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Reviews
| Crossing the Ethnic Divide: The Multiethnic Church on a Mission. By Kathleen Garces-Foley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 182 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $45.00 (cloth).
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Kathleen Garces-Foley's excellent ethnography, Crossing the Ethnic Divide, recounts the transformation of Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles as a congregation seeking to become inclusively multiethnic. Crossing the Ethnic Divide details the hopes and pitfalls of diversifying the church while contextualizing this case study within the sociohistorical and religious context of Los Angeles in the post–Rodney King, post–September 11 era. Garces-Foley questions why and how religious institutions adapt to modern discourses of multiculturalism, particularly when Sunday morning remains the most segregated half day in America. Evergreen is unique in being a primarily pan-Asian congregation that is now reaching out to post–1965 immigrant generations and to its surrounding Latino neighborhood. |
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In seeking to understand how such an institution might become more multiethnic, Garces-Foley chose Evergreen because it has explicitly taken a color-conscious rather than a color-blind approach to addressing ethnicity. With a historically Japanese American, then pan-Asian, evangelical congregation, it had grown exponentially in the 1980s and 1990s while employing the "homogeneous unit principle." This church's growth model assumes that churches evangelize more effectively when they target single ethnic groups. However, Evergreen pastor Ken Fong became convinced that his church's vision needed to incorporate racial reconciliation so that all groups would feel welcome and be restored to proper relationships with each other. |
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The racial reconciliation movement among American evangelicals was promoted especially by the Promise Keepers men's movement in the mid-1990s. Promise Keepers adopted a color-blind, individual reconciliation model that encouraged men to make friendships across racial lines. Garces-Foley contrasts this model with the color-conscious approach held by social justice–oriented evangelicals, which emphasizes structural solutions to racism. Significantly, she discovered that Asian American Evergreen members utilized a third racial discourse, one that emphasized the significance of ethnicity in daily matters and organizational affairs. |
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Because ethnicity mattered at Evergreen, the leaders sought to institutionalize inclusion of all groups at three different levels: leadership, programming, and corporate worship. They actively hired non-Asian staff, held racial reconciliation retreats and surveys, and even established a gospel choir. Rather than promoting ethnic transcendence, or a belief that one's Christian identity supersedes other identities, Evergreen affirmed each member's ethnic identity. By doing so, the leadership was also able to link the members' own sense of marginalization or justice to broader social issues, such as the treatment of Arabs after September 11. |
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While delineating Evergreen's unique racial reconciliation discourse, Garces-Foley also describes its target population and theology. She defines the "reconciliation generation" as an urban subpopulation that grew up with a cosmopolitan ethos. The church expanded by attracting members of this group, especially non-Asian college graduates of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. Garces-Foley also discusses how Pastor Fong continually preaches the theological imperative for the church's vision that the members need to "get out of their comfort zone" in order to cross ethnic divides. |
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Garces-Foley's ethnography works well because of her accessible style, her use of colorful vignettes and quotes, and her ability to integrate sociology-of-religion theory into her prose. She effectively highlights Evergreen's uniqueness by differentiating it from other successful, multiethnic congregations but also identifies problem areas for the church. The book includes a range of voices from the congregation: the staff; the older Asian American members; and the newer, boundary-crossing non-Asian congregants. |
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Although Garces-Foley could have theorized a bit more regarding the unique racial discourse at Evergreen, Crossing Ethnic Divides is a significant addition to the growing literature on race and religion. Her book would be useful for courses in Asian American Studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion, and in seminaries as well.
Russell Jeung
San Francisco State University
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