Christianity was first introduced to Vietnam in the 16th century. Christians represent a significant minority in Vietnam: Catholics and Protestants were reported to compose 7% and 2% of the country's population respectively in 2020.
Catholicism
Foundation period In the 10th century, some 'Nestorian' Christian priests had visited Vietnam. The first Catholic missionaries visited Vietnam from Portugal and Spain in the 16th century. In 1524, Portuguese merchant Duarte Coelho's fleet arrived in Hội An, central Vietnam, to trade, bringing along Catholic missionaries. A missionary named I-nê-khu arrived in Nam Định, northern Vietnam, in 1533.
The earliest missions did not bring very impressive results. Only after the arrival of Jesuits in the first decades of the 17th century did Christianity begin to establish itself among the local populations within the domains of both Đàng Ngoài (Tonkin) and Đàng Trong (Cochinchina or Quinan). These missionaries were mainly Italians, Portuguese, and Japanese. Two priests, Francesco Buzomi and Diogo Carvalho, established the first Catholic community in Hội An in 1615. Between 1627 and 1630, Avignonese Alexandre de Rhodes and Portuguese Pero Marques converted more than 6,000 people in Tonkin. These Jesuit activities were not always welcomed by the two rival governments of Vietnam. In May 1630, Lord Trịnh Tráng of Tonkin issued an order to expel the Jesuits. In 1639, some Japanese Christians in Hội An assisted in a revolt against the government; therefore, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Lan of Cochinchina ordered the Jesuits to leave his domain.
In the early 17th century, Jesuit missionaries including Francisco de Pina, Gaspar do Amaral, Antonio Barbosa, and de Rhodes developed an alphabet for the Vietnamese language, using the Latin script with added diacritic marks. This writing system continues to be used today, and is called chữ Quốc ngữ (literally, "national language script"). Meanwhile, the traditional chữ Nôm, in which Girolamo Maiorica was an expert, was the main script conveying Catholic faith to the Vietnamese until the late 19th century.
Since the late 17th century, French missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and Spanish missionaries of the Dominican Order were gradually taking the role of the evangelization in Vietnam. Other missionaries active in pre-modern Vietnam were Franciscans (in Cochinchina), Italian Dominicans & Discalced Augustinians (in Eastern Tonkin), and those sent by the Propaganda Fide.
Modern period The French missionary and Titular Bishop of Adran Pierre Pigneau de Behaine, who had come to evangelize in Đàng Trong (known to the Europeans as Cochinchina, played a role in Vietnamese history towards the end of the 18th century.Hall, p. 423.Cady, p. 282.Buttinger, p. 266.Mantienne, p. 520.McLeod, p. 7.Karnow, p. 75. Pigneau would ingratiate himself to and eventually become confidant to Nguyễn Ánh, the last of the Nguyễn lords, then engaged in a civil war.Buttinger, p. 234. Pigneau hoped that with a Nguyễn Ánh victory, he would gain concessions for the Catholic Church in Vietnam.McLeod, p. 9. A recent study suggests that his contribution to Ánh's success was not as it was conventionally believed to have been.
In August 1798, Emperor Cảnh Thịnh of the Tây Sơn dynasty in Huế, suspecting that Catholic civilians in Quảng Trị supported and allied with his enemy Nguyễn Ánh, who tolerated Christianity, ordered soldiers to carry out a pogrom against the Catholics. More than 10,000 Catholic civilians in Quảng Trị were massacred; it was during this time that a Marian apparition of Our Lady of La Vang was reported. Pigneau and other missionaries bought military supplies, enlisted European soldiers for Nguyễn Ánh, and took part in military operations.McLeod, p. 10.Cady, p. 284.Hall, p. 431.Mantienne, p.135Karnow, p. 77.Buttinger, p. 267.Karnow, p. 78.
Nguyễn Ánh conquered Vietnam and became Emperor Gia Long to establish the Nguyễn dynasty. He tolerated the Catholic faith and permitted unimpeded missionary activities out of respect for his foreign benefactors.Buttinger, pp. 241, 311. Missionary activity was dominated by the Spanish in Tonkin and the French in the central and southern regions.Cady, p. 408. At the time of Gia Long's death, there were six European bishops in Vietnam. The population of Christians was estimated at 300,000 in Tonkin and 60,000 in Cochinchina.Cady, p. 409.
This success would not last, however.Buttinger, p. 268. Seeking to limit Catholic influence, Gia Long appointed Minh Mạng as his successor for his deeply conservative Confucianism; his first son's lineage had converted to Catholicism and abandoned their Confucian heritage.Buttinger, p. 269. A power struggle developed between Minh Mạng and pro-Catholic, pro-Western officials who wanted to maintain the power they had been given by Gia Long.Choi, pp. 56–57McLeod, p. 24. Eventually, 2,000 Vietnamese Catholic troops fought under the command of Father Nguyễn Văn Tâm in an attempt to depose Minh Mạng and install a Catholic "emperor".McLeod, p.31
The revolt was put down, and restrictions were placed on Catholicism. Persistent rebellions occurred throughout the early period of the Nguyễn dynasty, many led by Catholic priests intent on installing a Christian monarch. During the French colonial campaign against Vietnam from 1858 to 1883, many Catholics joined with the French in helping to establish colonialism by fighting against the Nguyễn government. Once a French protectorate was established, the Catholics were rewarded with preferential treatment in government posts and education, and the church was given vast tracts of royal land that had been seized.
After the victorious overthrow of French rule and the country's temporary division in the mid-1950s, Catholicism declined in the North, where the Communists categorized it as a reactionary force opposed to both national liberation as well as social progress. In 1954, an agreement between North and South Vietnam was settled, allowing for civilians of either sides to migrate to the other. Many Catholics from the North, mostly through Operation Passage to Freedom, migrated to the South, wherein they were welcomed by President Ngô Đình Diệm, who promoted it as an important "bulwark" against North Vietnam. Diệm, whose brother was Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục, gave extra rights to the Catholic Church, consecrated the nation to the Virgin Mary, and preferentially promoted Catholic military officers and public servants, while severely restricting the practice of Buddhism and allowing Catholic paramilitaries to demolish sacred Buddhist temples and pagodas . In 1955, approximately 600,000 Catholics remained in the North after an estimated 650,000 had fled to the South in Operation Passage to Freedom.
In 1975, after the collapse of South Vietnam, Communist authorities reunited the country by military force and claimed that the religious activities of Roman Catholics were stabilized and that there was no religious persecution. Meanwhile, the communists acted to isolate and neutralize hard-core opposition within local Catholics-to-party policy and to persuade less-strongly-opposed factions to join a party-controlled "renovation and reconciliation" movement. A significant number of Vietnamese Roman Catholics, however, remained opposed to communist authority. Since Đổi mới reforms, the communist government alternates its treatment of Roman Catholics.
In 1980, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Vietnam was established. In 1988, 117 Catholics, representing hundred thousands of Vietnamese martyrs who had died for their faith, were canonized by Pope John Paul II.
Protestantism
Protestantism was introduced in 1911 to Đà Nẵng by Canadian missionary Robert A. Jaffray. As part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, over 100 missionaries were sent to Vietnam, assisting the faith's growth in the country.Erwin Fahlbusch, Geoffrey William Bromiley, The Encyclodedia of Christianity, Volume 5, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, USA, 2008, p. 680 Churches from this mission founded the Evangelical Church of Indochina in 1927. Due to the separation of the country in two in 1954, the latter was renamed the Evangelical Church of Vietnam North (ECVN), and officially recognized by the government in 1963. Southern churches founded the Evangelical Church of Vietnam South (SECV), recognized in 2001.
The Baptist Convention of Vietnam has its origins in an American mission of the International Mission Board in 1959, in Ho Chi Minh City.William H. Brackney, Historical Dictionary of the Baptists, Scarecrow Press, USA, 2009, p. 595 It is officially founded in 1989.Robert E. Johnson, A Global Introduction to Baptist Churches, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2010, p. XXVI According to a census published by the association in 2023, it claimed 509 churches and 51,000 members.Baptist World Alliance, Members, baptistworld.org, USA, retrieved May 5, 2023
By 1967, a number of Protestant communities were represented, mainly within South Vietnam. These communities included the French Reformed Church, Anglican–Episcopalian, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Baptists, Church of Christ, Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, and Seventh-day Adventists. Other Protestant associations were also represented in some social services and welfare agencies. In 1967, there were 150,000 Protestant adherents in South Vietnam, representing about 1% of the total population.
Protestant communities in the North decreased in membership to about 1,200 by the end of the Vietnam War. Several Protestant church properties were confiscated during the communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975.
In the early 1980s, Protestants were mostly located in the Montagnard communities in southern Vietnam's central highlands.
Present estimates of the number of Protestants range from the official government figure of 500,000 to claims by churches of 1,600,000 or more. The two officially recognized Protestant churches are the Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (SECV), recognized in 2001, and the smaller Evangelical Church of Vietnam North (ECVN), recognized since 1963. The SECV has affiliated churches in the southern provinces of the country.
In 2022, local churches estimated that two-thirds of Protestants were members of ethnic minorities, including Hmong, Thai, Dzao and others in the Northwest Highlands, as well as members of ethnic minority groups of the Central Highlands (Ede, Jarai, Sedang and M'nong, among others).
At least 50% of the current Protestant population is composed of members of tribal groups; the Vietnamese government's treatments towards them is varied. The tribal Protestants in Northern Vietnam do not face government persecution, but Protestant southern tribe members, notably the Hmong and H're, suffer from some religious persecution. In May 2006, over 300 Montagnard people remained in Vietnamese prisons for their faith. A young Hroi man who refused to reject his Christian faith reportedly died from injuries received while under official interrogation in April 2007.
Mennonite and Baptist movements were officially recognized by Hanoi in October 2007, which was seen as some improvement of religious freedom in the country. Pastor Nguyen Quang Trung, provisional president of the Vietnam Mennonite Church, taking part in the official ceremony of the above authorization, quoted his Church's motto: "Living the Gospel, worshipping God, and serving the nation.".
Eastern Orthodoxy