Taing-Yinn Tharr and the Acts of the Apostles: A Lens for Anti-Colonial Existence in Burma

Taing-Yinn Tharr is a theory of co-existence developed in Burma/Myanmar to accommodate fellow subaltern groups. It means "the fellow co-inhabitants of one country of origin." It was first developed among the Bama and seven other ethnic groups to uphold unity and solidarity in their common resistance against British colonial rule. Soon after independence, however, the dominant Bama exploited the notion of unity for the sake of political gain, subjugating the other, non-Baman groups. Given its original anti-colonial and later neo-colonial usage, Taing-Yinn Tharr has considerable potential as a postcolonial critical theory in that it can diagnose and expose the concepts of unification and solidarity when they are implemented as a guise for domination. This book uses the lens of Taing-Yinn Tharr to explore the system of domination exercised through apostolic power in the New Testament church and evident in multiple instances of subordination in the Jerusalem deliberation described in Acts 15:1-36. Moreover, as a hermeneutic of anti-imperial critique, this self-critical and self-liberating theory offers a better understanding of co-eschatological existence in which one co-representative universal apostleship shares and safeguards the one universal salvation of God for both Jewish and Gentile believers. The idea of multi-national existence with equality is a key axiom of TYT critique which seeks to decolonize local anti-existential forces exercised by the ruling class in the context of Burma. A TYT reading summons readers to celebrate the rule of universal salvation through the collective universal apostleship of a pluralistic Christianity in the context of internal colonialism.