A Christmas Mourning: Catholicism in Post-Bhumibol Thailand

The sacred place of the King within the cosmology, liturgy, and religiosity of Thai Catholicism is historically linked to the ‘earthly’ economic and political strategies that the Catholic Church has deployed to legitimize its presence in Thailand. The death of Thailand’s beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), on 13 October 2016, plunged the Church’s faithful – mostly royalist, Sino-Thai members of the urban middle-class – into a state of shock, sadness, and bewilderment, so much so that many have raised serious doubts as to whether the celebration of Christ’s birth held religious priority over the collective grieving of the nation for the divinized king’s death. This paper explores Thai Catholicism in the post-Bhumibol era through both historical and anthropological considerations.

The death of Thailand’s beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), on 13 October 2016, plunged the Church’s faithful – mostly royalist, Sino-Thai members of the urban middle-class – into a state of shock, sadness, and bewilderment, so much so that many have raised serious doubts as to whether the celebration of Christ’s birth held religious priority over the collective grieving of the nation for the divinized king’s death. This paper explores ethnographically the reconfiguration of Catholicism in Thailand in the post-Bhumibol era.