Cham oriental

Champa arose in the first centuries of the Christian era and kept close contact with India, from which it received writing, art, and religious influence. Its brick temples, the towers that still stand in Ninh Thuan and the surrounding area, bear witness to this past of splendor and maritime trade.

Over the centuries, the Vietnamese advance southward shrank Cham territory until the kingdom ceased to exist as a state. Many Cham remained on the coast, while others left for Cambodia and beyond. Those who stayed guarded their language and rituals as a way of continuing to be who they were.

Traditionally, families live from farming on arid land, with irrigated crops, livestock, fishing, and crafts. Pottery and loom-woven cloth are highly valued trades, and the younger generation also seeks work in the cities. Society is organized along the maternal line: the house and the inheritance usually pass through the women, which gives them a place of great weight in family life.

The calendar is marked by communal festivals tied to ancestors, harvests, and religious cycles, with drum music, dances, and offerings of food. Life revolves around the village and the bonds of kinship, and hospitality and respect for elders are central values.

The faith of the Eastern Cham is divided into two great traditions. The so-called Balamon follow a religiosity with Hindu roots, deeply blended with the worship of ancestors and local deities. Their priests conduct ceremonies in the ancient temples and preserve texts and rituals inherited from Champa.

The so-called Bani follow a tradition of Islamic origin, lived out in its own way, with practices and a calendar that took shape over centuries in contact with earlier customs. In both cases, religion is inseparable from the identity of the people and the life of the community, and leaving the faith of one’s parents is usually understood as turning away from the family and from one’s own Cham heritage.

The Cham language is the one that speaks to the heart of the people, even though many also read and speak Vietnamese. For a long time, the Scriptures available came only in Vietnamese, a language in which a good number of Cham struggle to grasp the deeper words of the faith. In 2024 the New Testament in Eastern Cham was published, the fruit of years of translation work. The complete Bible is still a hope waiting to be fulfilled.

For the Cham, faith and identity go together: following Jesus can be seen as abandoning the people, the ancestors, and the festivals that hold the community together. Christians are few, which makes it hard to form nearby churches and leaders rooted in their own culture. For a long time, Scripture was available only in Vietnamese, and the gospel was perceived as something coming from outside, distant from the Cham language and memory.

There is a need for God’s Word to be heard and read in the language of the heart, with audio and written materials that also reach those who read little. The coastal villages face water scarcity and poor land, and many families seek better opportunities for work and for their children’s education.

Spiritually, the few who believe need community, discipleship, and leaders from their own culture who will help them live out their faith without breaking with their people. May every Cham family come to know Jesus as a blessing to their heritage, and not as a threat to it.

A remarkable step was the publication of the New Testament in Eastern Cham in 2024, after years of translation work. It was requested by churches in the region itself, concerned about the difficulty many Cham have with Bibles in Vietnamese. Now the message of Jesus can be read and heard in the people’s mother tongue, which opens the way for new communities of faith to be born among them.