If any group in the United States has a reason to care about the people of Burma, it is Baptists.
That’s what Duane Binkley, a former Baptist missionary to the region, said Oct. 4, the day the Burmese government admitted it has arrested more than 2,000 people since the start of pro-democracy demonstrations in the country now officially known as Myanmar.
Baptist history in Burma stretches back hundreds of years to the efforts of a pioneering U.S. Baptist missionary couple.
The protests peaked the last week of September, when an estimated 100,000 people took to the streets to protest rising fuel prices and the military regimes that have held power since 1962.
Reports of prisoners taken varied from 4,000 to 6,000, with human rights organizations publishing lists of at least 43 protesters presumed killed.
Intimately familiar with the tenuous political stage in the region, Binkley praised the “pure courage and determination” of the protestors, who knew they would risk their lives by hitting the streets.
“We pray that these demonstrations will lead for some positive change … and that [the government] realizes there can be a peaceful solution,” he said.
In a country where only 6 percent of the population is Christian, Baptists make up approximately 35 percent of the Karen people group. Binkley and his wife, Marcia, have worked with the Karen since the 1980s.
Baptists should care about Burma because of their long history with the country, Binkley said. After spending time in India, Adoniram and Ann Judson, the first Baptist missionaries sent from the United States, settled in Burma in 1813. By 1834, he had translated the Bible into Burmese.
The Judsons also helped form the first-ever convention in Baptist life: the General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States for Foreign Missions. The organization served as a support agency for American Baptist missionaries, both from the North and the South, until the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845.
Bridging the gap
Nearly 200 years later, many Christians in Thailand and Burma are conscious of their Baptist heritage, and American Baptists are looking once again to pool their resources to help the more than 12,000 Karen refugees now living in the United States.
The refugees come from nine camps housing more than 150,000 Karen and Karenni people who have fled Burma. At least 100,000 Burmese refugees from other ethnic groups live in Malaysia and India.
The camps were formed when the current military rulers took power in 1988, after killing more than 3,000 protestors in a pro-democracy movement.
Karen are being resettled in America through the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program, which works with the United Nations and Thai government. As a result, Church World Service, along with other resettlement agencies, has processed the first of tens of thousands of refugees and is settling them in various cities around the United States.
As a first step to the resettlement, the American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA) formed the Burmese Refugee Task Force, which seeks funding for refugee work and to build support networks among congregations. That’s where the Binkleys come in.
Now living near Akron, Ohio, the Binkleys entered a joint partnership with ABCUSA and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Within the ABCUSA, they coordinate with national and international ministry branches to help bridge the cultural gap between American churches and the Karen groups resettling in their communities.
The cities of St. Paul, Minn., and Utica, N.Y., have two of the largest Karen populations, although the refugees are spread through 136 cities nationwide. Currently more than 500 live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area; almost 200 live in Jacksonville, Fla.; more than 200 live in Decatur, Ga.; and nearly 700 live in Phoenix, to name a few.
No matter where the refugees end up, providing a sense of community is “a strong role that the church can play,” Binkley said. “It gives them a spiritual base, certainly, but it can also give them a strong cultural base.” (ABP)
Share with others: