Pastor Wayne Lee leads an English-speaking church of second- and third-generation Chinese Americans in the heart of Philadelphia’s Chinatown.
His 120-member evangelical Christian congregation in the critical state of Pennsylvania falls under the same umbrella as two other immigrant congregations with a total of 500 members who speak Mandarin and Cantonese, respectively. While these members hold conservative views and support former President Donald Trump, Lee’s younger flock leans to the left.
“We are just one church,” he said. “But we are so diverse that it is difficult to make a general statement about political preference.”
This community in Philadelphia reflects the experiences of the country’s larger Asian American Christian population. Asian American evangelicals are a diverse, evolving group of voters who increasingly want to distinguish themselves from their white counterparts.
Lee and others emphasize that while they still hold theologically conservative views on abortion and LGBTQ+ issues, their opinions on these and other issues such as immigration and racial equality tend to be more nuanced and diverse.
Pastors and leaders in the Asian American Christian community say younger evangelicals are moving away from their parents and grandparents’ more unconditional loyalty to the Republican Party. That makes them an important demographic: independent voters in battleground states who could stage tight elections at the national and local levels.
Reaching this population can be a challenge, experts say. Although some legal organizations have gained traction due to the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic, political and civic engagement is still relatively rare in Asian American communities.
Asian Americans, along with Latinos, are the fastest growing voting bloc in the country. Among Asian Americans, Christians make up the largest group of voters, followed by those unaffiliated with religion. About a third of Asian American adults identify as Christian, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. Additionally, about 18% said they felt “close” to Christianity for reasons such as family background, meaning just over half of Asian Americans feel connected to Christianity.
Only 10% specifically identify as born-again or evangelical Protestants. But that number may not include those who hesitate to call themselves “evangelical” because that word now denotes a political identity rather than a religious identity, said Jane Hong, an associate professor of history at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
“With the rise of the religious right, the term ‘evangelicals’ has been used as a partisan category usually associated with white, conservative Christians,” she said.
Many Asian Americans remain theologically conservative
Instead, Asian American Christians, especially immigrants, commonly view themselves as evangelical in theological sense because of their historical ties to American missionaries in their home countries, said the Rev. Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.
These are people who relate to the key elements of evangelism: submission to the authority of Scripture, understanding the need for repentance, and the belief that the crucifixion of Christ is the only sacrifice that can atone for sin.
“The identity of the Asian American Christian is the convergence of cultural experience, historical background and core theological transformation,” Kim said. “Many scholars have argued that Korean Americans, regardless of denomination, tend to be evangelical because Korean Christianity was heavily influenced by American evangelicals.”
In the Asian American and South Asian diaspora, even some Catholics and Pentecostals consider themselves evangelical.
Owen Lee, senior pastor of Christ Central Presbyterian Church in Centerville, Virginia, who leads a 600-member Korean American congregation, says Asian American Christians have long believed they were part of white evangelical spaces — until the candidacy by Trump in 2016.
“It was discombobulating to see white evangelicals rally behind Trump,” Lee said. “For the first time, they wanted to distance themselves from white evangelicals without distancing themselves from evangelicalism. White evangelicals tend to be single-issue voters, but that is not the case with us. Yes, abortion is important to us, we are pro-life. But the character of a candidate also matters.”
This year, ahead of the presidential election, Lee said, “political fatigue” seems to have set in and his community members don’t seem happy with either candidate.
“I hope and pray that Asian American Christians take their civic responsibility seriously,” he said. “We need to be concerned about the way our society is governed and managed.”
Pastor Raymond Chang, president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, an ecumenical nonprofit that started in response to combating anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, said neither political party is taking this important voting bloc seriously.
“We don’t fall neatly within party lines,” he said, adding that people’s political preferences often depend on their transnational history, family heritage and the way they experience life in America.
“We are often silent from the pulpit and pews when it comes to politics,” he said. “We don’t see a lot of civic engagement outside of voting, but we do vote.”
James Cho, a former seminary professor who has led a Chinese American congregation in Orange County, California, believes this could be a “time of transformation” for Asian American evangelicals, even though some are not as politically active as four years ago.
Cho, who had always voted Republican, said he sat out the 2016 election because he didn’t like either candidate. In 2020, he said he “quietly voted for Joe Biden.” This time, Cho has decided to vote for Harris. What clinched it for him were Trump’s baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets.
“As immigrants and children of immigrants, we have all felt alienated at some point in our lives,” he said, adding that some Asian communities face similar stereotypes. “It hits us hard to see another group of immigrants being targeted in this way.”
Younger evangelicals are less loyal to the Republican Party
Cho sees the divide between white and Asian American evangelicals – especially the younger generation – rapidly widening. For example, Cho says he believes in the separation of church and state, and that the church “should not play a political role in the LGBTQ issue.”
“While I believe it is a sin to be gay, I also believe I am a sinner just like them,” he said. “Discriminating against someone who is gay is just wrong.”
The political diversity of church members can be a challenge for pastors. In Philadelphia’s Chinatown, Pastor Wayne Lee says he’s navigating that landmine by not revealing his political leanings. But he does have conversations with family members in an attempt to understand their political loyalties.
The pastor said he asked an elderly relative if he was aware that a vote for Trump could mean emigrating to the U.S. could become more complicated for their relatives or make life difficult for existing community members. The answer he got was that a vote against Trump would be a vote against God.
The origins of Asian American churches have influenced their evolution, says Jerry Park, an associate professor of sociology at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In migrant churches, elements of ethnic culture were mixed with religious practices, he said. But as they became more exposed to white evangelical teachings, they began to see it as the authentic version of Christianity.
“For example, patriarchy is part of Confucianism,” Park said. “But the churches here, instead of citing Confucianism, pointed to white evangelical rhetoric to justify the subordination of women. So in this racialized environment, we must ask ourselves who we rely on to understand our own culture and religious practices.”
It’s important for politicians and parties trying to reach Asian American Christians not to assume they are a monolithic group, Walter Kim said.
“There is a diversity of political and social concerns,” he said. “This gives both sides the opportunity to move away from political rhetoric to understand how to negotiate complex issues and build consensus and unity within the community.”
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Associated Press religion reporting is supported by the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
