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Eight years ago, when I first arrived in the United States to go to college, student life staff put me through a two-day crash course in assimilation. Though I grew up just an hour over the Canadian border, pamphlets about food etiquette and punctuality were shoved into my unwilling hands. One inventoried commondinner utensils, and another warned me that "when people say 'I'll see you later!' they don't necessary want to see you later." for two awkward days, my Canadian nationality involuntarily became my primary identity marker. Once the American students arrived, other than a casual "eh" joke, I faded into the backdrop.
As scholars of immigrant religion point out, ethnicity is often harder to shake as an identity marker, constituting proof of perpetual "foreignness" that keeps Americans from feeling fully American. This is not a new problem, but in the last few decades it has become anespecially Christian problem.
Since the Immigration Act of 1965, the nation's racial, ethnic, and religious diversity has increased dramatically. The numbers are staggering. In 2000, foreign-born Americans and their children numbered 56 million, around one-fifth of the entire population. Racial questions nolonger can be simply bifurcated into black and white. As many newcomers are either Christian or become Christian after immigration, religious bodies often become the primary places of assimilation and ethnic formation.
Three recent books join the growing body of scholarship that examines how foreign-born and second-generation Korean Americans, particularly Protestants, address ethnicity in their worshipping communities. Using primarily historical and sociological lenses, they examine the religious identities of Korean Americans, one of the fastest growing immigrant groups. The first, Religion and Spirituality in Korean America, offers a wide-angle view of the variegated spiritual landscape. The second, God's New Whiz Kids?, maps the evangelical terrain of the college campus, while the third, Korean American Evangelicals, explores evangelical church life after college for these upper-middle-class twentysomethings.
Religion and Spirituality in Korean America, a collection of essays edited by David Yoo and Ruth Chung, captures the diversity of Korean American religion, scattered among Protestant, Catholic, and Buddhist communities. The book's final section, "From Generation to Generation," explores the religious identities of second-generation Korean Americans (hereafter SGKA). Sociologist Sharon Kim's study of SGKAs in Los Angeles introduces readers to the challenges posed by the SGKA experience. Assimilation theory posits that "successful" immigrant children, acclimated to American culture, should become "Americanized," casting off ethnic segregation for the wider culture. SGKAs, however, reject both white mainstream churches and the immigrant parishes of their childhood. Instead, Kim writes, "they are charting a third path." Second-generation Korean American Christians are forging new connections between their generational, ethnic, and religious identities. In short, they find new ways to be all three: Koreans. Americans. Christians.
Rebecca Kim, a Pepperdine University sociologist, investigates the burgeoning number of second-generation Korean American evangelicals on university campuses. Traditionally white evangelical organizations like InterVarsity and Campus Crusade now thrive with a new infusion of SGKAs; some observers speak of "the Asian Awakening." This flourishing generation of worshippers avoids white, multiracial, or even pan-Asian ministries in favor of forming separate ethnic Korean groups. Why? On one level, it seems curious that Koreans would choose to keep to themselves. As a whole, Kim describes SGKAs who have made a comfortable home in American society. They are well-off, highly educated, monolingual English speakers, and a quarter of them marry non-Asians. Yet in very ordinary ways, they are also distinctive. The familiarity of Korean food, humor, and company motivates them to join ethnic communities, in addition to the social advantages of networking and dating. When given a choice, most Korean worshippers choose the group most similar and familiar to them. Simply put, separate ethnic services offer the comfort and security of a majority status.
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