Objects of Religious Change in the Konbaung Kingdom

The story of the American Baptist mission to Burma is a story of conversion—both failed and sweeping. Throughout the nineteenth century, Burmese Buddhists largely resisted Christian evangelism, whereas astonishing numbers of non-Burmese minority communities were being baptized. And American Baptist Christianity also found itself changed in the Buddhist kingdom. Missionaries who had arrived vilifying Buddha statues found themselves creating tree shrines and their converts hanging multicolored Jesus paintings in their churches. As eccentric as these objects might seem, they prove to be at the center of this story of religion in Burma. This book focuses on powerful Southeast Asian artifacts to understand how the Burmese majority transformed Buddhism to counter Christianity, how minority communities took on Baptist identities, and how Protestantism transformed into a kind of Southeast Asian religion.

Alexandra Kaloyanides is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina Charlotte.

This event is part of the Burma Past and Present: Religion, Ethnicity and Power, a series of readings and discussion of works in progress.

→ More at the York Centre for Asian Research