Statement of the Founding Director

On Founding Chin Society for Biblical Literature

“They read out of the book of the law of God, translating and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was read.”
Nehemiah 8:8, Christian Standard Bible

The vision of founding the Chin Society for Biblical Literature was born from a simple but urgent conviction: our people need a faithful, thoughtful, and service-oriented platform for biblical study, theological reflection, writing, translation, and publication.

I write as a Chin person living in a foreign land, carrying both the memory of home and the responsibility of diaspora. Like many Chin people scattered across the world, I have learned that exile, migration, and minority existence can become places of deep theological reflection. We read Scripture not only from libraries and classrooms, but also from refugee apartments, immigrant churches, multilingual worship services, online classrooms, and homes where the Bible is opened in Chin, Burmese, English, and other languages.

The Chin people have long been a people of the Bible. Scripture has formed our faith, shaped our churches, strengthened our endurance, and sustained our hope through political instability, displacement, poverty, persecution, and migration. Yet while the Bible has deeply shaped Chin Christian life, Chin voices have not yet been sufficiently represented in the wider world of biblical scholarship.

For this reason, I present and commend the founding of the Chin Society for Biblical Literature.

This Society is not created merely to imitate existing academic organizations. It is born from a particular calling: to gather Chin scholars, pastors, teachers, students, translators, and serious readers of Scripture from around the world for the advancement of biblical scholarship, the strengthening of the church, and the cultivation of a learned Chin Christian public.

We believe that Chin biblical scholarship can serve both the academy and the church. We believe that Chin experiences of suffering, migration, oral tradition, communal faith, minority identity, and multilingual interpretation can contribute meaningfully to global biblical studies. We believe that the next generation of Chin students should not only receive scholarship from others but also learn to produce scholarship for the world.

The Society therefore begins with humility, hope, and determination. We do not claim to have arrived. We begin as learners, servants, and witnesses. We seek to build a table where Chin biblical scholars and friends of Chin biblical scholarship can meet, present research, sharpen one another, publish responsibly, mentor younger students, and contribute to the interpretation of Scripture for the glory of God and the good of the church and society.

Hrang Zel, ThD
Founding Director
Chin Society for Biblical Literature
For the Founding Initiative