Issues of Power in Thailand

Chananporn Jaisaodee1 and Manit Maneewong2

Manit Maeewong:

Power according to the Thai dictionary is the ability to make things possible, which may be positively or negatively. Power is possible through human agency. In Thai society, there have been problems concerning power in areas of gender, age and sexuality. More pressing today are serious problems related to the power of financial status and mass media.

Financial status has been taken to measure human success or human value. Thus, people try every way, good or bad, to get more money. This creates more social and family problems. The Thai government policy which targets economic growth has led to the destruction of natural resources and the environment, widened the gap between rich and poor, increased the meanness of people, and demolished the virtuous lifestyle and social values. As people struggle for more money, they do not share or help others anymore, which was the characteristic of the early community. People, in their drive for more money, seem to be programmed like machines – to pump out money and increase consumption. Values emphasizing wealth and secular fulfillment triggers the rise of dishonesty in all communities, not only among elite, business people and high-ranking officers but also the common people and even those who used to be well-respected. Consequently, when parents work harder to get more money, there is less time for their children. Some people are forced to go abroad to earn better income in spite of the high social cost on their families and loved ones.

Power of the media is a serious problem in Thai society. Media often provide ‘models to follow’ or pressure on the young people. Media do not care about the bad results of what they publicize, but only of their profit.

The church, together with people of others faiths, need to do something to alert the government of the ill effects of emphasizing financial over moral concerns. The church needs to restore human value not on the basis of financial status but on the basis of Christ’s sacrificial love for people. The church must be ready to offer its properties for community services such as sports, education, career training, counseling in order to have better use of such facilities apart from worship on Sunday. This is truly incarnating the power from the Holy Spirit for the sake of the people.

Chananporn Jaisaodee:

In Thailand, where Christians are less than one percent of the population, the Thai Christian community needs to be strong in order to survive. The Thai church needs to build up its faith community, define and understand its identity as people of God, and witness to it in life. We are not only to demonstrate the love of Christ to people outside the faith community but also to one another within the community of faith.

The Thai church and society are rooted in a patriarchal culture, which manifests in the following:

1. Only the male carries the family name to the next generation, hence, sons are seen as much more important than daughters.
2. While men act as decision-makers, women’s role is to obey—first her father, then her husband, and later her son.
3. There is a double standard of morality.
4. Woman’s expected place is in the home; man works outside and has no responsibility at home.

The Thai church is also beset with conflicts and struggles. Due to narrow-mindedness of some leaders, scripture is taken as the only “Truth” and passages are used as “proof text” to condemn homosexuals, people with AIDS, etc. Most churches are male-dominated, failing to recognize the importance of women and children. Schism and politics happen as church leaders fight for higher authority. Finding the church to be not so loving, some people leave to join or build another, or just get away from the superficial community. It is time for the Thai church to ask what it really means to be a faith community, to be connected with the whole universal church on earth.

For me, faith must be balanced both vertically in my relationship with God as well as horizontally with my neighbors. My neighbors, according to Matthew 25, are the poor and the oppressed. As Jesus said, “Truly I tell you as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” We are called to serve and identify with the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner, the outcast, the marginalized and the powerless. God’s community means the community that includes all kinds of people: men and women, young and old, poor and rich, all races and classes working in equality and mutual ministry on the basis of Jesus’ love. Too often we forget that God uses all of us.

Patriarchal theology is very damaging for it denies women’s nature as God’s creation equal to men. It is a theology of violence that binds women to stereotyped roles, stripping them of their freedom to be real human and to exercise their gifts and potentials to the fullest. The loving and just God is presented as unjust and unloving to women, and correspondingly to all who are marginalized in society. To live out the vision of a new creation is to live in communal solidarity with one another, such that women and men of all races, classes, sexual orientation and abilities, as well as the whole creation manifest the oneness of the body of Christ. This solidarity in relationship requires that persons and their communities share in the struggle for full humanity and human dignity for all people, especially those who are poor and powerless. The church is the community which extends welcome to all God’s people equally. The transformed community should leave no room for inequality and injustice. This is the kind of community which the apostle Paul means in his letter to the Galatians (Gal. 3:28), “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The church is the people who gather in the round and search for new connections: with themselves, the world, God, and the community of faith. Then it is their responsibility to demonstrate the wonderful love of God in concrete action and reflection, and by participating in the struggles of people who hunger and thirst for justice. Christian feminism demands justice. The unique contribution feminists bring to the ministries of the church consists in their underlying concern that ministry attends to the lived experiences of women, to the oppressions and injustices that women endure, and to their intersection with all marginalized and powerless people.

Even though in the past thirty years the church in Thailand has begun to realize the importance of women in the community of faith, women’s roles are still not seen important as those of the men. Female leaders are not well accepted as male leaders. We have a small number of ordained women ministers. The Department of Women in the Church of Christ in Thailand was established to provide resources and activities for women’s spiritual growth, to educate and train women in leadership skills. Women are encouraged and prepared to serve Christ at all levels of the church’s life, as well as their homes and in the community.

NOTES:

1 Chananporn Jaisaodee teaches Christian Educationn at McGilvary Faculty of Theology in Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
2 Manit Maneewong teaches worship and liturgy, church administration and field education at McGilvary Faculty of Theology in Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.