1. THE IMPACT OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity impacted the Hmong community quite early in China. Not only were Roman
Catholic missionaries from the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) working in the areas
of Guizhou, Yunnan, and northern Vietnam where the Hmong lived, but also Protestant
missionaries, particularly from the Methodist churches and from the interdenominational
China Inland Mission began working among the Hmong and A Hmao peoples from the last
quarter of the nineteenth century in both Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. They were not as
successful in Guizhou, but in Yunnan several mass conversions were made by one of the
first missionaries, Samuel Pollard from Cornwall, attached to the Bible Christian movement
that later merged into the United Methodist Mission. Pollard (and his son Walter) left several
accounts of his work in China at this time and the deprived and desperate position his
Hmong and A Hmao converts were in after the failure of their various uprisings against
harsh Chinese rule. In some case he interceded for them against wicked or corrupt Chinese
landlords and magistrates. It was Pollard who, with A Hmao helpers, designed the first script
for any Miao language, a form of writing that is still being used by the A Hmao of Yunnan
province. There can be no doubt that converts at this time were in a desperate economic
and political position and welcomed the teachings of Christ as a beacon of hope in their
history.
However, from the start there were confusions and misinterpretations of understanding,
which, according to Pollard’s own writings, caused him considerable grief and upset. Many
of the converts took the words of the Bible too literally, believing that the Day of Judgement
was already at hand, and that the Messiah, whom they identified as a Hmong one, was
shortly to be born. The pronunciation of Jesus as “Yesu” sounded a little like the name of the
Hmong deity Yawm Saub, so they became confused. In one case a Miao woman claimed to
be the sister of Christ and went around winning converts. And it is more than probable that,
hearing that Pollard had bought a Book that was specially for them, as he put it, and coupled
with the fact that he was designing a form of writing for their language into which the Bible
could be translated, many converts believed that this was the fulfillment of the prophecy that
one day the lost form of Hmong writing would be restored to them. Without going too much
into history here, these movements and mass conversions of Hmong to Protestant forms
of missionary Christianity have continued to occur at regular frequent intervals in Vietnam,
Laos, and Thailand up until the present day. In the midst of the unhappy wars in Laos in the
1960s, for instance, three Hmong men traveled about the country claiming to be the Holy
Trinity and seeking to convert other Hmong. Around the same time the Communist Party of
Thailand tricked many Thailand Hmong into leaving their villages and fleeing to what turned
out to be a communist base in Chiangrai province by spreading rumors of the birth of a
Hmong Messiah there.
The impact of Christianity on the Hmong has been dramatic, unlike the slow adoption of
Buddhist values and practices, and it has differed somewhat between different churches and
sects. In general the Catholic missionaries have taken a more long-sighted view of Hmong
culture and custom and in many cases actively encouraged or sponsored the documentation
of traditional Hmong practices such as the death rituals and shamanic ceremonies.
Protestant missionaries such as the Presbyterians who worked in Thailand have generally
adopted an approach that is much more culturally intolerant, often burning household altars
and forbidding any kind of ancestral or funeral practice. And different sects have adopted
different approaches; for example, the Seventh-Day Adventists were known for not allowing

2. even the consumption of pork in northern Thailand. In the last two decades further changes
have taken place in the spreading of Christianity, because most pastors now are Hmong
themselves, unlike tthe fairly recent past when the missionaries were almost all American,
French, or from other Western nations.
In Vietnam, and to a lesser extent in Laos, Christianity is still disapproved of by the
socialist authorities, and in Vietnam the increasing Hmong adoption of Christianity in recent
years has been seen as a sign of their wishes for subversion and has been savagely
repressed with the slaughter of household animals belonging to Hmong Christians, their
arrests, and even their executions. The Chinese government, too, keeps a very careful
watch on mass adoptions of Christianity by the Hmong in its border provinces. The Hmong
response to this persecution has been in some cases flight (several families disappeared
into Burma from Yunnan for this reason in the 1990s), and particularly in Vietnam, even
suicide. The Christian faith has a very strong appeal, partly because it originated from
Western missionaries, whom the Hmong have traditionally identified as powerful advocates
who would deliver them from oppression by other local dominant groups. Christianity also
teaches about the second coming of Christ, which meshes with Hmong mythical belief about
the coming of a Hmong king to unite all Hmong under his rule as it did with the converts
made by Pollard. In such cases Christianity may be seen by converts as a part of their
culture and traditions, an aspect that offers them hope in the face of oppression.
The kinship-based clan or lineage is important in Hmong society at every level and
there is a customary need to perform ancestral and shamanic rituals at times of life crises
and at particular points in the annual calendar to affirm and maintain that identity. However,
once an individual or even a family or group of families converts to Christianity, it becomes
virtually impossible for communal social activities, such as those at weddings, funerals, or
even the New Year, to be performed together any more. Villages in Thailand and elsewhere
have become severely fragmented by these issues. It is fair to say that families, lineages,
and whole communities have been riven by divisions between Christians and non-Christians.
There are cases of shamans converting to Christianity, or of fathers whose sons refuse to
follow them, or of children converting for reasons of strong faith against the wishes of their
parents.
Many younger Hmong also convert on the pretext that the Hmong traditional rituals that
each married male has to perform for his family are too difficult to learn, or are not relevant
to their modern needs. However, in many cases these conversions are matters of genuine
faith and belief and arise from a feeling that the older Hmong beliefs are superstitious
or based on fear, as pointed out by Dowman. Often a succession of unfortunate events
such as illness or crop failure is pointed to as the result of the conversion, or refusal or
failure to convert. In Canada, the United States, and elsewhere conflicts over the adoption
of Christianity have become endemic. In these countries it was often local churches that
sponsored the arrival of Hmong refugees after 1975 and some converted out of a sense of
obligation to the sponsors, while others came into conflict with their sponsors as occurred
with the sponsorship of Hmong families by the Mennonites in Canada. In Australia the
conversion to Christianity of a Hmong shaman who had been sponsored to come to the
country owing to the shortage of shamans caused deep resentment as the individual
concerned was seen as reneging on his commitment and using the conversion to avoid
his community obligations. For a Christian, perhaps the most serious issue is the inability
to take full part in the funeral rituals for the soul of a deceased relative or parent. However,
debates and disagreements have also centered on other ritual events and practices such as

3. customary weddings and the traditional practice of bridewealth payments.
An important contributing reason to the rifts that have developed within the Hmong
community over the adoption of Christianity has been that some Christian denominations,
especially in the United States, are so rigid in their teachings that they dismiss all Hmong
traditional practices as paganism, so that their Hmong converts are forced to cut off all ties
with their relatives and clan members who remain faithful to the Hmong traditional system.
Some sects see all traditional rituals as tainted by demons, and converts are not allowed to
join in any feasts arising from these rituals. This kind of cultural intolerance further erodes
mutual obligations between family and clan members, because the more fundamentalist
Christian Hmong may refuse to provide help with family celebrations or community events
that involve some religious activities. Despite this, some of the bigger Hmong churches are
active with their own missionary work among fellow Hmong in China and Southeast Asia,
both through conversion in the field and through missionary radio broadcasts from the United
States and the Philippines.
One must not forget the agony of individual decision-making that the adoption of
Christianity involves in many cases, besides the communal conflicts drawn attention to here.
Cases of conversion back and forth several times are very common. Many Hmong may wish
to become Christian or leave their ancestral belief system behind, but feel constrained by the
presence of an elderly parent or relative for whom the absence of a traditional funeral would
be a calamity. Where a girl from a traditional family marries a Christian Hmong, or a brother
converts against the wishes of his father, the personal traumas caused can be tremendous.
At Hmong New Year in the United States, Christian Hmong also hold a family feast but
combine it with Christian songs and blessings, while some hold the feast in a restaurant or
hotel. It has become more of a private, family celebration than a public event, and may not
be held on the exact date.
The issue in the wider sense comes down to one of Hmong identity and how being
Hmong is to be defined in the future. The introduction of Christianity often challenges this
very identity, the traditional leadership structures and often the traditional authority of men in
the family, so that it involves not just relations between men and women, but also relations
between the younger generation and their elders, and the traditional aspect owed by wives
to their husbands as by youth to their elders. So the issue of the adoption of Christianity
becomes conflated with other changes in the relations between genders and generations
that are taking place in the new lives of the Hmong today, not just in the United States or
other advanced economies, but also in the rapidly modernizing society of Thailand and the
more urbanized parts of Asia where Hmong families and individuals live. Many members of
the older generation may feel that the younger generation are losing their Hmong culture
and therefore their “Hmong-ness” by not being able to speak Hmong, adopting ways seen as
non-Hmong and turning their backs on traditional customs. But others, not only among the
younger generation, feel that it is possible to remain Hmong while adopting new ways and
customs, and that being Hmong may and indeed should be defined in different ways from
those of the past.
Besides membership of the Catholic Church, many Protestant groups, including the
Christian Missionary Alliance, the Assembly of God, the Baptist, Lutheran, and Pentecostal
churches, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, there are small groups of messianic Hmong
who seek to revive the traditions of their people in new and unexpected ways, such as
a group of four families in Australia who have retreated to the mountains of the Atherton
Highlands to practice a new faith with newly designed rituals that they see as traditional and

4. as a way of remaining Hmong in the face of pressures to become Australian. And there is a
small community of Hmong in Portland, Oregon, who converted to the Baha’i faith in Laos,
where some believers still remain.
Despite these conflicts and divisions, the overwhelming majority of the Hmong today
remain attached to some degree or other to the more traditional beliefs of their ancestors,
and even those in Western countries often try to maintain traditional practices of ancestor
respect and shamanism as best they can. Behind these beliefs there is a strong substratum
of wisdom and belief in the harmony of nature and the need of humans to live in appropriate
accord with the natural world that remains an encouragement and inspiration for many
Hmong people.
Gary Yia Lee and Nicholas Tapp, 2010, Culture and Customs of the Hmong