From this news release about a fascinating report, College Students’ Spirituality and Religiousness Varies by Race and Gender, New Study Shows: African Americans Most Religious Group, culminating from a survey of 112,232 college students:
Asian Americans were the highest scorers on Religious Skepticism and the lowest on Spirituality, Equanimity, and Religous Commitment. … Asian Americans are the most likely to say that they have no religious preference.
Plus 2 more sound bites from a local newspaper article, The contours of a constituency: Asian American entrepreneurs meet at summit:
Divided, the region’s Asian communities are a patchwork of competing interests, said Sally Sternbach of Rockville Economic Development Inc. United, those same groups represent a powerful constituency. The challenge, Sternbach said, is for Asian American businesses to seize opportunities together.
But when critiquing (different from criticizing, different from being negative, even tho’ some can’t tell the difference), it’s always better when it comes from someone from within:
Asian American communities can be somewhat insular, [John] Lin said. “Each group does its own thing. They don’t usually collaborate.”
i guess those traits really showed through in the godblogcon numbers, eh? nah, i think there will be plenty of time for asian american christians to get into the blogosphere discussion. maybe more of them or “purposeless” bloggers on xanga, and so don’t care about godblogcon-type ideas?
(on a totally unrelated note, my family moved from gaithersburg, md, to seattle in june. it would have been cool to meet up!)
Religious heritage is the key here. All the other ethnicity received the gospel into their culture a few hundred years before we do…
i’m in total disconnect mode deej
because
at the same time, asian american christian groups are exploding on college campuses across america
what gives?
Here’s my hunch on what’s going on:
1. while Asian American involvement at some/many college campus ministries are growing, on the whole of Asian American demographics, the majority of Asian Americans are (still) not spiritually inclined (at this time)
2. perhaps the growing number of Asian American involvement at college campus ministries is merely perceived as “explosive”, and only in certain locations, due to the declining numbers of involvement by other racial groups
Supposedly, Korea has, by percentage of total population, the largest number of Christians. But I believe that this “spirituality” is a sham, due to a few things: A desire (at least by those who grew up during the war) to become Americanized, the conformist nature of the culture, and falsely believing that compliance with religious authority leads to prosperity and happiness.
And finally, in my observations, young Koreans (and many non-Koreans too) are unwilling to rock the boat by telling their parents that they don’t believe the same things as Mom and Dad. (More common methods of Asian-American rebellion include: Getting tattoos and piercings, [ooh so tough!], joining a gang, becoming a porn starlet, or dating a black person, [which could very well get a Korean kid disowned])