University of Dayton eCommons Music Faculty Publications Department of Music 2021 "Jesus Is Not a Foreign God":Christian Music-Making in Burma/ Myanmar Heather MacLachlan University of Dayton,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/mus_fac_pub Part of the Music Commons eCommons Citation MacLachlan, Heather, ""Jesus Is Not a Foreign God":Christian Music-Making in Burma/Myanmar" (2021). Music Faculty Publications. 23. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/mus_fac_pub/23 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Music at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Music Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. ‘Jesus Is Not A Foreign God’: Baptist Music Making in Burma/Myanmar Christians in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, also known as Myanmar, make up approximately five percent of the national population. The Christian community of Burma includes both Catholics and Protestants, and the Protestants are divided into many denominations. Baptist Christians are predominant among this group, and they provided most of the ethnographic information upon which this article is based. In the article I argue that twenty-first century Baptists in Burma fulfill both aspects of a “twofold legacy” bequeathed to them by Adoniram Judson, the first Baptist missionary to Burma, and that their fulfillment of this legacy is manifest in their musical practices. I further argue that it has been, and continues to be, to Burmese Baptists’ advantage to emphasize both aspects of this religious legacy, because at various times both aspects have highlighted their affiliation with more powerful groups inside Burma.