Why Most Chinese American Christians Are Conservative Evangelicals
That Chinese American Christians are Mostly Conservative Evangelicals
There is perhaps no more iconic Chinese American than Jeremy Lin. He’s the embodiment of all our hoop dreams, he got into Harvard, and he’s even a committed Christian! I mean come on, in 2010 he tweeted that his two favorite books were Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper and Humility by CJ Mahaney.
Now to the keen observer of American Christianity, Lin’s choice of literature is not only intriguing, but also quite telling. For Piper and Mahaney have both played prominent roles within New Calvinism, a theologically conservative and evangelical movement within American Christianity. Hence, Lin’s favorite books indicate what many sociologists, historians, and theologians, and even the Pew Research Center have confirmed: Asian American Christians are predominantly theologically conservative evangelicals, as opposed to liberal mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, or Eastern Orthodox.
The Question
The question I want to explore is: “Why are most Chinese American Christians, today, theologically conservative evangelicals?” In other words, why have Chinese American Christians overwhelmingly embraced the authority of Scripture and such doctrines as inerrancy? Why have they insisted so strongly that Jesus is the only way of salvation? And why is evangelism and conversion so central to their understanding of the church’s mission?
Some might say that it’s just because Chinese American Christians simply believe what the Bible says and share its ‘eternal perspective.’ I think the answer is more nuanced.
Five Reasons
- The Political Climate in China in 1949 & Contextual Theologies
The origin of Chinese American Christianity goes at least as far back as 1853 to the oldest Asian American church in North America. Today it’s known as the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, a PCUSA congregation where my wife and father-in-law both grew up.
Before the 1949 Communist victory in China, Chinese nationalism was strong even amongst the Chinese outside of China. The Chinese abroad still largely viewed the Chinese state as the center of Chinese identity. Sharing the fervor of the Chinese Republican Revolution in 1911, even the Chinese Christians in America placed their hopes in a new and modern China.
And liberal Protestant theology was the best contextual fit for these modernistic hopes. For liberal theology approached Scripture with modern scientific assumptions, embraced skepticism concerning the supernatural elements of Christianity, focused on Jesus’ moral and social teachings, and fostered a more ecumenical spirit.
However, when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the hopes of many Chinese nationalists were shattered. In fact, the center of Chinese identity and culture shifted from the central state of China, to the periphery. Instead of looking back to China as their home, many of the Chinese abroad felt like homeless pilgrims.
Conservative Protestant theology became a more suitable contextual theology for these pilgrims. Conservative theology emphasized an other-worldly home and an eternal perspective. It upheld the miraculous, and proclaimed a strong message of hope and certainty in the future based on a more literal reading of Scripture. The this-worldly hope for a present modern home in China was destroyed, and an other-worldly hope for a future spiritual home in heaven emerged.
- The Religious Climate in America since the mid-20th century
In America, the mainline churches, in which most of the Chinese American churches started, were beginning to lose interest in this home mission field. The conversion rates were minimal amongst the Chinese in America, and the idea of sending converted Chinese Americans back to China for missions was squashed because of Communist China. Also, along with the rest of the nation, the mainline churches embraced an assimilationist racial ideology. The assumption was that less attention and resources needed to be allocated to ethnic mission churches, since these people groups would eventually assimilate anyway.
Simultaneously, the mainline churches, who were shifting further left on the theological spectrum were in the twilight of their cultural dominance. On the other hand, neo-evangelicalism was birthed in the 1940s, and would soon become the predominant expression of American Protestantism.
Hence, not only were Chinese Americans leaving the mainline denominations that were losing interest in ethnic home missions and becoming more liberal, but evangelicalism was becoming a popular and inviting alternative in America.
- The U.S. Nationality and Immigration Act of 1965 & Chinese Christianity Abroad
This act lifted the severe restrictions that were placed on Asian immigration. The result was that the Chinese population between 1960 (237k) and 1980 (806k) more than tripled. Today there are over four million Chinese people in America.
As the Chinese immigrated from Asia, many of them brought their Christian convictions. The shape of Chinese Christianity in China and amongst the Chinese in other parts of Asia was largely conservative and evangelical for a variety of reasons. After all, J. Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission was the largest mission agency in China. Also, the mostly conservative Independent Church Movement thrived after the Communist takeover. These ministries along with such conservative denominations as the Christian & Missionary Alliance and the Southern Baptists even continued to be fruitful amongst the Chinese diasporic populations in Southeast Asia after 1949.
As the Chinese Christians immigrated into America after 1965, many of them started their own churches because there were too many differences between the pre-1965 Chinese Christians in America and the post-1965 ones. While the older and established Chinese churches in America were filled with Cantonese speakers, the new Chinese Christians immigrating to the U.S. were Mandarin speakers. Additionally, the new immigrants were generally of a higher socio-economic status because the Nationality & Immigration Act of 1965 gave preference to highly-skilled and educated immigrants. On a theological level, many of the Chinese Christian immigrants also viewed the mainline denominations as bastions of impure theology, compared to their conservative independent churches or the theologically conservative missionaries who taught them in Asia. Hence, between 1952 and 1979, the number of Chinese churches in America grew from 66 to 366. Today there are likely over 1,000 with only a meager minority being in the mainline denominations.
- The Nature of Evangelicalism
While many Chinese Christians came to the U.S. after 1965, by 1990 and into 2010 one could fairly say that most Chinese Christians in America became Christians after coming to the States.
Historically, the most emphasized convictions of evangelicalism are its commitments to Scripture’s authority (biblicism) and to preaching a Christ-centered message (crucicentricism) for the sake of “winning souls” (conversion). These convictions are very attractive to Chinese Americans.
As the Chinese in America (both immigrants and ABCs) wrestle with their multiple identities in America, the evangelical conviction regarding Scripture’s authority comes in handy. While Chinese Americans want to be both Chinese and American, the Bible gives them an authoritative standard by which to negotiate their dual identities. For example, to be more American, Chinese Americans can reject ancestor worship as unbiblical and idolatrous. However, wishing to preserve their Chinese/Confucian values, it is common for Chinese Americans to interpret the 5th commandment more rigidly and with a greater emphasis than other American Christians. Furthermore, in the cross-centered ethos of evangelicalism, many Chinese immigrants find a radically loving God, unlike any other authority figure they ever knew. And for immigrants, the evangelical “born again” rhetoric offers language and categories for a new way of being in America.
It should also be noted that a big reason Chinese American Christians are predominantly evangelical is because evangelicals evangelize far more than non-evangelicals.
- Asian American College Scene
Not all Asian Americans are the same. The “model minority” narrative is problematic in several ways. Still, it’s fair to ascribe the conservative evangelical orientation of the Chinese American church to Asian American evangelical ministries on campuses across the U.S.
Since the 1970s the campus fellowship/ministry phenomenon took off in response to the cultural upheaval of the 60s. Simultaneously, Asian college attendance tripled in America. In fact, on top of the campus ministries, such as Asian American Christian Fellowship (AACF) that were always meant to serve Asians specifically, the two largest and most prominent evangelical campus ministries, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru), have both launched Asian American chapters on their campuses. Such ministries not only attract a sprinkling of immigrants, but more importantly, they bolster both the evangelical identity and the Asian American identities of Chinese Americans. On college campuses, Chinese Americans are religious and ethnic minorities. For many, an Asian American and evangelical identity fusion occurs during college. Reading scientific textbooks in college fuses with InterVarsity’s insistence upon inductive Bible study. Finding like-minded Chinese American friends who like boba fuses with Asian American Christian fellowship activities.
After spending such formative years within these rather homogenous Asian evangelical groups, the commonly shared life-narrative continues. Handfuls of Chinese American students secure stable jobs and middle class lifestyles in American suburbs with their top-notch science and engineering degrees. Such relative success often results in embracing the “model minority” status. “If we can succeed, anyone else can.” Furthermore, the suburban lifestyles they lead can shield them from confronting the realities of poverty and social injustice. Such a lifestyle easily lends itself to a kind of Christianity that bifurcates the spiritual from the material. The Christian life becomes all about personal spiritual piety and winning souls.
Another common phenomenon amongst Chinese American evangelicals on college campuses is an interest in New Calvinism. Chinese Americans are becoming close friends with conservative, Reformed, and pietistic Koreans, and devouring Tim Keller, John Piper, D.A. Carson, Wayne Grudem and TGC blogs. In fact, at UCLA, one of the largest campus ministries is Grace on Campus, a ministry of John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church. This campus ministry is almost 75% Chinese and almost 90% Asian, and many of its aspiring pastors go on to attend The Master’s Seminary. In fact, just search the theological education of those who pastor the largest Chinese churches in the U.S. The most common places of theological education are Talbot School of Theology and Dallas Theological Seminary, both conservative and evangelical. And it is not uncommon for ministers from these schools to point their submissive Asian American successors to these schools as well.
So What?
Like I said earlier, it’s time we reckoned with the contextual factors that have shaped our beliefs and identities. Insisting that our theological convictions merely stem from our plain and objective reading of the Bible is simplistic. Such an attitude disregards our possible blindspots. Context matters, and must be interrogated.
By interrogating, the Chinese American historical context, one finds a variety of reasons why Chinese American Christians have predominantly been drawn to theologically conservative evangelicalism. For this, we have much to be thankful for, but may we never cease to critically examine this Chinese American Christian context with a spirit of humility and with a desire to reform it more and more unto the glory of God.
For Further Reading
I am incredibly dependent upon the work of many scholars for this, but most significantly upon Dr. Timothy Tseng‘s research.
Tseng, Timothy. “Religious Liberalism, International Politics, and Diasporic Realities: The Chinese Students Christian Association of North America, 1909-1951.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 5, no. 3/4 (Fall-Winter 1996): 305–30.
———. “Protestantism in Twentieth Century Chinese America: The Impact of Transnationalism in the Chinese Diaspora.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 13 (2004): 121–48.
———. “Trans-Pacific Transpositions: Continuities and Discontinuities in Chinese North American Protestantism.” In Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America, edited by Jane Naomi Iwamura and Paul Spickard, 241–71. New York, New York: Routledge, 2003.
Yang, Fenggang. Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
Chen, Carolyn. Getting Saved in America Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Wuthnow, Robert. The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II. 1. paperback printing. Studies in Church and State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Bays, Daniel H. A New History of Christianity in China. Blackwell Guides to Global Christianity. Chichester, West Sussex ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
———. “Christian Revival in China, 1900-1937.” In Modern Christian Revivals, 161–79. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
———. “The Growth of Independent Christianity in China, 1900-1937.” In Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, 307. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Jeung, Russell. “Evangelical and Mainline Teachings on Asian American Identity.” Semeia 90–91 (n.d.): 211–36.
———. Faithful Generations: Race and New Asian American Churches. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Very interesting. You and Anthony stimulate me to think that I am indeed “a product of my culture(s)” and “I’m a fish in water” as I commonly joke with him. Irony is that the joke is true!
I am a Canadian-born Chinese Christian attending a conservative evangelical church in Vancouver. We do hold to Calvinist views but it has not always been this way. I would describe the change as having taken place over a period of renewal in the last decade. While the points you make are interesting, I would hold that whatever cultural context that God allows a people to grow up in, which contributes to their knowing Christ in a biblical and faithful way, is an act of God’s grace–and it is always God’s grace we need to emphasize over and above other “forces” at work.
The phenomenon that you describe is true in Vancouver–I would agree that the Chinese Canadian churches form a bastion of evangelical conservatism in a landscape that of liberal theology. But I would add that things are always changing. I do not feel that most of the evangelical Chinese churches in Vancouver are at all immune to the liberalism that has and continues to erode away church membership and faithful biblical witness in the city. In fact, there are many instances of false teachings that crop up in the churches and we need to stand guard against this. Cultural conservatism is never a guarantee of theological conservatism.
Thanks for this, Gloria. I completely agree with you.
Andrew, I found this article to be very interesting and stimulating. As a Chinese-American pastor who’s pastored 30 years in the Chinese-American church, I see a lot here that I can agree with.
I found the paragraph below to be especially interesting and I want to think more about it:
“2. The Religious Climate in America since the mid-20th century
In America, the mainline churches, in which most of the Chinese American churches started, were beginning to lose interest in this home mission field. The conversion rates were minimal amongst the Chinese in America. The idea of sending converted Chinese Americans back to China for missions was closed because of Communist China. Also, along with the rest of the nation, the mainline churches embraced an assimilationist racial ideology. The assumption was that less attention and resources needed to be allocated to ethnic mission churches, since these people groups would eventually assimilate anyway.”
The point about “the mainline churches embraced an assimilationist racial ideology” – and by implication paid less attention to ethnic churches – made me think about what might happen if, say, a Chinese-American church wanted to go in the multi-cultural direction, meaning not only ministering to Chinese, but to other cultural groups? How might that affect its outreach to the Chinese? Would it be following the pattern of the mainline churches and thus bring a lowered interest in reaching the Chinese or would it increase the outreach to Chinese-Americans who feel comfortable with multi-cultural groups? What do you think? Thanks for your article and prompting me to ask these questions. I would like to think about this some more too.
Thanks for reading, Pastor Tung.
You raise a great question. It’s one I haven’t thought about, to be honest.
My initial impulse is that I think Chinese-American churches wanting to go multicultural is fine, but should be a matter of prayerful conviction rather than simple man-centered/consumeristic strategy. Such a decision should ask the very question you posed: “How might that affect its outreach to Chinese, but to other cultural groups?” In my humble opinion, context is key. In certain contexts, it’s a good decision, but in others, it’s not. I’d leave this up to the discretion of the church’s leadership.
I don’t think moving from being an ethnic church toward multi-culturalism would necessarily be following the pattern of the mainline, but it could. A helpful guardrail would be to make sure the decision was not out of an assimilationist ideology. I think that evangelicalism’s emphasis on the universal application of the gospel has often flattened its teaching on identity, such that ethnic and cultural identities are not paid attention to since “all that matters is identity in Christ.” This “no Jew nor Greek…etc” rhetoric has often underplayed the value of ethnic/cultural perspectives and led to an assimilationist ideology, which really is more of a white-dominant ideology. Americans often think their churches are multicultural because they have many non-whites in attendance, when really their churches are still dominated by a white cultural perspective. After all, it’s far more common for non-white people to go to churches that are predominantly white than for whites to go to churches that are predominantly non-white.
Andrew, Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
You started to explain this a bit, but can you expand and describe what “the mainline assimilationist racial ideology” is in more detail? That would help us to avoid it in our context.
Timothy Tseng, who I consider to be the foremost historian of Asian American Christianity, speaks about it in the context of Chinese Americans quite well in his dissertation: “Ministry at Arms’ Length: Asian Americans in the Racial Ideology of American Mainline Protestantism, 1882-1952” (Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1994 )
For a summary, you can also read about it in this presentation about Robert Ezra Park, one of the thinkers behind assimilation: http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/Mayer/Race%20and%20Ethnicity/Theories%20of%20Race%20Relations.%20Spring%202004_files/frame.htm
Basically, the mainline was beginning to accept the ideology that after a certain amount of time racial/ethnic identity would naturally lose its distinction and kind of melt away into the majority culture, such that all would be left was a single majority culture.
In truth, people have come to realize that this isn’t true multiculturalism, but just a dynamic of dominant monoculturalism that downplays or even eschews diversity in society.
Thanks for the references. Will look into them.
So, basically, it sounds as if mainline racial assimilation is the “melting pot” or “Americanization” theories applied to churches.
Yes, it’s very similar to the melting pot metaphor. The only difference is that ideally in a melting pot (let’s say a chocolate melting pot), each chocolate added will contribute and have a proportional influence on the overall flavor of the whole. The problem with the assimilation narrative in America is that the Hershey’s chocolate flavor remains pretty much the same in dominance, even though more and Pocky and Hello Panda chocolate is being added.
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Great article! You mentioned Taylor’s China Inland Mission as a dominant force in post 1965 Chinese American Christianity. How much of an influence would you say Protestantism and indigenous church movements in Taiwan had on the growth of Chinese American Christianity post 1965?
Thanks Tim.
Sorry I missed this comment earlier.
By indigenous church movements in Taiwan, are you referring to native Taiwanese indigenous churches, or movements like the True Jesus Church and Watchman Nee type churches? If the former, I don’t know if there is much of an influence, but if the latter, then there is quite a significant influence.
Much of the ethos and many of the worshipers of the indigenous church movements in China found themselves all around East Asia (including Taiwan), and the Chinese Christian diaspora has had a profound influence on Chinese American Christianity post 1965.
In fact, after 1965 you have a flood of Taiwanese immigrants coming to the States because many of them were highly-skilled and educated, and many of them did not want to join the Chinese/Cantonese churches that were already established in the U.S., so they started their own churches.
Thanks for reading!
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Hi Andrew, thanks for the article which is very interesting and insightful. I wonder the picture on the top of the article that is my church congregation. I don’t know how you get the photo and I don’t remember that you get our church permission to use the photo.
My apologies Pastor Mang. I’ll take the picture down and be in contact with Hannah. I believe I just found the pic on google images, but should have been more careful about considering permissions. I was in the mindset of a small-time blogger who didn’t think anything of using images from Google, but should have known better. Please forgive us.
Great post.