Members of the Zo tribe of Myanmar find sanctuary as PC(USA) church

“This church was founded on the principle that we will become a tree of life,” said the Rev. Sarah Lane, pastor of the Zo Presbyterian Church, a new worshiping community within the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta that serves refugees and immigrants from Myanmar. “A tree of life indicates that we are here for the people in the U.S. but also in the future to do mission work for people that are outside the bounds of the U.S.”

The ancestral lands of the Zo tribe fall on either side of the border between Myanmar and India. According to the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Armstrong, executive director of the presbytery's New Church Development Commission, Zo Presbyterian Church was started by Lane’s father, Dr. Lianchinkhup Taithul, during a time that the United States and international partners were resettling refugees from Myanmar because the Zo people were being ethnically cleansed. Armstrong remembers being surprised and impressed when Taithul walked into the presbytery office, introduced himself as a member of the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar and announced his intentions to start the first Zo church within the PC(USA), which would lead to other PC(USA) congregations of Zo people in the nation. As a young adult, Taithul received a ThM degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he learned both Greek and Hebrew before returning to the Zo tribal territory. Taithul completed the first translation of the Bible from these ancient languages into the Zo language.

Lane describes her father as valuing women’s contributions, so when Taithul died in an automobile accident, Lane felt called to serve the new worshiping community as its pastor even though there were no women ordained in Zo Presbyterian churches at the time. She enrolled at Columbia Theological Seminary and was later ordained as a teaching elder in the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, where she also works in health care chaplaincy.

As her congregation grows, Lane is working with the presbytery to train women as well as men to be elders in the church through a leadership training program for new worshiping communities run by the New Church Development Commission.

Opportunities to educate and lead flow both ways between the presbytery and congregations that have made a home for Zo Presbyterians in Atlanta. Currently two of the three PC(USA) congregations with predominantly Zo membership are located in Atlanta.

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“Zo Presbyterian Church’s impact on this presbytery has been unique,” said Armstrong. “I don’t think many people knew much about Burma or Myanmar. I don’t think many people knew a lot about the plight of the refugee people who were being resettled around the world.”

There is a third Zo congregation in Baltimore, according to the Rev. Ralph Su, who is the associate for Asian Intercultural Congregational Support for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Su currently supports 120 congregations, including Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Japanese, Laotian, Taiwanese, Thai, Vietnamese and South Asian churches, as they seek to partner with their councils and presbyteries in faithful ministry.

Su helps mid councils and immigrant ministers as they communicate with denominations in home countries, apply for religious worker visas and adjust to the polity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which can be difficult when the denomination’s constitutional books have been translated only into Spanish and Korean.

Su, who speaks Taiwanese, Mandarin and Japanese, works with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to accommodate the translation needs of non-Korean Asian language speakers. Later this year, translations of the Brief Statement of Faith of the PC(USA) will be translated into three of the 10 languages Su supports. This will be the first confession to be translated into these languages.

Su hopes these translated confessions will show both hospitality and support as well as assist in the training of pastors, elders and commissioned ruling elders in Asian language-specific communities. There are no plans to translate the Book of Order or the Book of Confession into Zo.

But that won’t stop Lane and her vision of the Presbyterian church as a tree of life that serves people of the Zo tribe both here in the U.S. and those abroad.

The PC(USA) and its partners continue to look for ways to support those affected by the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. Christians are a minority in Myanmar. The Presbyterian Church of Myanmar currently has only 30,000 members.

Feb. 1 will mark the fourth anniversary of a violent coup in Myanmar when the army forcefully suppressed pro-democratic movements and overthrew the democratically elected government. To learn more about the crisis in Myanmar and an ecumenical movement of support, attend a webinar to be held by the Interim Unified Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and its Asia Pacific Office at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, Feb. 3. The Zoom meeting will be available here.