Christianity in Vietnam

Vietnam’s Catholic community is the second largest in Southeast Asia after the Philippines. Exact figures are hard to come by but estimates vary between six and eight million (seven to ten percent of the population), of which perhaps two-thirds live in the south. The south is also home to the majority of the one million or so adherents to the Protestant faith, known as Tin Lanh, or the Good News, which was introduced by Canadian and American missionaries in the early twentieth century. Perhaps two-thirds of Protestants belong to ethnic-minority groups in the central highlands and northwest mountains. There’s evidence that the number of adherents has been growing rapidly, despite government restrictions on proselytizing.

The first Christian missionaries to reach Vietnam were Portuguese and Spanish Dominicans who landed briefly on the north coast in the sixteenth century. They were followed in 1615 by French and Portuguese Jesuits, dispatched by the pope to establish the first permanent missions. Among the early arrivals was the Frenchman Alexandre de Rhodes, a Jesuit who impressed the northern Trinh lords and won, by his reckoning, nearly seven thousand converts. The inevitable backlash against Christianity, which opposed ancestor worship and espoused subversive ideas such as equality, was not long in coming. In 1630 the Trinh lords expelled all Christians, including de Rhodes, who returned to France where he helped create the Society of Foreign Missions (Société des Missions Etrangères). This society soon became the most active proselytizing body in Indochina; by the end of the eighteenth century it had claimed thousands of converts, particularly in the coastal provinces.

Official attitudes towards Christianity fluctuated over the centuries, though the Vietnamese kings were generally suspicious of the Church’s increasingly political role. The most violent persecutions occurred during the reign of Minh Mang (1820–41), an ardent Confucian, and reached a peak after 1832. Churches were destroyed, the faces of converts were branded with the words ta dao, meaning "false religion", and many of those refusing to renounce their faith were killed; 117 martyrs, both European and Asian, were later canonized. Such repression, much exaggerated at the time, provided the French with a pretext for greater involvement in Indochina, culminating in full colonial rule at the end of the nineteenth century.

Not surprisingly, Catholicism prospered under the French regime. Missions re-opened and hundreds of churches, schools and hospitals were built. Vietnamese Catholics formed an educated elite among a population that counted some two million faithful by the 1950s. When partition came in 1954 many Catholics chose to move south, partly because of their opposition to Communism and partly because the new leader of South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem, was a Catholic. Of the estimated 900,000 Vietnamese who left the North in 1954, it’s said that around two-thirds were Catholic; many of these became refugees a second time in the 1970s.

Diem actively discriminated in favour of the Catholic community, which he viewed as a bulwark against Communism. As a result he alienated large sections of the population, most importantly Buddhists whose protests eventually contributed to his downfall. Meanwhile in North Vietnam the authorities trod fairly carefully with those Catholics who had chosen to stay, allowing them freedom to practise their religion, but the Church was severely restricted and there were some reports of persecution.

After reunification, churches were permitted to function but still came under strict surveillance, with all appointments controlled by the government, and members of the Church hierarchy frequently received heavy jail sentences for opposition to the regime. Since 1986 the party has been working to reduce the tension by re-opening seminaries, allowing the Church to resume religious educational work and releasing some clergy from prison. Catholics throughout Vietnam now regularly attend Mass, and, when the previous Cardinal of Hanoi died in 1990, thousands attended the funeral in the largest postwar demonstration of Catholic faith. Since the government still insists on vetting all appointments, it took more than seven years to find a new cardinal acceptable to both Vietnam and the Vatican. However, relations between the two continue to improve. All the bishoprics are now filled and there’s even talk of re-establishing diplomatic relations in the not too distant future. A senior Vatican emissary visited Hanoi in 2005, though it will undoubtedly be several years before the much hoped-for papal visit occurs.

The situation is not quite so rosy as regards Vietnam’s Protestant communities. While the government now officially recognizes the Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (SECV) and the smaller Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN), based in the north, it remains deeply suspicious of another evangelical branch known as "Dega Protestantism" practised mainly by the ethnic minorities of the central highlands. It’s not so much the belief system itself that the authorities are concerned about, but the movement’s potential as a political force and, specifically, its alleged association with demands from certain minority groups for greater autonomy. There have been (sometimes violent) clashes between ethnic minorities in the central highlands and the authorities in recent years. While the protests were generally sparked by disputes over land and continued poverty, some demonstrators also cited religious persecution amongst their grievances. As a result, the government imposed significant restrictions on all Protestant churches in the region. There are signs that the situation is easing, particularly as regards SECV-affiliated churches, though the government continues to keep a close eye on all Christian activity in the central highlands.