2008 Letter No 06

Each month Bill writes a pastor's letter for our monthly church magazine called 'The Messenger'. Here is the letter for June 2008:

I had already prepared a letter for this month’s Messenger, but this morning I decided that I needed to write something else instead. I must write about the situation in Burma since Cyclone Nargis hit last month.

We have probably all heard that the military government which rules Burma has been blocking many of the efforts to bring aid from outside the country. The Burmese regime is used to ruling with a rod of iron and wants to keep tight controls on foreigners and on foreign aid entering the country. While aid agencies are now finding it easier to gain access to the affected areas and to carry out their work, the situation is still very difficult.

But there is another part of this story which I had not heard before today. It is the story of how Christians have been affected. I knew that there were Christians in Burma. In fact I shared a house with a Christian from Burma for a short time, while we were both students at Bristol Baptist College. After hearing about the disaster, I knew that there were almost certainly Christians among the more than 78,000 who have died, and I wondered if my friend might have been among them. However, even though I knew that Christians must have been among the victims, I had not realised the high proportion of Christians among those who have died and been displaced.

Although Burma is a predominantly Buddhist country, there is also a strong Christian community there. It is stronger in some parts of the country than in others, and stronger among some ethnic groups than others. Today I learned that more than 10,000 of those who have already been confirmed as dead were Baptist Christians, and about another 94,000 Baptist Christians have lost their homes and other property.

And the tragedy does not end there. There is gross discrimination in way aid is being distributed, and at times withheld, according to people’s religious beliefs and ethnic origin. This should not surprise us in a country with an appalling human rights record, which has a history of persecuting the Church. Evidence has been reaching journalists in the West that the Burmese authorities have been diverting aid away from anyone infected with the “C-virus” – in other words anyone who identifies themselves as a Christian. There also seems to be a policy of ethnic cleansing taking place. The Burmese authorities are trying to squeeze out the ethnic Karen people, who have the highest proportion of Christians among them, from the fertile areas where they have been living. There are early signs that, as preparations are being made to rebuild and resettle the areas devastated by the cyclone, the authorities are giving preference to people who are ethnically Burmese rather than the existing Karen people who inhabited the area before the cyclone struck.

This makes it doubly important that we give what support we can, and it also makes it important that we channel that giving effectively. This is a matter for prayer, but it is also a matter for action. For every two Baptists in Britain there is probably one Baptist in Burma who has been made homeless because of this disaster. Now I do not think that our compassion should in any way be limited to those who share our Christian faith, and still less to those who share our particular denominational identity as Baptists. Nevertheless there are deep family ties and family obligations between Christians which led the apostle Paul to write, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6:10)

The money already collected at our church has been channelled through BMS World Mission, which is partnering with Baptist World Aid and with churches in Burma to make sure that aid gets to people according to their need and to ensure that Christians are not discriminated against in the distribution. I have decided that we should keep this way of giving open in the weeks ahead. If you want to give then please either put money in the baskets which are set aside for that purpose after our Sunday services or else put a gift inside an envelope into one of our offering bags and mark the envelope ‘BURMA APPEAL’. Please consider giving and giving generously.