MCC representatives gain rare glimpse into Christianity in Burma

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 26 August 2000

AKRON, Pa. -- "The capital city of Burma is a strangely quiet place. Everything in Rangoon is under the watchful eye of the distrustful military regime," observes Earl Zimmerman, co-pastor of Shalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg, Va., who recently returned from a month-long seminar at the Myanmar Institute of Theology in Rangoon.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) sponsored Zimmerman and Belizian student Pastor Romero in attending the seminar "Doing Theology Under the Bo Tree," to learn what is happening in the church in Burma. Zimmerman is working on a doctorate degree in church and society. Romero is a student at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.

Seminar participants met with various congregations, pastors and church leaders.

"The most obvious common thread was the intense feeling of isolation among Christians in Burma," Zimmerman says. "Foreign missionaries and church workers were forced to leave in 1965, and contact with the outside world practically ended for decades," Zimmerman says.

A bloody, 50-year civil war continues in Burma, currently ruled by SLORC, a repressive military government that refuses to give up power, despite having lost a peaceful, democratic election in 1990. SLORC has since renamed the country Myanmar, though the name is widely rejected because it was given by an illegitimate government. Many sectors of society are tightly controlled, including media, education and business.

"Both Christians and Buddhists in Burma need to creatively use the little space they have to work for social change," Zimmerman says. All of the country's universities were closed in 1996 due to repeated student uprisings.

Seminaries, which have remained open, "are full and growing," Zimmerman reports, "because they provide the only education available aside from military training. Education for youth is clearly one of the primary goals of the churches."

Participants met with a church-organized soccer league. Activities like this function to involve young adults who are unable to further their education and who have very few employment opportunities, says Zimmerman.

"It is in the interest of the military junta to keep Buddhists and Christians divided," he says. The seminar addressed the importance of interreligious dialogue, as religious tension allows the ruling junta to further divide the country already struggling with widespread ethnic tensions.

Three MCC volunteers in Thailand work with Burma Issues, a group that documents human right abuses in Burma.

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org