Churches Influence Attitudes Of New Americans.

A Rice study of Korean Americans shows just how important an influence churches can be in the lives of many first- and second-generation Americans. Those who attend multiethnic churches in their communities are encouraged to reach out to other ethnic and racial groups, while churches whose members are exclusively second-generation Koreans tend to reinforce old stereotypes and inadvertently build barriers of “us” and “them.”

Asian-American immigrants are often held up as the “model minority” – portrayed as predisposed to being financially and educationally successful. A new Rice study shows that this stereotype is often 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.

“The religious rhetoric of second-generation churches tends to inadvertently create distance between its Asian-American members and other racial or ethnic groups,” says Elaine Howard Ecklund, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology and author of the forthcoming book by Oxford University Press, titled “Korean American Religion: Race, Ethnicity and Civic Life.”

“As a result, there is a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ with obvious consequences for inter-racial and inter-ethnic relationships as they assimilate into American life.”

Ecklund sites, 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 hard-working than other non-white Americans,” Ecklund says.

“By not actively resisting this stereotype, some of these churches unconsciously reinforce boundaries between their members and other non-white 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 non-white 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 non-white minority residents who lived in a nearby urban area.

In an article for Ethnic and Racial Studies, “‘Us’ and ‘Them’: The Role of Religion in Mediating and Challenging the ‘Model Minority’ and Other Civic Boundaries,” Ecklund compares Korean Americans who attend second-generation Korean churches and those who are part of multiethnic churches to see how they view themselves vis-à-vis 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 did a survey on volunteer and political practices with members of these two churches. She also interviewed 42 other second-generation Koreans in four multiethnic churches and three second-generation congregations elsewhere in the U.S. In addition to being members of an evangelical Christian church, Ecklund’s respondents were all 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 seventeen percent of the U.S. overall population.

During her interviews, Ecklund asked the Korean Americans how they choose 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.

“Both churches were concerned about being involved in their local community,” Ecklund says.

“Members of the Manna church, however, reached out to other ethnic and racial groups to try to help them based on their commonalities, but those from second-generation Korean churches saw themselves as ‘different’ from other ethnic minorities and tended to be more comfortable helping other young Korean Americans versus other non-white minorities.”

For more information on this research, contact Ecklund at eh*@**ce.edu or B.J. Almond in the Office of News and Media Relations at ba*****@**ce.edu .

Courtesy of http://www.rice.edu