Church or Sect? Exploring a Church of New Chinese Immigrants in Southern California
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17192/mjr.2007.12.3607Abstract
Existing studies document that while sharing many similarities among themselves, Asian immigrant churches in the United States differ from American mainline churches in certain distinguishing aspects. These distinguishing aspects and the reasons behind them, however, have rarely been subject to theoretical analysis. This study examines a church of new Chinese immigrants within the church-sect theory and market metaphor by analyzing participant observation and interview data. The data reveal that the church in question stands half way along the church-sect continuum, being close to the sect pole in terms of its theologies, while approaching the church pole in terms of its organization. By being a church-sect hybrid, it meets the particular needs of the well-educated, yet marginalized, Chinese immigrants. The findings show that although the church-sect theory is derived from European cases, it can be well applied to Chinese immigrant Christians. The cultural and ethnic backgrounds of Chinese immigrants nonetheless affect their Christian experiences profoundly. In a market-economy metaphor derived from the church-sect theory, such backgrounds situate them in a segmented rather than an entirely free religious market.
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Sherkat, Darren E. 2001. “Investigating the Sect-Church-Sect Cycle: Cohort Specific Attendance Differences across African American Denominations.” In: Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion 40: 221-233.
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Wilson, Bryan. 1959. “An Analysis of Sect Development.” In: American Sociological Review 24:3-15.
------. 1970. Religious Sects: A Sociological Study. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Yang, C. K. 1967. Religious in Chinese Society. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Yang, Fenggang. 1997. Why Conservative Ethnic Churches are Growing: The Case of Chinese Protestant Churches in the United States. Working Draft. WPS 97-1. Do Not Cite
Without Permission of The Authors.
------. 1998. “Chinese Conversion to Evangelical Christianity: the Importance of Social and
Cultural Context.” In: Sociology of Religion 59(3): 237-257. Fall.
------. 1999a. Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation and Adhesive Identity. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
------. 1999b. "ABC and XYZ: Religious, Ethnic and Racial Identities of the New Second Generation Chinese in Christian Churches," In: Amerasia Journal 25: 89-114.
Yinger, J. Milton. 1970. The Scientific Study of Religion. New York: Macmillan.
Zhou, Min, Carl L. Bankston III, and Rebecca Kim. 2002. “Rebuilding Spiritual Lives in the
New Land: Religious Practices among Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States.” Pp.
37-70 in Jung Ha Kim and Pyong Gap Min's (eds.) Asian Immigration and Transplanting and Transforming Religions. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Zen, Zen. 1998. The Harmony and Conflict between Two Genders: Synopsis of the Roundtable Meeting on Male and Female.” In: Overseas Campus 28:12-14.
Cayton, Horace R. and Anne O. Lively. 1955. “The Chinese in the United States and the Chinese Christian Churches.” Statement condensed for the National Conference on the
Chinese Christian Churches. New York: National Council of the Churches of Christ. April.
Chai, Ch’u. 1965. “Transmit VII.” Pp. 1-18 In: The Sacred Books of Confucius and Other Confucian Classics, edited and translated by Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai. New Hyde Park:
University Books.
Chen, Carolyn. 2002. “The Religious Varieties of Ethnic Presence: A Comparison between a Taiwanese Immigrant Buddhist Temple and an Evangelical Christian Church.” Sociology of Religion. 63: 215-38.
Chen, Zheng and Wei Li. 2000. “Busy Looking for Wives on New Year’s Eve Vacation from Overseas.” Creaders. Net. Retrieve
Christiano, Kevin J., William H. Jr. Swatos, and Peter Kivisto. 2002. Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman & Littlefield Pub.
Eitzen, D. Stanley and Maxine Baca Zinn. 1988. In Conflict and Order: Understanding Society. 4th Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.
Ellison, Christopher G. and Darren E. Sherkat. 1995. "The Semi-Involuntary Institution Revisited: Regional Variations in Church Participation among Black Americans." Social
Forces. 73:1415-1437.
Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark. 1997. The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Glock, Charles Y. 1964. “The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and Evolution of Religious Group.” Pp. 26-34 In: Religion and Social Conflict, edited by Robert. Lee and Martin
Marty. New York: Oxford University Press.
------. 1993. “The Church and Social Change in Twentieth-Century America.” The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 527: 67-83.
Guest, Kenneth J. 2003. God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York’s evolving immigrant community. New York: New York University Press.
Hammond P.E. 1963. “The Migrating Sect - An Illustration from Early Norwegian Immigration.” In: Social Forces 41: 275-283.
Hernandez, Edwin I. 1995. “The Browning of American Adventism.” In: Spectrum 25: 29-50.
Hurh, Won Moo and Kwang Chung Kim. 1984. Korean Immigrants in America: A Structural Analysis of Ethnic Confinement and Adhesive Adaptation. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press.
Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1988. “A Formal Model of Church and Sect.” In: American Journal of Sociology 94: 241-268.
------. 1994. “Why Strict Churches Are Strong.” In: American Journal of Sociology 99(5):1180-1211.
Jeung, Russell M. 2000. “Emerging Asian American Pan-ethnic Congregations: the Religious Construction of Symbolic Racial Identity.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
Johnson, Benton. 1963. “On Church and Sect.” In: American Sociology Review. 28: 539-49.
Johnstone, Ronald J. 2001. Religion in Society: A Sociology of Religion. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Kurien, Prema. 1998. “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu: Indian Americans Take Their Place at the Multicultural Table,” Pp. 37-70 In: Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious
Communities and the New Immigration, edited by R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Kwon, Victoria Hyonchu. 2000. “Houston Korean ethnic church: an Ethnic enclave.” Pp. 109-23 In: Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptation in Immigrant
Congregations, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz. New York: Altamira Press.
Kyle, Richarch G. 1985. From Sect to Denomination: Church Types and Their Implications for Mennonite Brethren History. Hillsboro, KS: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies.
Lawson, Ronald. 1998. “Broadening the Boundaries of Church-sect Theory: Insights from the Evolution of the Nonschimatic Mission Churches of Seventh-day Adventism. In:
Journal for Scientific Study of Religion. 37: 652-672.
------. 1999. “When Immigrants Take over: The Impact of Immigrant Growth on American Seventh-day Adventism’s Trajectory from Sect to Denomination.” In: Journal for Scientific Study of Religion. 38: 83-102.
Macionis, John J. 1997. Sociology (6th Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Mann, William E. 1962. Sect, Cult, and Church in Alberta. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Massey, Douglas S. 1981. “Dimensions of the New Immigration to the United States and the Prospects for Assimilation.” In: Annual Review of Sociology 7: 57-85.
Min, Pyong Gap. 1992. “The Structure and Social Functions of Korean Immigrant Churches in the United States.” In: International Migration Review 26: 1370-1394.
Mol, J. J. 1961. “Churches and Immigrants: A Sociological Study of the Mutual Effect of Religion and Immigrant Adjustment.” Research Group for European Migration Problems R.E.M.P. Bulletin 9 (Supplement 5).
Ng, Kwai Hang. 2002. “Seeking the Christian tutelage: agency and culture in Chinese immigrants conversion to Christianity.” In: Sociology of Religion 63: 195-214.
Niebuhr, H. Richard. 1929. The Social Sources of Denominationalism. New York: Holt.
Perrin, Robin D., Paul Kennedy and Donald E. Miller. 1997. “Examining the Sources of Conservative Church Growth: Where Are the New Evangelical Movement Getting Their Numbers?” In: Journal for Scientific Study of Religion 36(1): 71-80.
Sherkat, Darren E. 2001. “Investigating the Sect-Church-Sect Cycle: Cohort Specific Attendance Differences across African American Denominations.” In: Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion 40: 221-233.
Smith, Timothy L. 1978. “Religion and Ethnicity in America.” In: American Historical Review 83: 1155-1185
Stark, Rodney and William S. Bainbridge. 1985. The Future of Religion. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
------. 1987. A Theory of Religion. New York: Peter Lang.
Thomas, Curlew O. And Barbara Boston Thomas. 1989. “Charisma and Charismatic Changes: A Study of a Black Sect.” In: Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 17: 107-111.
Tizon, Orlando P. 1999. “Esguerra, Congregation and Family: Changing Filipino Identities.” In: Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and Social Sciences. 60(5): 1781-A.
Warner, R. Stephen. 1993. “Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Study of Religion in the United States.” In: American Journal of Sociology 98: 1044-1093.
Weber, Max. [1930] 1998. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury Pub.
Wilson, Bryan. 1959. “An Analysis of Sect Development.” In: American Sociological Review 24:3-15.
------. 1970. Religious Sects: A Sociological Study. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Yang, C. K. 1967. Religious in Chinese Society. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Yang, Fenggang. 1997. Why Conservative Ethnic Churches are Growing: The Case of Chinese Protestant Churches in the United States. Working Draft. WPS 97-1. Do Not Cite
Without Permission of The Authors.
------. 1998. “Chinese Conversion to Evangelical Christianity: the Importance of Social and
Cultural Context.” In: Sociology of Religion 59(3): 237-257. Fall.
------. 1999a. Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation and Adhesive Identity. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
------. 1999b. "ABC and XYZ: Religious, Ethnic and Racial Identities of the New Second Generation Chinese in Christian Churches," In: Amerasia Journal 25: 89-114.
Yinger, J. Milton. 1970. The Scientific Study of Religion. New York: Macmillan.
Zhou, Min, Carl L. Bankston III, and Rebecca Kim. 2002. “Rebuilding Spiritual Lives in the
New Land: Religious Practices among Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States.” Pp.
37-70 in Jung Ha Kim and Pyong Gap Min's (eds.) Asian Immigration and Transplanting and Transforming Religions. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Zen, Zen. 1998. The Harmony and Conflict between Two Genders: Synopsis of the Roundtable Meeting on Male and Female.” In: Overseas Campus 28:12-14.
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Ren, P. (2015). Church or Sect? Exploring a Church of New Chinese Immigrants in Southern California. Marburg Journal of Religion, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.17192/mjr.2007.12.3607
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