Excerpt from Faithful Generations: Race and New Asian American Churches by Russell Jeung

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While China and Japan were at war, Chinese and Japanese in the United States found themselves to be enemies of one another as well. Christian churches enthusiastically organized members to support homeland nationalist movements. When his son joined the Imperial Japan Army to fight the Chinese, a Japanese American minister cheered proudly “Banzai!” in support of his son’s decision.1 One Chinese American Christian, in a two-page autobiography, made a point of Japanese wartime atrocities by recalling, “When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, we had no food. The Japanese treated the Chinese badly; we were afraid that they would come into our home, and we never knew where our next meal would be coming from.”2 Buttons that declared “I am Chinese” were worn to distinguish Chinese Americans from Japanese Americans who were being rounded up for internment camps. As one of the primary social institutions in the community, religious congregations served to maintain ethnic ties and reinforce specific linguistic and cultural identities.

Two generations later, Chinese and Japanese American congregations are undergoing a significant transformation into panethnic congregations. Groups that were once at war now pray and worship together with common songs, liturgies, and religious understandings. Those who had distanced themselves from each other now unite under a single group identity and a new subculture. In fact, half of this study’s churches in the San Francisco Bay Area now target Asian Americans instead of focusing on a single ethnic group. As church entrepreneurs, Christian leaders have chosen a newly constituted racial group as their spiritual market niche.3 Overcoming ethnic conflict to establish group solidarity, Asian American churches have generated a new institutional identity as well.

Although touted as the “model minority,” Chinese and Japanese American Christians have not assimilated fully like other white immigrant groups but have adopted a new panethnic identity. Churches of previous white immigrant groups to America have tended to evolve from ethnic institutions to nonethnic, denominational churches (Dolan 1985; Herberg 1955; Wind and Lewis 1994). As members acculturated so that they were culturally indistinguishable from other Americans, ethnic churches no longer had to meet needs for a particular group. Unable to sustain themselves by serving only one ethnic constituency, immigrant congregations either died out or moved to the suburbs without retaining ethnic specificity. The building that remained would house a new congregation meeting the needs of the local population (Ammerman 1998; Davis and Wilson 1966; Douglass 1927). Just as generations of individuals transitioned from being immigrants to ethnics to Americans, so did their ethnic institutions (Dolan 1985; Hansen 1937; Niebuhr 1929).

American-born generations of Chinese and Japanese Americans have now become acculturated, have moved away from ethnic neighborhoods, and out-marry in high percentages (Alba and Nee 1997; Fugita and O’Brien 1991; Gans 1999). We would thus expect these groups to assimilate into local congregations and for their congregations to close. For example, Mark Mullins (1987) argues that over time, Japanese ethnic churches will de-ethnicize as they adapt to generational differences. However, contrary to expectations, Chinese and Japanese American churches are not dying out or becoming open to all but are adapting by becoming Asian American.4

Given the traditional enmity between Chinese and Japanese and the historic American pattern of assimilation, a Pan-Asian church seems an unlikely new form of religious congregation.5 Yet facing demographic and generational change, congregations have had to reorient themselves toward a new target population in order to survive and grow. Instead of assimilating into the American denominational landscape, these congregations have established themselves with a racialized identity now legitimated in multicultural America. By integrating their church theology and their understandings of panethnicity, Asian American ministers have strategically and faithfully constructed new ways of doing church and being the people of God. This study of fifty congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area tells the story of the generation, growth, and expressions of panethnic Asian American congregations.

Why Study Asian American Ethnic Churches

The development and role of churches in the Asian American community have received scant research attention despite their long history and the increasing numbers of Asian immigrants and churches to serve them (Min and Kim 2002; Yoo 1999). Their growth not only reveals the significance of religion in the lives of the individuals, but also challenges the stereotypes about Asian Americans and their beliefs. Furthermore, study of these Christian churches sheds light on the relationship between religion and race. Religion provides symbols, narratives, and discourses with which ministers construct racial identity. At the same time, race both limits and structures new ways for these churches to organize themselves.

Chinese and Japanese congregations have served as religious homes for their ethnic communities in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1852 and 1879 respectively.6 Yet the stories of past and current faith communities need to be detailed to counter the invisibility of Asian Americans in American religious history. To demonstrate the agency of our forebears, we need to uncover the rich and complex ways that Asian Americans have made sense of their lives (Busto 2003; San Buenaventura 2002; Yoo 1999). In 1882, when the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, Christians had already established five Chinese missions and churches in San Francisco and Oakland. By 1924, when Congress restricted immigration to the United States from Japan with the National Origins Act, at least seven denominations had founded twelve Japanese congregations in the area. When Chinese began migrating to the United States again in large numbers in the 1970s, the number of new Chinese American congregations rose dramatically through church splits, church start-ups, and denominational new church developments. James Chuck’s (1996) research reveals that the number of Chinese congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area grew from 15 in 1950 to 158 in mid-1996. One hundred of these new Chinese congregations (both Chinese- and English-speaking) have been established since 1980. In the meantime, the 18 Japanese American congregations in the area planted only 2 new congregations in the 1980s and 1990s, both of which became Asian American congregations.

This book focuses on Chinese and Japanese congregations because these groups have been in the United States longer and have more English-speaking congregations than other Asian subgroups. Consequently, these churches reveal better the issues of generational transition and the development of ethnic churches. However, many Korean American churches have begun establishing English-speaking ministries for second-generation Asian Americans, as well as planting multiethnic congregations.7 I examine some of these congregations in my conclusion. Filipinos, Asian Indians, and Southeast Asians have established religious institutions in the United States in increasing numbers, but they are less likely to be Pan-Asian or Protestant Christian because of the religious and ethnic diversity within these groups. A recent survey found that the percentage of Asian Americans who identify as Christian nationwide fell from 63 percent to 43 percent from 1990 to 2000, while those professing other religions (Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim) rose from 15 percent to 28 percent because of new immigration (Kosmin, Mayer, and Keysar 2001).8

In 2000, an estimated twenty-four thousand worshiped weekly at 180 Chinese Christian churches and about two thousand congregated at 18 Japanese churches in the San Francisco Bay Area.9 These numbers make religious institutions the largest voluntary association within these ethnic communities where people have regular, face-to-face interaction.10 Although Asians are stereotypically oriented toward education and business, more Asians participate in churches than in parent-teacher associations or business/professional groups (Lien 2001). Overall, 25 percent of Asians participate in organized religious activity, as compared to 15 percent engaging in PTA and 13 percent in business/professional groups.11 Given this high level of social interaction, which promotes “thick ethnic ties,” religious groups are the community’s primary social institution in maintaining ethnic solidarity and promoting ethnic identity (Kurien 2002; Min and Kim 2002; Zhou, Bankston, and Kim 2002). Beyond their spiritual and religious functions, these churches offer social services, language and citizenship instruction, business contacts, and political education (Chen and Jeung 2000). Understanding the roles of the church within the ethnic community can thus serve church leaders, community activists, and policy makers (Cha 2001; J. H. Kim 2002).

If one could wear one’s religion on a shirtsleeve, then two T-shirts would neatly summarize the stereotypes of Asian American popular religion. In 2002 the corporate retailer Abercrombie and Fitch marketed T-shirts with a laughing Buddha that read, “Buddha Bash—Get Your Buddha on the Floor.” Besides mocking the faith tradition of Asian Americans, it portrayed Asians as the exotic, religious “other” who have strange beliefs (Strasburg 2002). Ironically, American Evangelical Protestantism has seen the greatest gains of all faiths within the Chinese and Japanese American communities. Although the numbers of these Protestant churches are not as staggering as that of the Korean American or Latino communities, they do challenge this “perpetual foreigner” stereotype of Asians (Tseng 2003).12 Nationally, 819 Chinese American churches and over 200 Japanese American churches held Protestant Christian worship services in 2000. In contrast, only 120 to 150 Chinese Buddhist groups and 61 Japanese Buddhist churches provided religious services (Luo 2002; Yang, 2002; Yoo 2002). 1