The "good" American: Religion and Civic Life for Korean Americans
- ISBN-10
- 0496088149
- ISBN-13
- 9780496088140
- Pages
- 544
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2004
- Publisher
- Cornell University, Aug.
- Author
- Elaine Howard Ecklund
Description
Recent immigration studies focus largely on economic adaptation. Studies of religion's influence on civic participation are largely concerned with the forms of capital religion provides for civic participation. Expanding both areas of study, this research examines civic life for Korean American evangelicals in second-generation Korean and multiethnic churches. Findings reveal that, in addition to providing forms of capital, congregations provide different cultural schemata, interpretive and religiously based frameworks for civic identity construction. Specific research activities included over one hundred interviews around the country, as well as nine months of fieldwork and surveys of two evangelical congregations: a second-generation Korean American congregation and a multiethnic congregation with Korean American participation. Korean Americans with the same basic structural locations, those demographically similar in race, ethnicity, and class, come to very different and church-specific understandings of Christianity's relationship to these categories. Korean Americans in both church types connected Christian belief with a responsibility to reach out to their local communities. Those in second-generation churches, however, used Christianity to de-emphasize identities as part of racial and ethnic minority America. In contrast, those in multiethnic churches thought being a Christian meant having an identity as part of racial and ethnic minority America. Such identity constructions have relevance for how Korean Americans view the image of Asian Americans as model minorities. Those in second-generation churches implicitly accept this image, while Korean Americans in multiethnic churches reject the image. Different civic identities have consequences for civic practices. Korean Americans in second-generation churches have a high commitment to church-based volunteer activities. Those in multiethnic churches actually volunteer more in their local communities, however, and use an ethic that legitimates religious individualism to justify involvement in individual rather than church-based volunteer activities. These findings expand immigrant adaptation, showing that religious organizational contexts may lead to different pathways for civic integration even for those in the same ethnic group. They expand religion research by revealing the ways that new Americans might change established American Christianity through connecting Christianity to a racial civic consciousness.
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