Missionary Encounters at the China-Vietnam Border: The case of the Hmong / 中越边境的传教士活 动---以赫蒙人为例

Abstract This paper examines missionary encounters that faciliate the extraordinary conversion of nearly one third of approximately one million Hmong in Vietnam to Evangelical Protestantism in the last two decades. Since this conversion is not officially approved by the Vietnamese government, these missionary encounters and the networks that facilitate them are highly informal and largely underground. This paper argues that the informality of Hmong evangelical networks as well as the conversion that they facilitate can only be fully understood if one seriously takes into account their ethnic and transnational aspects. Ethnic ties are important factors that motivate overseas Hmong to carry out missionary work in Vietnam, and such ties are also the primary reason why evangelism, carried out by Hmong missionaries, was and is so readily accepted by so many Hmong people in the country. In other words, it is from an ethnic aspiration to change their group’s marginal position and to become modern that many Hmong in Vietnam decide to convert to Christianity. Similarly, the missionary zeal of many American Hmong Christians is connected to their ethnic commitment to the Hmong in Asia while simultaneously shaped by their conversion to Protestantism during and after their migration to America. In this paper, I will show that it is also because of an ethnic commitment that many Hmong missionaries undertake the risk and danger to evangelize in Vietnam.