The Anatomy of Misunderstanding: Readings and Consequences for Australian Korean Churches

Introduction

The process of secularization and de-denominalization in western societies has raised significant issues with regard to the rise of the reason, identity politics, and the futures of Christian movements. In many western countries, for instance, traditional denominations and even sections of Pentecostal Christianity are only growing on the back of global migration patterns. (In Australia, this is particularly case with the Presbyterian, Uniting Church, and Christian and Missionary Alliance). The processes whereby first-generation, ethnic churches are planted, grown, and sustained, and by which they eventually plan for succession, become more than simply the interest of historians of migration. Rather, the role and identity of the children of migrants (1.5 and second-generation migrant groups) has become essential to the Christian presence in many countries around the world. Within this, there are very real tensions which will have a significant impact upon the religious profiles of the West and of westernizing countries. This paper looks at some of the sociological sources for coherence and dispersion among second-generation ethnic groups in Christian communities, with a particular focus on Korean churches in Australia, Canada and the United States.¹

Literature

R. Stephen Warner notes that while the literature on mainstream evangelical churches has improved over the last two decades, that on new immigrant and religious groups has not.² In part this original deficit arose because of the widely noted bias amongst academic researchers towards religion as a subject, based on widespread ideologies of secularization. Thus much of the improvement in range of study has had to await the maturing of institutions within those mainstream traditions of which he speaks. New migrant waves, by contrast, have not yet had the opportunity to mature, or build, institutions of reflection, which can contribute to the literature. This is beginning to change with regard to diasporic Korean churches – not only are there considerable numbers of mature Christian institutions in Korea itself, but there are increasing numbers of targeted programs outside Korea. First wave migration gives way to wider communities, which build institutions to further their own strategic objectives. Not surprisingly, this is most mature in the United States. There, Korean migration has been earlier and more substantial than in either Canada or Australia. As Warner notes, ‘By actual count in 1988, there were 2018 Korean-American churches.’ By 1999, there were claimed to be 1000 Korean American churches in the stretch of Californian coast between Santa Barbara and San Diego alone. ³ Migration there was earlier, due to the continuing American involvement on the Korean peninsula, as reflected by the opening of the United States to Korean migration through the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. Conversely, ‘White Australia’ legislation did not effectively end in Australia until 1971, with significant Asian migration commencing in 1974. ⁴ The Family Reunion scheme in 1978 opened the doors further, reinforcing the migration of extended family groups. The first stand-alone Korean church was thus founded in Melbourne in 1974, and the second in Sydney in 1974. ⁵ By 1989 there were thirty churches in Sydney alone. Greater numbers for a longer time, proximity and preference to and by the population of the Korean peninsula, in a philanthropic society which positively assists the growth of religious institutions of education and reflection, has meant that the American literature on first and second generation Korean churches is considerably more developed than in other parts of the world. Even so, the grooming of a reflective literature which is not warped by secularized presumptions has taken time.

Despite the ideological bias against Christianity (due to the post-Bandung perception among scholars that it was a western imperialist religion), it is becoming widely accepted that Asian peoples have not merely adopted Christianity in its western form but have selectively adopted and adapted it according to their own needs. As Yoo notes, religion, "even Christianity", has been a force in its own right that "shapes, transforms, [and] unifies as well as divides Asian-American communities," its symbols and institutions having been "appropriated by Asians for their own purposes." ⁶ The irony of this is that the very migrant churches which are subjected to secularized studies by researchers are the means by which secularization is undermined in western countries through increasing recognition of the global importance of religion. "Instead of focusing on the decline of the erstwhile Protestant establishment," writes Warner, "the new paradigm regards the master function of religion in the United States to be the provision of social space for cultural pluralism." ⁷ This has been less the case in Australia, where state support of universities has meant that secularist ideologies have been protected from the free market competition of ideas, and exposure to religious communities on the ground. It is still comparatively easy to find accounts of Australian society which marginalize, or treat as irrelevant, the religious factor. When religion is dealt with in ethnic cases, it is often presumed to be a mere extension of ethnicity. White men, according to some commentators, are "over" the religious virus which still infects the rest of the world.

Significant challenges to the ‘hard secularization thesis’, however, indicate that the trends expected in Australian religion (in for instance, the despairing titles which emerged in the 1980s for books like Can God Survive in Australia, and Australia: the most godless place under heaven?) ⁸ have mercifully been unrealized. While there has been significant decline in traditional denominations, there are also significant signs of growth and flourishing, particularly amongst the ethnic churches in the global cities. What this means for our subject is that, not only should we not assume that Korean churches will decline into ethnic remnants, or disperse into homogenized and anglicized versions of broader church cultures, but that we should not assume that Korean churches (or any other form of ethnic church) are merely victims of the host culture. Indeed, as Warner notes, "many immigrants see themselves as missionaries, whether to their co-ethnics, their home countries, or the host society, you and me." Nor is this a particularly Pentecostal issue, but something which radically colours the study of Korean churches in Sydney. Australian historians are so used to telling the story of decline, that they tend to associate growth with the unusual, into which category Pentecostalism normally falls. In looking at transfer and influence within the Korean community, however, one has to look at vibrant conservative communities which provide part of the palette of options for Koreans coming to Australia. ⁹ On the back of a domestic situation which has continued to see significant growth in Korean- homeland Christianity, ¹⁰ as Busto notes, "Korean immigrant churches, dominantly conservative, are one of the few growth sectors in mainline denominations, even as Asian-American evangelical students have changed the ideological tenor of many American university campuses." Researchers can and have produced artificial accounts simply by studying ethnic communities in isolation, as opposed to in dynamic tension with their host and other referential communities. Ethnic churches often begin by collocating with mainstream or other ethnic churches. On the horizontal level this can be cause for conflict, while on the vertical level (in terms of its relationship with the host community) it can simply reinforce the sense of difference. ¹¹ The challenge for any new literature on ethnic churches and secularization theory is to stop treating the churches either as abnormal or as merely homogenous and untroubled by the issues of identity, coherency, context and generational continuity. Ethnic and second generation churches are not the future, they are the present, even if they are a present which differs from the way Anglos normally view their churches.

Function of the Churches

While Anglos in the west are ‘ethnic’, they are usually unconscious of their own culture and values and conscious of the difference of "the other" – not that the hosts feel different, but rather that others are defined in terms of their difference rather than because of anything intrinsic to their culture. It is precisely because of this host/other tension in most cultures that churches come to perform functions which go beyond their so-called spiritual functions. The primary fact of the migrant is the change in identity caused by migration.

In their first phase Korean churches abroad often act as mediating institutions between homelands and new multicultural societies, as people are caught in the ‘assimilation gap’ created by personal/cultural adaptability, receptiveness of the host culture, economic and other factors influencing social mobility. Internally, migration means the attenuation of extended family structures. Shim suggests that, in part, Korean churches step into the gap so formed – using the work of Clinebell (1972) he notes that:

Korean churches fall within the 3rd sphere of activity in place of the extended family, whereas the American churches fall within the 4th sphere of activity. This stems from the role of the church as an alternative to traditional modes of social closeness such as extended relatives and friends from school. ¹²

The consequence of this is that the religious community is much more closely associated with total community, and therefore, has significantly more punitive ability through excommunication and shunning than the average Western church. ¹³ As Fetzer notes, nativist responses to communities of new migrants in western settings tend to be based on contests over what may be considered core cultural values. ¹⁴ That Australia is not immune from such reactions, which have important identity formation consequences for church based communities, could be seen in the rise of ethnic politics in the 1990s – both in Victoria and in Queensland. Such reactions indicate a reality to the observation that ethnic communities do not simply mediate the forces in the context, they actually change the context. ¹⁵

In later phases such churches need to shift their role with regard to meaning construction. Many host cultures assume that migrant communities will simply become assimilated over time, but this is an assumption based on a commonsense view of the homogenous and unchanging nature of the receiving culture. In fact, as receiving cultures themselves come under pressure to change -- from the decline of the nation state and the rise of the global market state (e.g. Hispanic America, Muslim England etc) -- it is decreasingly likely that the expected pattern of decline and assimilation will proceed unimpeded. One option, as Matsuoka notes, is for the ethnic church to become "an agent of emerging Asian American cultures incorporating elements of . . . collective memories and future visions." ¹⁶ This is partly a result of the inability of receiving cultures to achieve a balanced multiculturalism: in the United States, at least, he suggests that ethnic pluralism is a permanent facet of life. This is a direct result of the fact that the core values of the secular society – based around individuality, autonomy, technical rationality, and a market economy - are alienating to non-Western cultures, leaving ethnic churches in a states of permanent peripherality. In the ‘either-or’ choice offered to such communities (which Huhr’s term "status inconsistency" indicates is a choice between self-comparison to both the Korean and the Australian baselines), ¹⁷ not everyone will make the choice for the host culture. Lee seems to suggest that this is a process of rejection by the Anglo community, but a more nuanced interpretation would be to say that, in multiculturalism, there is increasingly no core to penetrate, leaving every community in permanent peripherality. As Kim notes, the increasing percentage of the world population which is effectively transnational creates a situation whereby the state of marginality effectively becomes normal. Floating populations between two different cultures means the formation of a third culture which cannot be assimilated into either –a marginality which can be threatening to both cultures. Estimates vary as to the projected size of Korean-church communities in the West as they enter their second and third generations. Song’s research would suggest that numbers may decrease by as little as one half (drawing on the one-third who have remained Christian, and some of the one-third who are nominal prospects for reconversion), and Robert Oh’s survey of Southern Californian second-generation Korean Americans who are members of first-generation Korean churches found that 80 percent hope to attend a church where English is the primary language. ¹⁸ Ro is less sanguine.

In my view, it is quite possible that the number of Korean American Christians will be reduced dramatically to one-tenth within the next 30 years. The vast majority of the 1.5 generation and 2nd generation Korean Americans is now leaving the church. There is a dramatic gap between the first and second generations in their church attendance. In this respect, the growth or the "success" of Korean American church has been largely due to the first generation of Koreans. ¹⁹

Neither is likely to be accurate, as the solutions being sought by the migrant community will accelerate as the reality of the situation begins to bite. Continuing migration will mean the continued existence of some "first-generation" Korean- churches, the third culture Koreans will create more integrative communities which maintain values and norms more comfortable to their mixed background, ²⁰ and the wider church will no doubt benefit from the continuing significant number of Korean- descendants to maintain their faith but in an Anglo context. Either way, the future migrant Korean- church economy is likely to be much more mixed than it is now. The global nature of the Korean diaspora means that the immediate pressure will probably not come from a decline in available ministers, but from the economic pressures placed on churches who have overbuilt on the basis of the promise of the first generation, and then face invidious organizational challenges sustaining staff and buildings (as Robin Gill has outlined with regard to English churches back to the 1700s) ²¹ in the face of shifts in migration choices and pressures. This will include the needs of older generations as ethnic waves age and create issues of dependency for younger generations, who are often the carers and translators. Patterns of mutual obligation vary from culture to culture, and generational shift can create tension within churches. ²²

In the assessing these trends, of course, a singular barrier is the availability of appropriate statistics – the census is a blunt instrument, and other data is subject to the willingness of people to respond to inquiries over the phone from strangers speaking in another language. Direct transposition on the Korean situation does not, for instance, take into account differential engagement with global realities within the population. Immigration to the United States indicates that Christians are more likely to migrate from Korea than non Christian Koreans. While they form only one-quarter of the population of Korea, Christians form nearly half of the total migration. ²³ Moreover, of the remaining half of migration (at least in Australia and Canada), fully half of these people ‘eventually call a church their ‘community centre’ where they seek support and assistance in adjusting to their new home.’ ²⁴ Christianity has impacts on social mobility, in particular as regards the broader Global setting where Christianity is more common outside the country than inside. It has an essentially globalizing message which can take people elsewhere while creating communities which recreate a sense of safety. ²⁵ Christian identity is not linked to geography, however much some traditions give preference to holy sites. This is particularly so in Korea, suggests Ro, where Christianity has become detached from all forms of traditional Korean culture, apart from a particular form of Korean language and typography. ²⁶ Historical experience, such as oppression by their neighbours in Asia, ²⁷ late entry into the Asian economic miracle, being hemmed in by an artificial barrier to the north, a projected saviour complex established in their long-term relationship with the United States in the twentieth century, political instability in the 1960s, followed by the opening of the American migration market … all of these things have, since the 1960s, made migration for Koreans a natural part of the cosmos. Koreans are the fourth most scattered nationality on the earth, after the Jews, the Chinese and the Italians. ²⁸ Pre-War migration was limited and largely consisted of labourers. Post-war migration has been aspiring lower middle class people looking for a better life. Like Italian Christian migration, religion was not a cause of migration so much as a means for selecting the most energetic, acting as a bridge for the imagination, and as a receptive cultural mediation institution at the other end. ²⁹ They followed the myth of the promised land, the land of milk and honey, to America, to Canada, Australia and many other countries around the world. ³⁰ These were the lands of the Christians, conceived as places where westernization and Christianization were identical terms. It is something of a matter of pride that they found themselves more fervent in their religion, more fruitful in their attendance (some 75% of Koreans attend church in America as opposed to 55% of the more general population), and amazingly fecund in spreading churches and ministries across the land. ³¹ As Warner notes, ‘Far from the new immigration bringing about the de-Christianization of American society, it is more likely that it is presaging the de-Europeanization of American Christianity.’ ³² Indeed, the concentration of Korean migrants in particular places, and particular denominations (Presbyterian, United/Uniting Church and Baptist) has bent the internal dynamics of some formerly Anglo churches, and has resulted in the formation of specific Korean-administrative structures (e.g. presbyteries in the Presbyterian setting, or overarching councils, such as the United Methodist Council on Korean American Ministries in the UMC-USA or the Council of Korean Churches in the UCA). The importation of strong fundamentalist–liberal orientations, and the entrepreneurial nature of migrant Korean leaders, can lead to significant factionalism and religious politics in ways that create suspicion amongst longer established religious communities. On the other hand, Korean- congregations also offer unexpected gifts – such as the ability to create growth in the urban areas where traditional denominations are declining, restore elements of lost tradition (such as the Wesleyan class meeting system being restored to the UMC), and a renewed passion for prayer and mission into aging denominations. ³³

Finding the means of living together in the mixed Korean congregations thus becomes essential. This is certainly the case with many second generation Korean Australians, Canadians and Americans. The profile of Canadian Korean churches reported by Joe Couto in a 2000 issue of the magazine Faith Today, is typical of many Korean churches: he described one Edmonton church as consisting of:

A healthy complement of middle-aged and elderly Koreans who have immigrated … over the past 30 years and have retained their culture, language and customs; a clutch of mostly bilingual teens and young adults, the sons and daughters of the immigrants; and a dozen "mixed" couples, Koreans who have married non-Koreans.

One Canadian study of 300 post-university age young people of Korean ethnicity who were born abroad or immigrated before age six, found that: ‘the group broke down equally into thirds: one-third remained active and committed Christians; another third classified themselves as nominal Christians, and the rest have left the church altogether.’ ³⁴ For some, the main reason for declension was revolt against the internal rigidity of Korean church cultures (ie. authority divorced from spiritual connectedness), while for others, the grind of economic reestablishment in a new country meant that Christian values were not inculcated in the home and connected to the church (ie. the church remained simply a cultural centre). ³⁵ There is also some evidence that lack of language inculcation and culture stripping - caused by replacing identifiable Korean values or iconic cultural content with Protestant simulacra – has impact on the self-esteem and personal development of second generation children. ³⁶ These processes are much more advanced in the older American diaspora, which is experiencing what some are calling a ‘massive silent exodus’, ³⁷ producing a variety of responses among the older generation as to the disappearance of their youth. Some blame influence from the wider culture, or a lack of spirituality. But it is also clear that the highly ethnic nature of older churches creates identity conflict among the younger generation, many of whom would prefer to worship in at least a more contemporary, hybrid Asian American or Asian Australian context, but cannot while staying at or near home. ³⁸ Rather than shame their parents by going to an alternate church nearby the older ethnic church, many young people will not go to church at all. In America, Chai has noted that when such younger generation members moved away from home, for instance, to go to university, they will quite often join a largely second generation Asian church rather than a homogenously Anglo church. ³⁹ There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that this is also the case in Australia, ⁴⁰ and these trends have been recognized in the mission priorities of the United Methodist church in the United States. As Bishop Hee-Soo Jung of Chicago noted, ‘Although large second- and third-generation populations are emerging in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Dallas and other U.S. cities, and there are "about a dozen pilot projects going on now" for second- and third-generation Koreans, "we are in short supply of second-generation pastors."’ ⁴¹ Despite the ability to mobilize significant resources, it is clear even to the North American church that they cannot produce a sufficient organizational response without increased risk-taking by first-generation ethnic Korean churches. Reflecting on the crisis of succession in east Asian churches generally, Scholar Tseng notes: "Unless the first-generation leaders are able to give second-generation pastors the freedom to lead, their young people will not go to these churches. First-generation pastors need to be aware of this dynamic." ⁴² There is also a significant issue of cultural hermeneutics— for first-generation Koreans, homogeneity is a sign of strength and consistency. It is a ‘fused culture’, in which cultural strictness is associated with authoritativeness. Second-generation ‘busters’, however, "think that if you’re not being multiethnic in your endeavors, you’re not for real… They see the diversity everywhere else in society, but if they don’t see it in church, they think the church is superficial." ⁴³ In a fragmented culture such as that of the West, culture and authority are disconnected from one another. The former is taken merely as a series of signs, the latter as originating in authenticity rather than compliance. ⁴⁴ As Chong notes, this does not necessarily imply a rejection of ethnicity: ‘religion can interact with ethnicity in one of two ways: either as identical to or precedent to ethnic identity, or as ancillary to ethnic identity.’ ⁴⁵ It is to say, however, that second generation ethnic believers can hold the relationship between their ethnicity and their religion in a different way to that of the parents. What for the first-generation is a matter of refuge (the search for release through immigration from discomfort), for the second-generation is a matter of either sacrificial compulsion or radical choice (nicely described by David Gibbons of New Song church, Irvine California, as the ‘theology of discomfort’). The special sense of calling inherent in the Korean tradition -- protected and passed on through Korean- newspapers, radio stations, and direct relationships with megachurches in Korea – are the touchstones of reality and authenticity to the older generation, but (stripped of what their American culture has taught them to consider the substance of culture) mere shadows and colonialism to their children. Language, which for the first-generation seems almost hardwired, to the second generation (living in a multilingual setting) is merely a matter of choice and skills in a medium often emptied of its intrinsic meaning. ⁴⁶ For non-Koreans attending Korean churches, a growing group as the second-generation engage with the broader culture, the fact that there is "no one like me" is an even larger issue in finding a sense of being normal and accepted. ⁴⁷ What appears to one group to be a matter of authority, appears to the other to be merely a play for power. What one group thinks of as building for the future, the other considers a burden which will relegate them to perpetual childhood as parents refuse to pass on authority, and as the shadow of great founder-pastors becomes iconic in the memory of their home churches. What may to one group be the only area of privilege and normalcy that they have in a larger Anglo culture, ⁴⁸ the call to give up the life boat is a significantly larger issue than for the other group, which has grown up knowing life as one continuous dog-paddle. ⁴⁹ For the one church is the place for a sense of normalcy through personal significance; for the other, it is the search for normalcy through a sense of closeness, a sense that "what I look like" doesn’t matter, or at least is not objectified and made different from "who I am" on the inside. The searches overlap, but they are not identical. What appears to be a non-negotiable racial barrier to the older generation, appears to be a series of negotiable ideas with regard to the broader community, which reconstructs race not as Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, but simply as "Asian".⁵⁰ NewSong Church’s motto - "A real place for unreal times" – captures the hermeneutical interplay between reality and constructedness in Western host societies. Home and church are contested spaces for the younger generation, with Lee reporting that the key issues for 1.5 and second-generation Koreans rotate around confusion over choice of career, pressures of gender expectations, race stereotyping and schooling, and ‘conflict in negotiating their own desires with those of their parents, against a backdrop of feeling guilty because they had witnessed their parents’ sacrifices on their behalf’. ⁵¹ Indeed, the celebration of Korean Independence and Parents Sunday (near 15 August and 8 May respectively), reinforces the thematic identification of Christ’s sacrifice, family sacrifice and national sacrifice. The moral and culturo-linguistic dynamics of membership thus have a huge part to play in transference between generations and the continuity of ethnically identifiable organizations.

What this indicates is that we need to understand the nature of identity formation amongst modern Koreans and the second and third generations in a mobile, multiculturalizing society. Indeed, the formation can be managed better if it is understood rather than simply written off as a ‘lack of spirituality’. Responses from various churches will range according to their ability to integrate social concepts into what might otherwise be rigid theological conceptualizations. On the one hand, churches may choose to close out external cultural influences, becoming internally turned on and so limiting their ability to influence the culture through which those influences come. On the other, churches may simply exist as offshoots of larger, Anglo church establishments, the organizational marginality of which compromises their ability to move beyond language into culture. In the middle, are a range of approaches such as that of Dong Chun Seo in Edmonton, Canada, which promotes bilingual, intergenerational worship that welcomes younger, bicultural Koreans and interracial couples; or the ‘church within a church’ model (such as with the KPCM English congregation in Minnesota). These are more likely to be successful in Australia and Canada due to the fact that models of multiculturalism there allow more agency to non-Anglo peoples. In the United States, by contrast, ‘Only 3.5 percent of all churches in the country have a second racial group that makes up more than 20 percent of the congregation.’ ⁵²

The key factor for church planning is clearly the creation of spaces where "third culture" identity can be successfully negotiated. The very success of Korean churches in new societies relies upon the fact that churches become important identity markers for Koreans who are migrating out of their homeland. As Williams notes:

Immigrants are religious -- by all counts more religious than they were before they left home -- because religion is one of the important identity markers that helps them preserve individual self-awareness and cohesion in a group.... ⁵³

The flip side of this, ironically, is that the same currency (ie. Identity) is a mobile quantity which needs to be managed in a dynamic way. As Sanders notes:

Ethnic boundaries are patterns of social interaction that give rise to, and subsequently reinforce, in-group members’ self-identification and outsiders’ confirmation of group distinctions. Ethnic boundaries are therefore better understood as social mediums through which association transpires rather than as territorial demarcations. ⁵⁴

That is, when such differences are understood culturally at all. The holders of a tradition are more likely to treat ethnic boundaries as territorial and fixed, while the successors to it (who have had to negotiate across the boundary) are more likely to constitute it as a negotiable space. Worship thus differs between generations and congregations as they interact with the emotional or rational core of their religious identity, and they produce spaces which enable them to reconstruct an identity which fits their lives and contexts. ⁵⁵ If these spaces are not created within the ambit of the Korean church, their inevitable creation elsewhere produces different combinations of identity. One alternative is the development of an homogenized pan–Asian identity. In his study of Kyopo (second generation Korean American) migrants between Korea and North America, Ji-Hoon Kim finds exactly the development of this sort of homogenized pan–Asian identity, and locates its origins in marginalization from both traditional Korean and Anglo cultures, where second generation Koreans effectively become transnationals rather than at home in either place. ⁵⁶ Chong finds it "expressed and mobilized in opposition to the ‘dominant’ white group", rather than as a thing in itself. It emerges in the sense of being the object of a supposed host culture’s judgemental gaze, the sense of being, and being made to feel, different.

Contested Theologies

This is not only a situation with regard to the generational issues within Korean communities, but is also an issue with regard to inter-church, and interdenominational relationships. A current debate for example is that between conservative evangelical churches and the sort of blessing theology told by prominent leaders such as Paul Yonggi-Cho. As Wonsuk Ma notes,

Pentecostal denominations have been heavily influenced by the western Pentecostal movement in their theology, worship and structure, whereas indigenous Pentecostal groups draw their inspiration from traditional Korean religiosity.

The assumption made is that blessing theology has shamanic roots. ⁵⁷ This is one interpretation, but another might be that (as Weon Yeol Chu notes) conservative evangelical churches have adapted American conservative evangelicalism into a Confucianist base, ⁵⁸ which seeks to maintain its own identity by merging the identity of indigenous Pentecostalism with the traditional enemy of Confucian established religion in Korea, shamanism. ⁵⁹ Indeed, as Chong-ho Kim notes, formal Confucianism is now only a tiny part of Korean society, while most of the public opposition on shamanism comes from Christians, who see it either as demonic or as a superstition that is holding up Westernization. ⁶⁰ Ma’s easy acceptance of the transference flows from his own involvement with American evangelicalism, recreating the way in which American evangelical criticisms of pentecostalism are imported through the link between the American Assemblies of God and the National Association of Evangelicals. On the ground, the process of taking theology at face value (as opposed to interrogating it as a contested cultural artifact) helps reassure conservative evangelicals in their own identity in first generation Korean evangelical churches, and, likewise, Pentecostal churches in their own identity as separate and sectarian from both Korean and Australian – American host communities.

Another irony is that even Pentecostal churches tend to share the cultural presuppositions of the Confucian culture. ⁶¹ While younger members may have solved expectations about the less contractual nature of Australian or American cultures,

internal mentor relationships in Korean churches tend to maintain the hierarchical patronage structures typical to the culture. As Young-shin Kim notes, mentors among Korean pastors tend to function as sponsors. They concentrate on helping mentorees advance in upward mobility in their career achievements. ⁶²

The inevitable result of this is to create a dilemma for younger leaders in church settings and indeed, given the ability of ethnic communities to carve out influence over economic domains, their lay members as well. If they promote others in more democratic structures their own advancement is undermined. And on the other hand if they do not produce the sort of cultural engagement which their positions often rely upon, they can be seen as ineffective either by the hierarchy or by their constituencies. It is an environment in which Christian obedience is paralleled with Confucian filial piety and submission, where the Keswick holiness value of "complete surrender" is taught to create space for authoritarian structures. ⁶³ Frustration on the one hand, and continuing cultural marginalization for the second generation on the other.

Conclusions

The literature on second-generation Korean churches internationally provides insight into the challenges which face ethnic churches in host communities around the world. The Confucian underlay, Christian re-identification through appropriation of North American theologies, variations in push and pull factors with regard to migration, the mixture of multicultural policies and religious attitudes to diversity and ethnicity in the receiving culture, all create resonance and difference between Korean church experiences in Canada, Australia, and the United States. One difference is the relative lack of literature outside the United States, which puts a strain on any testing of theories. Another is that the data is simply not there to tell us whether the type of Koreans leaving their homeland to go to the United States varies in such a way as would affect the development of second generation cultures. Nevertheless, there seems to be enough wisdom already compiled to suggest that the biggest challenge for Korean ethnic churches in Anglo cultures is the construction of spaces for negotiated identity. Korean churches will need to begin to think strategically, and with a greater openness to risk, if they’re to retain the allegiance of their second generations. Constructing meaningful leadership development pathways for second-generation people which include serious consideration of their concerns will be an essential step in this direction. Understanding the nature of the "third culture", and taking a missiological approach to teaching of the gospel in the receiving cultures will go a long way towards helping Korean churches solve what is emerging as a serious crisis in continuity.

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Endnotes

• Mark Hutchinson [BA(Hons), DipEd, PhD] has lectured in history in the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University. Since 2000, he has been head of History and Society at Southern Cross College, is currently Reader in History and Society, and also Dean, Academic Advancement.

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