missionaries
Christmas in a Semai Community
Christmas is a special time of year for the Semai of Kampung Janggap, though the isolated community in Malaysia’s Pahang state lacks some trappings of the holiday found in other countries. An article in the Malay Mail Online on December 24 described the enthusiasm of the Semai, in that one village at least, for celebrating […]
Christian Churches React to Fipa Traditions
Recent publications have described both the strength of Roman Catholicism among the Fipa of southwestern Tanzania and the ways the church has adapted to their traditional practices. Kathleen R. Smythe, an historian at Xavier University in Cincinnati, considered these issues in a 2006 book that reviewed both the history of their conversion to Catholicism beginning […]
Orang Asli Religions and Cultures Challenged
The New Straits Times recently reported that the Orang Asli (original peoples) of Malaysia are increasingly being converted to Islam, Christianity, and Bahai, a trend which threatens to destroy their culture. This story supplements a recent scholarly article on the same subject by Kirk Endicott and Robert Knox Dentan which was reviewed here last year. […]
Update on Piaroa/New Tribes Mission Story
Several posts in the blogosphere update last week’s coverage of protests by Indian peoples, including the Piaroa, that the New Tribes Mission (NTM) would be expelled from Venezuela. A blog carried by Salon.com posted a comment by a New Tribes missionary named Matt who was irritated that the blogger did not seem sufficiently informed about […]
