| Chinese in the United States and abroad are turning to Christianity in growing numbers. Many come from families with a “long history” of missionary Christianity from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as some South Asian countries. Christianity, for many has become a Chinese tradition. This study looks at how and why this process of becoming a Chinese tradition has taken place. In the Summer of 2000 I moved to Boston, Massachusetts to undertake a year's worth of field work in a large, diverse, evangelical Christian Chinese church in the heart of Boston's Chinatown. It was in this context that the relationship between ethnicity and religion became particularly problematic. It was one thing to become a Christian but quite another to negotiate between being Chinese and following a strict counter cultural lifestyle as the “almost” chosen people. Something in being Chinese legitimized being Christian. How were those who have chosen to follow Christ separate from those who hadn't? And how did this play into assimilationist and ethnicity models? I propose that the for Chinese of this church and perhaps many churches that are growing in numbers and conservatism, Christianity provides a context in which to perform Chineseness. Through ethnographic analysis, based on culture and language, I illuminate ways one performs Chineseness within the context of the Church. Areas of analysis include gender, generation and socioeconomics. Other scholars investigating the ways Christianity has become a Chinese tradition for many, talk in terms of not a syncretic approach, but one where the individual Chinese forms an adhesive identity. This is a selective process whereby cultural elements in various traditions are maintained or discarded. In this work, I provide a mechanism for such a process, the “new creation”. This forms the foundation for my analysis of the discourse of identity of Christian Chinese in the United States. |
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