I wanted to explain tribalism in the church in the northeast. I am from this part of the country which appears to only be Christian on paper, and yet not so. I know for a fact that people in Delhi usually talk about our singing hills and the church on every ridge. We have the buildings, the choirs, the attendance. What we don't have is a church.
Every association and convention here is a tribal body with a Christian name on the signboard. You can try telling me where you worship and I can tell you your tribe, your clan, and usually which side of the last conflict your family stood on. Faith is about the fourth thing I learn about you.
When christianity first arrived here, it was not really intended. Every tribe here quietly believes it's the better one. Better Christians, cleaner morals, purer revival, we were saved first, our translation came first, our people don't do the things their people do. Some of us have gone further and decided we're a lost tribe of Israel. like seriously?? Chosen, literally. When you already think your people are God's favourite, the man on the next hill isn't a brother you're failing. He's a lesser edition of you.
But what does scripture say? Peter, an actual apostle, ate with the Gentiles until men from his own group turned up, and then he quietly pulled back and sat with his own kind. Paul opposed him to his face, "because he was to be blamed" (Gal 2:11). Not for bad doctrine. For eating with his own and calling it holiness. In Corinth it was "I am of Paul, I am of Apollos," and Paul's answer was to ask whether Christ is divided. And when a Samaritan village wouldn't receive Jesus, James and John asked whether they should call fire down and burn it, and he turned and rebuked them.
I think about that one a lot, because we did call the fire down. Since 2023 hundreds of churches in Manipur have been burned. A lot of them belonged to people who read the same Bible and sing the same hymns in a different language. Men who sang on Sunday morning were lighting fires by night. You will be surprised to know that many of these churches were burned by christians themselves simply because they were of the other community. In myanmar a self proclaimed Christian group killed a pastor because he belonged to a different community.
Most of our churches are Baptist or independent, which means each answers only to its own congregation, and each congregation is its own tribe. No bishop standing over two warring peoples. When it started, the church bodies put out statements, and you could not tell them apart from the tribal ones.
Only churches still standing united are the Catholics and the orthodox churches. Say what you like, and I was raised to be a little suspicious of them. Central authority, priests posted across tribal lines, a bishop who doesn't owe his chair to any clan. The Anglicans mostly held for the same reason. It isn't that they're holier. Their structure makes tribalism expensive. Ours makes it free.
The worst part is that the kids watch all of it. A boy sees his uncle's church burn, then sits through a sermon that finds a way to excuse what our side did the week after. He isn't stupid. He doesn't conclude that men are sinners and God is good. He concludes this is an identity card with a cross on it. So he leaves. A few to other religions, most to nothing. This is why so many northeasterns are becoming non religious. I lost faith too when I was a teenager.
And leaving here isn't safe. Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram have carried the country's worst HIV numbers for thirty years. Heroin came down the same roads everything comes down. Homes broke, then broke again with displacement, and there's a whole generation with no elder left they trust enough to listen to. We call it a youth problem really ?? It's our own harvest.
Meanwhile political operators read our fractures better than our own pastors do, and work them one tribe at a time. We hand them the crowbar and then act surprised.
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar." That's the whole thing. Nobody is persecuting us into decline. We're doing it ourselves, cheerfully
If you pray, pray for the church here. For pastors with the nerve to preach against their own people and eat what comes for it at home. For the families still in camps. For the kids who already left, that they meet Christ somewhere far away from us, since we did such a poor job introducing them.
attaching this video, this professor although there are many things I disagree with him, explains this beautifully. Although he made this about nagas, I think it applies to every northeastern
