Hello. My name is Tony Carnes. I’m your host for A Journey through NYC religions Television.
This coming Sunday, we will have an extraordinary report from a journalist in Rangoon, Burma. On February 1, the military launched a coup d’etat against the democratically elected government. A renegade Buddhist monk has advised the military to shoot every demonstrator in the head and to pick out one example for execution in the villages that start with the letter “M.”
Most Buddhists support the democratic leaders as do the Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and others. There are hundreds of thousands who have fled for their lives.
Our producer Brian Finnerty called to wake me up one morning and said, we have a New York reporter who is in Rangoon, Burma, or Myanmar, as it’s officially called, that can tell us what is going on there.
We had to do the phone interview without a video of the reporter, and we anonymized his name as “Journalist” and slightly altered his voice. He has already been wounded once.
At any moment, the government may cut off all internet connections to the outside world. So if we have a sudden cessation of the interview, you will know that’s what’s happened. But we believe we were able to get just under the wire before the government clamped down with the help of Chinese military cyber-warriors.
Statement by Cardinal Charles Bo of Burma provided to Journey TV:
“Myanmar today is in yet another chapter of darkness, bloodshed and repression. After a decade of reform and opening, in which – despite many challenges and storm clouds along the way – we thought we had glimpsed the sun beginning to rise over our beautiful land and the prospect – however fragile or faltering – of emerging into a new dawn of democracy, freedom, peace and justice, Today, we have been set back by more than a decade, taken back to the nightmare of military repression, brutality, violence and dictatorship.
Yet in these dark, dark times, we hear the voice of the Lord calling the Church still to be a witness, to be an instrument for justice, peace and reconciliation, to be His hands and feet in providing assistance to the poor and those in fear, to counter hatred with love.
We hear that voice in Isaiah 65: 17-21, the first reading in the liturgy of the Mass in the Catholic Church around the world today. “Thus says the Lord: Now I create new heavens and a new earth, and the past will not be remembered, and will come no more to men’s minds. Be glad and rejoice for ever and ever for what I am creating, because I now create Jerusalem ‘Joy’ and her people ‘Gladness’ …. No more will the sound of weeping or the sound of cries be heard in her; no more will be found the infant living a few days only … They will build houses and inhabit them, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”
We will pray and work for a new Myanmar to be born out of this current tragedy, a Myanmar where truly every human being has an equal stake in the country and equal rights to basic freedoms, a Myanmar where ethnic and religious diversity is celebrated and where we enjoy real peace, a Myanmar where the soldiers put down their guns, step back from power and do what an army is meant to do: defend rather than attack the people. A Myanmar to which God says – as Jesus said to the father of the dying man in the Gospel – “Your son will live. You will live.” A Myanmar that rises again from the ashes.
How do we get there? By faith, prayer, love, dialogue and courage. By speaking out for truth, justice, freedom, peace and democracy. And so we need your prayers now more than ever. Please pray for this vision for Myanmar.”
Burmese in New York City
We should also consider the Burmese Americans who live in New York City. They are not the whole of the Burmese community in America. They are only a small part of the whole, less than 5% perhaps of the 190,000 Burmese living in the United States.. Still, the Burmese Americans have significant concentrations in Queens and Brooklyn. Further, they have founded a number of religious works in those boroughs.
There is a popular Burmese rhyme that mixes religious tastes: “of all the fruit, the mango’s the best; of all the meat, the pork’s the best; and of all the leaves, lahpet‘s the best.” People of all faiths eat the mango. Buddhists have many stories of this “divine fruit” in the life of Buddha. Muslims and Buddhists may avoid pork, while Burmese of other faiths seldom do. And lahpet, fermented or pickled tea leaves, is an exclusive Burmese food offering used as a doormat of welcome visitors, and a peace offering to offended neighbors. One of the great things about our city is that we have some Burmese restaurants where you can savor divine dishes with religious history at the same time.
That opportunity comes because we have seven thousand or more Burmese clustered in the Queens neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Woodside, and Elmhurst and Brooklyn’s Homecest and Sunset Park. We don’t have more because many Burmese only stay awhile in the city before joining the large Burmese community in Buffalo, New York or elsewhere where it is cheaper to live.
Check out Mother’s Day Prix Fixe Menu to celebrate special Moms!
Religions of Burmese Americans in NYC
The religious affiliations of Burmese Americans typically fall along the ethnic lines found in their home country. For example, Burmans, Rakhine, and Mon are mostly Buddhist. Karen people are approximately seventy percent Christian and thirty percent Buddhist or animist. Most Chin and Kachin are Christians.
Currently, New York City has several Theravada Buddhist temples and monasteries in Queens, in addition to the American Burma Buddhist Association meditation centers in Brooklyn, for example, The Universal Peace Buddha Temple of New York. There are two evangelical Christian Burmese churches pastored by Burmese ministers: Myanmar Baptist Church New York with Rev. U Myo Maw; and Calvary Harvest Church with Rev Mew Myo Maw. Catholic Burmese have a network that arranges for worship and other religious events.
