C&MA info
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 21:39:25 -0500
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
From: "David Del Testa" <ddeltest@bucknell.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] C&MA info
Dear friends,
Just a little information to add to the discussion linked to the C&MA. During the Fall of 2004, I took three undergraduates from my former institution to Vietnam as part of an AsiaNetwork faculty-student research grant. All three students had to conduct field research on papers they had begun as library-based projects over the course of the previous year. One student conducted research on the Christian and Missionary Alliance presence in Vietnam. Before traveling to Vietnam, he did a few days of research at the archives of the C&MA in Colorado Springs. The archivists were quite helpful. You can find his (Michael Barker's) paper at
http://www.bucknell.edu/Beaucarnot/bios.shtml, although it lacks what we discovered in Vietnam because we decided to keep the interviews we did private...remember, it's an undergraduate's paper!You all may already know that the C&MA had a wide network of popular Protestant churches throughout Vietnam and as I understand it they were the only Protestant group the French allowed to evangelize in Indochina. Their colonial-era and RVN-era churches form the basis of the 'official' Protestant church of Vietnam. What I find so interesting is that the colonial-era C&MA network extended as far North as Son Tay and Viet Tri and as far south as Ca Mau. The current pastor of the Nha Trang church is the son of a Vietnamese C&MA pastor himself who worked in the North. I think it's interesting to see both Protestant and Cao Dai churches as far North now as Dong Ha; I haven't heard much about the popularity of Protestantism in the Central Highlands for quite a while, since the horrible "difficulties" of 2003.
David Del Testa
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 00:33:34 -0500
From: "Charles Keith" <charles.keith@yale.edu>
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] C&MA info
For those interested in further reading, there is a dissertation on the history of the Evangelical Church in Vietnam. The title is: "A Short History of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam, 1911-1965" (Unpublished dissertation, New York University, 1972). The author is Dr. Phu Hoang Le, who (from the dissertation bio) "served 25 years with the C&MA Tin Lanh Church in Vietnam. His last position there was academic dean of Nha Trang Theological College. He then served 25 years in the United States as a C&MA missionary on loan to the FEBC radio translating The Living Bible into Vietnamese."
From: Frank Proschan <ProschanF@folklife.si.edu>
To: vsg@u.washington.edu, charles.keith@yale.edu
Date: Jan 13, 2006 7:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] C&MA info - FEBC (Far East Broadcasting Company)
In her book, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right, (I recall), Sara Diamond cites a one-sentence acknowledgement by a former director of Radio Free Europe (Sig Mickelson) that both RFE and Far East Broadcasting Company were established and funded by the CIA. I recall trying to track down anything beyond Mickelson's published statement in his memoirs, to no avail. But I wonder if any more diligent VSG'ers have run across further corroborating information in their research? FEBC has been a constant opponent of the DRV and SRV governments for decades, and seems to trade (or share) personnel with C&MA and SIL/Wycliffe Bible Translators with some regularity.
Best,
Frank Proschan