“'Oh, yes!’
one young attendant quickly answered in a nonchalant tone. ‘I’ve seen this,
too. My village has a woman like this. She speaks with many strange angry
voices and levitates in the air.’”
That's the opening to Jeff's 2017 dissertation, entitled Incorporating a religious logic into a discipleship program: A strategy for Cambodia house churches. I’ve been able to hear from him live, both in one-on-one chats, and when he presented and led discussions about it at our World Team field conference a couple weeks ago. I've also been reading through his dissertation the past few months. (It's the basis for this post, but if I've written something inaccurate, it's probably my fault, not his!)
That incident brought home to Jeff the huge gulf between the assumptions and experiences that Western cross-cultural workers and Cambodians bring into our shared Christian faith. This gulf impedes our ministry.
Christianity's growth in Cambodia is among the fastest worldwide. However, Steve Hyde’s 2012 study uncovered what Jeff calls the “back door” of Christianity: Cambodia’s churches have a 69% “'attrition rate of one-time professing believers becoming completely inactive.'” Hyde concludes that to slow this leak, Christian leaders and missionaries need to better understand and implement Biblical discipleship (teaching others to follow Christ).
Another driving force for Jeff's study was this quote by McKinney (2000):
“’When missionaries come into an area, they need
to understand the local religious system. Failure to do so results in
traditional religion answering one set of questions and Christianity answering another
set. The local Christians feel it necessary to retain both the primal religion
and Christianity to address these different issues, and thus Christianity
becomes an overlay on the traditional religion. If Christianity is to become
truly relevant and transformative, it must address the same issues as the
primal religion. This means the Christian missionary must understand the local
primal religion and its means of dealing with specific issues, then together
with local Christians search the Bible for a Christian perspective on these
issues.’” (p. 788)
Jeff took on these challenges from Hyde and McKinney. His qualitative study analyzes interviews with Cambodian Christian leaders from Buddhist backgrounds. The interviewees describe two things:
1. how they sought supernatural power previously as Folk Buddhists
2. how they seek supernatural power now as Christians.
Based on these interviews, he distinguishes a core value and several supporting values that drive people's decisions related to their life circumstances and the supernatural. He coined the term religious logic to describe people's pursuit of these values through supernatural means.
In this post, I'll focus on the former group: Folk Buddhists. But first, a few definitions. Primal religions, sometimes called animism, use local knowledge of supernatural power to address people’s immediate felt needs: safety, health, prosperity, good relationships. Primal religion isn't a unified system of beliefs; it's flexible, with variations among individuals and groups. Examples that might sound familiar to an American include athletes’ good-luck rituals, horoscopes, knocking on wood, and voodoo. Primal religion's spiritual specialists, shamans, mainly perform rituals for adherents.
By contrast, formal religions like Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam usually address more abstract questions about salvation, eternity, and the meaning of life. They feature sacred scriptures and spiritual specialists who not only lead rituals but also focus on educating devotees and providing moral assistance.
Folk religions mix both primal and formal religions, fitting “local knowledge of the supernatural” into the philosophical framework of a formal religion. The Western Christmas tradition originated this way. The Roman Catholic church allowed its followers to continue celebrating the winter solstice using lights and evergreen trees, but assigned it new religious meaning. (Interestingly, in Cambodia and other parts of the global South, Christmas has no connotations with lights, trees, or cold weather.)
Most Cambodians today practice a folk version of Theravada Buddhism, which is known for adapting easily to prior religious practices. Cambodia’s primal religion is likewise particularly flexible and has thrived under Hinduism, Buddhism, and Communism at different points in history. This means that most Cambodian monks perform local rituals as well as Buddhist ones, and pagodas contain altars and statues for local spirits that don't appear in Buddhist teachings. It also means that Cambodians often pursue supernatural power from outside sources. Cambodians call their traditional beliefs prahman-sesna because it has strong ties with Cambodia's ancient practices of Brahman Hinduism. They believe prahman-sesna is "powerful, but amoral in nature." Though the spirits help solve people's practical needs, they operate outside of Buddhist virtues and may even require adherents to violate Buddhist principles.
Whole books have been written about all the supernatural forces that some Cambodians believe in and pay homage to. (I just read a great one called Spirit Worlds.) Buddhism teaches that Buddha has achieved nirvana and is therefore inaccessible today. So he can't hear prayers or help people day-to-day. Plus, he'd probably tell them that they need to patiently endure hardship to work out their bad karma from a past life. Rather, most Cambodians have multiple shrines or altars in and around their homes, each for a specific type of spirit offering protection but requiring devotion. When people face illness, financial need, a wayward family member, or calamity, they may seek supernatural help from one of many sources. Most spirits are capricious but sometimes provide the needed assistance. There's a continuum from completely benevolent spirits (Buddha's helpful servants, the Boramey) to disturbing forms of black magic abhorred by most Cambodians. All of this comes at a cost, and Cambodians can expend enormous energy and money trying to enlist the support of spirits or avoid their torment, often through human mediums or spiritual leaders who charge money. Spirits always take from the human at least as much as they give; their demands may include not only respect and faith, but also vows, incense, or tangible gifts.
Cambodians believe that relationships with a spirit require constant maintenance. Don't mess with them; angry spirits can inflict illness, loss, and even death. You must continue obeying them to keep them on your side. For example, if you want to become a shaman, a demon will enter you and place demands on you. (Sometimes demon possession is also involuntary.) One of Jeff's respondents describes his experiences as a shaman:
2. how they seek supernatural power now as Christians.
Based on these interviews, he distinguishes a core value and several supporting values that drive people's decisions related to their life circumstances and the supernatural. He coined the term religious logic to describe people's pursuit of these values through supernatural means.
In this post, I'll focus on the former group: Folk Buddhists. But first, a few definitions. Primal religions, sometimes called animism, use local knowledge of supernatural power to address people’s immediate felt needs: safety, health, prosperity, good relationships. Primal religion isn't a unified system of beliefs; it's flexible, with variations among individuals and groups. Examples that might sound familiar to an American include athletes’ good-luck rituals, horoscopes, knocking on wood, and voodoo. Primal religion's spiritual specialists, shamans, mainly perform rituals for adherents.
By contrast, formal religions like Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam usually address more abstract questions about salvation, eternity, and the meaning of life. They feature sacred scriptures and spiritual specialists who not only lead rituals but also focus on educating devotees and providing moral assistance.
Folk religions mix both primal and formal religions, fitting “local knowledge of the supernatural” into the philosophical framework of a formal religion. The Western Christmas tradition originated this way. The Roman Catholic church allowed its followers to continue celebrating the winter solstice using lights and evergreen trees, but assigned it new religious meaning. (Interestingly, in Cambodia and other parts of the global South, Christmas has no connotations with lights, trees, or cold weather.)
Most Cambodians today practice a folk version of Theravada Buddhism, which is known for adapting easily to prior religious practices. Cambodia’s primal religion is likewise particularly flexible and has thrived under Hinduism, Buddhism, and Communism at different points in history. This means that most Cambodian monks perform local rituals as well as Buddhist ones, and pagodas contain altars and statues for local spirits that don't appear in Buddhist teachings. It also means that Cambodians often pursue supernatural power from outside sources. Cambodians call their traditional beliefs prahman-sesna because it has strong ties with Cambodia's ancient practices of Brahman Hinduism. They believe prahman-sesna is "powerful, but amoral in nature." Though the spirits help solve people's practical needs, they operate outside of Buddhist virtues and may even require adherents to violate Buddhist principles.
Whole books have been written about all the supernatural forces that some Cambodians believe in and pay homage to. (I just read a great one called Spirit Worlds.) Buddhism teaches that Buddha has achieved nirvana and is therefore inaccessible today. So he can't hear prayers or help people day-to-day. Plus, he'd probably tell them that they need to patiently endure hardship to work out their bad karma from a past life. Rather, most Cambodians have multiple shrines or altars in and around their homes, each for a specific type of spirit offering protection but requiring devotion. When people face illness, financial need, a wayward family member, or calamity, they may seek supernatural help from one of many sources. Most spirits are capricious but sometimes provide the needed assistance. There's a continuum from completely benevolent spirits (Buddha's helpful servants, the Boramey) to disturbing forms of black magic abhorred by most Cambodians. All of this comes at a cost, and Cambodians can expend enormous energy and money trying to enlist the support of spirits or avoid their torment, often through human mediums or spiritual leaders who charge money. Spirits always take from the human at least as much as they give; their demands may include not only respect and faith, but also vows, incense, or tangible gifts.
Cambodians believe that relationships with a spirit require constant maintenance. Don't mess with them; angry spirits can inflict illness, loss, and even death. You must continue obeying them to keep them on your side. For example, if you want to become a shaman, a demon will enter you and place demands on you. (Sometimes demon possession is also involuntary.) One of Jeff's respondents describes his experiences as a shaman:
To gain supernatural power we must
provide offerings and prayers and persistently follow rules. After that the
spirit will cover and control us. We understand this to mean the spirit
protects and preserves us.
They [the spirit entities] command
us to fast, fast from meat, walking under white shirts, different things. For me
I had to fast from people touching my head on Sundays. If I didn’t protect myself
and someone touched my head on a Sunday, I would get very sick.
When the French
took on Cambodia as a protectorate in 1863, they asked the king for a map of
the country. The only map in existence showed all the regional spirits (neak-ta)
that the king needed to honor as he traveled. Neak-ta have power over a given area, which can be as large as a province or as small as a parking lot. Some require animal sacrifices,
even though Buddhism forbids the taking of life. New ones appear often; in Koh Kong where Jeff used to live, a neak-ta was just emerging, the spirit of a respected Buddhist monk who died a few years back. Neak-ta spirits may
inhabit a person, which often brings illness along with power. Cambodians with
Chinese heritage often pursue Chinese neak-ta, which regularly demand self-mutilation
and bloodletting. During the Chinese lantern festival, they gather for a parade
where they distribute “paper talismans, stained by the blood of mediums under
spirit possession.” Devotees believe the blood marks are the spirit’s writing, which brings good luck to those who receive it.
 |
| Yeay Mao is an especially famous neak-ta, said to govern a wide area near the coast; drivers often stop to ask her for safety as they travel through. |
Jeff describes a human corpse as the most dangerous supernatural force in a Cambodian’s everyday life.
Buddhism teaches karma and reincarnation, but to Cambodians, it’s more complicated
than that. Those who have just died are confused, angry ghosts, liable to lash
out and wreak havoc. They need monks and relatives to properly cremate their
bodies, to conduct certain rituals, and to continue caring for them in the afterlife. These beliefs cause anguish
for many whose relatives died in unknown locations during the Khmer Rouge,
according to interviews with Khmer immigrants to the US (Langford, 2009). One respondent
described it this way: “The spirit of someone who has died and has no relatives
to do the ceremony, will wander around like a bird without any tree branches on
which to perch” (Langford, 2009, p. 285). Thirty years later, they still wish they
could free their loved ones from wandering in the forest as ghosts by
relocating their bones to a temple.
If all goes well, some deceased people will become a guardian
spirit for their descendants’ homes. Others will be reincarnated, possibly
after spending time in hell to atone for past misdeeds. It’s not uncommon for a
family to claim that a newborn child is the reincarnation of a recently
deceased relative. Nirvana seems distant if not impossible to most Cambodians -
only monks even have a chance at it, and there are no female monks – so it’s
not a top priority. Instead, they hope their karma will earn them more
tranquility in this lifetime or the next.
Based on his interviews, Jeff concludes that Khmer Folk Buddhists' highest value is sok, or tranquility, in one's heart and one's way of life (especially concerning family). He identifies five sub-values that contribute to the feeling that sok is present in oneself and one's loved ones: relational connectedness (good relationships), enhanced prospects (prosperity and a bright future), protection from loss (ex. lost livestock), emotional endurance (courage and control over one's emotions), and physical health. 
Suffering in one of these areas, as an individual or within one's family, decreases the sense of sok and moves people toward the opposite end of the spectrum: tok (suffering). This motivates Cambodian Folk Buddhists to seek supernatural power. Jeff notes that in his interviews, respondents rarely discussed Buddhism. Instead, they identified Brahmanism (prahman-sesna), practiced by both Buddhist monks and various types of shamans, as their source of supernatural power. This makes sense since Buddhism is Cambodians' source of authority on morality, transcendent questions, and ultimate destiny, but doesn't offer much help with everyday felt needs.
A lot of this is still abstract for me - things I've heard about but haven't personally experienced. But that's changing a bit. I recently met a new Christian who asked for prayer that a demon would stop possessing his legs every Thursday. How do I respond to that? I'm trying to learn all I can and take my cues from strong Cambodian Christians, as well as veteran missionaries like Jeff. I'm thankful for those who have gone before me in navigating these murky waters!
In Part 2, I'll describe Jeff's findings on the shift in Cambodians' religious logic as they became mature believers, and some implications for discipleship programs.
