Baptizing Burma

Baptizing Burma provides an important overview of religious change in Burma that provides insights relevant outside the narrow confines of religious studies. A well-researched and thought-out account of Burma, religion, and missionary activity, shedding light on the Judsons’ story, their legacy, and Burmese religious thought. * Asian Review of Books *
Baptizing Burma will spur conversations among diverse scholars about multiple perspectives towards religious objects. * Asian Studies Review *
Baptizing Burma is a very well-organized and clearly-written book which avoids insider jargon. As a result, it will be legible for both area specialists and non-specialists. * Material Religion *
Meticulously researched and theoretically distilled, Baptizing Burma offers fresh understandings of material culture among nineteenth-century Theravada Buddhists and converted Protestant American Baptist Christians in Myanmar. Kaloyanides’s insightful and clearly articulated analysis of religious change focuses on how sacred texts, schools, pagodas, and visual representations were revalorized in dynamic ways that proved transformational for adherents of both traditions. Essential reading for students of Southeast Asian religious cultures and history. -- John Clifford Holt, author of Theravada Traditions: Buddhist Ritual Cultures in Contemporary Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka
Rich with multiperspectival sources and stories, Baptizing Burma offers a fascinating vantage point onto the material culture of nineteenth-century American Baptist missionaries to Burma. Alexandra Kaloyanides invites her reader to consider the lingering resonances of these missionaries and their images, sites of memory, and writings among U.S. and Burmese Baptists today. -- Pamela Klassen, author of The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary's Journey on Indigenous Land
Baptizing Burma reveals the nuanced and agentive interactions between American Baptist missionaries and Burmese Buddhists. Drawing on rich archives in counterintuitive ways, Baptizing Burma stands out for its exploration of religious landscapes and transformations unlimited by the imagined boundaries of Buddhism or Christianity. It is bound to reshape how we understand religion in colonial Burma. -- Alicia Turner, author of Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma
Neither a triumphalist insider account of the heroes of the mission nor a Saidian takedown of imperialist Orientalists, Baptizing Burma examines a series of objects as a window onto the translation from Baptist to Buddhist and vice versa. In the process Kaloyanides provides new ways of thinking about the interaction between Christian missionaries and Buddhists that resonate with recent work on the material aspects of Protestant missions in Africa, the Americas, and other parts of Asia. Because of her close attention to Buddhist doctrine and history, she also offers insights into Buddhist materiality. Not only did Protestants adopt different approaches to the material when they stepped away from their pulpits back home to enter the missionary field, Buddhists too worked within different frameworks of the material depending on their status within local society. -- John Kieschnick, author of Buddhist Historiography in China
As Myanmar continues to grapple with a protracted civil war, the book’s analysis contributes significantly to understanding the enduring impact of foreign missionaries on the country’s socio-religious landscape. * Religious Studies Review *
A well-researched book. * Religion *
A useful piece of scholarship that will be of interest to researchers studying American missions history, as well as those working on Buddhism and on 19th-century Burmese religious movements. * Reading Religion *
Kaloyanides does an excellent job of neither naturalising religion nor overlooking the self-interest that can sometimes colour the Christian movements of the past. * Journal of Religious History *