Cambodia’s relative religious freedoms have encouraged Christian groups to set up shop in the Kingdom, but they risk creating ‘rice Christians’ when they preach to the poor

ELDERS Jones and Henderson cycle calmly through Phnom Penh’s rush-hour traffic, Bible-bags strapped to their backs, white cotton shirts snapping in the breeze. It is becoming a familiar sight in Cambodia: clean-cut young missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – better known as the Mormon Church – taking to the streets to spread the word of God and the doctrines of Mormonism.

“I made a decision to come here because of my belief and my desire to serve the Saviour,” said Elder Henderson, originally from Hawaii. As Mormon missionaries, Jones and Henderson are awake at five and proselytise until eight in the evening, seven days a week. Both are nearing the end of their gruelling two-year stints in Phnom Penh, but look back on their time here with no regrets. “My purpose is to welcome others to come into the Word of Christ,” Henderson said. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love it.”

In the church’s plush new mission centre on Street 63, they sit with three Cambodian students in a small circle, reading excerpts from dog-eared copies of the Book of Mormon and answering questions posed by the students. The entire lesson is conducted in fluent Khmer, helped further by what Jones and Henderson describe as the natural curiosity of their Cambodian students. “There’s a lot of curiosity. There’s a great number of people who are willing to hear the message that we are sharing,” Henderson said.

Elder Jones, originally from Idaho, said the friendliness of the locals was an advantage for the Mormon church, which was founded in the United States in 1830 and has since grown into a global religion with over 13 million adherents, according to Utah’s Salt Lake Tribune. “We just go and talk to [Cambodians] while they’re here,” he said. “The Lord is in charge, and he’s taking care of things.”

With a growing membership of more than 8,000, Mormonism has lead a significant demographic shift towards Christianity in Cambodia since the early 1990s. According to the US State Department’s 2007 International Religious Freedom Report, Christians make up around two percent of Cambodia’s population (approximately 282,000 people), dispersed amongst 100 organisations and denominations.

Compared to more restrictive neighbouring countries like Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, Cambodia also has a relatively open climate for missionary work. The law requires all religious groups to register with the Ministry of Cults and Religious Affairs if they wish to build places of worship or conduct religious activities. But according to the Religious Freedom report, “there is no penalty for failing to register, and in practice some groups do not.” As a result, only 900 of Cambodia’s 2,400 churches are officially registered with the government.

Dok Narin, undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Cults & Religions, said that the Constitution of Cambodia guaranteed freedom of religion, and that there are few laws to regulating the day-to-day activities of missionaries. “We cannot control them, as we don’t have any special laws,” he said, adding that more regulation was desirable but difficult to balance with a commitment to religious freedom. “The Ministry plans laws to exercise more controls on religion, but we are afraid that it may affect the constitution,” he said.

In February 2003, the government reacted to growing local discontent by imposing a ban on door-to-door proselytising, which curtailed the activities of the more energetic missionary organisations, such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. But the lack of a firm regulatory framework and the proliferation of unregulated churches has created fresh temptations, and the missionary community has long been plagued by rumours that some were exploiting the nation’s poverty to attract converts – a problem Christian leaders say goes to the heart of doing missionary work in Cambodia.

“When a country like Cambodia opens up you get greater freedoms to operate,” said Vernon Elvish, a missionary with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who arrived in Phnom Penh in 1992 and have a dedicated congregation of around 300. “In one way that’s a good thing, but then you can also get the bad side of that freedom coming in,” he said, adding that rumours of exploitation by Christians were persistent, though hard to verify.

Elvish said by avoiding hand-outs, his church had made a strong effort to maintain its integrity. “We’re very conscious of making ‘rice Christians,’” he said, referring to those in developing countries who change religions on a material incentive. “Our organization is purely a religious organisation… We don’t even teach English here, so if they want to become a Jehovah’s Witness, it’s because they want to become a Jehovah’s Witness, not because they’re getting any material benefit out of it.”

David Manfred, a missionary with the Christian & Missionary Alliance (CAMA), founded in Cambodia in 1923, said the openness of Cambodia made the country tempting for some idealistic missionaries and that the issue of “rice Christians” was a constant ethical concern. “My own sense is that some groups have probably come here and out of zealousness have used some methodologies that we wouldn’t feel comfortable with,” Manfred told the Post. “There has been a tendency — not just on the part of expatriates, but also with Cambodians — to inflate [conversion] numbers, or to count them differently. It’s actually something we work quite hard to try and avoid, because that would not be the kind of faith that we’re looking for.”

Mormon mission president Robert Winegar, a former dentist from Layton, Utah, said the church spent between $400,000 and $1 million per year on various charity, education and development programs, but that such activities were tightly sealed off from the organisation’s religious work. “In all of these [projects] we never talk about the church. They are part of the same organisation but are fostered separately,” he said, adding that the church asked more of its members than its members asked of the church. According to Mormon doctrines, each church member is required to pay ten percent of their income as a tithe to help support its activities. “Not only do we not use poverty as a lure to join the church; we invite [members] to donate ten percent to assist the church to grow,” he said. “Gifts only make the individual dependent on the giver.”

Some missionaries have gone further, distancing themselves from the large international churches that they say have made Christians dependent on large injections of foreign church money. Michael Freeze, a Baptist missionary who has worked in Cambodia since 2000, said that after four years of running a church in Phnom Penh, he became disillusioned and now focuses on small Bible study sessions with dedicated students. “It became apparent to me that [Cambodians] were coming to church but not wanting to take part in building the church,” he said. “That’s why I no longer want to have a big structure and have them think that ‘this is the Western money train, I want to get on board.’”

An independent Khmer-American pastor, who declined to be named because of his associations with several Cambodian missionary organisations, agreed that the massive economic gap between Westerners and most Cambodians turned proselytising into an ethical minefield. While outright bribes were rare, he said that patron-client relationships and economic dependency were hard to avoid. “It’s good to give, but you have to be very careful how you give. You come to Cambodia with SUVs and tons of rice, and that’s virtually bribery in itself,” he said.

The pastor said the financial concerns of many large church groups had compromised their aims. “When you put money into play, less and less comes out of it. If you build your foundation on money, religion will crumble,” he said, singling out the Mormons – Cambodia’s richest Christian organisation – for criticism. “I believe that churches have made a lot of mistakes, in terms of their focus on finance and on getting their numbers up. That’s where the church of Mormon comes in. They know how to work the system… But all the money in the world can’t buy God.”

Freeze agreed that economic and cultural misunderstandings created a lot of complications for missionaries, something he was now conscious to avoid. “They’re not that blunt [about bribes]. But in Asia, when I offer you something, there’s an expected return. If I’m giving you a job and an education, you might feel obligated to follow me. Some Cambodians did that to me, and I knew it was wrong.”

CAMA’s Manfred said that in terms of building local capacity and avoiding the pitfalls of dependency, the principles of effective missionary activity were similar to the principles of effective aid work. “I think that the use of money is an area where we have to be hugely careful, so that these kinds of patron-client relationships are not established. In many ways I see that the work of starting a church in a healthy way is very similar to the principles of doing development work in a healthy way,” he said. Given the lack of government oversight, Manfred added, some Christian groups imposed a regime of self-regulation on themselves, setting benchmark standards for their own activities in Cambodia. To this end, CAMA has associated itself with the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia (EFC), an umbrella organisation representing a large number of missions, which has a stringent code of conduct prohibiting the use of material “enticements.”

“One of the things that we look at is money from the outside, and this is one thing where there is a broad difference of opinion amongst the different Christian groups. We really limit the amount of money coming from the outside in terms of direct support [to churches],” he said, adding that such support built financial dependency into the church’s day-to-day operations. “My problem with [such support] is when they try to wean themselves off, there’s already a bit of a dependency, and often they’ll just look for another patron.”

But Freeze said much negative missionary work was a result of over-enthusiasm and a lack of understanding of the local context, something that could be overcome through long experience in the country. “Most groups have genuine heart, but a lack of understanding about Cambodian culture, and that totally cuts out a lot of what they’re doing,” he said. “A lot of the problem here is a misunderstanding of culture.”

[Published in the Phnom Penh Post, September 3, 2008]