By Wayne Stapleton, VP of Cross-Cultural Engagement and Emerging Leader Engagement; & Kevin Wong, senior pastor at Cornerstone Trinity Baptist Church in San Francisco, California
The movement of God has never been dependent on optimal human circumstances. From the beginning, God’s raw material has been sinful, broken humanity. And yet, from such lowliness, God has transformed tough places into fields of healing and spiritual growth. For example, we read in Acts 8 that, as a result of persecution, followers of Jesus finally began to fulfill Christ’s vision proclaimed in Acts 1: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8 NASB).
Likewise, the Chinese church in America we see today was birthed out of challenging circumstances. From 1882 through 1943, the Chinese presence in American culture was precarious. In 1882, the United States put into effect the Chinese Exclusion Act. Similarly, Canada ratified its own Chinese Immigration Act in 1923, the end result of anti-Chinese racism and policies. These acts were implemented after Chinese immigrants, eager to partake in the advantages of economic opportunities provided in the expansion of the Western territories of North America, began to be scapegoated as taking the jobs of nationals and as the cause of social ills:
As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese sentiment among other workers in the American economy. This finally resulted in legislation that aimed to limit future immigration of Chinese workers to the United States, and threatened to sour diplomatic relations between the United States and China.[1]
Regarding the impact in the US, Timothy Tseng in Christianity Today writes, “Chinese labor was crucial for the growth of the North American West. Much of California’s agricultural industry as well as US and Canadian railroads were built by Chinese contract workers from Guangzhou.”[2] This led to decades of discrimination. For example,
In 1852, the state of California passed discriminatory taxes and later attempted to force Chinese out of the mines and stop Chinese immigration. [. . .] Even the advocacy of missionaries and mission agencies could do little to prevent the US (and later, the Canadian) government from passing discriminatory immigration and naturalization laws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [. . .] As the Chinese population nearly doubled to 63,000 by 1870 and approached 105,000 by 1880, animus toward the Chinese intensified. They were blamed for the 1870s economic downturn in the West.[3]
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the very first official American policy that overtly and specifically identified a foreign group of people for select discrimination. Through this Act, Chinese laborers were specifically targeted, preventing them from entering the US, originally only for a decade but then indefinitely. Chinese residents who were already in the US were denied the ability to become citizens. Chinese people in the US faced the possibility of deportation if they were found not to carry identification proving their status. Because of this Act, there was a sharp decrease in the population of Chinese people in the US; this Act is also thought to have influenced immigration restrictions on people of other nationalities later on.
And yet, despite the suffering that inevitably comes from this kind of oppression, God would bring into being something beautiful, in part because, thankfully, there was an active Christian witness on behalf of the Chinese immigrants. God’s people came to the aid and support of the targeted Chinese population. Again, Tseng writes:
During this time, American missionary agencies renewed their efforts to build up and support the Chinese Christian community. Beginning in 1868, Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist, and Episcopalian missionaries and Chinese pastors were assigned to San Francisco’s Chinatown. Before long, women missionaries accompanied them and established English language schools, community centers, and women’s rescue homes.
A number of white missionaries gained notoriety for their fearless advocacy of the rights of the Chinese. William Speer (1822–1904) not only helped plant the Chinese Presbyterian mission in San Francisco, but he also left important testimony in the California state records defending the Chinese in the face of racial prejudice.[4]
Many of the first Chinese converts in the US were drawn by the diligent efforts of Christ followers preaching human equality in the eyes of God:
In a speech at an anniversary celebration of the Methodist Chinese Mission in San Francisco in 1875, Ma See connected the Christian view of a Creator God and Chinese rights: “If this world was created by the one universal God; if it belongs to God; if men are all created equal; if all men come from one family; if these things be so, and they are so, then the Chinese, of course have the same right to come to this land and to occupy the land, that the people of any other nation have.”[5]
The Act was repealed in 1943 during World War II. After the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (the Hart–Celler Act), the racial and ethnic composition of the United States was transformed. Many Asian migrants entered the nation, and the new immigration system, based on job skills and family reunification, caused the racial demographics of United States–bound migrants to change from majority European to majority Asian and Latin American.
And there was a spiritual impact to this transformation: some have observed that as many as 75 percent of Asians migrating to the US between 1965 and 2000 had some Christian background. The face of Chinese Christianity in the United States was transformed by the lifting of restrictions on Chinese immigration, as well as the diligent efforts of Christ-followers to minister to and on behalf of Chinese immigrants during the years the Exclusion Act was in place.
Fenggang Yang writes, “Today there are more than one thousand Chinese churches in the United States, most of them Protestant evangelical congregations, bringing together diasporic Chinese from diverse origins—Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Southeast Asian countries.”[6]
Even in the NAB there are some who see themselves as descendants of those who rode the waves of immigration and its missional vision. Pastor Kevin Wong of Cornerstone Trinity Baptist Church in San Francisco, California, says, “I personally see my faith history and present ministry as beneficiaries of God’s movement despite the impulses of government and society. The movement of Christianity in San Francisco’s Chinatown from that time, leading to the establishment of numerous Asian American churches in the city, might resemble what some call revival in other parts of the nation.”
God uses it all. He certainly used the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act to bring followers of Jesus from China to the States, thereby enabling them to establish, on the shores of the US, outreach to other Chinese immigrants, literally Kingdom mission among the Chinese.
Despite sinful, broken humanity, God has continually shown he can make something new and beautiful. We have never stopped living in a sinful, broken world, and he has never stopped saving and transforming sinful and broken people. In Christ, we have the utmost reason for hope.
Let’s advocate for those hurt by racial oppression and division. Let’s see them as God sees them: as having inherent dignity, made in God’s image. Let’s serve our neighbors with our eyes on Jesus.
[1] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration.
[2] Timothy Tseng, “How American Exclusion Created the Chinese Church,” Christianity Today, May 11, 2022.
[3] Tseng, “American Exclusion.”
[4] Tseng, “American Exclusion.”
[5] Tseng, “American Exclusion.”
[6] Fenggang Yang, Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021).
Header image of Angel Island Immigration Station in California, ca. 1915; from The Everett Collection.