The impact of missionaries around the world has been widely condemned by anthropologists, historians and medical professionals. They have been accused of suppressing indigenous languages, religious and social practice, disrupting countries’ social fabrics and prohibiting contraception. Moreover, missionaries were, on the whole, stalwart defenders of European colonialism. However, that does not mean they are unworthy of nuanced academic study, indeed given the immense socio-political and religious change they have fostered, academic engagement is crucial to understanding the outcomes of their activity.
In Burma, the legacy of missionary activity remains keenly felt, so Alexandra Kaloyanides’s new book Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom, is a welcome addition to Burma studies. Kaloyanides tells the story of the Judson family, the first American Baptist missionaries to travel to Burma. Their journey in 1813 marked the beginning of American overseas missionary activities, laying the foundation for countless similar trips that continue to this day. These missions had a profound and lasting impact on the social and religious landscape of Burma, with millions of Baptists now practicing in the country. This study offers a comprehensive overview of the struggles and successes of early missionaries, while also offering a wider analysis of religious change in Burma and its ongoing political and sociological impacts.
The book is structured around four chapters, each focusing on a different sacred object: the book, the school, the pagoda, and the portrait. Through these objects, the chapters explore the intersection and exchange of ideas, norms, and practices between American missionaries and indigenous Burmese communities.
The Judsons’ first baptism was featured in the American press.

Throughout, the book details the myriad of activities undertaken by the Judson family amidst their growing fame. The Judsons’ first baptism was featured in the American press, as was the news that Judson had finished translating the bible into Burmese. Indeed, Kaloyanides states that the Judsons were some of the “most well-known celebrities” in America. The challenges Adoniram Judson faced with gaining permission, acceptance and approval for his missionary activities from the Konbaung dynasty are well-explained. While providing rich portrayals of the Judsons, the book is far from a hagiography, as the book highlights the many ways that the ”Baptists helped justify British economic and military campaigns in Burma.”
While the majority Burman population proved a tough nut to crack, the Judsons’ pivot to ethnic minorities, such as the Karen, Chin, and Kachin, proved far more successful. The Karen were the first people in Burma to adopt Christianity, yet early adopters of Christianity adopted these new beliefs to match their own traditional practices by refashioning their new biblical texts “into amulets worn as earrings or wrapped them in special fabrics and attached to bells to be worshipped as magical devices.” The book therefore explains how “minority communities took on Baptist identities, and how Protestantism transformed into a kind of Southeast Asian religion.”
The book delves into the role of education in missionary efforts. Missionaries capitalized on the Burmese desire for improved education, and used their fascination around modern devices like telescopes, globes, and maps to capture attention. While some missionaries debated whether these devices aided conversion or merely attracted curious onlookers, Baptist schools became popular across Burma. Women played significant roles in establishing these schools, embracing the power of religious objects and also using the distribution of Western medicine as an opportunity for proselytizing.
The complex relationship between missionaries and Buddhist pagodas is explored in another section of the book. Initially, missionaries did not understand the significance of pagodas and struggled to comprehend the practice of providing offerings to Buddhist pagodas and statues of the Buddha asking themselves “why worship a brick?” Some missionaries even prayed for the conversion of pagodas into Christian sites, and there are accounts of at least one missionary desecrating Buddha statues. However, some missionaries admired the pagodas, considering them preferable to what they perceived as “obscene and disgusting” Hindu shrines in India.
The book addresses the legacy of the Judsons and other missionaries in Burma. Their activities changed both Burma and American Baptist Christianity. The missionary efforts resulted in the adoption of Baptist practices and the blending of Burmese traditions with Christianity. For example “missionaries who had arrived admonishing the idolatry of Buddha statues found themselves creating tree shrines and their converts hanging multicolored Jesus’s paintings in their churches.” Moreover, the Judson’s and other missionaries changed from preaching stood up, as was there tradition, to sitting down, emulating how Burmese Buddhist monks preached, hoping this imitation would help their message be better understood
The arrival of these missionaries helped shape and change how ethnic minorities saw themselves. Christianity acted as an alternate collective identity, one that challenged the nation’s dominant Burman Buddhist hegemony. As Kaloyanides writes “minority communities like the Karen found in conversion to Christianity an opportunity to redefine their identity.” The widespread adoption of Christianity in Burma’s frontier regions would add a new dimension to Burma’s politics, deepening divides between ethnic minorities and majority Burman populations and exacerbating communal tensions, tensions that have resulted in over seven decades of conflict between the Karen and Burmans.
Baptizing Burma provides an important overview of religious change in Burma that provides insights relevant outside the narrow confines of religious studies. A well-researched and thought-out account of Burma, religion, and missionary activity, shedding light on the Judsons’ story, their legacy, and Burmese religious thought. It also touches on radical Buddhist reform movements and the contemporary promotion of Buddhism by the government, which has further marginalized Burma’s Muslim and Christian minority communities. As Myanmar continues to grapple with a bloody civil war, where religion has played a role in decades of ethnic conflict, this book contributes significantly to the study of Myanmar and the lasting impact of foreign missionaries on the country’s socio-religious fabric.
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