Churches Influence Attitudes of New Americans

Churches can have an important influence on the lives of many first- and second-generation Americans. A new study by Elaine Howard Ecklund, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at Rice, however, also suggests that there are significant differences in attitudes between those who attend exclusively second-generation ethnic churches and those who attend multiethnic churches in their communities.

Asian American immigrants often are held up as the “model minority”—portrayed as predisposed to being financially and educationally successful. Ecklund’s research shows that this stereotype frequently is reinforced, albeit unintentionally, among Korean Americans who attend exclusively Korean evangelical Christian churches. In contrast, Korean Americans who are members of multiethnic churches tend to reject this image of Asian Americans and, instead, are taught the spiritual importance of race relations and diversity in general.

Elaine Howard Ecklund

In “‘Us’ and ‘Them’: The Role of Religion in Mediating and Challenging the ‘Model Minority’ and Other Civic Boundaries,” an article published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Ecklund compares Korean Americans who attend second-generation Korean churches and those who are part of multiethnic churches to see how they compare themselves to other minority groups. She also examines how Korean Americans with different religious affiliations view their responsibility to help other ethnic and racial groups in social service settings.

For nine months, Ecklund observed and conducted 46 in-depth interviews with Korean Americans at two congregations, Grace and Manna, near a small urban area in the Northeast and conducted a survey on volunteer and political practices with members of the two churches. She also interviewed 42 other second-generation Koreans in four multiethnic churches and three second-generation congregations elsewhere in the United States. In addition to being members of an evangelical Christian church, Ecklund’s respondents all were second-generation Korean Americans, between 21 and 40 years old, and completely fluent in English. Most of them were professionals, and all of them had or were pursuing a four-year college degree.

In contrast, the urban community where many members of both Grace and Manna churches volunteered consisted of a large African American and Asian immigrant population. Twenty-four percent of the families there with children lived in poverty, compared to 17 percent of the overall U.S. population.

During her interviews, Ecklund asked the Korean Americans how they chose their current congregation and in what ways, if any, their church has influenced how they view their relationship to the community. She also questioned them regarding volunteer work, specifically in what settings it would be easier or more difficult for them to help.

“The religious rhetoric of second-generation churches inadvertently tends to create distance between its Asian American members and other racial or ethnic groups,” Ecklund says. “As a result, there is a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ with obvious consequences for interracial and interethnic relationships as they assimilate into American life.” Ecklund cites, for example, the image of Asian Americans as inherently more industrious than other minority groups. “Members of second-generation Korean churches see their own and their parents’ generation as being more hardworking than other nonwhite Americans,” Ecklund says. “By not actively resisting this stereotype, some of these churches unconsciously reinforce boundaries between their members and other nonwhite Americans.”

On the other hand, Ecklund observed that the central mission of evangelical Christian churches with ethnically and racially diverse congregations is “sharing the gospel” and emphasizing commonality between its members and other minorities. Sermons and public teachings at these churches, she notes, tend to de-emphasize socioeconomic and ethnic differences in favor of discussing the common characteristics of the church membership.

“By stressing that accumulated wealth results largely from God’s blessings rather than the hard work of a particular group of individuals, for example, they are rejecting the Asian American stereotype,” Ecklund says. “This perspective helps to establish a sense of commonality regarding other nonwhite Americans.”

Korean Americans at second-generation churches also downplayed the importance of accumulating wealth, but as Ecklund found, many leaders of these congregations explicitly and implicitly affirmed the stereotype that Korean Americans were predisposed to achieve financially. As a result, their members identified themselves as middle-class suburban Americans rather than as an ethnic minority, and they found it difficult to relate to nonwhite minority residents who lived in a nearby urban area.

Ecklund’s research will be more fully explored in her forthcoming book, Korean American Evangelicalism: New Models of Civic Life (Oxford University Press).