Vietnamese Christians Explore Future Role
Episcopal News Service. December 5, 1985 [85244]
GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (DPS, Dec. 5) -- For the first time, more than 200 Vietnamese pastors and church leaders from the United States, Canada and four European countries gathered here Nov. 23-24 at the instigation of a Vietnamese Episcopal priest to review the decade of Vietnamese immigration since the fall of Saigon and to share ideas on how to expand the Vietnamese Christian community.
There are some 10,000 Protestant and Episcopal Vietnamese in the United States, half of whom are recent converts. The bulk of Vietnamese Protestants belong to the Christian Missionary Alliance, which began its mission in Vietnam in 1911, after more than five centuries of Catholic activity in a country that is predominantly Confucian. About 100,000 Vietnamese immigrants are Catholic.
The conference organizer, the Rev. Nguyen Xuan Duc, told Religious News Service that one of the biggest problems facing the Vietnamese community is finding a place in American society.
"What are we doing here? Who are we? These are the questions that people ask. We have to address them and help them find the answers," said Duc, who is the first Vietnamese to be ordained as an Episcopal priest.
Many Churches which were involved in social ministries in Vietnam during the war, but did not have any "planting" programs there, are now working at building congregations among the refugees.
Most Vietnamese churches are small and share facilities with American congregations. Of the 101 congregations and mission groups of Vietnamese and Chinese refugees in the United States, 26 are in California and 21 in Texas.
Duc admits that it was easier for denominations such as CMA and the Southern Baptist Convention to "transplant" their churches, because they already had a constituency when they started their work in the United States.
"We have to sow the seed and start from scratch," said Duc. Two years ago, the Vietnamese Lutheran Church of Garden Grove began with seven members, and today the congregation numbers more than 130 members.
"I am the first Anglican priest. We have the first Vietnamese Presbyterian Church here, the first Methodist, the first Conservative Baptist. It will take some time to have a second, a third and a fourth, but it will come," said Duc.
Today in Vietnam, according to Duc, there is no missionary activity, and most pastors are in jail for "conspiracy against the government."
He said the Vietnamese government is trying to "crack down on organized religion" in an attempt to set up a state-sponsored church, much like the Catholic Church in the People's Republic of China.
A special Thanksgiving service was part of the conference, which also included workshops on social issues facing the Vietnamese community.
Although many Vietnamese refugees have made preliminary adaptations to life in the United States, there remain deep-rooted adjustment problems.
Duc says that the American emphasis on youth is odds with the tightly structured Vietnamese family, where an elder's wisdom is highly valued.
"Many parents don't speak English," said Duc, "and so authorities will talk to the kids instead of the father."
This is a particular problem for newly-arrived refugees, who are often poorer, less educated and less likely to have English skills than the first wave of refugees.
A growing incidence of child abuse is a major concern to American and Vietnamese social service workers, but Duc cautions that examining the problem in the Vietnamese community must be done "in terms of the intention."
While not denying the seriousness of the problem, he explains that outsiders don't understand that "whipping children" is a standard disciplinary practice among Vietnamese and "could be easily misinterpreted."
Spouse abuse is also a problem, but Duc observed that its most serious aspect, he feels, is emotional abuse of husbands by their wives.
He cited the example of a Vietnamese general whose traditionally submissive wife "was at home in Saigon learning English while he was out fighting battles."
Upon arrival in the United States, the general's wife found it easy to get a job and "could move up real fast," while her husband is forced to take low-paying service jobs.
"There's not much demand for a general's skills, so after 20 years of fighting and being important, he feels down," commented Duc, "and she's getting even for his control in the past."
During a lecture on the criminal justice system, a Japanese-American criminal court judge was bombarded with complaints about police harassment and discrimination against the Asian community.
A Vietnamese welfare worker said that "people don't trust the police, they don't protect our people."
People are afraid to report criminal activity by Vietnamese youth gangs because they don't trust the police to keep the information secret and "are afraid of gang retaliation," she said.
An interpreter in San Diego says that even interpreters are fearful of translating victim testimony against gang defendants face to face. Despite a desire to curb gang violence and extortion of Vietnamese business, victims cannot understand why they have to testify in open court.
When the first groups of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the United States, government officials scattered them all over the country in belief that they could best be Americanized this way. However, cultural differences and cold weather caused mass migrations to Texas and California, which now have the largest Vietnamese populations.
The Vietnamese population is especially evident in Orange County, where Vietnamese grocery stores share shopping center space with Mexican taco stands and Korean acupuncturists.
Pastor Gordon Clark, whose Garden Grove Friends Church hosted the Vietnamese Christian conference, said there was a lot of initial suspicion among local people when the Vietnamese first arrived in the area because of a "lack of understanding and a need for education."
One Thanksgiving, however, Garden Grove Friends sponsored a Thanksgiving dinner service in four languages -- Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish and English.
"At that moment, the walls came down," said Clark, "and 'they' and 'we' became 'us'."