Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America

Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations

Pyong Gap Min

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780814795866
• eBook ISBN: 9780814796153
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology of Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

2012 Honorable Mention Award, Sociology of Religion Section, presented by the American Sociological Association


2011 Honorable Mention for the American Sociological Association International Migration Section's Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book



Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America explores the factors that may lead to greater success in ethnic preservation. Pyong Gap Min compares Indian Americans and Korean Americans, two of the most significant ethnic groups in New York, and examines the different ways in which they preserve their ethnicity through their faith. Does someone feel more “Indian” because they practice Hinduism? Does membership in a Korean Protestant church aid in maintaining ties to Korean culture?

Pushing beyond sociological research on religion and ethnicity which has tended to focus on whites or on a single immigrant group or on a single generation, Min also takes actual religious practice and theology seriously, rather than gauging religiosity based primarily on belonging to a congregation. Fascinating and provocative voices of informants from two generations combine with telephone survey data to help readers understand overall patterns of religious practices for each group under consideration. Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America is remarkable in its scope, its theoretical significance, and its methodological sophistication.

1 Theoretical Frameworks

THREE MAJOR THEORETICAL perspectives are useful for comparing Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus in the intergenerational transmission of ethnicity through religion: (1) participation in congregations, (2) the association between religion and ethnicity, and (3) the theological difference between Korean evangelical Protestants and Indian Hindus in their acceptance of religious dogma. This chapter reviews the literature related to each theoretical perspective and discusses the implications of the theories for comparing the two groups.

Participation in Congregations

An abundance of literature focuses on the earlier white immigrant and ethnic groups—Italian, Irish, German, Jewish, and Greek—stressing the positive effects of religion on ethnic preservation (Dolan 1985; Greeley 1972; Handlin 1979; Herberg 1960; Hirschman 2004; Ostergren 1981; Rosenberg 1985; Tomasi and Engel 1971; Warner 1994; Warner and Srole 1945). Because Christian immigrant groups and their descendants practiced their religion mainly through participation in congregations, the traditional literature emphasized this as the major mechanism for preserving ethnicity.

For example, in their classic book on white ethnic groups, Warner and Srole (1945, 160) pointed out that “the church was the first line of defense behind which these immigrants could organize themselves and with which they could preserve their group, i.e., system, identity.” Tomasi and Engel (1971, 186) made a similar comment with regard to Italian Catholic parishes: “The network of Italian parishes functioned to maintain the ethnic personality by organizing the ethnic group around the familiar religious and cultural symbols and behavioral modes of the fatherland.” Referring to “an explosion of congregations” in the United States in the nineteenth century, Ammerman (2001, 1) also made nearly the same observation: “By creating congregations—in cities and on the frontier— Americans embodied the cultural and religious values they cherished in ongoing institutions, structures that gave those values and traditions a place to thrive.” Regarding the role of white immigrant churches in preserving ethnic culture, Stout also observed, “The church service became a symbolic rite of affirmation to one’s ethnic association and a vehicle for preserving the ethnic language. Schools were established under the aegis of the church and efforts were made to inculcate the group with ethnic values and faith in the ethnic heritage” (Stout 1975, 207).

The previous review of the literature shows the strong emphasis on participation in a congregation as the major mechanism for the preservation of ethnicity by the studies of the earlier white immigrant groups. Following the same theoretical tradition, many studies of post-1965 immigrant groups emphasize the role of participation in religious institutions in preserving ethnicity (Bankston and Zhou 1995; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000, 393–96; Fenton 1988; Gupta 2003; Hurh and Kim 1990; Kim and Kim 2001; Kurien 1998, 2002; Lin 1996; Min 1992; Numrich 1996; Warner 1994; Warner and Wittner 1998; Williams 1988; Yang 1999; Yang and Ebaugh 2001a, 2001b; Yu 2001). For example, based on survey data regarding Vietnamese high school students, Bankston and Zhou (1995) concluded, “Religious participation consistently makes a greater contribution to ethnic identification than any of the family or individual characteristics examined, except for recency for arrival.” Regarding the ethnicity function of an Argentine immigrant church in Houston, Cook commented (2000, 183), “Iglesia Cristina Evangélica provides a social space where Argentine immigrants meet and interact on a regular basis, and the outcome of these exchanges is that Argentine ethnicity is maintained and reproduced.”

Today’s immigrants include many people of non-Judeo Christian faiths— Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs—who did not take the congregational approach to their religious practices in their home countries. Partly influenced by Christian religions in the United States and partly to meet their own practical needs, non–Judeo Christian immigrants do participate in formal religious institutions, though less frequently than Judeo-Christian immigrants do. Researchers have indicated non-Christian immigrant groups’ adoption of the Christian congregational model as one of the major transformations of their religious practices (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000; Warner and Wittner 1998; Yang and Ebaugh 2001a). Many studies also show that these non-Judeo Christian immigrant groups use their religious institutions to maintain their ethnic traditions. For example, in his study of a Chinese Buddhist temple in Los Angeles, Lin (1996, 113) said, “Hsi Lai temple offers Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Cantonese classes, mainly to 1.5 and second generation Chinese Americans. Special classes on Chinese culture are offered as well, including Chinese art, folk dance, music, cooking, and tai-chi classes that help over-seas Chinese to keep in touch with their ancestral roots.”

While contemporary non-Protestant immigrant groups, including Catholic groups, usually do not have separate religious organizations for second-generation members (Crane 2003; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000), Korean and other East Asian Protestants have established ethnic or Pan–East Asian English-language congregations for 1.5-, second-, and third-generation members (Alumkal 1999, 2001, 2003; Chai 1998, 2001a, 2005; Ecklund 2006; Jeung 2005; R. Kim 2004, 2006; S. Kim 2008; Min and D. Kim 2005). A number of second-generation Korean Protestant scholars have studied second-generation Korean congregations, particularly Korean English-language evangelical congregations, emphasizing the differences between Korean immigrant and second-generation congregations in congregational culture.

Some of these studies indicate that because of their experiences with racial prejudice and discrimination, most second-generation Korean Protestants feel comfortable participating in Korean ethnic congregations that contribute to recreated Korean ethnicity (Chong 1998; R. Kim 2006; H. Kim and Pyle 2004; S. Kim 2008). For example, in the first social science study of a second-generation Korean congregation, Chong claimed that “Christianity in the Korean-American community, more specifically conservative/evangelical Protestantism, plays a powerful role in the construction, support, and reinforcement of Korean ethnic identity/boundary in second-generation members” (Chong 1998, 26–27). In her study of Korean American evangelicals on campus, Rebecca Kim (2006) shows that their individual desire for community and propensity for homophily (love of the same) and imposed racial and ethnic categorizations in the larger society have led Korean American Christian students to join Korean ethnic campus ministries rather than multiracial or white ministries. She asserts that microlevel conditions interact with macrolevel structures to crease a kind of “emergent ethnicity” in younger-generation Korean campus minorities. Based on her ethnographic research in Korean English-language congregations in Los Angeles, Sharon Kim (2008, 169) argues that second-generation Korean Americans have created “their own hybrid religious institutions” that radically differ from both white American churches and their parents’ immigrant churches. Like Rebecca Kim, Sharon Kim emphasizes second-generation Koreans’ sense of racial marginalization as the main reason that they prefer to attend Korean congregations instead of white American churches.

The Association between Religion and Ethnicity and “Domestic Religion”

Another important religious mechanism for preserving ethnicity is the close association between religion and ethnicity in “ethno-religious” groups. In their discussion of the relationship between religion and ethnicity, Hammond and Warner (1993) offer three patterns. First, the relationship remains strongest when religion is the principal foundation of ethnicity. Hammond and Warner use the Amish, Jews, Hutterites, and Mormons as examples of groups with the strongest relationship and call this pattern ethnic fusion.

Among white ethnic groups, the Amish have been most successful in retaining their cultural traditions and identity, mainly because their religious values and rituals and ethnic cultural traditions correspond perfectly. Jewish Americans, too, have been more successful in retaining their ethnic traditions than other white ethnic groups, because their religious values and rituals also represent Jewish culture and identity (Hammond 1988; Hammond and Warner 1993), although their historical experience with discrimination all over the world also is an important source of Jewish ethnic identity. Both groups’ religious values and rituals are closely intertwined with elements of their ethnic culture, such as food, holidays, music, dance, weddings, funerals, and other ethnic customs.

What Hammond and Warner did not point out is that the Amish, Jews, and others have been able to maintain their ethnic traditions to a far greater extent through religious practices at home and small-group community settings than through participation in congregations. Although the Amish community, school, and church have contributed to their preservation of religious and ethnic traditions, the Amish “family has remained the smallest and strongest unit of Amish culture, the central social institution” (Huntington 1998, 451). The synagogue has become a community center for Jews, but only a small fraction of Jewish Americans participates in it regularly. For example, according to an analysis of the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey, 46 percent of Jewish Americans are affiliated with a synagogue, and only 27 percent of them attend Jewish religious services monthly or more often (United Jewish Communities 2004, 7). Passover dinner, Shabbat candles, and kosher food are important elements of ethnicity for Jews, and they usually celebrate or perform these rituals with their families. Both the Amish religion and Judaism include more religious rituals involving elements of their folk cultures, such as dietary rules, holidays, weddings, and funerals, than Protestantism does. Since these religions evolved in their homeland over a long period of time by incorporating the local cultures, it is not surprising that they include more family and community rituals than Protestantism does.

To Hammond and Warner (1993), the second closest relationship between religion and ethnicity is when religion, along with language and geographical origin, becomes one of the major foundations of ethnicity, such as in the Greek or Russian Orthodox and the Dutch Reformed churches. In this relationship, ethnic identity enhances religious identity more than the other way around (Hammond and Warner 1993, 59). But with their highly nationalistic religious practices, Greek, Russian, and Hungarian Orthodox immigrants and ethnic groups also have a huge advantage over other Christian groups in preserving ethnic traditions through religion. They, too, perform their religious rituals and practices intertwined with ethnic traditions more often at home than in churches. For example, Gasi (2000, 156) reported that

virtually all Greek homes have an “iconostast,” an area that displays two or three icons, that are first blessed in the church, and an oil-burning candle. Not all members go through the process of blessing their icons, or burning the oil-candle, but there is no Greek American home that does not have one or two icons of their favorite saints or the Virgins.

Hammond and Warner’s (1993) third, and weakest, relationship between religion and ethnicity can be found in many white ethnic groups that are linked to a religious tradition but share it with other ethnic groups. White Catholics—Polish, Irish, and Italian—and white Protestants—Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Lutherans—are good examples. In this pattern, the linkage between religion and ethnicity is weak because a few or several national-origin groups share the same religious tradition. But because Polish, Irish, and Italian Catholic groups brought with them such strong national religious traditions when they immigrated (Greeley 1972, 119), they may have been more successful than other white ethnic groups in preserving ethnic traditions, mainly through their religious practices. And they practice their religious rituals, such as religious holidays, dances, weddings, and funerals, more frequently with family and/or in the community than in churches (Greeley 1971, 1972; Waters 1990).

Today’s Asian immigrant groups have transplanted their traditional non-Christian religions—Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam—which are inseparably linked to their regional, national, and/or local cultural traditions and identity, to their new, predominantly Christian, country. Asian Buddhist and Indian Hindu temples also contribute to ethnic preservation through language and other ethnic cultural programs in religious institutions (Fenton 1988; Huynh 2000; Yu 2001). These Asian, non-Christian religious institutions enhance the participants’ ethnicity mainly because the physical characteristics of the temples and the religious faith and rituals practiced there symbolize their ethnic culture and identity. Herberg pointed out that white immigrant groups use their religion to maintain their cultural traditions and identity, especially because religious pluralism in the United States allows them to do so (Herberg 1960, 27–28). American multiculturalism in the post–civil rights era even encourages minority and immigrant groups to use their religion to mark their ethnic culture and identity. Thus Asian Buddhists and Indian Hindus offer their religious institutions and religious rituals to the American public as representing their “authentic” ethnic culture and different from the American Christian culture.

A number of studies show that Asian non-Christian immigrant groups have effectively used the close association between their religions and ethnic cultural traditions, and the differences between their non-Christian and American Christian religions, to enhance their ethnic identity (Chen 2002; Gupta 2003; Kurien 1998; Suh 2003, 2004; Williams 1988). For example, in her comparative study of a Taiwanese Buddhist temple and a Taiwanese evangelical church, Carolyn Chen (2002, 233) made the following observation:

At the same time that their religious difference prevents Dharma Light [a Taiwanese Buddhist temple] from being truly “American,” in the age of multiculturalism, the presence of “just enough difference” becomes the ticket to recognition and possible acceptance. By virtue of the association of Buddhism with the Far East and Christianity with the West, the Buddhists, rather than the Christians, are the ones to be recruited and courted as the Chinese representatives at the multicultural table.

Sharon Suh (2003, 181) made a similar observation about a Korean Buddhist temple: “Many male members of Sa Chal [a Korean Buddhist temple in Los Angeles] further claim that by remaining Buddhist in the U.S. they remain more loyal and more “authentic” Koreans—in contrast to their male counterparts in the Korean American Christian church.”

These non-Christian Asian immigrant groups practice their religions through rituals in the family or small groups more often than do American Protestants. The reason is that like Judaism, these non-Christian religions, with a long history in Asian countries, have incorporated many rituals closely tied to ethnic food, holidays, life-cycle events, music, and dance. Accordingly, studies of Asian Hindu or Buddhist immigrants have paid special attention to “domestic religion” and “family shrines” (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000, 391–93; Guest 2003; Huynh 2000, 50–51; Joshi 2007; Kurien 2007; Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2003).

Partly because of their Christian and partly because of their sociological bias, earlier studies of immigrant/ethnic religions looked exclusively at religious institutions as sites for religious practice.¹ But after 1965, the influx of Asian non-Christian and Latino/Caribbean Catholic immigrant groups has forced researchers to study religious practices at home, even those of white Christian immigrant groups. Catholics perform more rituals at home and in the community than Protestants do. Furthermore, various third-world versions of Catholicism feature more family and community rituals closely intertwined with their folk culture than does American Catholicism, as Roman Catholicism since the Vatican II (the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican) has allowed its missionaries to propagate the religion without destroying the local culture.² The mass migration of Catholics from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia also has led to the spread of Voodoo and other syncretic family and small-group rituals, combining Catholic beliefs and local folk culture, in American cities (Guest 2003; McAlister 1998; Orsi 1996; San Buenoventura 2002; Stepick 1998, 86–92; Stevens-Arroyo and Diaz-Stevens 1994; Sullivan 2000; Tweed 1997; Wellmeier 1998). In her introduction to an edited volume on Latino “popular religiosity,” Ana Maria Diaz-Stevens (1994, 19) claims, “Undeniably, Latinos have appropriated the notion and expression of popular religiosity as a defining characteristic of our religious experience in this country.”

McAlister (1998) illustrated how Haitian Catholic immigrants in New York simultaneously employ the religious languages of both Roman Catholicism and Voodou, the Haitian (African) folk religious tradition, with family rituals performed in Haitian immigrant homes representing the Voodoo tradition (McAlister 1998, 144):

Like the Chicana/o case, the Haitian home altar can be seen as an alternative sacred space controlled primarily by women. Prayer is offered according to the codes of Haitian religious culture, and dedicated to the spiritual work necessary to maintain relationships with the spiritual energy of both the saints and the iwa.

The fusion of Spanish Catholicism with the home-based rituals of the African folk tradition is also conspicuous among Cuban Catholic refugees. In his study of a Cuban Catholic shrine in Miami, Thomas Tweed (1997) exposes the struggles between the religion prescribed by Roman Catholicism and that practiced by many Cuban refugee devotees, emerging in rituals associated with the annual festival on September 8 (Tweed 1997, 53–54).

Asian Catholic immigrants also combine more ethnic-specific home rituals than do their white American counterparts (Guest 2003; Sullivan 2000, 259–71). Both Vietnam and Korea have been strongly influenced by Confucianism. Studies reveal that many Vietnamese and Korean Catholic immigrants also practice ancestor worship, an important component of Confucianism (Min 2004; Sullivan 2000, 259). Many Filipino Catholics also are part of an ethnic network of families that house, for a week, images of the Virgin. Sullivan (2000, 270) describes how it works: “Together with other compatriots, host families gather in prayer to welcome Mary into her new temporary abode. While she resides with a family, it prays together each evening before the image, thereby promoting family unity.”

In an article entitled “Religion and Ethnicity among New Immigrants,” Yang and Ebaugh (2001a) compared a Taiwanese Buddhist temple and a Taiwanese Christian church in Houston in the same way that Chen and Suh compared the two religious institutions of Taiwanese or Korean immigrants. In their conclusion, they state that the majority-minority status in both the host and the home country should be considered as predictive of variations in patterns of immigrant congregations’ adaptations. The major findings from these studies suggest that the non-Christian immigrant groups who enjoyed the majority religious status in their home countries but who have minority religious status in the United States benefit from using their religion for preserving ethnic culture and identity, for two reasons. First, particular non-Christian religions represent their cultural and philosophical traditions of their home countries. Second, their “very un-Americanness constitutes an attraction to some native-born Americans who seek alternative beliefs” (Yang and Ebaugh 2001a, 7)

Not all groups with majority religious status in their home countries benefit equally from using religion to preserve their ethnicity. As Hammond and Warner (1993) pointed out, whether a particular religious group has originated from a single country or from several different countries should be considered as affecting the level of the association between religion and ethnicity. Buddhist immigrants come from many Asian countries, such as Thailand, China, and Sri Lanka (Prebish and Tanaka 1998). Consequently, although Thai immigrants come from a heavily Buddhist country, they cannot find a near-perfect association between being a Buddhist and being a Thai. Muslim immigrants have even more diverse origins than do Buddhist immigrants, as they come from all parts of the world (Haddad and Smith 1994). Thus, even though most Muslim immigrants come from heavily Muslim countries, they are likely to find a big gap between their religious and ethnic identities in the United States. Accordingly, U.S. mosques usually provide ethnically mixed services (Abusharaf 1998; Badr 2000). This suggests that even very religious Muslim immigrants may not be able to use their religion to preserve their country-of-origin ethnic identity, even though being a Muslim may be the core of that identity (see Peek 2005).

Because of their majority status in their home country and their single-country origin, Indian Hindu immigrants have an extremely high level of association betwee...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Theoretical Frameworks
• 2 Religions in India and South Korea
• 3 Korean and Indian Immigrants’ Religious Affiliations and Participation in Religious Institutions
• 4 Ethnographic Research on the Shin Kwang Korean Church
• 5 Ethnographic Research on the Hindu Temple Society of North America
• 6 Participation in Religious Institutions, Family Rituals, and Identity
• 7 Younger Generations’ Preservation of Ethnicity through Participation in Religious Institutions
• 8 Younger Generations’ Preservation of Ethnicity through Domestic Religious Practices
• 9 The Importance of Religion to Younger Generations’ Identity, Socialization, and Social Relations
• 10 A Summary of Major Findings and Their Theoretical Implications
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author