Evangelism and education: The making of the Zo people into a Christian community

Abstract

Imparting education by Christian missionaries to the locals of a non-literate society was not an end in itself, rather it was a means to an end. Evangelizing needed to go hand-in-hand with church planting and institutionalisation of the church establishment. To fulfil this mission, it was necessary to deploy locals but first equip them with the ability to read and write, as reading the Bible is necessary for spiritual growth, which necessitated the introduction of education among the local youths. This paper delineates how the Christian missionaries groomed and deployed the local youths for evangelism among the Zo people in the Indo-Myanmar borderland.