The Christian Century
The Vietnamese diaspora
Jan 16, 2013 by _Philip Jenkins_
(http://www.christiancentury.org/contributor/philip-jenkins)
Historians argue at length about when the Vietnam War began—or the U.S.
role in it—but an excellent claim can be made for 1963. In that year, global
media were transfixed by the horrible image of a Buddhist monk burning
himself alive in protest against the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of
South Vietnam, who later that same year was assassinated. This crisis, just
50 years ago, set the stage for direct U.S. military intervention.
Of the making of books about Vietnam there is no end, and the response of
religious communities in the United States to the war has been amply
documented. What gets lost in popular memory is how religious battles within
Vietnam itself shaped political attitudes and arguably doomed the
anticommunist
cause.
Such amnesia is scarcely surprising. In the 1960s, few people paid
attention to religion as a political factor. But without understanding the
role of
religion, and particularly of Catholic Christianity, we miss much of the
story of those dreadful years. In its origins, the Vietnam War resembled the
later civil-religious strife in Lebanon.
Although Southeast Asia is traditionally Buddhist, a potent Catholic
presence dates back at least to the Jesuit missions of the 16th century.
Through
much of the 19th century, Buddhists and Catholics fought and intrigued
against each other, provoking bloody wars and persecutions.
Catholicism grew in numbers and influence with the establishment of the
French empire in Indochina. The faith appealed particularly to those who were
influential and Westernized. The Catholic presence received a massive
setback with the establishment of communist rule in the north of Vietnam after
1954, setting off the first of successive exiles. Buttressed by these new
arrivals, the anticommunist regime in the south became aggressively Catholic.
Ngo Dinh Diem’s ultraconservative brother was the Archbishop of Hue.
Although Christians made up just 15 percent of the population, the regime
gave Catholicism something like established status, dedicating the country
to the Virgin Mary in 1959. The government exempted Catholic villages from
official burdens, directed external aid toward Catholics and placed heavy
restrictions on Buddhist activities. Rowdy Catholic militias demolished
Buddhist temples. When Buddhist protests erupted, government forces responded
ferociously. When Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc immolated himself in 1963, it
was not a generic protest against dictatorship or human rights abuses but
a specific call to end religious persecution.
When communist agents called on Buddhist peasants to rise against Catholic
landlords and the regime in South Vietnam, they were preaching to those
already half converted. At that stage, they needed say little about Marxism or
nationalism.
The communist victory in 1975 was a disaster for the Catholic Church as
much as for the Western cause. Catholic leaders were killed, exiled or
imprisoned, and the new regime was stridently antireligious.
Vietnam was in the news again last year when the U.S. State Department
offered a lengthy catalogue of how religious freedoms have been abused and
religious people persecuted, part of explaining the country’s designation as a
“country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom
Act.
Vietnam’s regime is a variant of the Chinese model. It demands that all
religious bodies register with the state or risk heavy penalties. The
communists target Catholic human rights activists and restrict church
activities.
Newer Protestant and Pentecostal churches are a particular source of
tension, as they are mainly concentrated among ethnic minorities, the
Montagnards
and Hmong, and the paranoid regime dreads the slightest hint of subversion
of separatism.
One response to the religious situation in Vietnam is amazement that
Christian churches are healthy enough to be perceived as threatening. Vietnam
today has perhaps 8 million Christians, constituting 8 to 9 percent of the
population, with a heavy predominance of Catholics.
Catholic structures have maintained themselves very well, to the point of
inaugurating new dioceses and opening new seminaries. The country has about
a million Protestants. We can only speculate how these numbers would grow
if the regime lifted its heavy hand.
Another religious consequence of the war was the Vietnamese diaspora.
Worldwide, some three and a half million people claim Vietnamese origins. More
than half of these live in the United States, with other large groups in
France and Australia. Christians make up over a third of these exile
communities. Among Catholics, overseas Vietnamese are highly visible for their
loyalty to the church. They are much in evidence in Catholic seminaries in
North
America and Europe and consequently are heavily represented among younger
priests.
In coming decades, white Western Catholics are very likely to encounter
these heirs of this rich—and thoroughly Asian—Christian tradition.
--
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