INTRODUCTION

The present volume, outlining as it does the history of the Baptist Church in Burma during the one hundred and fifty years since its beginning, is a most timely publication as the Sesquicen- tennial Celebration of the coming of the Judsons to Burma is celebrated in 1963.

Our thanks go to the authors of this Baptist Chronicle, Maung Shwe Wa, author of Book One, and to Rev. and Mrs. Erville E. Sowards and the others who have written individual chapters of Book Two. They have searched and sifted the source material of fifteen decades to provide a background for an understanding and interpretation of the data in the context of conditions prevailing in our times. Their only reward is the satisfaction of a worthy task well done.

Baptist churches in Burma owe their beginnings to Rev. and Mrs. Adoniram Judson who were the very first Protestant missionaries to leave American shores. As a result of their work and that of the early Burmese Christians themselves, the first continuing churches for Burma nationals had their origin.

Baptists of Burma owe a debt of gratitude to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions of the Congregational Church for making it possible for these first’ young missionaries to come to the East, and to American Baptists for having adopted and supported them and nearly eight hundred others during the past century and a half.

The first American groups to begin sharing the Christian gospel with people of other countries, the Congregational and Baptist churches, confronted novel developments and unforeseen problems in carrying the Good News around the globe. Baptists in Burma have pioneered through a hundred and fifty years, marked by very rapid and extensive changes, during which they have contributed to the redrawing of the contours of race relations, the development of isolated frontier peoples, and the spread of education and social services. The Baptist form of church organization has permitted the Christian groups in the various parts of the country to act freely as guided by their own experience and insights, not being bound by any central ecclesiastical authority.

This chronicle of the development of the church in Burma is a significant chapter in the growth of the world church. Never before has a Baptist history of Burma been written from the point of view of the national church. There are books about individual missionaries and their work, but this book traces the planting and development of the church in Burma during the one hundred and fifty years from its very beginning. The centre of gravity for such a chronicle lies in Burma where this book has been written.

This volume high-lights the transfer of responsibility from the Baptist Mission to the churches of Burma co-operating in the Burma Baptist Convention. With the transfer of responsibility, it is essential that this Convention efficiently co-ordinate the working of the churches, lest dissension enter and destroy the voluntary working unity which has been built up through the years. We hope that this book will help us recall the certainty of our spiritual forefathers as to the adequacy and relevancy of the Gospel, and give an overwhelming sense of mission.

We hope that the unfinished task of the church, which was begun so nobly in 1813 and which is still a venture of uncharted ways in the upheavals of the Far East, will stir us with a burning desire to rededicate ourselves as the Company of the Committed at every level of our lives, as an unconditional response to the Crucified and Risen Lord, as did the Judsons and our spiritual forefathers.

Rev. Aye Myat Kyaw, General Secretary Burma Baptist Convention. Rangoon, July 13, 1963.		Rev. U Ba Hmyin, Chairman Sesquicentennial Celebrations Committee.