Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Sven Trakulhun, "Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Sven Trakulhun, "Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Siam had been dealing with Christian missionaries for centuries, but from the 1830s a new wave of Protestant missionaries began to work in Siam, just as the European imperial powers were encroaching on Southeast Asia. They brought with them modern science and technology, which was of interest to the Siamese elite, but at the same time they challenged Siam’s official Theravada Buddhist religious tradition. Coincidentally, a reform movement in Siamese Buddhism got underway in the 1830s, led by Prince, later King, Mongkut (r.1851-68), then still a monk. The missionaries were largely unsuccessful in converting Thais to Christianity, but to what extent did the new Protestant Christianity influence the Buddhist reform movement?
This is the question that Sven Trakulhun seeks to answer in his new book, Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand (U Hawaii Press, 2024).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
View all episodes
By New Books Network
4.5
44 ratings
Siam had been dealing with Christian missionaries for centuries, but from the 1830s a new wave of Protestant missionaries began to work in Siam, just as the European imperial powers were encroaching on Southeast Asia. They brought with them modern science and technology, which was of interest to the Siamese elite, but at the same time they challenged Siam’s official Theravada Buddhist religious tradition. Coincidentally, a reform movement in Siamese Buddhism got underway in the 1830s, led by Prince, later King, Mongkut (r.1851-68), then still a monk. The missionaries were largely unsuccessful in converting Thais to Christianity, but to what extent did the new Protestant Christianity influence the Buddhist reform movement?
This is the question that Sven Trakulhun seeks to answer in his new book, Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand (U Hawaii Press, 2024).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More shows like New Books in World Christianity
View all
The NPR Politics Podcast
25,830 Listeners
Pod Save America
87,119 Listeners
The Daily
112,105 Listeners
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
7,220 Listeners
The Bulwark Podcast
12,490 Listeners
Converging Dialogues
46 Listeners