The Orthodox Mission to Southeast Asia: An Interview with Craig Patrick Truglia
"The Protestants do the important work of introducing many Cambodians to Christianity," says Truglia."As these students mature, they become intrigued by what true Christianity is: Orthodoxy. They find this out on the internet, just like converts in the West."
How did you become involved in the missions to Southeast Asia?
My wife is Cambodian, and we both converted to Orthodoxy in 2017. We are traditionalists and affirm that normatively there is no salvation apart from Christ and His life-giving Body, so we were, of course, concerned for her own people who are largely unreached by Christianity, let alone Orthodoxy.
It took a lot of sleuthing on the Internet, but I was able to find a mostly Russian website that provided some contact information for the Cambodian mission. Sysoevites and other generous Russian donors built two beautiful churches and actually bought a plot of land for a third one. So, it was good news to us that Orthodoxy already had a ground game in Cambodia.
We translated an email into Russian and were able to get in contact with Father Roman Postnikov. From there, we started providing financial assistance to the mission. Soon after, we were in regular contact with Hieromonk Paisie Ipate, the rector, and we have been involved ever since.
We did not get to help out with the mission hands-on until a few years after our son was born. At that point, I had begun using my own presence as an evangelist on YouTube to raise additional money for the mission.
The importance of our fundraising in the Anglosphere really took off after the war started in Ukraine. For better or worse, the financial sanctions suddenly cut off the churches in Southeast Asia from their primary donors. Dozens of kind people, some famous but in secret, answered my call to help support these churches, and they did so generously. Another generous donor gave substantial funds to renovate the concrete of the cathedral around the same time. These donors kept the mission alive.
In short, my wife and I are fundraisers for the mission who also take our vacation time to help hands-on about once a year. I think that every parish, even small ones, could adopt an Orthodox mission in a third-world country/global south and help hands-on. It would make a real difference.
What does mission work in the field look like?
Historically, converting royalty and then the conversion of their subjects was the most effective form of missionary work. In the modern era, schools are the most effective strategy as people get an education, adopt the Christian religion, become successful, and affect their societies. Almost every Cambodian I meet who is a Christian went to a Christian school. The Protestants have the most of these in Cambodia, by far. But I thank God we have any.
Since the fall of Imperial Russia, Orthodoxy lacks the resources to compete with the numerous sects, let alone with unbelieving secularism, which is literally financed by every government on the planet. However, Orthodoxy is having its moment on social media, and English is ubiquitous. So, what we do on a phone in New York has effects on missions across the planet.
We laypeople do the best with the limited resources we have. We do English classes (which are structured around the saint of the day), give out candies on Valentine's Day, hand out tracts, and meet with inquirers and parishioners. But the most significant heavy lifting is done by Orthodox clergy and influencers with an online presence. Inquirers in Cambodia know who I am because I do work in Church history and Christian apologetics. My long-term ambition is to eventually open a school.
The Protestants do the important work of introducing many Cambodians to Christianity. As these students mature, they become intrigued by what true Christianity is: Orthodoxy. They find this out on the internet, just like converts in the West.
It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that the mission stays in contact with a Telegram group, as many of the converts and inquirers are teens, and their Buddhist families do not tolerate their children attending a church more than once a month. We try to address their needs through a Khmer website. My wife and Reader Johno make translations of the saints’ lives, which are uploaded on the site. There’s also a Khmer prayer book that is passed around the Telegram group, but it is not fully edited, so it is not on the website.
In short, a mission needs to have both a ground game and a presence on the internet these days.
You mentioned that schools are the most important means of evangelism. What does this cost?
Schools need access to serious donors. I have a friend who helps run a large Protestant school, and he was kind enough to teach me all the forms and the "red tape." If we had the money, we could open the school tomorrow. That said, building a large new school in the capital for hundreds of pupils costs about 10 million dollars. Operating expenses approach about a million. It sounds very expensive, but if one looks at what a school costs in the United States, this is actually very cheap (a small rural school in the USA has an operating budget in the tens of millions annually, let alone buying property, building the school, etc.). Nevertheless, the days of Cambodia being "very cheap" sadly are over since the influx of Chinese investment.
My own education is at Teachers College, Columbia University, so thank God I had the ability to make a serious, working plan for a school down to an annual budget for employees, cost of construction, school materials, cost of tuition for students, and the like. Sadly, we lost our donor for now. We have a plan for a modest secondary school that teaches about 100 pupils, and it would cost about four million dollars. Ideally, we would build right behind the cathedral so we can join the facilities. Four strong parishes could pull it off if they wanted to. With the growth of secularism, I feel the window of opportunity is closing a little bit every year, even in a traditional country like Cambodia. So, we just pray and wait.
Which countries have the largest Orthodox communities?
In Southeast Asia, Thailand has the largest missionary presence. The parishes are built around a core of Russian and Ukrainian expats. This is very similar to the ancient church, where Christian merchants brought their religion with them to Ethiopia and India, and so the earliest missionary presence was substantially the local parishes of people bringing the Orthodox faith with them. Of course, the idea is to evolve in order to serve the needs of both expats and converted locals.
Considering the war between Ukraine and Russia, how does this affect the expats who worship together?
As an outsider, I am not entirely sure, but they appear to get along due to the fact that, as expats, they do not have hardened national loyalties to the extent they may otherwise have. Ideally, as New Martyr Daniel Sysoev says, we ought to be Uranopolitans: our kingdom is not of this world.
What is the liturgical language there?
Slavonic and English are the primary languages, with Khmer as the secondary one. Slavonic is used mainly out of respect for tradition. It appears to me that Russian and Ukrainian expats, who all know a little English because it is the international language, understand more English than Slavonic! As for the Khmer, they prefer English for theological discourse for now because the native Khmer language is so Buddhist-coded that it is really hard to understand Christian distinctives.
As I mentioned beforehand, my wife and Reader Johno are presently translating a saint for each day of the year and hammering out a vocabulary, which we hope can help shift the liturgical language to Khmer. Our resident priest there, Father Roman Postnikov, is fluent in Khmer and also helps.
Are they growing in Southeast Asia? If so, how quickly?
I am not well aware of the ground game in Thailand, but in Cambodia, the growth is exponential though modest. We started maybe with one or two steady Khmer parishioners a few years ago (there are other converts who go very infrequently) to about 15 or so. This sounds not that impressive after years of work, but there is a consistent uptick. The feast day for Saint Panteleimon brought about 25 Khmer, so the number is higher than what we see any given Sunday due to the age of many of the converts precluding frequent attendance. One Khmer told me proudly, "On some Sundays, we outnumber 'the Russians'." I see this as bittersweet, sort of like when a child outgrows a parent.
Our hope is to keep growing to the point where we would have suitable candidates for clergy. One of the catechumens is blessed by Metropolitan Sergius of Singapore to paint icons. They are quite beautiful. But he is only 15 years old! So, we are probably ten years away from another gamechanger: native clergy.
What’s ironic is that being a clergyman in Cambodia is a financial sacrifice for the Cambodian middle class! Most of the converts are middle-class, educated, and English-speaking. This is good because we have no pretend-converts for this reason—there is nothing in it for them other than the small things like salvation!
However, there is a long-term "investment" my wife and I make, which is awfully peculiar at first glance. The mission has to transcend "skin color" and social class. As I said, most missionary success has been with middle-class Khmer, who tend to be lighter-skinned and English-speaking. All Cambodians are not the same in that respect. The majority of Cambodia is darker-skinned and not conversant enough in English to be evangelized in that language. So, we bring a van to a nearby province (Kampong Speu) to bring in inquirers from the countryside, hold English classes for the local children who are not middle-class, etc. We have spent years building a ground game to transcend the social and perhaps quasi-racial barriers specific to Cambodian evangelization. We sow the seeds and await the harvest.
Can you tell us more about your personal experience as a missionary?
I love hanging out and talking about Christianity with anyone. The conversations are really no different than the ones that are had anywhere else in the Anglosphere. Global culture has significantly flattened due to technology. My wife is Cambodian, so we are used to doing normal Cambodian things, and she is, of course, my translator as I speak very little Khmer. That being said, sometimes my own tastes are too Cambodian. I like the authentic "street food" and their traditional coffee; something that is passé among the young in Phnom Penh who prefer much more Western things. For what it’s worth, ants taste like quinoa, and bugs are allowed to be consumed on oil-and-fish days.
Are there aspects of their pre-Christian cultures/religions that dispose them towards Orthodoxy?
They are gender-coded in their language and have a cultural esteem for tradition amidst progress—a strange combination. However, Orthodoxy is "new" yet "old" at the same time to those being evangelized, so this really works for us and, honestly, all Christian evangelism.
The Cambodians are a recovering "failed society" in the sense that their GDP is low, and they are recovering from years of the Khmer Rouge, civil war, and Vietnamese occupation (and it is not altogether clear to Cambodians which was really the worst. It depends on who you talk to). This makes Cambodians very open to listening to new points of view.
We in the West are used to evangelism being something where people look at you peculiarly or slam a door in your face. But as strange as it sounds, they want to be evangelized. If people realize how plentiful the harvest could be and how fertile the soil, we would have more missionaries. I don't think a mission gets more like catching fish in a barrel than Cambodia. I wish everyone would take two weeks off and volunteer. Or, better yet, move there! We would figure out accommodations and everything.
Is the Orthodoxy in these countries developing any distinctively Asian characteristics?
We take our shoes off before entering the Temple. All Asians do this with holy places and their own homes. It reminds me of how Moses removed his footwear because, as God reminded him, he was standing on holy ground.
Are there any cultural obstacles that make it more difficult to become Orthodox?
Respect for tradition is a double-edged sword. Concerned parents prevent the teen inquirers and converts from attending frequently, for example. Furthermore, the hyper-secularism imported from the West is now openly propagandized as an alternate worldview of religious importance, which makes things confusing to Cambodians. "Christianity is the religion of the more successful West we want to emulate" is being obfuscated by "Christianity is just one of several competing worldviews of the West." It was easier when the West kept their immorality in the shadows and did not build it up as something that’s actually moral!
Have any of these communities faced backlash from their non-Christian neighbors? From their governments?
I have only seen the Cambodian people and their government as highly tolerant, even in the more traditional countryside. As an outsider, I personally think the government is doing a good job, all things considered. And they do allow missionary work. The Cambodian nation and people need stability, and they are surrounded by more powerful neighbors. When all is said and done, it’s a careful balance, which I think is being done right. As for the allegations about their democracy, I will simply say that their voter security process—with multiple identifications and fingerprints—is more strenuous than that of the nations who point their fingers at them.
Still, there are certain bureaucratic things specific to Cambodia. Bringing religious literature into the country isn’t a straightforward process unless we print it there. Depending on the locality, one cannot build a church within so many meters of a pagoda and vice versa. I don't view these things as intentional impediments, but they would be speedbumps we are not used to in the United States, for example. Yet I would never lose my job in Cambodia for my religious opinions, while I do what I do with some risk at home because American culture is becoming increasingly unwelcoming to Christianity. So, there is tension all around.
How can our readers support this good work?
I implore readers to consider becoming a missionary and praying for the mission!
Support missionary work in Cambodia: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/KhmerOrthodoxChurch
Become a monthly donor to the mission by joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/OrthodoxChristianTheology
Venmo: @Craig-Truglia http://venmo.com/craig-truglia
For sizeable donations of $10,000 or more: https://orthodoxchurchcambodia.org/english-version-donations/
To become a missionary: https://t.me/patricktruglia
