1827-Present
Judson Baptist Church
Mawlamyine/Myanmar Maulmein/Burma
After the first Anglo-Burmese War ended in 1826, Adoniram and Ann Judson moved their headquarters from Rangoon to Maulmein (now Mawlamyine) and settled under the safety of the British empire. The first church Judson constructed was in 1827 patterned after the zayat from which he worked in Rangoon. A few years later the original building was replaced with an open-sided masonry structure which merged the traditional zayat with a colonial-looking church building with a bell tower. The third church was started in 1907 and is appropriately listed on the World Monuments Fund.
World Monuments Fund (WMF) works with local communities around the world to safeguard irreplaceable cultural heritage. It is the leading independent organization devoted to safeguarding the world’s most treasured places to enrich people’s lives and build mutual understanding across cultures and communities.[1]
Photographer and writer Tim Webster prepared the website material for the World Monuments Fund related to the Judson Church in Mawlamyine.
Perhaps no other foreigner has had a greater impact on the land that became Myanmar than Malden, Massachusetts-born, Adoniram Judson (1788-1850). While Judson’s message remains embodied in congregations across the country—and stories of his faith, loves and travails might fill volumes—it is in Moulmein (Mawlamyine) where the evangelist made his most significant contribution to the establishment and enduring legacy of the Baptist church in Burma….
Jump to the present. As a documentary photographer and writer working with heritage, it’s unusual to receive a brief, where the importance of a structure could be perceived as secondary to its function as the home of a longstanding community…. As part of my World Monuments Fund assignments, I have begun to learn something of the people that this building serves.
Four elderly ladies seated together exude an understanding that only time can forge. Daw Nant Su Su gently laughs that she is the most recent addition to the quartet, having only made friends when her husband arrived here as pastor in the mid-1970s. Daw Aye Kyi, Daw Than Sein and Daw Htar Yin, who have known each other since childhood, spent their working lives teaching together at the former missionary school across the road, a Judson-legacy building nationalized into the state system in the 1960s as part of a larger government takeover of missionary properties….
Following a special service commemorating both a birthday and a passing away, May Hnin Phyu serves an abundance of food before taking on dozens of dirty dishes. While some in her family worship elsewhere, May is at home here, a member of the choir amongst friends. During the week she staffs the pharmacy of the Mawlamyine Christian Leprosy Hospital, another part of the Judson legacy, the one and only mission hospital in Myanmar, which provides health care without charge.
Although merely scratching the surface, a religious basis for health and education—healing and teaching—now occurs to me. Among many dozen Buddhist pagodas, Islamic mosques, Hindu temples, and Christian churches, this congregation is considered by many to be the ‘mother church’ of Mawlamyine. This church and its physical premises are also a reminder of longstanding connections between the United States and Myanmar, and a salient example of the impact that one individual can have. Judson’s journey speaks not only of endurance but perhaps even triumph, exemplifying fidelity in the courage of one’s convictions. (Tim Weber, 2016)[2]
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[1] https://www.wmf.org/blog/judson-legacy
[2] https://www.wmf.org/blog/judson-legacy.