Ethnic Christian Research Articles

Christianity as a Majority Religion of the Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar: Exploring Triple Dialogue in the Currents of World Christianity

It is common to say that Christianity is a minority religion in Asia. Yet this article argues that Christianity is a majority religion of the ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia in general and Myanmar in particular and that one dimension of dialogue is not adequate in an age of world Christianity. Using a ‘triple dialogue’ as a methodology, the article explores three of the most salient issues of Myanmar ethnic minorities in the currents of world Christianity. First, the article revisits a cross-cultural relationship between foreign missionaries and locals in a colonial period and how Western mission impacts on Christians’ relationship with people of other faiths. Second, it explores the current issues of interreligious relationship between Christians and Buddhists and how Christian-Buddhist interaction plays a role in developing Christianity as a Myanmar local religion in a postcolonial mission period. Finally, it examines an intercultural hospitality between the ethnic Christian migrants and Western Christians and a ‘glocal’ relationship between migrants and their homeland Christians in a post-Western Christian period.

Chinese University Students and Their Experiences of Acculturation at an Ethnic Christian Church

This paper examines the experiences of Chinese international students from East Coast University (a pseudonym) in the United States through their participation in a Chinese ethnic-based Christian church (CCC). Employing ethnographic-based fieldwork, the study highlights how Chinese international students see their experiences in CCC as a source of acculturation to U.S. society. However, the students evidence little understanding of the reality that they are in fact being acculturated to a subculture within U.S. society that at times embraces values contradictory to those of progressive-oriented East Coast University.

Chinese University Students and Their Experiences of Acculturation at an Ethnic Christian Church

Chinese University Students and Their Experiences of Acculturation at an Ethnic Christian Church

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theology of Breaking Boundaries and Building Bridges Between Christianity and Buddhism in Myanmar

Theravada Buddhism is a national religion of the Burman majorities, whereas Christianity is an alienated religion of the ethnic minorities in Myanmar. Failing to embrace one another, ethnic Christians and Burman Buddhists built boundaries of mutual exclusion and hostility. This paper will argue that wrongs are on both sides — for instance, Buddhism becomes an ‘analogy’1 of Judaism in terms of its nationalistic imperialism, whereas Christianity as an analogy of Hellenism in terms of its religious supersessionism. I will employ the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. In particular, I will explore the boundary breaking of Jesus and the bridge building of Paul in a Greco-Roman context as the contextual models for Myanmar.

Language policy in Japanese ethnic churches in Canada and the legitimization of church member identities

This paper is aimed at understanding the language policy of Japanese ethnic churches and the legitimization of church member identities in the midst of dominant languages in Canada. While church members often construct Japanese ethnic Christian churches with ‘grassroots’ language policies that seem to legitimize their Japanese language and cultural identities and practices, their membership to their churches and their Christian faith often leads them to experiencing legitimization as Christians in solidarity with other Christians in the world (Takamizawa in Torch Trinity J 4(4):34–45, 2001). Using theoretical descriptions of language planning and policy, I discuss the scholarship of ethnic church studies, kokusaika and nihonjinron discourses, and groupism as described in frame theory (Nakane in Japanese society. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1970), as a framework to contextualize church member experiences and perceptions in the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of language policy of Japanese ethnic churches in Canada. I use Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough in Analysing discourse: textual analysis for social research. Routledge, London, 2003) to analyze relevant language policies and interview texts that reveal the perceptions of Japanese ethnic Christian church members from three churches in Western Canada.

The early history of migration and settlement of Yemenis in Cardiff, 1939–1970: religion and ethnicity as social capital

Utilizing Putnam's concept of bonding social capital, this article explores the under-researched topic of the history of migrant men's reproduction of social capital in Cardiff, Wales. Drawing upon a series of oral history interviews with a respected imam of more than fifty years, and informed by existing research on Muslim migrants, we explore both the advantages and disadvantages of community relationships between Yemeni men in relation to trust, reciprocity and interpersonal well-being. By examining these complex bonds, this article contributes to the literature on religious and ethnic social networks by challenging the assumption that migrants always benefit from social resources (Wilson 1978; Shah 2007), and offers an alternative account of religiously underpinned social capital to those of studies of majority ethnic Christians in North America (Smidt 2003). Uniquely, this article also points to the divergences between religious and ethnic capitals in the context of Yemeni migrants' social resources during 1939–1970.

East Syriac Christianity in Mongol-Yuan China by Li Tang (review)

Reviewed by: East Syriac Christianity in Mongol-Yuan China by Li Tang Matteo Nicolini-Zani (bio) Li Tang. East Syriac Christianity in Mongol-Yuan China. Orientalia Biblica et Christiana, vol. 18. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011. xvii, 169 pp. Hardcover €58.00, isbn 978-3-447-06580-1. It is a great pleasure to have in our hands a volume entirely devoted to East Syriac Christianity in Mongol-Yuan China. This subject has been quite neglected so far. Historical research on Christianity in China commonly focuses on Catholic, and mainly Jesuit, missions in the late Ming–early Qing period or the Protestant missionary endeavors in modern China. From the perspective of theological or religious studies, research on the history of East Syriac Christianity is still a small discipline in the academic world. As the author appropriately remarks in the preface to the book, “the historical and theological attention given to this subject weighs far less than the impact, which Syrian Christianity has had in history and the rich cultural-religious relics and heritage it has left behind” (p. xv). [End Page 525] In the last twenty years, however, research on East Syriac Christianity in Central and Eastern Asia has grown in academic circles both in the West and in the East (China and Japan). Quite a few publications (monographs, collections of essays, and articles) in this relatively new field of research have come out in various languages. Even more significant is the fact that these publications have resulted in a new approach, one based, to a great degree, on the sources and with a broader philological foundation. Scholars involved in this research are trying to work more concordantly through long-term collaborations. They have come to be increasingly aware of the particularly important role of fruitful interdisciplinary exchange among scholars from all over the world, which can bring together the results of different disciplines, such as religious and church history, philology, archaeology, theology, and others. With her scholarly expertise, editorial endeavors, and organizational enterprises, Li Tang, the author of the volume under review, is one of the scholars who, in the last few years, have contributed a great deal to develop this new approach in research on East Syriac Christianity in Asia. In this respect, we would like to mention at least her contribution to the organization of the second international Research on the Church of the East in China and Central Asia conference, which took place in Salzburg (Austria) in 2006. The conference proceedings were later published in a volume coedited by her and Dietmar W. Winkler.1 On the basis of her expertise in different fields—notably, her knowledge of several different ancient languages, Chinese, Syriac, Turkic, Mongolian—Li Tang with this book offers us a comprehensive reconstruction of the history of East Syriac Christianity in Mongol-Yuan China (twelfth–fourteenth centuries) within its political, social, economic, cultural, and religious environment. It deals with the relevant historical background, the ethnic Christian groups involved, philological and theological studies of the East Syriac Christian inscriptions, the migrations of Christian populations, Mongol religious policies, as well as missionary activities in the Mongolian plains and in China. In its comprehensive approach to the subject, this book can be ranged with groundbreaking works, like those by Paul Pelliot and Jean Dauvillier.2 When I first opened the book, what I appreciated very much was the effort to use the term “East Syriac” or “East Syrian” Christianity instead of the inappropriate, even though for a long time commonly used, term “Nestorian” Christianity. Although the author explicitly says that “the term ‘Nestorian’ is only used with restraint and is written in quotation marks … when the use of the term is deemed unavoidable” (preface, p. xvii), when I read the book more carefully, I nevertheless found that the term is still used several times, even when it could be avoided. In more than one case, it is not put in quotation marks. Generally speaking, I consider that the best points of the book are two. Its first merit, as said already, is that it gathers together many previously scattered materials [End Page 526] and specific studies in different disciplines; in this way it succeeds in reconstructing a...

Religion in Australia: Sociological Perspectives

Introduction - recent studies in the sociology of religion in Australia, Alan W.Black the social construction of the Catholic Church in Australia, Rowan Ireland and Paul Rule Anglicanism and gender in Australian society, Ruth Sturmey conflicting discourses - attitudes to the ordination of women in the Anglican Church in Australia, Barbara L.Field inequality, belonging and religion in a rural community, Ken Dempsey social factors and individual preferences for images of God, Tricia Blombery types of faith and the decline of mainline churches, Philip J.Hughese Australian Pentecostalism in comparative perspective, Alan W.Black by what authority? an analysis of the locus of ultimate authority in ecclesiastical organizations, Gary D.Bouma radical subjectivity in self-religions and the problem of authority, Rachael Kohn Aboriginal religions in time and space, Tony Swain religious conflict and integration among some ethnic Christian groups, Jim McKay and Frank Lewis Islam immigrants and the state religion and cultural politics in Australia, Michael Humphrey.