Professional Documents
Culture Documents
During the past sixteen years, I have worshipped, gotten married, and raised my
crime-ridden and poor, with 35% of my neighbors below the poverty level.2 Three men
have been fatally shot within blocks of our home in the past two years. Twice this
Our community is also multiethnic and multiracial. Our son attends preschool
two blocks away at our church, New Hope Covenant. His classmates represent ten
different ethnic heritages—and there are only ten students in his class! The neighborhood
is 39% Mexican, 16% African American, 13% Southeast Asian, 12% Central American
occasionally get donations from Svenhard’s Swedish Bakery, only one of our members
comes from a family with long-time Covenant roots. With most of our pan-Asian
members 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 primarily
suburban membership. Yet our church’s own story closely parallels the Covenant history,
and owes much to its development to the denomination and Pacific Southwest
conference.
discourse 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 denomination
multiracial, and social justice-oriented ministries are the key reasons that we have
embraced the denomination. Indeed, our relationships with conference leadership and
leadership and funding. Our pan-Asian and multiethnic congregation has joined the
Covenant not because of its politically correct rhetoric, but because of how those values
contained, institutionally complete community, Peterson suggests that its “free church
New Hope’s founders began ministry in Oakland working with multiracial youth, many
who were 1.5 generation refugees.3 Some of us were staff at Harbor House, a Christian
made up of primarily Cambodian and Latino families.4 We found that the youth did not
our ethnic home churches because of their more parochial concerns.5 New Hope was
established, then, to bring together multiethnic youth and college relocators who grew up
with more American urban values and tastes than traditional ethnic ones.6 Like the first
Covenant immigrants, New Hope thus supports the hybrid identities of its members, who
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 the
heart rather than traditional forms of expression.”’7 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, and
regularly schedule silent retreats for the entire congregation. Instead of traditional orders
of 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 on
special subjects. Our church unity isn’t based on theological doctrines, but on our shared
life 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, creedal
statements aren’t as salient as real experiences with the sacred. We utilize the New
International Reader’s Version of the Bible because so many of our friends cannot read
above a fourth grade level. In these ways, New Hope accommodates to the American
upbringing of the “new second generation” and to the class backgrounds of those whom
we serve.8 However, one aspect of American culture that we actively repudiate is its
increasing racial and economic segregation. Instead, our ministry within our low-income
community calls us to confront sin on both the personal and systemic level.
The Civil Rights movement and values of social justice affected the denomination
according to Peterson. This same concern for racial justice is central at New Hope, as
3
many of us have been influenced by the teachings espoused by the Christian Community
color and of the privileges held by whites. And given our neighborhood context, even the
whites of our church are very aware of America’s racial hierarchy. Our German
American pastor, Dan Schmitz, jokes that when his hair is short, neighbors assume he is a
police officer because whites are seldom seen here. When his hair appears longer and
shaggier, they try to sell him drugs. He, and the rest of the church, actively work to
develop local leadership that represents the diversity of our neighborhood. The
movements of the sixties have not fully “petered out,” but have evolved to embrace both
This pursuit of justice is not our own isolated value within the denomination, as
we have found out. Organizing fellow tenants, we helped our neighbors to win almost $1
million in damages and to obtain new housing for 37 families in a landmark housing legal
settlement. Using some of these funds, our members put a down payment on the duplex
in front of Oak Park, which once was an abandoned crack house. This building has
become our church preschool, office, and prayer room.11 However, we could not have
purchased this building if it were not for major funding from Berkeley Covenant Church
and its Mustard Seed Preschool. Their generosity and commitment to a younger, poorer
Compassion, Mercy and Justice conference in 2002. Called the “Center for Community
Transformation,” it was the best training I’ve received in holistic, Christian community
4
development and evangelism. Most of the 70 attendees in Encino, CA were African
American and Latino, and I was encouraged by the like-minded sisters and brothers who
had doing urban work much longer than I.12 Mealtime stories of communal life from
members of Jesus People USA were particularly rollicking. Impressed by this event, I
later agreed to help organize and teach at two subsequent “Institutes for Community
Covenant.
more than the language of justice. Recognizing the influx of new immigrants and
targeting a generation that values diversity, the denomination seeks “to increase diversity
through a variety of means, extending beyond the homogeneous unit principle and even
diversity within our congregation, New Hope utilizes a discourse which Kathleen Garces-
ethnicity” that Peterson recommends. Every church, even a white one, is an “ethnic
ministry.” Unfortunately, the implicit assumption that “ethnic ministry” involves only
people of color establishes our congregations as the “cultural other.” It masks the
privileges their style of Christianity as the universal norm. As Peterson notes, reclaiming
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the cultural heritage of our denomination helps us identify the cultural particularity of
every congregation, and better enables us to then share our different perspectives of the
Kingdom of God.
aspects of our members’ heritages in its worship style and elements. Our communion
elements, for example, occasionally consist of Cambodian rice cakes and mango juice.
These foods that are more familiar to our members help us understand better how Jesus is
our daily bread/rice. The practice of using certain foods often represents a superficial
understanding the values and issues of other ethnic groups.14 Instead, New Hope’s
worship stations over time have become deeply meaningful rituals, both ethnically and
spiritually.
At the same time, New Hope leadership recognizes the racialized power
differences between individual members within our church, as well as social class
dynamics. Celebrating ethnicity appears to place each group on equal status, without
identifying and seeking to dismantle the racial privilege of certain ethnic groups. Beyond
diversifying leadership and staff, and conducting outreach activities to build local
leadership, we have sponsored a worship project entitled, “New Urban Voices.” Led by
our associate pastor Russell Yee, this effort brought together emerging Southeast Asian
culturally appropriate, innovative worship that addresses this group’s experience of the
divine, these types of activities exemplify our commitment to hearing and lifting up the
6
marginalized. Racialized multiculturalism values both racial and ethnic distinctions,
Conclusion
throughout its history provide insight on how it has related to issues of ethnicity and race.
Its accommodation to American culture, missionary zeal, concern for justice, and support
of diversity each shaped its ability to draw in and integrate new congregations of color.
Similarly, New Hope Covenant Church draws from these values to address issues of
We realize that ethnic culture is not static, but involves the continuous
construction of group values and practices. Rather than simply assimilating to the United
States, we aim to hybridize the best of our American and ethnic backgrounds that reflect
God’s kingdom. In the sharing of our heritages and perspectives, we offer all that we are
We also understand that God’s peace demands racial equality and equity. On a
daily basis, we see how social injustices play out in our local schools, government, and
streets. So we seek God and His righteousness in and for our neighborhood. One
example is our prayer for those in our country without documents. Our neighbors simply
want to work and support their families, which are not crimes. We long for the day when
families are reunited and all have meaningful work, as in Isaiah 65. These desires are
As the Covenant has put its values into practice, New Hope Covenant Church has
benefited greatly from the denominational support. More significantly, the relational
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practices of the broader Covenant--through church partnerships, conference meetings,
As the Covenant becomes larger and more diverse, the issue of its core identity
does become more complex. A related concern is its ability to maintain its relational
character that has sustained New Hope through its inception. Given the relational
blessings we have received from being part of the Covenant, we hope to continue to
8
1
To be published in the Covenant Quarterly, a journal of the Evangelical Covenant denomination, 2008. Do not use or
reprint without permission of author
2
Census tract data from the 2000 United States census.
3
The 1.5 generation includes those who emigrate to the United States before their adolescence and primarily grow up here.
4
For our ministry at Oak Park Apartments, see Russell Jeung, “Multiethnic, Faith-based Tenant Organizing” in Pierrette
Hondagneu-Sotelo, ed., Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
To learn about Harbor House, see www.hhministries.org
5
See Rebecca Kim, God’s New Whiz Kids: Korean American Evangelicals on Campus, New York: New York University
Press, 2006; Elaine Howard Ecklund, Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
6
New Hope Covenant Church’s original mission statement reads, “We will focus initially on East Oakland young adults.
Our priority is to serve the indigenous population of inner-city Oakland.”
7
Kurt Peterson, “Transforming the Covenant: The Emergence of Ethnic Diversity in A Swedish-American Denomination” ,
p.
8
See Alejandro Portes, ed., The New Second Generation, New York: Sage Foundation, 1996.
9
New Hope’s mission statement includes educational and employment development to address the structural inequities in
our community.
10
Charles Marsh, Beloved Communities: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today, New
York: Basic Books, 2005.
11
New Hope Covenant Church meets a few blocks away in a storefront non-profit building for worship service on Sundays.
12
The composition of conference attendees initially gave me a warped perspective of who makes up the Covenant.
13
Peterson, K. ___
14
Frank Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond White and Black, New York: Basic Books, 2003