At 94, Southern Baptist missionary Sam James is still traveling to Vietnam to preach and support Christian mission work. But as he watched an entire generation of missionaries pass away, he realized something else was disappearing: the story of how Baptist Christianity first took root in Vietnam.
“If I don't write it, that whole history will die,” James told The Christian Post about his new book,Birth in the Midst of War: A History of Baptist Beginnings in Vietnam, 1959-1975.
That realization led James to spend about five years researching and writing Birth in the Midst of War, which documents the work of Southern Baptist missionaries and the Vietnamese Christians who helped establish and preserve the Baptist church during a turbulent period of war and political upheaval. James was among the first Southern Baptist Convention missionaries to travel to Vietnam and remained involved in the mission field until 1975, when North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon.
During his interview with CP, James explained that he felt a need to tell the story of that generation of missionaries and the first native converts to the faith, after hearing from students and Vietnamese Americans who wanted to understand how Baptists came to Vietnam but struggled to find reliable sources about the movement's early history.
“For several years, I've had calls from Ph.D. students writing their dissertations and master's students and their theses, and they always say, ‘I cannot find any resources regarding Baptists in Vietnam. I know you were there, I know you did a lot of work there, but we can't find anything in print,’” James said.
Vietnamese Americans asked similar questions, he said: “We know there are Baptists in Vietnam, but we don't know how they got there, how in the world did Baptists show up in Vietnam and what did they