Korean Immigrants Flock to Growing Congregations

Six years ago, St. Bridget of Sweden Roman Catholic Church in Van Nuys drew 40 to 50 people to its Korean-language Mass, the only such service in the San Fernando Valley.

Today, more than 1,000 of the parish’s 1,400 Korean members attend the two weekly Masses offered, and an average of 15 first-timers show up each Sunday.

St. Bridget’s Father Derek Harris, an Irishman who spent 22 years as a missionary in South Korea before coming to Los Angeles, said anticipated growth has prompted a search for a second Valley parish to serve the Korean-speaking community.

“I’ve been here 8 months, and the community in the parish has grown by half just since that time,” Harris said. “I’m called on to bless a new house every week.”

St. Bridget is one of nearly 500 churches serving Korean immigrants that have sprung up in Southern California in recent years.

The Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning estimates that there are up to 300,000 Koreans in the Los Angeles area. Although the largest concentration is in Koreatown, dozens of Korean congregations--many of which share quarters with established English-language congregations--have been organized in the Valley. The Valley congregations serve about 30,000 Koreans, according to the Rev. Yoon Sung Chang, pastor of Han Yang Presbyterian Church in Arleta.

“The fastest-growing churches in all of Southern California are Korean language,” said Eui Young Yui, director of the Center for Korean-American and Korean Studies at Cal State Los Angeles.

The Rev. Donald Locher, the United Methodist Church official who oversees the Valley, said Koreans “are revitalizing the denomination here. It’s an exciting ministry and one that, in most cases, is growing faster than Anglo churches.

“The church is an important place for Koreans as it has been for all immigrant groups that have come to this country,” Locher said. “It affirms tradition and ethnicity while making the transition to being an American.”

Koreans come from a nation that, except for the predominantly Catholic Philippines, is the most Christian in all of Asia. Buddhism--influenced by indigenous shamanism and later Confucianism--remains the dominant religion, but about 25% of South Korea’s more than 41 million people are Christians.

That figure is up from just 5% a quarter century ago, leading such church growth experts as C. Peter Wagner of Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary to label Korean Christianity the most vigorous and dynamic in the modern world.

As many as 70% of the Koreans in the United States are Christians, according to various surveys. Presbyterian missionaries were the first Protestants to proselytize in Korea more than a century ago, and their work has paid off. Nearly half of the Korean Christians in Southern California belong to Presbyterian churches, with Methodist, Catholic, Southern Baptist and various Pentecostal and charismatic denominations accounting for most of the rest.

Part of Assimilation

More than half of the Korean Christians in Southern California were Christian in their homeland, according to Chang of Han Yang Presbyterian Church. The remainder have converted since their arrival, leading Chang and other researchers to conclude that church membership is viewed by many Koreans as “part of the process of becoming an American.”

Moreover, said Chang, a leading Korean minister within the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., many Koreans in the Valley, like their counterparts elsewhere in this country, sometimes attend church for reasons that are not primarily spiritual.

“About half the 200 people who come to Sunday worship are not really Christians,” said Chang, whose church, with about 300 adults and several hundred children, is one of the larger Protestant Korean congregations in the Valley.

“Many people come because they are looking for practical help, to make business acquaintances or social acquaintances. Immigrant people have a deep isolation. They need contact with other people from their country.”

Sense of Community

Don S. Lee, a 51-year old plumber who lives in Granada Hills, said he felt alone when he immigrated 8 years ago. “My children needed a sense of community. We have so many problems and speak poor English,” he said.

Although he was raised a Buddhist and no one in his family had ever left that faith, Lee became a Christian in his new land. Now, Lee said, he is a committed Christian and he serves as an elder of the Han Yang congregation.

Han Yang is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.’s Hanmi Presbytery, an all-Korean-language jurisdiction whose members tend to be first-generation immigrants. The congregation, which started a decade ago with 30 members and moved to its present home from shared quarters in North Hollywood about 5 years ago, is in many ways typical of Korean Protestant churches in the Valley: The church revolves around its pastor, who is an 18-year resident of the United States.

Chang explained that reliance on the pastor stems from the Confucian emphasis on personal relationships and respect for elders.

“American culture emphasizes convenience, so you go to a neighborhood church,” he said. “The Korean emphasis is with the individual, so people drive from all over the area to be with their pastor.”

Korean Presbyterian congregations have very strong loyalty to the pastor, said the Rev. Robert Fernandez of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.’s Valley regional jurisdiction. “The way they develop a congregation is they select a leader, a pastor, and then follow him all the way.

“And it’s always a him, never a woman.”

But at Han Yang, the influence of mainline American Presbyterianism is evident. Slowly, the male dominance that characterizes Korean Christianity--and culture--is giving way. Two of Han Yang’s 15 elders are women.

“In Korea, women have almost no rights to say anything in church,” said Shin Hee Song, who became the church’s first female elder 4 years ago.

“There are no women elders in the Presbyterian Church in all of Korea,” said Song, speaking through an interpreter. “Here, we have equal rights. That’s a very big change.”

Opening to Women

Chang said he expects that most Korean Protestant churches will become more open to women in their hierarchies as the generations become more assimilated. “This is good. God likes new things,” he said.

At Han Yang, which takes its name from one of the former names of South Korea’s capital city, Seoul, the worship services for adults are entirely in Korean, while special services for children are conducted in English. Korean and American flags flank either side of the pulpit and choir area in the main sanctuary.

Although the worship style is more conservative than most mainline Presbyterian churches, the service reflects little of its Korean roots other than the language. “That’s because the missionaries told us to throw away our own culture,” Chang said. “So we adopted the American style.”

Following services, members of the congregation mingle in the church’s courtyard and parking lot, and it is not uncommon to see older women wearing hanboks , the traditional Korean dress, and sitting on benches as their grandsons toss around a football a few feet away.

Cultural Blend

A similar mingling of cultures also takes place at St. Bridget. “The kids come to the Korean Mass and stand around not knowing what’s going on,” Harris said. “These kids go to American schools, and they’ve become very Americanized.”

Church-growth expert Wagner said the way Korean-language churches deal with this ever-widening cultural gap will determine their ultimate success in this country.

“All mobility heightens openness to new things, and it’s no different with the Gospel,” he said. “But the period of receptivity does not last. The big problem comes with the second generation.”

Wagner noted that despite the wave of Christian conversions that occurred among first-generation Chinese immigrants, their children did not generally retain the faith and have, instead, largely joined the ranks of the “unchurched.” “You can’t just assume the Korean kids will remain Christians given the influences of this culture,” he said.

Chang believes that Christian faith has become important enough to Koreans for it to survive across generational lines. But if Korean Christianity is to successfully transplant itself in the United States, he added, its ministers must “know both sides, the Korean and American.”

To meet that goal, the Hanmi Theological Seminary will soon open its doors on the grounds of the Han Yang church to train Korean-American Presbyterian ministers. The first classes are scheduled to begin in January.

Until now, Korean Presbyterian clergy have either been trained in Korea or at fully American seminaries in this country. “They get one side or the other that way,” Chang said. “Assimilation is the final goal, but we are Koreans and we will always be that, so we need both sides.”