Chinese Christians in America: conversion, assimilation, and adhesive identities

by Fenggang Yang

Christianity has become the most practiced religion among the Chinese in America, but very little research exists on Chinese Christian churches. This book explores the subject from the inside, revealing how Chinese construct and reconstruct their identity -- as Christians, Americans, and Chinese -- in local congregations amid the radical pluralism of the late twentieth century.

Today there are more than one thousand Chinese churches in the United States, most of them Protestant evangelical congregations, bringing together diasporic Chinese from diverse origins -- Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Southeast Asian countries. Fenggang Yang finds that despite the many tensions and conflicts that exist within these congregations, most individuals find ways to integrate creatively their evangelical Christian beliefs with traditional Chinese (mostly Confucian) values. The church becomes a place where they can selectively assimilate into American society while simultaneously preserving Chinese values and culture.

Yang brings to this study unique experience as both participant and observer. Born in mainland China, he is a sociologist who converted to Christianity after coming to the United States. The heart of this book is an ethnographic study of a Chinese church, in Washington, D.C., where he became a member Yang draws upon interviews with members of this congregation while making comparisons with other churches throughout the United States. Chinese Christians in America is an important addition to the literature on the experience of "new" immigrant communities.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Natalie Fong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up in a Chinese American church and I had never seen the dynamics of the Chinese Christian church laid out so clearly. Even though the subjects of this book were from a church in DC, the similarities were nonetheless striking. However, I thought there were obvious limitations to the book, the research was quite narrow in the sense that it only focused on one church and generalized its findings across subjects that weren't directly being studied, and ignored some historical factors at play. Despite this, I still found it to be an informative picture of "selective assimilation" that opens dialogue on a less studied part of Chinese American sociology, reinforced by my personal experiences.

[Celestine Woo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad this book exists, because when it came out, there were few if any serious studies of the Chinese American church as a phenomenon--a phenomenon I grew up within. Yang makes his own faith clear, and it provides him access to conversations and contexts that he would not have been provided as an outsider. So that is valuable. However, the writing is quite mediocre, the organization seems elementary, and the book could go a LOT further on sociological or societal analysis. It strikes me as a doctoral thesis that got turned into a book: not bad, but I wanted the book to be a whole lot more insightful, and it just wasn't. I think by now there are tons more out there that are far better.

[Joshua Sim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have given the book 3.4 or 3.5. I am not reviewing the book here, but this was a refreshing read as it caused me to reflect a lot on my experience in Chinese ministry in Singapore. While circumstances are different, the problems and tensions raised in the book are very similar. The struggle over identity is also very pronounced in Singapore's Chinese miniseries/churches. For post-baby boomer Singaporeans, there's a need to balance multiple identities: Chinese identity, Christian identity and Singaporean (English-speaking yet bilingual, but not necessarily bicultural) identity.

[Prakruti · Rating 3 out of 5]

i had some questions and this book did a decent job of answering them