Occasionally in trying to find what’s out there about Asian American Christianity, I’ll simply Google random terms. 

Today I found Daniel Yang and what I like about him is that he’s got a life – a very cool, tech and design-savvy life. Plus he’s not a pastor, so the fact that he’s written a great paper on Asian American religion offers insight into what intelligent, professional, and non-clergy Asian Americans are asking and thinking re: church. It also helps that he has a great sense of aesthetics. 

Here’s the link to his paper and the following are some notable bullets [emphasis mine]. 

• Brian Hall suggests, “The nature of Buddhism allows room for Chinese young people who have been raised in Buddhist households to experiment or ‘dabble’ with Christianity and/or other religions.”  In addition Min also states, “many non-Western religions do not put as much emphasis on participation in a religious congregation as do the Judeo-Christian religions.” These two factors of openness and lack of fellowship lead Chinese Americans and Korean Americans who are not already Christian to seek religious organizations that better fulfill a need in their ethnic identity development in America.
• Fenggang Yang’s dissertation on Religious conversion and identity construction in a Chinese church he notes, “New Chinese immigrants generally trust the educational system…they trust the economic system…However, they do not trust the media and entertainment industry for encouraging liberal moral values and unconventional lifestyles. These Chinese Christians choose evangelical Christianity because its value system fits their desire for order and success.”
• The churchgoers did not view themselves as accepting an Anglo-American tradition but rather values that are supposed to be universal. There is also strangely not much evidence of conflict or questioning of beliefs…. Antony Alumkal reconciles these facts in his dissertation Ethnicity, Assimilation, and Racial Formation in Asian American Evangelical Churches², “A sense of cultural conflict can still be substantial even for the second generation. Combined with a sense of racial exclusion, this can produce a strong desire for a secure basis for identity, which evangelical Christianity can provide.” The function of the church in providing an ethnic identity is one of the biggest draws to Christianity for Asian Americans, and congregating results in community formation.
•  According to an Ecklund and Park study⁶, “Religion gives Asian American immigrants opportunities for leadership and a sense of meaning and belonging, resources that help individuals overcome a deficiency in social status” while at the same time also providing “members of the second generation opportunities to sustain ethnic identity through maintaining networks with those who share a common national history.”
•  overall the actual proportion of Asian Americans who volunteer is rather small for their socio-economic status. This might be attributed to the fact that Alumkal’s study ² found that church members did not tend to think of other social issues that were not church related. The solution to this may be to open a dialogue with pastors to encourage congregation members to be more civically active in helping the community.

Share and Enjoy

Remembering tragedy helps us move forward, to not take things for granted, to resolve that whatever was preventable will be prevented. Tragic events can only be made more tragic if we assume they will remain isolated events, that things will naturally return to the ways they were. Remembering helps us to stay connected to the reality that bad things happen, evil is real, and that we need to treat the root cause and not the symptoms.

With VT remembering those that fell a year ago today, I wonder if the Korean American community could produce another Cho Seung-Hui. Or perhaps, I wonder if we could prevent one. Granted, there was perhaps a perfect storm of mental illness and accessibility to weapons. But also there was something that resonated with me in that Cho had problems with his sense of identity and belonging. Added to this was this notion that he was making himself out to be martyr of some sort, to which he ascribed to Jesus Christ (?!). 

It seems as though the ethnic church should have been able to help and not exacerbate the situation, but do we have that ability, sensitivity and language to even address the problem? Are we espousing a gospel that is only good news for those who succeed and make something of themselves? Do we not believe that Christ healed those he came in contact with? 

I’m hopeful that there is a strong connection between identity formation and spiritual formation that the ethnic church can contribute to for those like Cho and myself. But we must deepen our theology, not only to propel our seeking of normalcy and success, but to shed healing light on our darkest corners and most perverted sins. Then we can remember this tragedy not in shame, but for the turning point that it was in reflecting the power of the Gospel and the unlocked potential in our churches.

Last semester, I tried to tie some of these things together in a paper where I posited that unsuccessful cultural identity formation could lead to violence. Although I got a good grade on the paper, I believe it’s still a work in progress. So if you want, feel free to read it – expand on it, critique it, whatever. Just help us remember what good can come of it. 

Share and Enjoy

When I was busy working on being like you? The vicious cycle of identity…

Share and Enjoy

Loren Cunningham (YWAM)

“God told me that He wnts to use Korea to send thousands of missionaries to bless the nations…” (1971)

“Next great wave of Christian leaders and missionaries will be Korean American young people…they have double anointing with two cultures and languages…

John Dawson, “Taking Our Cities for God” (1989)

We will be surprised at whom the Holy Spirit anoints for leadership in the coming revival. I believe that strong leadership will be provided by Korean (Christians), Black (Christians)…

Rick Joyner (Nov. 2005)

Korea is going to be one of the most strategic focuses of the world in the times ahead. We need to understand the spiritual reasons for this. South Korea has become one of the world’s greatest bastions of Christianity. The Korean church is one of the strongest in the world and is being used to give strength and resolve to Christians around the world.

A youth movement will also arise in Korea that will produce some of the great Christian leaders for the last days.

The following is a video Dr. Pak used in his presentation to illustrate the vibrancy of Korean missionary efforts to reach the nations.

Share and Enjoy

Daniel Pak, M.D., U.Michigan prof and of JAMA spoke today at CTS… here are some quick bullets from live-blogging his seminar this afternoon. More resources to follow…

• Korean American college students experience highest rates of depression, drinking, and suicide among ethnic groups
• There is a strong observed correlation between grades and depression as well as grades and relationship with parents. 
• Among 2nd gen. Korean American marriages, the divorce rate is 60%, which is higher than national average.
• Korean American churches that go multiethnic are often faced with the question, “Why can’t you get along with your parents?” The integrity of their ministry of reconciliation is being challenged.
• Jim Bob Park at Binneri Church in TX is an example of transitional KM/EM 1.0 to 1.5 church. Also Sarang Church in CA. 
• Less than 3% of all Korean churches in US (~4,000 according to Dr. Pak) are predominantly English-speaking. This contributes to the Silent Exodus – up to 95% of post high-school churchgoers leave the ethnic church.
• Were those who left the church kicked out for all practical purposes? Maybe it wasn’t a silent exodus, rather it was a silent expulsion? Perhaps we need to reconsider the posture of welcoming…
• In Korean context, love is mute. They/We don’t express it verbally. We value non-verbal expressions of love more. 
• Another contrast between Korean and American perspectives: Korean– “Self-denial is the secret to our survival”; American- “Self-assertiveness is the key to our success.”
• 2nd gen pastors are usually filled with bitterness due to these cultural differences with 1st gen. The hierarchy, scarcity mentality vs. prosperity mentality, etc. These lead to value judgments made on others and unhealthy dialogue.
• Before, the younger generation had to choose to be Korean OR American. Increasingly, identity crisis can lead to great contribution. Having both identities is not a handicap, with possibility to be Western and capacity to be Easterner. This has a lot of roots Biblically as well. Increasingly, we are the most needed people group in order to build bridges and deliver the Gospel more effectively. 
• “We were placed in a context we could not escape…God placed us…just like Joseph. God met him and trained him and showed him the world. We were sold into slavery…American Dream Slavery…I say this, not only as analogy, because we are selling our children into the American Dream. What we dream about becomes our master. Harvard becomes our master. Becoming a doctor becomes our master. When it doesn’t happen, we become depressed. I’m finding out the whole generation is like me, with 50% falling into depression.”
• 1st gen pastors don’t know how to relate for 2nd gen. They don’t know what to do. It is difficult just to talk about these issues. When we prayed, we saw some things happen. Danny Han in NJ is doing an annual gathering of pastors to continue this work.

Share and Enjoy

So what do you when you become aware of that small pea that you’ve been sleeping on? My gut feeling, which I’ve been carrying around with me for some time now, is that something is wrong with the ways in which Asian Americans understand and relate to our faith because we have pawned off our identity for the American dream.

With this rather brash hypothesis, it has left me very little room to operate in terms of what I view as positive in the current landscape of Asian American churches. This sounds rather pretentious, especially when I’m not in a major hub of Asian American activity – Atlanta, Georgia. It also sounds foolish coming from someone who’s working from a small sampling of churches and who doesn’t hail from a strong denominational/church background. My father was/is a pastor/church planter in the smallest of rural towns along the east coast of Florida. I’m also confessing that I’m a hack – I’ve never served a ministry of much consequence, I’m not a particularly moving preacher, and I have no track record of leadership to speak of, with the sole exception that my wife believes in me.

In essence, the more and more I blog, the more I realize that I am an idiot. When people ask me what gifts the Asian American church has to offer the body of Christ at large, my thoughts empty out as though someone had pulled the plug in a kitchen sink. When someone reads or hears my harangues about the void of Asian American worship, and they ask me what is should sound like or look like, my own silence deafens me.

Am I so filled with self-loathing that I can’t mention the positive about Asian American churches? Am I so critical that I cannot conceive of what could be?

I have so many questions and so few answers.

Last week, one of my colleagues in seminary, a recent Korean immigrant, looked me in the eye and said, “You know what the problem with the 2nd generation is?”

My engines started to rev. THE problem? I’ve got a truckload of problems…I started flapping my lips, but he waved me off.

“You don’t pray enough. You can criticize the first generation all you want and you’d be right. They have their problems. They have trouble living the Gospel, it’s true. Their lifestyles are a complete mess, I know. But at five in the morning, they still gather by the hundreds and pray. Their churches grow and they feed each other. They pray. The second generation needs to learn to pray.”

Kitchen sink again.

I repent. I got nothing. Dear God, I am at square one again. give me a heart for you and your people. I have not sought your heart enough. I have ignored the beauty that is right before my eyes. Show me and give me hope. Give me hope, give me a future, give me a home. Amen.

Share and Enjoy