Asian American Christians: Why we tend to be conservative

By: Bruce Reyes-Chow, May 18, 2008

Tags: Beyond Borders, Opinion |

Faith Perspective

Most Asian American Christians are conservative. Ding, ding, ding — generalization warning. I know it is dangerous to make such blatant statements, but, as one who has been engaged in the Asian American Christian community over the past 20 years, I do think this is the reality.

When there were protests here in San Francisco against same-sex marriages a few years ago, there was a huge representation of mostly Chinese American Christians. Some people were surprised, while others wondered what took them so long.

We could spend time arguing about definitions, generational trends, or my blatant disregard for many liberal Asian American Christians, but let’s not delude ourselves. If you were to visit random Asian American churches in San Francisco or any other city, you would go far and few between as you seek out those of a more progressive flavor.

Are Asian Americans more drawn to conservative Christianity? Is conservative Christianity seeking out Asian Americans? Yes, and, well, sort of.

Here are three characteristics that create an environment ripe for the convergence of conservative Christian teachings and Asian American mojo.

1) Conservative Christianity and Asian American culture like the idea of working hard for what you get. Conservative voice: “Work hard and you will succeed.” Progressive voice: “Work hard because you have been blessed.” A common conservative theological stance is that if you are faithful enough, God will reward you. This is called the Prosperity Gospel; oversimplified, it means your “blessings” equal how much God loves you.

2) Conservative Christianity and Asian American culture emphasize the family unit before the individual. Conservative voice: “Do not do anything to upset the community.” Progressive voice: “Express your faith as a unique member of the family of faith.” Suppress your individual expression of faith for the good of the church, goes the thinking in conservative Christian communities. You must submit to the will of the community lest your inclusion, welcome and faithfulness be re-evaluated.

3) Conservative Christianity and Asian American culture stress strict obedience to the authority given to elders. Conservative voice: “If Pastor [insert male name here] says it, it is true.” Progressive voice: “What do you think God is saying to us?” A common idea in the Christian Church is that authority is given to those in higher positions. This type of hierarchical structure often leads to the discouraging of questioning those in authority. There is one “head of the household,” and what he says goes.

I never said all Asian American Christians are conservative, only that there is a natural connection between the two and that we should not be surprised at the high number of socially and politically conservative Asian American Christians. So if this does not describe you as a person of faith, please save the hate mail for another day. I will get to you, too.

Bruce Reyes-Chow is the pastor of Mission Bay Community Church, San Francisco.

Comments

Bravo!
From a “progressive,” I believe, non-Christian admirer.

–Frank Eng on May 18, 2008
I’m an Asian American. I’m a semi-practicing, semi-liberal Christian. For the past six years, I attend church about twice a month – I work or can’t make it the other Sundays. I believe in God, yet I had two gay friends. I was friends with a lesbian for over 10 years and friends with a gay buddy for six years. I used to argue with my “super-Christian” friend who said that homosexuality can be cured. She would tell me, “If you’re a true friend to homosexuals, you’ll advise them to change.” But I said, “No, I am their friend and I accept them the way they are.” My former gay and lesbian friends had told me that when they were in junior high, they were naturally attracted toward the same gender. People are born with their homosexuality.

I’m no longer friends with those two homosexual friends because they had said and done things to my family and I that hurt. I still e-mail one gay buddy and hopes he invites me to his wedding. I accept homosexuality and I believe in God. That could be a contradiction, but that’s the way I see it.

–Grace on May 18, 2008
Conservative Christian Chinese Americans are cut from exactly the same cloth as their fellow rabidly reactionary white, Latino/Chicano, African-American and Native American counterparts - they cling desperately to a dangerously outmoded worldview that has about as much resonance in today’s society as the notion that the sun orbits the Earth. I’m sick and tired of them foisting their fascist mentality on the rest of us. They’re no difference between them and the fundamentalist Muslims whose terrorism currently plagues the planet. Gays and lesbians should be free to marry, women should enjoy full reproductive rights, all manifestations of religion should be banned from our public schools and other state institutions, and these flat-earthers should dispense with their stone age thinking and embrace the 21st century. So exclusively heterosexual marriage needs to be protected from the “homosexual threat?” More than half of all straight marriages end in divorce.
Domestic violence against both female spouses and children permeates the institution. The institution of marriage is inherently patriarchal and misogynistic. Perhaps heterosexual marriage needs to be saved from itself.

–Christian on May 20, 2008
Migawd, Christian:
I eat crow, cold, and in public.
Now if only you would get off the bashing bit, maybe only with a helium bat?
Frank Eng
P.S.: Greetings to your mom. And why aren’t you vocally in the ranks of those working for a theoneocon-free America? Or are you?

–Frank Eng on May 20, 2008
If it weren’t for many of the christian values that this country possess still…you wouldn’t have the freedom that you enjoy today!!! Remember this country was founded with achristian morality….Once this country erases God from its picture as it trying to do…it will all go down the drain!!!!!

–adilene on May 21, 2008
adilene, many of our freedoms have been stripped from us by the ostensibly god-fearing george bush and his cronies. this country’s galloping towards fascism under the tutelage of those who call themselves “christians” and hate everyone who doesn’t share their myopic worldview. like their fundamentalist muslim brethren, they attempt to spread their fascist creed at the point of a bayonet, be it killing terrified iraqi and afghani citizens with their bombs, assasinating foriegn governments that don’t toe the pro-u.s. line or killing doctors who perform abortions in the u.s. the most rabidly conservative christians are terrorists, pure and simple.

–Christian on May 21, 2008
Folks:
May this unapologetic and altogether too much oa a weisenheimer “agnostic” be allowed an aside here?
To wit:
Christ was, by almost all accounts, both prophet AND saint. Especially to the fractured and infighting Judeo/Christian/Islamic protagonists.
“Christians,” on the other hand, are as “Christians” do. American Friends and Unitarians and Jesuits and, no doubt, a “host” of others, to this observer, are “authentic” “Christians.”
But the likes of prominent “Christian” “leaders” who openly advocate assassination, forget the money-changer television evangelist types, are in league with and part and parcel of a “church” which aligns itself with and is hugely complicit with and responsible for the likes of today’s “Iraq War” and tomorrow’s Armageddon.
ANY “organized” “religion” that is focussed on the material and power rather than on the truly spiritual is NOT a religion, but an exploitation of EVERYone’s want and need of spiritual support.
And, to me at least, the only possible “religion” has nothing to do with icons and symbols and ritual, and has ALL to do with what resides in mind and gut and heart and, yes, “spirit.” For each of us is, willy-nilly, part of “spirit,” no matter how you see it, approach it, define it. Our “patriots” wrap the “flag” around themselves, and sour “heros” strut swaggeringly, but none begins to address the void in eash of us that each of us must fill for him- or herself.
Frank Eng

–Frank Eng on May 21, 2008
I think it is important to remember that NOT all _____ are all the same. And when it comes to the Christian church, there has been a great deal done that has been destructive, to paint huge generalizations can be dangerous. Easier, but dangerous and skewed. I also appreciate the need to make visible the travesties of the church, but would also push back a little to acknowledge the good that the church has done and is doing: civil rights movement, liberation theology, etc. Again, I am not trying to justify, deny or gloss over those act that have been destructive, but only yearning for us all to embrace a broader perspective. And I will get to the “progressive” element of the Asian American Christian community next month.

–Reyes-Chow on May 21, 2008
Reyes-Chow, I absolutely agree with you that it’s wrong to lump all Christians into the same category. Throughout my life, I’ve known many progressive Christians who were passionately committed to struggles for peace, justice and equality. I’ve always highly respected them and the courageous stances they assumed, even though they’ve often experienced problems with more conservative ecclesiastical bodies.
At the same time, far too many Christians espouse the most hateful, “you’re gonna burn in hell as I ascend to the heavens” doctrines. It’s those folks I cannot tolerate.
Just because you believe in a particular diety or belief system doesn’t mean that everyone else must embrace it.

–Christian on May 22, 2008
Christian,

I connect with you on this one. That was the main reason I left church at a younger age. I did not believe in going to heaven knowing my family was going to burn in hell. Heaven would be a very lonely place for me. I truly believe in Jesus Christ, but I don’t believe all the human interpretations of the Bible. All people of God will feel good doing good things, and feel bad when they do bad things. If you embrace Jesus because you are afraid of hell, it should be the very last reason. We should embrace and believe in Jesus, because its the righteous thing to do and you should feel good about it.

–Huang Fong on May 22, 2008
Bruce,

I’m encountering a small, but growing number of AA Christians that refuse even to operate within the conservative/liberal binary and feel comfortable within a postmodern epistemology (yes, this could also be translated as being AA Emergents).

As a Korean-American who has been entrenched in K-A ministries for a good part of my life, I’m deeply troubled by the “unholy” marriage between K-A church and conservative Reformed theology (Piper, Driscoll, Grudem, Westminster, TEDS, etc.). I’ve talked with some at length as to why AAs adhere to an almost hyper-calvinistic theology blindly. We end up depressed.

–Dan Ra on May 27, 2008
Reyes fails to distinguish between theological, cultural, and political conservatism.

Theologically, Asian American Christians are overwhelmingly conservative (evangelical or fundamentalist) because liberal Christianity has little to no evangelistic drive and Asians are not historically Christian — therefore Asian Americans who are Christian are recent (relatively speaking) converts to a theologically conservative faith.

Culturally and politically, there is a clear conservative or traditionalist pulse within most the Asian American community to begin with. Part of this is traditional Asian values. Another is multiple anti-communist immigration pattern that supports an interventionist foreign policy.

I work in ministry and consider myself theologically conservative, culturally/socially progressive, and politically moderate. I would characterize the Asian American Christian community as substantially more socially, culturally, and politically progressive than their equally theologically conservative white counterparts — and not significantly more conservative in these areas as compared to other Asian Americans.

–Calvin Chen on May 27, 2008
Folks:
As one with no “standing” whatsoever within the “walls” of this discussion, may an old poot edge in on a point or two?
First, I am really impressed by both foregoing posts and applaud same.
Second, Mr. Ra, have you traced your “sources” to the “left-behinders” and the upper-echelons of Texas institutions of “higher” “Christian” epistomology, or are the names you named indeed the latter?
My spotty and essentially uninformed scannings led me to believe that those theologians are the wellspring if not fount of the current “liaison” between said proponents and their “Jewish” brethren in the theoneocon entente ruling the to me UNholy precincts of the Middle East.
There was even a piece in Info Clearing House, was it yesterday?, on that theme.
Finally, here, has not the Rev. Moon for generations demonstrated an absolute authoritarian approach to the “Christian” God? And could the Falun Gong be but a sprig off the branch?
And Mr. Chen’s brief but profound and total assay of this “issue” reads and reasons to me as spot-on.
I doubt “Christianity,” other than the rice-bowl variety of the “Oil for the Lamps of China” and the “Keys of the Kingdom” days, could ever truly find sustenance in the Mainland soil of Confucian/Taoist/Buddhist earth.
“Chinese,” whether “northern Mandarin” or Shanghai merchant or Cantonese, like Pagnol’s Marsellais?, hedonists, are, at heart, true “pagans” and while “tolerant” of others’ beliefs, find them more puzzling than logical. So long as it doesn’t interfere with the commerce and comforts of mere and sheer “living.”
The “religious” or “moral” constraints of a true “Christian” are antedated by the “virtue” of Confuciuses’ “original” “man,” who practiced the benevolences and benignities of the noblesse-oblige of the true “family,” from mere scion all the way to the Son of Heaven himself.
So why would a Mainlander embrace a vengeful OR self-anointed “God”?
The “socio-” and the “politico-” are similarly proscribed, in my view.
The former again “Confucian” as in the Golden Rule, or what my parents taught me as “right,” as in “correct,” and in “fair” and in “just.”
Politically? Hah. My mom, who taught herself how to read a newspaper, was a Chiang apologist. Moi? Heh-heh. Later, baby.
But, between these two “extremes,” if, indeed, they WERE extremes, lie almost ALL of our relations and our familiars, which is to say, every point of the compass and every degree of the differences.
In short, WE were and are, simply, HUMAN.
And the badges and passions and, yes, rantings of “religion” are but one more facet of our INDIVIDUAL humanity.
NOT TO BE RULED OR EXPLOITED BY ANY ISM.
Frank Eng

–Frank Eng on May 27, 2008
Dan - Thanks. Yes, I think this segment of the population is definitely growing, though still struggling to find its way out of some of the massive cultural norms that part of the religious/cultural realities. KA is a GREAT example.

Calvin - Yes, you are correct, I did not make the delineation and was really trying to stay within the realm of theological. Still, I am not sure that I would agree that there are many that are theologically conservative and socially/culturally progressive or at least it may depend on the issue. Still you are correct in raising the issue that it is not that simple.

–Reyes-Chow on May 27, 2008
Bruce - I completely agree with you that theologically conservative and socially/culturally progressive Asian American Christians are probably rare. I was simply (poorly) trying to explain that Asian American evangelicals (especially 2nd and 3rd gen) are probably less culturally/socially conservative than white evangelicals.

I agree with both you and Dan that the ethnic immigrant church is a place where cultural norms — often conservative and Confucian — become dangerously indistinguishable from religious teaching. I recently worked with a Korean American student who had been extremely disillusioned with the Church because she had only consistently heard the “gospel” of hard work.

An interesting contrast to the conservative/fundamentalist/syncretistic Chinese and Korean American churches are Taiwanese American Presbyterian churches. (I’m Taiwanese American). They are essentially liberal theologically but conservative culturally and socially, and liberal on Taiwanese politics but hardline conservative on American politics. Phew!

–Calvin Chen on May 29, 2008
Can we give Christian a column on his own? I would read Asian Week more often.

–Wilma on Jun 01, 2008
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Please visit our news website at http://www.gospelherald.net.

Please pass it to those who might be interested to find out more information about it.

Thank you very much!

–Luke Leung on Aug 27, 2008

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