Kon Tum Wooden Church

In 1913, in a remote corner of the northern Central Highlands, a French parish priest named Joseph Décrouille began to build a church.

He did not follow the usual European pattern. He hired Bahnar carpenters and used cà chít wood from the forests of the Highlands. He plastered the walls with earth mixed with straw, in the traditional local way. And he shaped the church roof high and steep, taking his cue from the roof of the Bahnar nhà rông. A nhà rông is the large communal house at the center of a Central Highlands village.

The building was finished in 1918. On January 6 of that year, it was consecrated under the name of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. In 1932, it became the cathedral of the Diocese of Kon Tum.

Today it is simply called the Kon Tum Wooden Church. After more than a hundred years, it still stands at 13 Nguyễn Huệ Street, in the center of the old Kon Tum, now part of Quảng Ngãi province.

What sets it apart from many French religious buildings in Indochina is exactly this blend. It is not a copy of a church in France, moved whole to the Highlands. It was born in the Highlands, from Highland craft and Highland materials, and it speaks a Western religious language in the shape of a Highland building.

At the front rises a wooden bell tower of four tiers, 24 meters high. Two long, wide galleries run along both sides of the nave. They give shade and recall the porch of a Bahnar house. The steep, high roof makes the church look, from far away, as if it is rising out of the treetops.

Inside, wooden columns carry a high vault, and light filters through panes of colored glass. There is no concrete. The columns, rafters and floors are fitted together with wooden joints, in the traditional carpenter's way. This is what many architects and visitors find most striking: a large religious building, standing for more than a century, made entirely of wood and earth.

The grounds hold more than the church itself. They form a self-contained complex, with a reception house, a hall displaying ethnic and religious objects, a nhà rông and community buildings. It is rare to find a Catholic site with a Bahnar nhà rông in the same grounds, a way of showing a conversation between two cultures.

The church is still a working place of worship for the local Catholic community, and that living presence is part of its beauty.

Close by stands the Kon Tum Bishop's Residence, also called the Kon Tum Missionary Seminary. It is another fine wooden building.

The Kon Tum Wooden Church is a place to sit down in silence. The sound of the wood can be heard, light passes through colored glass, and the patterns on each column catch the eye. It is a quiet meeting of two cultural worlds on this highland.