Lindsey Fields and Dr. Jacob Hickman, Anthropology

Introduction:

Hmong of Thailand find themselves at the beginning of the 21st century embedded in a unique religious context. Though traditionally, Hmong people have practiced a mixture of spirit rituals and ancestral worship known as Dab Qhuas shamanism, in an increasingly globalized world these traditional practices have in some cases given way as Hmong in some locales are beginning to convert to other religions. Although Thailand does not have a significant Christian population, Western Christianity has begun to take seed among this people. Additionally, a surge of home-grown religious revitalization movements is emerging. Messianic groups professing a more correct set of ritual practices and prophesying of a reunification of Hmong people are taking hold. For my senior thesis in anthropology, in the summer of 2013 I conducted fieldwork in a rural Hmong village in the highlands of Northern Thailand studying the process of religious conversion.

Methodology:

In gathering data about these religions, I chose to focus on studying converts during time in the field. I came to Thailand with the desire to understand why Hmong were converting from traditional shamanism to these new belief systems. In an attempt to answer this puzzle I attended worship services. Every Sunday I went to church with the Christian congregation, and digitally recorded the majority of those hour-and-a-half to two-hour meetings. I also attended several Messianic services. I was able to visit this faithʼs temple site on several occasions, located in the mountains approximately an hourʼs drive and spend the night. Ultimately, my primary mode of data became conversion narratives. With these stories, I was able to study both the ways in which converts spoke about their past and analyze the degree in which a rupture may have taken place. In so doing, I was able to recognize the similarities in ideology and practice between those present in traditional shamanism and in the those they identified as part of their current faiths.

Results:

This unique religious situation of this Hmong village offers a valuable context for the study of the processes of conversion from traditional shamanism to these new faiths. While many anthropologists explain conversion as a process of cultural continuity in which elements of traditional religions persist as part of the process of conversion and remain part of the new belief system, others offer a model of conversion in which the convert breaks from the past completely. This study offers an alternative conceptualization of conversion, suggesting that discontinuity and continuity are not as dichotomous as they seem, employing a particular local context as a case study.

Hmong converts with whom I interacted in a rural, highland village of Northern Thailand in the summer of 2013 experienced and narrated their conversion as a discontinuous process with a complete break from their past practice of traditional shaman rituals. While the adoption of a new faith constitutes a rupture in belief, the undeniable similarities between traditional shamanism and the new faiths of Christianity and Messianism reveal that a much more continuous process of conversion is taking place. In blending former assumptions with new faith, syncretism links old and new values and practices together. This blending is possible, I argue, because of the underlying ontological assumptions that permeate the bounds of these three religious entities.

Discussion:

Although Hmong converts in this Northern Thai village experience their conversion and new life to be a complete turn from their shaman past, similarities in ideology and practice reveal that the explanation is not that simple. In adopting a new faith in which belief is taught and required, these individuals do experience a form of rupture, as anthropologist Joel Robbins identifies in his model of conversion. However, I have shown that this turning away is neither as simple or complete as either these Hmong converts or Robbins suggests.

In converting to a new faith, these converts begin to believe in a different sort of deity. Yet, the belief in this new god does not completely transform the way in which they see the world. Rather, their new beliefs are added to the prior underlying assumptions that remain in place. These structures of significance, of which Marshall Sahlins discusses in his Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities, cannot be changed. Though added upon to create structures of conjuncture, when, in the case of my work, converts adopt a new faith, the underlying assumptions about the world persist. This syncretic union of underlying assumptions and new beliefs allows Hmong Christians and Hmong Messianic members to engage in new practices that share significant similarities with shaman rituals and that serve many of the same functions.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, the conversion experiences of these Hmong acolytes reveal that the concepts of a discontinuous conversion and cultural continuity are not completely dichotomous. Rather, the syncretism of persistent ontology and the introduction of new beliefs allows for both conceptualizations of conversion to take place