism that came with increased tourism and the garment and construction industries. Some church leaders are also distracted by the need to earn their own income. Yet, through it all these young Cambodia Christians said together with us, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.” (Psalm 136)
Prayers:
- Please join your prayers and support to this ongoing story of a young Church, emerging within its country, emerging from the trauma of horrific war, learning to be Christian neighbors within Buddhist communities, and learning how the Lord wants them to be a blessing in their Asian country, Cambodia.
