Myanmar’s economy is booming. International investor Jim Rogers says: ‘If you can find ways to invest in Myanmar, you will be very, very rich over the next 20, 30, 40 years.’ In 2012 the military government allowed foreign companies to have 100% ownership of the companies they start in the country.
The economic tide is rising fast. Everyone seems to have a mobile phone. Construction sites, modern hotels and shopping malls are everywhere in Yangon (Rangoon). The Myanmar Times is transitioning from a weekly to a daily edition. Tourists are now free to travel beyond the usual sites of Yangon, Pagan, Mandalay and the beautiful Inlay Lake. Luxury coaches ply the well tarmaced highways. Will the church in Myanmar be able to surf the wave?
Target for growth
In a country of 53 million, there are 1.5 million Baptists, 800,000 Roman Catholics and 67,000 Anglicans, which is about 5% of the population. Anglicans have set a target to grow to 100,000 by 2020. But their witness is constrained. Their involvement in education is limited to the provision of pre-schooling and calling on parishes and congregations to encourage as many as children as possible to go to school. The Holy Cross Theological College in Yangon graduated 15 seminarians at the end of the recent academic year. In Yangon there is a place known as Seminary Hill, as it boasts three Christian training institutions.
The Anglican Cathedral services include a chanted Anglican liturgy, which resonates well with the religious culture where chanting is part of Buddhist rites. Following the formal service, an adult Sunday School has started, taking up the tradition of education in the Anglican Church, led by a gifted layman, U Tun. This has recently taken the congregation through an Alpha course and now, in Lent, through the meaning of the cross. The Emmanuel Baptist Church next to City Hall by Mahabandula Park, which sports the Independence Monument, features much tuneful singing from congregation, choir and soloists.
Revoking freedoms
But proposals are afoot to revoke the laws which allow Christians to bring up children of mixed faith marriages as Christians, and other such freedoms. The large traditional house which had been home for many years to archbishops of Myanmar is now occupied by the police. Pressure is nothing new for the Myanmar church. Under the Japanese occupation in World War II the Anglican cathedral was used as a brewery.
Archbishop’s visit
In October 2014, Archbishop Welby went to visit the primate of Myanmar, the Most Revd Stephen Than Myint Oo, who had been imprisoned and tortured in earlier years. All the bishops of Myanmar turned up to greet and be photographed with Archbishop Welby, who is reported to have attended a special dinner with government ministers, senior ecumenical church leaders, and former diocesan archbishops and bishops. He also met with other faith leaders at the British Embassy. Mrs Welby met with the president and national secretary of the Mothers’ Union in Myanmar. Archbishop Stephen will be visiting London in April for the meeting of the Primates Council of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. The Church’s international links are very important to them.
Election looming
A stunning example of the interconnected-ness of all things is provided in Pagan on a bend in the vast River Irrawaddy. At the centre of trade routes throughout the region, it was a wealthy rice growing area. But the process of building pagodas out of bricks brought ecological devastation. Bricks need clay and clay needs to be fired. So trees were cut down to fuel the kilns needed to build over 13,000 pagodas over the centuries. With few trees the climate changed, the rains retreated and the earth is now bare sand.
Elections are scheduled to take place in November. Observers expect the current party in power to win, since on their watch Myanmar is experiencing unprecedented economic development. It is not expected that Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy will win power. Despite that, will Western churches and governments look without prejudice at what is happening in Myanmar? Or will they insist that liberal democracy must be the regime of choice for all peoples at all times?
