Lisu Church is a Christian church of an ethnic minority of southern China, Myanmar, Thailand and a part of India. The Chinese government's State Administration for Religious Affairs has proposed considering Christianity the official religion of the Lisu. [1]
Christian missionaries worked in the Lisu area from the early 20th century. The first to work among the Lisu, in the Yunnan province in China, was James O. Fraser with the China Inland Mission; he also developed the written Lisu language and the Fraser Alphabet, which has been officially adopted by the Chinese government. [2] [3] Reading and writing in Lisu was mainly developed by the church and, in some villages, the membership of the Christian church comprises far more than half the population. [4] The Lisu Church has both the Holy Bible and a Christian hymn book in its own language. As an originally orally-based culture, Lisu hymn singing has become a centerpiece in Lisu Christian worship and practice. [5] [6]
The Chinese Lisu Church has training centers for evangelists in Fugong and Lushui. Lisu pastors are trained at the Theological University of Kunming. There is a shortage of pastors in the Lisu churches, according to representatives of the church. The church is part of the official Protestant Church of China, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Sunday church services take place mainly in Lisu.
Of the 18,000 Lisu who lived in Fugong in 1950 - 3,400 adhered to the Christian faith. As of 2007, it was estimated that 80-90 percent of the 70,000 professed the Christian faith. [7] It is estimated that there are now nearly 300,000 total Lisu Christians. [1] More than 75,000 Lisu Bibles have been legally printed in China following this growth. [7]
The Lisu people are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group who inhabit mountainous regions of Myanmar (Burma), southwest China, Thailand, and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.
Christianity in Iran dates back to the early years of the religion during the time of Jesus, predating Islam. The Christian faith has always comprised a minority in Iran under its previous state religions; initially Zoroastrianism in historical Persia, followed by Sunni Islam in the Middle Ages after the Arab conquest, and Shia Islam since the Safavid conversion of the 15th century; although it had a much larger representation in the past than it does today. Iranian Christians have played a significant part in the historical Christian mission: currently, there are at least 6000 churches and 380,000–1,500,000 Christians in Iran.
The Nu people are one of the 56 ethnic groups recognized by the People's Republic of China. Their population of 27,000 is divided into the Northern, Central and Southern groups. Their homeland is a country of high mountains and deep ravines crossed by the Dulong, Irrawaddy, and Nujiang rivers. The name "Nu" comes from the fact that they were living near the Nujiang river, and the name of their ethnic group derives from there.
A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as educational or hospital work. Sometimes individuals are sent and are called missionaries, and historically may have been based in mission stations. When groups are sent, they are often called mission teams and they do mission trips. There are a few different kinds of mission trips: short-term, long-term, relational and those that simply help people in need. Some people choose to dedicate their whole lives to mission. Missionaries preach the Christian faith, and provide humanitarian aid. Christian doctrines permit the provision of aid without requiring religious conversion. However, Christian missionaries are implicated in the genocide of indigenous peoples. Around 100,000 native people in California, U.S., or 1/3 of the native population, are said to have died due to missions.
James Outram Fraser was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He pioneered work among the Lisu people, of Southwestern China, in the early part of the 20th century. He is credited with developing the Fraser script for their language.
Christianity is a minority religion in Malaysia. In the 2020 census, 9.1% of the Malaysian population identified themselves as Christians. About two-thirds of Malaysia's Christian population lives in East Malaysia, in the states of Sabah and Sarawak. Adherents of Christianity represent majority (50.1%) of the population in Sarawak, which is Malaysia's largest state by land area. The major Christian denominations in Malaysia include Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Brethren, non-denominational churches, independent Charismatic churches, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians.
James Hudson Taylor was a British Baptist Christian missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission. Taylor spent 51 years in China. The society that he began was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country who started 125 schools and directly resulted in 18,000 Christian conversions, as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work with more than 500 local helpers in all eighteen provinces.
Lisu is a tonal Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan, Northern Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand and a small part of India. Along with Lipo, it is one of two languages of the Lisu people. Lisu has many dialects that originate from the country in which they live. Hua Lisu, Pai Lisu and Lu Shi Lisu dialects are spoken in China. Although they are mutually intelligible, some have many more loan words from other languages than others.
Christianity in China has been present since at least the 3rd century, and it has gained a significant amount of influence during the last 200 years.
Protestants in Vietnam are a religious minority, constituting from 0.5 to 2% of the population. Though its numbers are small, Protestantism is the country's fastest-growing religion, growing at a rate of 600% in the 2000s.
Protestants in Myanmar make up 3% of that nation's population, many of them Baptists. Most Christians are from the minority ethnic groups such as Karen, Lisu, Kachin, Chin, and Lahu. An estimated 0.1 per cent of the Bamar population is Christian.
OMF International is an international and interdenominational Evangelical Christian missionary society with an international centre in Singapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.
In the early 19th century, Western colonial expansion occurred at the same time as an evangelical revival – the Second Great Awakening – throughout the English-speaking world, leading to more overseas missionary activity. The nineteenth century became known as the Great Century of modern religious missions.
Isobel Selina Miller Kuhn, born Isobel Selina Miller, aka, "Belle", known as Isobel Kuhn, was a Canadian Christian missionary to the Lisu people of Yunnan Province, China, and northern Thailand. She served with the China Inland Mission, along with her husband, John, as a Bible translator, church planter, Bible teacher, evangelist and authored nine books about her experiences.
The Borneo Evangelical Church or SIB is an evangelical Christian denomination in Malaysia. The church was organised in 1959 from the work of the Borneo Evangelical Mission with help from the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Indonesia
Stephen Arnold Metcalf was a British Protestant missionary to Japan, the son of George Edgar Metcalf and Elizabeth Mary (Donnelly) Metcalf, China Inland Mission missionaries to the Eastern Lisu/Lipo minority of Yunnan Province. He was born in Kunming, China.
George Edgar ‘Eddie’ Metcalf, Chinese name 王懷仁 Wáng Huáirén, was a British Protestant missionary serving in China with the China Inland Mission and credited with the first translation of the New Testament for the Eastern Lisu/Lipo minority.
The Reverend George J. Geis was an American Baptist minister and anthropologist of German descent, best known for his missionary work in northeastern Burma. He promoted Christianity amongst the Kachin people, a group which he also studied, collecting general ethnographical data about them. He arrived in Burma with his wife in 1892, and spent most of the rest of his life there, establishing missions throughout Kachin State and Shan State. Geis is best known for his work in Myitkyina in Kachin State, but in the 1930s he established a mission in Kutkai in Shan State, and at the time of his death in 1936 was working there at the Kachin Bible Training School.
The Bible has been translated into many of the languages of China besides Chinese. These include major minority languages with their own literary history, including Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian and Uyghur. The other languages of China are mainly tribal languages, mainly spoken in Yunnan in Southwest China.
Singapore Bible College (SBC) is an evangelical Bible college in Singapore. SBC has over 500 students, representing 25 countries. The current principal is Rev Dr Clement Chia.