Karen refugees revitalize two mainline churches, inspire film All Saints
Ye Win, now an Episcopal lay minister, paid forward the help he received when he reached the United States from Burma.
Ye Win. Photo by Heather Hahn, United Methodist News Service.
After a split over theology in the 1990s, there were only 12 members of the congregation left at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Smyrna, Tennessee, a suburb south of Nashville. The church couldn’t pay its mortgage. By 2007, the church was in danger of closing.
Today, 130 to 150 parishioners attend Sunday services. Many worshipers filling those pews are Karen refugees, an ethnic minority from Burma (called Myanmar by its military government). The church has paid off its mortgage and has a community farm.
At All Saints’, it was the refugees who saved the Americans.
