Asian Americans are changing the face of evangelicalism. And its politics.

Asian Americans are changing the face and politics of evangelicalism - The Washington Post

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“Followers of Jesus are to seek God’s kingdom of peace and justice, and so in my work and in my activism I seek to do so,” Jeung said. “God calls us to live in right relations with each other, and racism is a sin where people’s dignity is stripped, where people’s sense of belonging is torn from them.”

Jeung is part of a robust community of Asian American evangelical Christians in the United States, a population that makes up a growing share of American evangelical Protestants. A plurality of 18-to-29-year-old evangelical Protestants in America are Asian, according to data from the Pew Research Center, reflecting the growing proportion of Asian American adherents and the declining proportion of White adherents.

Helen Jin Kim, an assistant professor of American religious history at Emory University, noted that in recent decades, the term “evangelical” has taken on a political connotation. “Since the election of Reagan, it’s been tied to the politics of the GOP,” she said.

But as Asian Americans rise to leadership roles within the evangelical community and take on a more visible presence, the association of evangelicalism with White American political conservatism is changing.

The American definition of Christian evangelicalism is ambiguous. Some scholars, like Kim, define it as “a multidenominational, umbrella category for a group of Protestants who believe in a … theology that’s really focused on Bible conversion … and activism.” Others, like Sam George, who directs Wheaton College’s Global Diaspora Institute, believe the term is broader and can also include Catholics, Pentecostals and Mormons who adhere to its core tenets.

Evangelicalism’s origins among Asian Americans date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when White missionaries, including Europeans and Americans, went to China, Korea and the Indian subcontinent to proselytize. Kim noted that the missions occurred in tandem with Asia-Pacific wars and colonialism, and are born out of the legacy of slavery, but that Asians and Asian Americans have taken “indigenous ownership over the traditions” since then and have reckoned with racism.

Today, Asian American evangelicals have established communities in every part of the country. “In any major city in America, you will find Asian churches,” said George, who is of Indian descent. “They’re no more [just] in Chinatown and Indiatown and Koreatown, but have spread across the suburbs and the cities.”

Asian Americans now occupy leadership positions at major evangelical institutions. Since 2020, Walter Kim has led the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and since 2016, Tom Lin has led InterVarsity, a nationwide campus Christian ministry. Both men are the first people of color to lead those organizations, a testament to the ways in which Asian Americans are making their voices heard after decades of membership in the community.

Karen Lee, the provost of Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian liberal arts school in Illinois, and Nikki Toyama-Szeto, the executive director of Christians for Social Action, are also Asian American. And Jeanette Hsieh is the former provost and former dean of Trinity International University, an evangelical Christian seminary based out of Illinois.

Walter Kim, who is Korean American, and Lin, who is Taiwanese American, have taken on issues of diversity and inclusion in the evangelical community that they say have long been ignored or dismissed.

“Racial injustice is deeply a part of the church’s mistakes and sins that need to be repented of and addressed,” Kim told The Washington Post, adding that the NAE’s response to the civil rights movement of the 1960s “was uneven at best and did not live up to its ideals.”

Kim has made racial reconciliation and immigration reform priorities for the NAE, while InterVarsity, led by Lin, has embraced racial justice movements like Black Lives Matter while still committing itself to theological conservatism, as evidenced by controversy around its decision to fire employees who disagreed with its views on sexuality and sex. But individual InterVarsity chapters, including Cornell University’s Asian American InterVarsity, have engaged with questions of gender and sexuality and welcomed openly gay adherents.

“Gen Z has a wonderful high value for inclusion,” said Lin, adding that he believes there is a generational change among evangelicals’ beliefs. “They always ask the question, ‘Who’s not in the room? Whose voice are we not hearing?’”

Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies and politics at the University of Maryland, said Asian American evangelicals’ political views largely differ from those of their White counterparts — and are more progressive among young adherents — with the exception of abortion, which evangelicals tend to oppose across the board.

Lin, of InterVarsity, also emphasized the diversity of evangelicals within the Asian American community, pointing to a diversity of beliefs and ethnicities. “Our fastest-growing segments in the last decade have been especially in the South Asian and the Southeast Asian communities,” he said.

In part because of the conservative political connotation of the word “evangelical,” some progressive groups have rebranded — Christians for Social Action had been Evangelicals for Social Action. Its leader, Toyama-Szeto, is Japanese American.

Carolyn Chen, a professor of Asian American and diaspora studies at the University of California at Berkeley, said the question remains of whether the word “evangelical” will ever move away from its equation with Whiteness.

“There’s so much baggage attached to that term,” she said, adding that White adherents and adherents of color seem to be “very separate” when it comes to their worship. “Will these two groups cooperate? Do they see themselves as part of one another? Meaning, can folks of color change White folks?”

Wong said that although the number of multicultural churches in America has increased and the share of multiracial evangelical congregations has nearly tripled in the past two decades, primarily White evangelical churches haven’t made adequate efforts to welcome people of color. “In the last 10 years, White evangelicals have doubled down on anti-immigrant attitudes on average,” she said. “It remains the case that Sunday’s the most segregated day in America.”

Part of the problem, she said, is that some White adherents “feel like their way of life is under attack.” A recent example is the Chapel Hill Bible Church, a North Carolina evangelical church that has struggled with a large exodus of worshipers of color, including Asian Americans, in part driven by political differences between White and non-White members that have led to White leaders’ skepticism around engaging with questions of race.

Helen Jin Kim, of Emory, said she is skeptical of Asian Americans’ overall ability to move the evangelical community leftward on social issues including race and immigration. “I don’t necessarily see their religious and political leadership as fundamentally being able to change the White-centric elements of the American evangelical movement,” she said. Kim instead foresees more progressive members leaving the community and forming their own Christian movements.

But she acknowledged the younger generation’s impact among the evangelical community, evidenced by the work of campus organizations like Cornell’s Asian American InterVarsity. Serena Wang, a 20-year-old sophomore in the group, said she hopes its events focusing on topics including race, queerness and doubt will bring more people into the community.

“We don’t really shy away from topics that maybe older generations used to avoid talking about,” said Wang, who attended a Chinese Christian church growing up in McLean, Va. “A lot of times it’s taboo in the Christian community to talk about certain things. And so … we come with an open mind to really listen to people.”

Others, like Lin and Walter Kim, are more optimistic that their work will lead to meaningful change within the community when it comes to inclusion of people of color, while still allowing for diversity among political views.

“The strength of the immigrant church is infusing a new vitality within evangelicalism,” Kim said, adding that he doesn’t believe his appointment as NAE president would’ve happened “10 or 20 years ago.”

Peter Cha, a professor of church, culture and society at Trinity, said he believes the secular community is sometimes exposed to a “very narrow view” of American evangelicalism that doesn’t include Asian Americans’ contributions.

“It’s a lot more than Trump-backing, Republican-supporting, White evangelicals,” he said. “And even among White evangelicals, I know plenty of people who are not, but sometimes I think we get the picture that it’s a very monolithic group.”