Initial Plans and Purpose:
Our Louisville Institute-funded oral history project set out to gather and interpret narratives of first-generation East Asian American Christians—focusing on their transpacific migration experiences, religious identities, and theological self-understandings. Recognizing that first-generation immigrants carry diverse “inheritances”—cultural, linguistic, religious, political, and historical—we aimed to document how these prior contexts inform their lives of faith after arriving in the United States or Canada.
We began with a core assumption: while previous scholarship on Asian American Christianity often centers on second-generation issues (such as cultural gaps with immigrant parents), the distinct voices and experiences of first-generation Christians are less understood on their own terms. Our purpose was to use oral history methods to hear directly from these first-generation believers, discovering patterns and themes that may disrupt or complicate established narratives—such as the trope that first-generation churches exist only to serve ethnic enclaves or that immigrant faith merely replicates conservative American evangelical or mainline paradigms.
What Changed as the Project Developed:
From the start, we envisioned a relatively straightforward coding process and data analysis—listening for common themes like hospitality, the importance of ethnic churches, or conversion stories shaped by American campus ministries. As we conducted interviews, however, our analytic framework evolved. We found that many standard categories—“evangelical” vs. “mainline,” or even “Asian American” as a stable identity—did not fully capture the complexity expressed by our interviewees.
Instead, the interviews pointed us to subtler, more fluid patterns. We noticed how first-generation migrants continually renegotiate “inheritances” from their homelands—such as Confucian family ethics, Buddhist traditions, or the political traumas of war, dictatorship, and colonialism—and how these shape their spiritual experiences in the United States or Canada. Rather than only referencing a fixed, “transatlantic” framework of American Christianity (i.e., denominations with European roots), interviewees drew upon transpacific inheritances and local North American contexts to craft their faith stories.
Obstacles and Surprises Encountered:
One unexpected obstacle came from the complexity of translation and interpretation. Many interviews were conducted in Mandarin, Cantonese, or Korean, then translated into English. This added layers of cultural nuance and interpretation. For example, one Cantonese-speaking interviewee, when asked “What kind of Christian are you?” responded with genuine puzzlement: “How many kinds of Christians are there?” Her confusion underscored that categories taken for granted by American theologians—“evangelical,” “Reformed,” “mainline”—were not self-evident or meaningful to her. She understood herself simply as a “serious Christian,” with no interest in parsing denominational lines. This surprise highlighted the limits of standard American religious taxonomies.
Another surprise was the depth of religious experience and its connection to political and personal crises. A Hong Kong immigrant interviewed in Vancouver spoke at length about how the 2019 protests in Hong Kong elicited shock, anger, fear, and sadness—emotions that found resonance or relief in her Christian faith. Similarly, a Korean immigrant recalled how, upon arriving in the U.S., a small American Baptist church ministered to her children, easing her loneliness and eventually leading her to commit to Christianity. These stories move beyond simple narratives of “ethnic church as social club” and show how diaspora Christians navigate profound political disruptions and find hope, community, and meaning in faith.
A third surprise was the variety of ways first-generation Christians engaged the notion of family. Family emerged repeatedly as a sacred value—an inheritance carried across oceans. At the same time, not all found solace in the family ideal. One Taiwanese woman described how her church in the U.S. offered little support and how family structures, once stabilizing in Asia, felt disrupted and isolating in America. Instead of the expected warmth of a church-as-family model, she encountered loneliness, prompting a deeper personal spiritual journey and a reshaping of her theology of community and God’s presence.
Concrete Examples from the Interviews:
- From Mainland China to the U.S.—Cultivating Sacred Values:
“Jake,” a Mandarin-speaking interviewee, recounted how after arriving in America for graduate studies, he was welcomed by hospitable Chinese Christians, though he initially had no Christian background. Their kindness, presented in simple acts of help—housing assistance, meals, and moral support—eventually led him to “experiment” with prayer. He described a moment of shouting “Oh Lord Jesus” three times and feeling a surprising “warm current” fill his body. This direct religious experience, initially startling, gradually evolved into a sacred value of community and care. Over time, Jake came to see himself as bearing multiple identities—Chinese, American, and Christian—tied together by a God who desires to save all people, motivating him to return to China with a gospel of hope. - Hong Kong Immigrants in Vancouver—Political Trauma and Faith:
Another interviewee, a Hong Kong-born woman who immigrated to Vancouver, reflected on the profound disappointment and anger sparked by the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Shocked by state violence and injustice, she grappled with sadness, fear for her family, and confusion about the future. Amid this turmoil, her Christian faith offered a language of lament, a space to channel anger and seek justice. Her faith community did not erase political pain, but provided a framework for understanding suffering and longing for God’s righteousness in an unjust world.
- Korean Immigrants—Medical Exams and Holy Spirit Encounters:
A Korean veterinarian struggling to pass U.S. licensing exams recounted a New Year’s Eve church service marked by prayer, tongues, and ecstatic worship. Under immense pressure and low self-esteem, he experienced the Holy Spirit’s comfort and felt “all worries disappear.” Soon after, he passed his oral exams. For him, the church and its spiritual practices offered not just moral support but a palpable encounter with divine aid. This story illustrates how migration stresses—occupational hurdles, accreditation barriers—become contexts for fresh theological insight and personal religious experience.
- Confronting Denominations—An Older Cantonese Couple’s Puzzle:
An older Cantonese couple in Vancouver gently questioned the value of denominations. The husband asked, “How can the same God and same salvation produce different practices?” They were unmoved by debates over “Alliance” or “Baptist” labels. Their priority was Christian unity and common salvation, not subdivision by doctrine or tradition. This questions the usual American theological narrative that starts from denominational distinctives and suggests that transpacific Christians may view such divisions as unnecessary or even antithetical to communal flourishing.
Discoveries and Significance:
What have we discovered through these varied, surprising narratives?
- Transpacific Inheritances Matter:
Migrants do not arrive as blank slates. They bring cultural, religious, and political inheritances. Whether Confucian family ethics, Buddhist traditions, or memories of war and authoritarianism, these inheritances set the stage for how they interpret Christianity once in North America. - Beyond Evangelical vs. Mainline:
Many interviewees did not fit cleanly into American Protestant “boxes.” Some found denominational disputes puzzling, others prized unity over doctrinal litmus tests. Faith was less about fitting a label and more about experiencing community, addressing trauma, and cultivating moral life. - Political and Emotional Complexity:
First-generation Christians testified to how faith communities and religious experiences helped them navigate political crises, professional disappointments, and homesickness. Christianity, in these stories, is not just personal piety or ethnic fellowship—it is a resource for grappling with injustice, longing, hope, and the mystery of divine presence amid suffering. - Sacred Value of Family and Community—With Nuance:
Family emerged repeatedly as a core theme—valued, disrupted, reinterpreted. Churches sometimes functioned like extended family networks, but just as often, individuals struggled with isolation and had to reimagine family and belonging through faith. The simplicity of “Asians value family” gave way to a more contested and dynamic negotiation of what family means in diaspora.
Significance for the Church in North America:
These findings challenge North American churches to recognize that immigrant believers do not merely adopt preexisting religious categories. Instead, they transform them, introducing narrative surplus—fresh stories, complexities, and possibilities that exceed conventional theological frameworks. Churches might learn from these first-generation narratives how to:
- Welcome migrants without imposing rigid doctrinal or cultural frameworks, allowing room for their inheritances and experiences to shape communal life.
- Understand faith formation as a process grounded in social embodiment, everyday challenges, and political upheavals—not as abstract belief alignment.
- Attend to the sacred value of family and kinship networks, but with sensitivity to the pain, disruption, and reinvention that diaspora believers may face.
- Realize that standard denominational markers, familiar to American-born congregants, may not translate easily for immigrants whose priority is unity and shared salvation rather than brand loyalty.
In sum, the first-generation East Asian American Christians we interviewed push us to reimagine the very categories we use to describe and understand Christian life. They show how inheritance, migration, political crisis, family reconfiguration, and direct religious experience can foster new forms of faith—forms that challenge the North American church to expand its narrative horizons, broaden its theological imagination, and become truly hospitable, not only in action but also in thought and language.
