Religious Conversion and Identity Construction:

A Study of a Chinese Christian Church in the United States

Fenggang Yang

(Abstract)

This is an ethnographic study of identity construction at a Chinese Protestant church in the United States. For Chinese Christians in Chinese churches in America, three primary identities undergo construction or re-construction. As adult converts, they need to achieve a Christian identity. As immigrants, they need to achieve an American identity. They also struggle to retain a Chinese identity. Moreover, these three identities are not easily compatible with each other. This dissertation has three categories of literature serving as the theoretical background: (1) assimilation and ethnicity, (2) functions of ethnic religious organizations, and (3) Chinese identity reconstruction. I argue that assimilation is selective in the segmented and pluralist American society; that the ethnic church, even with a majority of adult converts, serves both to (selectively) assimilate its participants to American society and to (selectively) preserve ethnic culture; that Christian conversion helps to retain Chinese identity and Chinese traditional culture; that identities can be adhesive and multiple for some individuals.

This dissertation has five parts besides an introduction and a final conclusion. The first part reviews the literature and lay out the historical backgrounds, including a brief history of Chinese Christian churches in the United States. The second part describes the Christian identity of the church under study: an evangelical church with a majority of adult converts. The third part shows that this ethnic church is not a major agency of acculturation and structural assimilation, but it selectively promotes certain "American" values--the "Protestant ethic"-- and the conservative version of American civil religion. The fourth part is about preserving the Chinese language and Chinese culture. These Chinese Christians separate Chinese religious traditions from nonreligious traditions, rejecting the former while accepting the latter. They value Confucianism highly. The fifth part concerns the deconstruction of outgrown Chinese identity and reconstruction of new multiple identities. The general tendency is in increasing Chinese cultural identity, pushing away Chinese political identity and pulling over Chinese primordial identity, and moving from particularism to universalism. Some people hold the "adhesive pattern" of integration of Chinese, Christian and American identities, which embodies two or three identities at once.