BY FENGGANG YANG
University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BR563 C45Y36 1999
A Book Review by Joseph Ng
July 2004
South of the border can seem for Canadians a coarse reflection, as looking into a pond, of their own circumstances. So was my impression when I opened this fabulous doctoral dissertation-turned-trade book. Although the Canadian experience of Chinese Christianity is not identical to America’s, it nonetheless comes across as parallel and similar, and lessons and observations can often apply both ways.
Those working in a Mandarin-speaking church environment, be they pastors or lay leaders, would benefit much from Fenggang Yang’s pioneering study. As an English pastor in a Mandarin church, I found myself informed, forewarned, and encouraged by his experience at a Washington, D.C., Chinese church, and I would heartily commend the reading of this volume to others trying to reach immigrants from Mainland China with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Moreover, may this book prod some of us to take a closer look at the power of the Word and the social milieu here in Canada.
Chinese Christians in America (CCA) takes apart the complex experience of a fast-growing Asian minority in the United States with a high conversion rate to Christianity. It comprises six chapters:
Preface
Introduction: Studying Chinese Christians in the United States
1 Assimilation, Ethnicity, and Religion
2 Chinese Immigrants, Cultural Traditions, and Changing Identities
3 Becoming Christian
4 Becoming American
5 Preserving Chinese Culture
6 Deconstructing the Chinese Identity, Reconstructing Adhesive Identities
Conclusion: Pluralism and Adhesive Identities
Appendix: The Chinese Christian Church of Greater Washington, D.C.: An Annotated Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Index
In his highly autobiographical introduction, Fenggang Yang describes leaving Beijing for Washington to study religion in America in hope of returning to China as a religion lecturer and how God intervened to save him through a “chance” visit to the Chinese Christian Church (CCC) in Washington’s Chinatown. There he would spend several years as a Ph.D. student, receive baptism, and be given permission to rummage through boxes of documents dating back to CCC’s founding—membership lists, baptismal records, minutes of meetings, the works. Yang was so captivated by the phenomenon of high conversion among Chinese in America that he could not get away from it, an interest his church fortunately shared, and was able not only to examine it in generalities but in considerable ethnographic and sociological detail, as no one else had done.
Yang points out that the conversion of Chinese is somewhat unexpected given their prevalent mindset in China. Chinese people, like many people living in modern societies, do not typically think about God in their secular setting. He identifies “social Darwinism” as a key factor in the rejection of Christianity in China:
The most urgent need was to save the nation from physical extinction (jiuguo). ... Science and scientism became the standard and norm. Darwin’s evolutionism became the scientific truth. ... In this regard, Chinese rejection of Christian religion is also part of a universal modern phenomenon, not a particularly Chinese rejection.” (p. 54)
Discussing the meaning of conversion, Yang points out the necessity of baptism for public witness within the church and for the purposes of definition in his study:
At the CCC the common understanding of “conversion” is that a person has had the experience o being “born again and saved” (chongsheng dejiu), or has accepted Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior and lord. A convert needs to be baptized. They do not say that baptism is necessary for salvation, because they proclaim “justification through faith only”; but they say that a true convert must be baptized in order to publicly witness for the Lord. ... Therefore, I use the word “conversion” in this book to mean a change from other religions or no religion to Christianity. (pp. 70-71)
The factors of conversion are unique for Chinese who arrive in America. What influenced Chinese students and immigrants to convert, unlike their brethren growing up in America, was not “Christian socialization” in China—not much about which can be said under the Communist regime—but rather, extreme godlessness and adversity:
For people from the PRC and Indochina, there was almost no Christian socialization [prior to immigration]. In mainland China under Communist rule, for several decades Christian churches were closed, Christian believers persecuted, and the compulsory education tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party indoctrinated students with materialism, scientism, and atheism. However, experiences of political catastrophes and social turmoil prepared many of them for religious conversion. Experiences in America as foreign students or immigrants further intensified their desire for a religion. In sharp contrast, for most ABCs (American-born Chinese) and ARCs (American-raised Chinese), Christian socialization was the single important factor for their receiving baptism. (p. 75)
In contrast to the experience of recent immigrants, the founders of CCC and earlier generations of Chinese arrived decades ago from Hong Kong or Taiwan after fleeing “the Chinese Communist dictatorship.” One of these self-styled “sojourners,” an elderly Chinese Christian in Boston, who was born in Guangdong and had lived in Taiwan, the U.S., Hong Kong, and other places, declared, “The only permanent home is in the kingdom of God.” Tellingly, some CCC membership application forms have Tianjia (the heavenly home) listed for “permanent address.” Comments Yang: “This answer was not frivolous because many of these people truly had no permanent residence anywhere in this world. Their only hope of permanence was in the heavenly kingdom assured by the Christian religion” (p. 80).
Expanding on the experience of these people from Hong Kong or Taiwan who in the 1960s and 1970s arrived in the U.S. for studies, Yang highlights the impact of warm Chinese Christian fellowships:
For the lonely students, Bible study groups or fellowship activities were warm, intimate, and psychologically secure. At these meetings they could speak their familiar Chinese language rather than English, talk about things of common concern to fellow Chinese students, and have familiar Chinese food. Finding a sense of group belonging, many gradually converted. Sometimes former missionaries to China sought out these Chinese students and befriended them. (p. 82)
The practice of providing a welcoming environment in the church has not ceased to this day, as it is extended to the stream of Chinese arriving from the PRC:
At the CCC the climax of the Chinese New Year celebration is a grand jiaozi (boiled dumplings) banquet. ... On that day in the years when I did my research, church members and invited friends would gather at the Fellowship Hall of the church and make lots of jiaozi together. Preparing dough and stuffing, making wrappers, wrapping, and boiling, everybody participates in this collective cooking. It provides an opportunity for the people to chat and enjoy themselves, and it also creates a jolly family-like atmosphere. The “jiaozi banquet” is followed with entertainment programs, including performing Chinese dances, playing musical instruments, and singing gospel songs” (pp. 142-43).
Yang continues to describe the repressive experience of the “newest Chinese immigrant group” from the PRC, who had undergone the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76:
Religious believers were treated not only as people who had wrong beliefs, but as counter-revolutionaries or reactionaries—the enemy of the “proletariat dictatorship.” Active Christians were thrown into jails or labor camps. Many Christian leaders and believers suffered physical torture, mental abuse, and political persecution. Furthermore, for several decades the huge propaganda machine indoctrinated all people, young and old, into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Atheism was taught as the scientific truth in textbooks from kindergarten to university. In that situation, even if someone was born into a Christian family, it was hard to get Christian socialization. Many Christian parents feared that any teaching of Christian beliefs to their children might get their children and themselves into troubles. Sometimes children took action to denounce their parents for their “superstitious” beliefs. It is not surprising, therefore, that almost no mainland Chinese received baptism before 1980. (p. 84)
So why do the Chinese convert to Evangelical Christianity? Yang, for lack of “existing theories to refer to,” posits “three assimilation explanations for immigrant conversions ... based on commonsense understandings” (p. 90). The first is that of “rice-bowl Christianity,” joining a church for material gain. The second is “to make themselves appear to be more American.” And the third is to meet one’s “social needs for ethnic group belonging” (pp. 90-91). All three “commonsense”-based theories he rejects as inadequate.
Instead, Yang offers the following as factors influencing conversion:
Without cultural traditions as barriers, the Chinese are now both free and bound to seek alternate meaning systems. As one of the available alternatives, Christianity sufficiently answers the spiritual quest for many Chinese who have experienced life-threatening traumas. (p. 93)
“Living in this fast-changing, pluralistic, relativistic, and chaotic world, conservative Christians are assertive in proclaiming that the sole and absolute truth can only be found in the inerrant Bible. Evangelicals assure believers of absolute love and peace in this world and eternal life after death. For new Chinese immigrants, both premigration traumas and postmigration uncertainties in modern American society fortify their desire for absoluteness and certainty.” (p. 94)
Having considered the phenomenon of the Chinese “Becoming Christian,” Yang moves on to his chapter on “Becoming American,” where he provides a penetrating, nonhagiographic glimpse of CCC’s struggle with language deployment and American management patterns:
The CCC began with a monolingual Mandarin Sunday service in 1958. About ten years later the Sunday service became bilingual in Mandarin and Cantonese. In the early 1970s English was added to the Sunday service. The trilingual Sunday worship is a fascinating event to observe, although some participants find it difficult to follow. ... In 1972 a CCC member who was fully trilingual made the first request for holding a separate English service each Sunday. He argued that monolingual services without interpretation would save time and allow the sermon message to be communicated more effectively to the congregation. ... [Despite a majority vote to separate] the Official Board decided to continue the trilingual Sunday service. Church records show that some lay leaders feared that a separate Sunday service might lead to division of the church; some parents wanted to sit beside their English-speaking teenage children in the same service; and some members found the bilingual or trilingual translation helpful for them to learn another language. (pp. 101-2)
So strong was the opposition to the starting of a separate English service, that one elder quipped rather crisply at a point when church attendance was bursting the seams of the sanctuary, sometime in the early 1970s:
We do not need two services. In our evangelism visits we can recommend people to join nearby churches in their neighborhoods. They do not have to come to our church. Our goal is to evangelize and to let them know the Lord, not to make our church bigger.
What a gem, highlighting the sharp difference of opinion that ensued between the pastoral team and the congregation. On one occasion in 1975, Peter Luo, who was later ordained and went ahead with the Senior Pastor to start an English service in defiance of the congregational position, pleaded:
We haven’t done enough for the ABCs. We need to pay more attention to them in the ministry. A separate English service is necessary in order to effectively meet their spiritual needs. (p. 102)
By August 1976, the Senior Pastor had resigned and other complications had arisen, and “Assistant Pastor Luo, two elders, most of the deacons, and about half of the church members suddenly withdrew from the CCC and started another church” (p. 103). Unhappily for some, “the experiment of an English service had to be discontinued because the total Sunday attendance [of above 300] suddenly dropped to about 160. It took another ten years before the English service was reintroduced at the CCC” (p. 103).
But all was not lost. Having left CCC, the large splinter church became the Chinese Bible Church of Maryland, where:
The radicals in this group wanted to focus exclusively on Christian devotion and evangelistic missions. Some of them later gave up well-paying jobs and went overseas as missionaries. They opposed church democracy, measures of cultural preservation, and involvement in ethnic community activities. On a scale from liberal to fundamentalist, the new church was obviously more fundamentalist. ... In brief, the more conservative people with a stronger Christian identity left for the Chinese Bible Church, and the not-so-conservative people with a stronger Chinese identity left for the nonreligious ethnic community. After this, the CCC became a church of people who wanted to maintain balance of the three identities [Chinese, American, and Christian]. (p. 182)
Back at CCC, the church’s troubles were hardly over, with the subsequent hiring of non-Chinese-speaking Caucasian ministers and their conflict with new Chinese pastors, such as the Rev. Daniel Tang (Senior Pastor, 1991-1995, pp. 104f.), who turned out theologically left of the Scripture:
Rev. Tang could be regarded as an evangelical, but his theological positions leaned toward liberal evangelicalism. Rev. Tang was a graduate of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School ... and Fuller Theological Seminary ... was ordained by the American Baptist Churches ... and served a United Methodist church in California. ... Rev. Tang said on various occasions that women could be deaconesses, elders, and pastors. In 1994 Rev. Tang received an invitation to attend a conference in the People’s Republic of China organized by the government-sanctioned “Three Self” churches. Most Chinese Christians in America perceived the “Three Self” churches as the accomplice of the Communist government to suppress Christianity. When Rev. Tang made a request for traveling funds to attend the meeting in China, it caused antagonism from several lay leaders. Eventually, Rev. Tang was voted out by the congregation in 1995. (pp. 66-67)
Besides the issue of language preferences, Yang also discusses parallels between traditional Chinese values and the Protestant ethic, including issues of success (for grades, “C is ‘no-no,’ B is ‘so-so,’ A is ‘OK’ [p. 108]), thrift, temperance (no smoking or serving of alcoholic beverages), sexuality and marriage, and the mottos “Be Proud of Yourself” and “Dare to Be Different.”
Concerning gender equality, Yang expresses some incredulity that the CCC should “voluntarily accept the influence of American Christian fundamentalism” despite their having “been educated in China and the United States and have experienced equality between men and women. The opposition to gender equality at this Chinese church is puzzling” (p. 121). “Again,” says Yang of an incident during CCC’s pastoral search, “it was a surprise when I heard the American-born young people voicing strong opposition to a candidate for the senior pastor merely because his wife was also an ordained pastor” (p. 181).
Except for Rev. Daniel Tang, who was ousted for his liberal-leaning positions, none of the pastors at the CCC believed in the ordination of women. Some English-service members at CCC appeared to prefer the teachings of an unnamed “professor of biblical theology, a white man” “at a fundamentalist Bible college,” who “taught them that according to the Bible, no woman should be a spiritual leader—pastor or elder. American fundamentalists seem to have exerted significant influence in this regard” (p. 120). Yang also mentions that some ABC youth at against the candidacy of a potential senior pastor “argued that if the biblical principle of no female spiritual leadership could be broken, no biblical principles would be unchangeable. To protect the integrity of the faith, faithful Christians should not accommodate worldly trends in anything. This is a powerful argument at this evangelical church whose members are in need of certainty” (p. 120). In contrast to “many immigrant Chinese [who] showed more flexible attitudes,” the young people insisted:
If he [the candidate] compromises in any way on this important issue of a woman pastor, how can we expect him to stick to the absolute authority of the Bible? (p. 181)
In this chapter, Yang seems to assume vestigial Confucianism as key to the Chinese identity vis-à-vis conversion to Christianity. Confucius’ ghost appears to loom large in the psyche of both Christian and non-Christian Chinese:
Many contemporary Neo-Confucian scholars praise the agnosticism in Confucianism. To Chinese Christians, however, this lack of religious dimension is a fatal deficiency of Confucianism. ... Precisely because Confucianism failed to provide consistent answers concerning God, death, and the spiritual world, these Chinese Christians argue, various human-invented wrong religions have filled China ever since the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 220), when Confucianism became the orthodoxy. ... To remedy what they perceive as the deficiency of Confucianism, these Chinese Christians call for a restoration of ancient Chinese culture prior to Confucius. ... By pointing out the verses about God in the most ancient Chinese texts and by arguing that this God is the same God whom Christians believe in and worship, these Chinese Christians want to prove that believing in God is indeed very Chinese, very traditional (in ancient roots), rather than at odds with Chinese identity and Chinese traditions. (p. 152-53)
But Yang denies Confucianism the status of a religion:
The orthodoxy of Confucianism is not a religious one. Confucianism is mostly a system of social ethics, and it allowed coexistence of many religions in the past. ... Therefore, Chinese converts to Christianity could claim their Chinese identity by preserving their nonreligious Chinese cultural heritage, rejecting traditionally religious elements of the culture, and sometimes reinterpreting the meaning of certain cultural traditions. For these Christians, Christian conversion becomes an integral part of the general identity reconstruction of Chineseness. (p. 199)
To tie their Confucianist Chinese identity to their Christian faith while avoiding the charge of religious syncretism, Chinese Christians hold that “Confucianism is a system of moral values, whereas Christianity provides transcendent beliefs and spiritual guidance. ... Confucianism and Christianity do not compete on the same level. ... A frequent statement in talks and articles at the church is ‘Worship Jesus Christ as God, revere Confucius as a sage, and honor ancestors as human beings” (p. 154).
Yang then compares the “orthodoxy” that is Confucianism with the “heterodoxies” of Daoism [or, Taoism] and Buddhism. Buddhism is rejected outright for its incompatibilities, but not Daoism. Yang makes a point about Chinese Christians “appreciating philosophical Daoism while rejecting religious Daoism” (p. 156). In a brief excurses into comparative religion, he contrasts the subjective and mystic experience of “‘Daoist’ Christians” against the more objective and cerebral tendencies of “‘Confucian’ Christians” (p. 161).
Yuan also highlights the connection made between the Chinese word Dao and the Johannine use of the Greek term Logos (John 1), most often rendered in English as the Word. He attributes to popular Chinese evangelist Yuan Zhiming a book that presents:
a systematic reinterpretation of Dao De Jing in the light of Christianity. The manuscript, entitled The Light of God (Shen Guang) was circulated among CCC members before its formal publication. To Yuan Zhiming, a Christian convert, God is a universal God of all humankind, and the Dao (Word or Way) of God is the universal Dao. In his book, Yuan comes to the conclusion that more than twenty-six hundred years ago, when God prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ to Isaiah, God also shed light to ancient China through Laozi. ... Yuan argues that Dao De Jing clearly articulates that the Dao is God, is Who He Is (YHW) [sic], is infinity, eternity, the creator, the transcendent, revelator, and savior. ... Because God’s revelation to Laozi ws only a “general revelation” (yiban qishi), Dao De Jing could not prophesy the incarnation of Dao as clearly as Isaiah in the Old Testament, for only Isaiah received God’s direct and specific revelation (zhijie tebie qishi) at about the same time of Laozi. (pp. 157-58)
In his concluding statement, Yang contrasts Chinese conversions with the findings of “past studies of European and some Asian immigrants ... that transplanted religious organizations help to preserve traditional culture and maintain ethnic identity” (p. 198). Instead, he argues that:
Religious conversion in post modern pluralism [such as the case at CCC] can be an act of preserving traditional culture. Postmodern pluralism has a tendency to relativize traditions. ... These Chinese immigrants find a good match between Confucian moral values and evangelical Christian beliefs, and the conservative Christian faith provides an absolute foundation for their cherished social ethics. Therefore, religious conversion to evangelical Christianity indeed helps these people to maintain their Chinese identity. ... In China, communist experiments became very destructive to traditional culture and society. Christianity is an alternate universalism with which many Chinese today have become interested in experimenting. (pp. 198-99) ... This study shows that Chinese Christians have constructively integrated Confucianism with Christianity. (p. 200)
Yang largely succeeds in making his book both candidly autobiographical—hence delightful to read—and as objective as practicable as an observer-participant. His contribution to the corpus of knowledge is significant being the first major survey of Chinese conversions in North America. He suggests good directions forward in terms of the ABC/ARC scene. In personal communication, he has suggested looking at the Canadian situation, where more statistical data are available.
In terms of pragmatic lessons for the reader to take away, in terms of evangelistic methods or multicultural congregations, more research in these areas would be welcome. What would have been more satisfying would be hard statistical data for some of Yang’s assertions. Perhaps these might have been presented through charts or footnotes in his dissertation but not in his published work. His list of factors influencing conversion, for instance, might have enjoyed the benefit of quantitative data perhaps, through direct responses from a sample of immigrant respondents. For example, the following questions might be answered with greater explanatory adequacy:
· What played a greater role in conversion in the perception of converts themselves: networking opportunities, cultural proximity, or prospect of forgiveness?
· Which was the greater fear: the loneliness of geocultural displacement or philosophical incertitude in the midst of the postmodern milieu?
· To what extent did the horrors of the Cultural Revolution cause anyone to flee to Christ?
· How many would care whether Christianity was compatible with Confucianism or Buddhism, or, for that matter, Maoism?
· What were the appeal and the offense of the Cross?
Yang did not have access to a nationwide census on religion in the U.S.; there isn’t any. The situation is different here in Canada. If a parallel study were done for this country, data on religion from Statistics Canada could be analyzed in addition to any fieldwork.[1]
Another area of concern would be Yang’s hesitation at taking atheism or secular humanism as a religion. But if, indeed, they are not religions, then the study of religious conversions in Chinese from the PRC might be a case of comparing apples and oranges, since atheism, secular humanism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are assumed not to be religions while Christianity is. Against this, it has been strongly contended, and even accepted under the American justice system, that atheism or secular humanism—in its various expressions and with its apparent absence of a deity or religious rituals—is indeed a religion.[2] Even Yang, on occasion, concedes to the fanatical rigour of Maoist “indoctrination” (a word he uses in pp. 75, 84) in the backgrounds of recent Chinese converts. How the Maoist religion informs any putative Confucian—the religious status of the latter being another area of contention—is unknown but could provide interesting focus for any future study. As it is, Yang seems content to account for religious background only vaguely through certain Confucian, Daoist, or Buddhist vestiges of pre-Communist-era religion. And one must surely wonder about the usefulness of his Daoist/Buddhist/Confucian categories for Chinese Christians!
In terms of theology, Yang identifies the raison d’être of CCC to be evangelism. Ironic as the elder’s argument was, that “Our goal is to evangelize and to let them know the Lord, not to make our church bigger,” it puts across that objective very clearly, an objective shared by many Chinese churches in North America. Yet soulwinning per se cannot be the ultimate goal of a church; in fact, it does not even fulfil the Great Commission, which does not seek to mass-produce and abandon spiritual babes but to “make disciples” through baptism and the teaching of obedience to Christ’s word. This implies conversion, sanctification, obedience, submission, zeal, maturity, service, and sacrifice—all of which are but aspects of conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. CCC’s theological deficiency in this area would come out in Yang’s assessment of its young people’s opposition to egalitarian “gender equality” on the biblical principles. Their “fundamentalism” was holy obedience and faith in the Scriptures, nothing more.[3] Unlike their left-leaning Senior Pastor Tang, they made the right choice to believe God’s Word prima facie. Chinese churches would do well to pay special attention to the area of biblical obedience and not just to missions and evangelism.
Association for the Sociology of Religion Annual Meeting 2004. “The Causes and Consequences of Contemporary Moralities.” August 13 – 15. http://www.sociologyofreligion.com/Prelim%20for%202004.htm
Carnes, Tony, and Fenggang Yang. Asian American Religions: The Making and Remaking of Borders and Boundaries. New York: NYU Press, 2004.
Guest, Kenneth J. God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York’s Evolving Immigrant Community. New York: NYU Press, 2003.
Kussrow, Paul G., and Loren Vannest. “Can Public Schools Be Religiously Neutral?” http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/neutral.html
Ling, Samuel. “An Overview of the Chinese-American Church in the 21st Century.” An interview by Albert H. Lee, April 10, 2004. The Christian Post. http://www.christianpost.com/archive/2004/04/2004-04-10_americas-41.htm
Noebel, David A., J.F. Baldwin. and Kevin Bywater. “What Is Secular Humanism?” An adaptation of their Understanding the Times: The Religious Worldviews of our Day and the Search for Truth, and Clergy in the Classroom: The Religion of Secular Humanism. http://www.christiananswers.net/q-sum/sum-r002.html
Tu, Janet I. “Ethnic Churches Drawing Crowds.” Seattle Times, March 12, 2002. http://www.seaq.org/seattletimes2002.htm
[1] The Canadian census includes a question on one’s religious affiliation. While the number of Roman Catholics and Protestants declined, the number of people claiming “no religion” shot up to “16% of the population in 2001, compared with 12% a decade earlier” (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030513/d030513a.htm). Whether this could be attributed to the influx of atheists from China may be answered with greater academic access to the Stat Can database.
[2] Both the U.S. Supreme Court and secular humanists themselves have defined their faith a religion (http://www.agetwoage.org/Religioninschool.htm). In Torcaso vs Watkins, 1961, the highest court in America thus ruled secular humanism to be a religion protected by the First Amendment: “Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others” (http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/weaver/030304). The Secular Humanist Manifestos confess that they are “an expression of a living and growing faith” (http://www.christiananswers.net/q-sum/sum-r002.html).
[3] To be fair, Yang does not claim to be a theologian and his is the work of a sociologist. Nonetheless, Fred Moritz provides an ample survey of definitions of fundamentalism where Yang offers none (http://www.itib.org/articles/contending_for_the_faith/contending_for_the_faith_1-2.html). John Piper and Wayne Grudem’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, through clear biblical exegesis, demystifies Yang’s incredulity at the fundamentalist position taken by the CCC youth. The online edition of the book is available for free at http://www.cbmw.org/rbmw/