The Edge of Mission

In 1555, Gaspar da Cruz, a Portuguese Dominican, was the first-known missionary to have arrived in Lovek (Cambodia). However, after one year, he abandoned his mission, concluding that the Khmers were impenetrable to the gospel because of their loyalty to the king and their religious way of life.1 In 2025, the echoes of this reason still ring true; it is not uncommon to hear Cambodians say, “Your Jesus is good, but you have your religion, and I have mine.”

The resistance of the Khmers to the gospel is also apparent—and arguably more so—in Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand.2 Despite active evangelization by Catholics and Protestants for more than four centuries, Christian presence in Buddhist Southeast Asia remains marginal at best, with most conversions among animist minority groups but not the majority Buddhist populations. Does this Theravada belt still constitute the edge of mission? The gospel of Christ has been preached across many parts of the Mekong Indosphere; the people have heard, but they have decidedly not embraced the gospel of the messengers. I submit, in this article, that the edge of missions is not defined by the “unreachedness” of a community but the limits of our own Christian missiological methods.

Modern cross-cultural missions emerged from a specific socio-historical context and intellectual tradition shaped by the Reformation, the Enlighten-ment, and imperial and colonial enterprises. Critically, the methods of proselytizing the Christian faith and envisioning a God-centered way of life are based on a particularistic understanding of religion and how it should be practiced—that religion is a coherent system of beliefs hermeneutically constructed from scriptural texts, and from these beliefs flow actions; religion is a matter of individual choice, a personal relationship with a Divine, and a private practice; religion sets apart the sacred from the profane or secular, valorizing other-worldly rather than this-worldly aspirations.3
However, this Western construct of religion does not aptly reflect the majority of lived realities in Asia. Mission methods based on such conceptions produce forms of religion that create dissonances among the receiving communities. This essay invites us—frontier mission thinkers and practitioners—to explore how “religion” is lived and practiced in other parts of the world and to reimagine our missiology accordingly. Here, I share two emerging perspectives from my analysis of the Cambodian sasna (“religion”).

Sasna (“Religion”) as a Marker of Collective Identity

The concept of religion as a system of beliefs and practices was only introduced in Asia during the colonial era.4 Not that ideologies and practices pertaining to spirits and the afterlife did not exist before, but the notion of religion as a discrete domain distinct from other aspects of life and subject to individual choice was largely alien to pre-colonial mentalities. In fact, several historians and anthropologists have shown that etymologically there is no indigenous word equivalent to the Western term, religion.5

This is true in the Cambodian context as well. In at least two Khmer-French dictionaries in the 1870s, the Khmer word sas សាសន៍៍ and its cognate, sasna សាសនា, which today denote race and religion respectively, appeared as single entries and were interchangeably translated as religion or race.6 Before the introduction of the sacred-secular divide by Western modernism, sasna referred to a total, holistic way of life that was inherently religious.

Although many Cambodians nowadays linguistically separate sas and sasna, in the collective consciousness of Khmer Buddhists (less so among Christians), “religion” is still intimately associated with civilizational identity. In a 2023 study on religion in South and Southeast Asia by the Pew Research Center, 97% of Cambodians consider Buddhism to be a vital part of who they are; it is “a culture one is part of,” “a family tradition one must follow,” “an ethnicity one is born into,” and “a central part of national identity.”7 Interestingly, patriotism is a more important “religious” value than following the Buddhist precept of not drinking alcohol.8 Similar patterns of thought are also evident in other Theravada societies, suggesting that to these peoples, Buddhism as a religion diverges from the conventional definitions and operates within a different framework of parameters. In Theravada worlds, “religion” embodies history and culture and is integral to nationhood; it is not so much about a private faith for individual salvation as it is about a communal practice inextricably linked to collective identity and solidarity.

Sasna (“Religion”) as a Moral and Emotional Practice

In contrast to the Western perspective in which world religions are categorized according to beliefs, in Cambodian lived realities, beliefs are not primary determinants of people’s identities. Most men and women on the street are not able to articulate core Buddhist tenets such as the Four Noble Truths, but they would categorically profess to be Buddhists. People do not make offerings to their deceased loves ones because of certain cogent conceptions of the ontological nature of spirits or a doctrinal understanding of puñña (merit). Lay beliefs are diverse and eclectic, morphing with varying situations. Just within the last 10 years, hungry ghosts transformed from spirits who could not enter temple premises to beings who can be found within sacred spaces, though lingering at the peripheries. Religion as lived and practiced is not defined by Orientalist conceptions of textual scripturalism. Belief in Buddhism does not hold the same currency as it does in Christianity, especially in Protestantism.

Rather, sasna is a practice of life characterized by shared customs, values, and emotions which are religiously imbued. The Khmer word sasna is derived from the Pali term sāsana which refers to the teachings or advice of the Buddha for wise living. Sāsana is not about special revelatory truth-claims of the Divine and afterlife that require faith but general realities that can be discerned by keen observation of life. For example, the beauty of flowers is fleeting, the strength of a lion fades, and human happiness comes and goes—all existential phenomena are impermanent. This insight should therefore encourage people to maintain a healthy distance from temporary things and not be consumed by them. The call to respond does not require believing but realizing the nature of life and living wisely.
 
The Buddha’s sāsana, which may be compared to the collection of Jesus’ teachings, such as the Sermon of the Mount, the beatitudes, and his parables, is a different genre of knowledge from theological doctrines. Central to Buddhist teachings, such as the Three Characteristics of Existence, the Eight-fold Noble Path, or the Ten Meritorious Deeds, is the eradication of unwholesome roots that lead to turmoil and suffering and the establishment of wholesome states of mind-heart-and-being. According to a renowned Buddhist scholar, Maria Heim, the development of moral emotions is pivotal to the Buddhist practice of life,9 and in Khmer society, these include a profound sense of indebtedness to parents—living or deceased—and forebears of the Khmer race, and a deep compassion to all beings including hungry ghosts condemned to a life of misery because of their bad kamma (actions). Cultivation of such affective characteristics, and not the profession of propositional truths, determine collective identities. While the European Enlightenment has privileged intellectuality over affectivity, in societies not predominantly shaped by this Western tradition, such as that of Cambodia, being a Buddhist is not defined by what they think and espouse but how they feel and relate with others. The value of a religion is measured not by the cogency of its doctrines but the virtuosity of its adherents.

Implications for Christian Mission

This article invites us to consider the Theravada conception of sasna (“religion”) and to reimagine missiological approaches, working within local paradigms of understanding. It is assumed that how we conceive religion shapes the way we construct our mission methods. For example, if we conceive religion as a system of beliefs, evangelization involves the communication of the gospel as a message of doctrinal ideologies, which require intellectual assent by the recipients. However, if religion were conceived as shared practices, values, and emotions, introducing Jesus and sharing faith in him may take on more communal, relational, and affective approaches. In this concluding section, I raise a few questions to open the conversation.

Is it possible to re-envision a missiological approach based on a non-dualistic understanding of “religion”? Can we do missions in a way that respects the place of Buddhism in Theravada polities? The work of the Dominican friar Silvestre de Azevedo may inform our missiology.10 Azevedo won the trust of the devoted Buddhist King Barom Reachea II, who allowed the missionary to establish churches and even provided assistance for the translation of Christian resources into Khmer. Unfortunately, as the mission expanded with the arrival of other missionaries who were less religio-culturally cognizant, the king’s good will ceased because the Christian mission was perceived as a socio-political threat. All missionaries but one—Friar Azevedo—were expelled.

Can followers of Jesus demonstrate their love for country, history, and culture by honoring the traditional religio- cultural practices of the land? Revelation 7:9 portrays a picture in which a multitude of people of every ethnos, phulon, laon, glosson will stand before the throne of Jesus. The word ethnos does not merely refer to an abstract identification but denotes divergent lived practices. Beyond cultural garments and indigenous languages, this prophetic verse depicts a profound diversity of life of different traditions and social habits, and varying thought paradigms and moral sensibilities. The uniquely distinct ways of life of every ethnos will be represented—not just a universal form in different packaging. Additionally, the word ethnos in the New Testament is often translated as Gentiles.11 To Jewish listeners, ethnos bore an inferior connotation—referring to the non-Jews with their heathen rituals. However, Revelation 7:9 suggests that indigenous practices will be redeemed and sanctified in Christ and will not be eradicated.

Can knowing Jesus occur through corporeal and affective rather than cognitive approaches? Acts 17:27 suggests that the Greeks may pselaphao—grope and feel—their way to God. Additionally, Acts 17:28 alludes that it is through our living with each other and movements in our world that we have our being. Furthermore, Old and New Testament words such as yada or ginosko (know), biyn (understand), pisteuo (believe) carry highly relational, visceral, and affective nuances.12 These suggest an alternative epistemology—that ways of knowing are not merely cerebral through cognitive understanding of theological conceptions alone, but that knowing God and understanding his ways occur also through enacted, embodied, and emotional practices through the senses and
affects. It is probable that modern Christianity has privileged intellectualist approaches and neglected somatic and social ones because of the Enlightenment intellectual tradition.

Similarly, discipleship could emphasize the cultivation and embodiment of virtuous emotions and not merely focus on acquiring right beliefs. Rather than viewing Bible study and discursive discussions as the crux of discipleship, could God’s Living Word be embedded in enacted stories, recitations, religious artefacts, cultural customs, local arts, and daily rhythms such that the embodied Word shapes and transforms moral sensibilities, emotional dispositions, and behavioral instincts? Could followers of Jesus embody metta (lovingkindness), karuṇā (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy), and upekkhā (equanimity)—virtues esteemed in Buddhist societies—in Christ?

Conclusion

In this article, I have defined the “edge” of mission not by the geographical limits of the gospel but the limits of our own missiological imaginations, which are based on the Western construct of religion. If we can accept that, in some places, religion is not merely a discrete set of beliefs but a practice of life—a practice of living and moving and becoming—and that God’s redemptive work could be accomplished through divergent conceptual paradigms, Christian mission may move beyond propositional evangelization and discipleship and toward more holistic approaches.