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Transforming the Ethnic: The Emergence of Covenant Values at New Hope Covenant Church, Oakland CA
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Russell Jeung, Ph.D.San Francisco State Universityrjeung@sfsu.eduDuring the past sixteen years, I have worshipped, gotten married, and raised myfamily in an underclass neighborhood of East Oakland, California. Our community iscrime-ridden and poor, with 35% of my neighbors below the poverty level.
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 Three menhave been fatally shot within blocks of our home in the past two years. Twice thissummer, thieves have broken into our home.Our community is also multiethnic and multiracial. Our son attends preschooltwo blocks away at our church, New Hope Covenant. His classmates represent tendifferent ethnic heritages—and there are only ten students in his class! The neighborhoodis 39% Mexican, 16% African American, 13% Southeast Asian, 12% Central American(Mayan, Guatemalan and Salvadorian), 10% Chinese, and 8% mixed race.What is an Evangelical Covenant church doing in a place like this? Although weoccasionally get donations from Svenhard’s Swedish Bakery, only one of our memberscomes from a family with long-time Covenant roots. With most of our pan-Asianmembers born after 1980, including a sizeable proportion of Southeast Asian refugees,few of us know our denominational ties, its own strong ethnic history, and its primarilysuburban membership. Yet our church’s own story closely parallels the Covenant history,and owes much to its development to the denomination and Pacific Southwestconference.This chapter reviews Kurt Peterson’s compelling review of historical Covenantdiscourse on ethnicity and race, and asserts that New Hope has come to embody each of 1
 
the values—free-mindedness, justice, and diversity-- promoted by the denominationthroughout its history. Further, the Covenant’s continued commitment to urban,multiracial, and social justice-oriented ministries are the key reasons that we haveembraced the denomination. Indeed, our relationships with conference leadership andlocal Covenant congregations have sustained us as we have struggled to raise up localleadership and funding. Our pan-Asian and multiethnic congregation has joined theCovenant not because of its politically correct rhetoric, but because of how those valueshave been realized in the denomination, from top to bottom.
New Hope’s Multiethnic Foundation
Although the Covenant began as a Swedish American denomination within a self-contained, institutionally complete community, Peterson suggests that its “free churchmind” promoted accommodation to American culture and non-creedalism. Similarly, New Hope’s founders began ministry in Oakland working with multiracial youth, manywho were 1.5 generation refugees.
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Some of us were staff at Harbor House, a Christiannon-profit organization, while others of us lived at Oak Park Apartments, a complexmade up of primarily Cambodian and Latino families.
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We found that the youth did notfeel comfortable in ethnic congregations because of language and generationaldifferences. Likewise, many of those of us who relocated to Oakland felt disaffected byour ethnic home churches because of their more parochial concerns.
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New Hope wasestablished, then, to bring together multiethnic youth and college relocators who grew upwith more American urban values and tastes than traditional ethnic ones.
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Like the firstCovenant immigrants, New Hope thus supports the hybrid identities of its members, whoare both ethnic and American.2
 
The non-creedalism of the Covenant works well with us, too, as we too emphasize‘“spontaneity over against reason and law,” as well as an emphasis on conversion of theheart rather than traditional forms of expression.”’
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Because of the relative young age of our congregation members, we share the Gen X values for relational authenticity,transcendent mystery, and egalitarian community. We are open to charismatic prayer, andregularly schedule silent retreats for the entire congregation. Instead of traditional ordersof worship, we host“worship stations,”different sites in our building where members are free to move about and confess sins, take communion, pray for the world, or meditate onspecial subjects. Our church unity isn’t based on theological doctrines, but on our sharedlife together. In fact, the great majority of the church lives within two blocks of it. Half of the church eats together in a meal co-op, where we take turns cooking for one another.Further, for those in the neighborhood whom we serve and evangelize, creedalstatements aren’t as salient as real experiences with the sacred. We utilize the NewInternational Reader’s Version of the Bible because so many of our friends cannot readabove a fourth grade level. In these ways, New Hope accommodates to the Americanupbringing of the “new second generation” and to the class backgrounds of those whomwe serve.
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However, one aspect of American culture that we actively repudiate is itsincreasing racial and economic segregation. Instead, our ministry within our low-incomecommunity calls us to confront sin on both the personal and systemic level. 
Racial Justice at New Hope
The Civil Rights movement and values of social justice affected the denominationas its African American congregations sought autonomy and self-determination,according to Peterson. This same concern for racial justice is central at New Hope, as3
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