Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
immigrant church as a service hub offers both social and spiritual comforts,
and its ministries provide a peephole into the initial needs of East Asian
immigrants. At one Korean church:
The recent immigrants want to find support and a network to be connected
into as they are finding a new home here. They are in need of direction in the
education system, the job opportunities and how they should learn English.
Some are in need of real help because they contemplate suicide and come
from broken families… There are many cases in which the fathers are being
depressed or stressed because they can no longer be properly be head of the
family household due to the language barrier.
Both Korean and Chinese churches mentioned the case of the downwardly
mobile male, in status as well as in economic achievement, and the needs
of astronaut wives. Counselling by church staff and caring in weekly
'house groups' were important services. Immigrant men 'feel ashamed that
they have no real status in this society', and there was frequent reference
to the need for recognition (Ley 2008). Indeed more than one speaker
suggested that the large number of small churches resulted in part from
congregational splits where groups formed around strong males, whose
activism in the church might replace their deflated standing in more
worldly pursuits.
At a long-established Chinese-Canadian congregation with poorer mem-
bers: 'We help them to find accommodation and a job; teach them to fill in
application forms; be their interpreter and a referee for them.' Such practi-
cal assistance is often worked out in fellowship or care groups where new
immigrants and longer-established church members share experiences.
Mentoring is encouraged. Help is practical. 'We are a walking yellow pages
to them,' declared another Chinese-Canadian minister. A third minister was
more explicit: he offered short-term accommodation to immigrants in his
own house 'and then our members from a care group will advise them how
to apply for the social insurance card, the medical card, how to open a bank
account, recommend them a family doctor…'
Tension between parents and children, mentioned earlier, can reappear
in institutional form in immigrant church life. The issue of the second gen-
eration received knowing responses from church leaders (Min 1992; Chai
1998). The Canadian-born children of immigrants have memories and cur-
rent points of reference that are Canadian rather than homeland-based,
they do not remember the struggles of being newly landed, and most of all
speaking and writing English is second nature, not a daily trial. The church's
traditions, its homeland language, cultural memories, and patriarchal struc-
ture that anchor ethnic identity for the first generation are lower priorities,
even distractions, for the second:
