Transforming the Ethnic: The Emergence of

Covenant Values at New Hope Covenant Church, Oakland CA1

© Russell Jeung, Ph.D.

San Francisco State University
rjeung@sfsu.edu

During the past sixteen years, I have worshipped, gotten married, and raised my

family in an underclass neighborhood of East Oakland, California. Our community is

crime-ridden and poor, with 35% of my neighbors below the poverty level.2 Three men

have been fatally shot within blocks of our home in the past two years. Twice this

summer, thieves have broken into our home.

Our community is also multiethnic and multiracial. Our son attends preschool

two blocks away at our church, New Hope Covenant. His classmates represent ten

different ethnic heritages—and there are only ten students in his class! The neighborhood

is 39% Mexican, 16% African American, 13% Southeast Asian, 12% Central American

(Mayan, Guatemalan and Salvadorian), 10% Chinese, and 8% mixed race.

What is an Evangelical Covenant church doing in a place like this? Although we

occasionally get donations from Svenhard’s Swedish Bakery, only one of our members

comes from a family with long-time Covenant roots. With most of our pan-Asian

members born after 1980, including a sizeable proportion of Southeast Asian refugees,

few of us know our denominational ties, its own strong ethnic history, and its primarily

suburban membership. Yet our church’s own story closely parallels the Covenant history,

and owes much to its development to the denomination and Pacific Southwest

conference.

This chapter reviews Kurt Peterson’s compelling review of historical Covenant

discourse on ethnicity and race, and asserts that New Hope has come to embody each of

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the values—free-mindedness, justice, and diversity-- promoted by the denomination

throughout its history. Further, the Covenant’s continued commitment to urban,

multiracial, and social justice-oriented ministries are the key reasons that we have

embraced the denomination. Indeed, our relationships with conference leadership and

local Covenant congregations have sustained us as we have struggled to raise up local

leadership and funding. Our pan-Asian and multiethnic congregation has joined the

Covenant not because of its politically correct rhetoric, but because of how those values

have been realized in the denomination, from top to bottom.

New Hope’s Multiethnic Foundation

Although the Covenant began as a Swedish American denomination within a self-

contained, institutionally complete community, Peterson suggests that its “free church

mind” promoted accommodation to American culture and non-creedalism. Similarly,

New Hope’s founders began ministry in Oakland working with multiracial youth, many

who were 1.5 generation refugees.3 Some of us were staff at Harbor House, a Christian

non-profit organization, while others of us lived at Oak Park Apartments, a complex

made up of primarily Cambodian and Latino families.4 We found that the youth did not

feel comfortable in ethnic congregations because of language and generational

differences. Likewise, many of those of us who relocated to Oakland felt disaffected by

our ethnic home churches because of their more parochial concerns.5 New Hope was

established, then, to bring together multiethnic youth and college relocators who grew up

with more American urban values and tastes than traditional ethnic ones.6 Like the first

Covenant immigrants, New Hope thus supports the hybrid identities of its members, who

are both ethnic and American.

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 The non-creedalism of the Covenant works well with us, too, as we too emphasize

‘“spontaneity over against reason and law,” as well as an emphasis on conversion of the

heart rather than traditional forms of expression.”’7 Because of the relative young age of

our congregation members, we share the Gen X values for relational authenticity,

transcendent mystery, and egalitarian community. We are open to charismatic prayer, and

regularly schedule silent retreats for the entire congregation. Instead of traditional orders

of worship, we host “worship stations,” different sites in our building where members are

free to move about and confess sins, take communion, pray for the world, or meditate on

special subjects. Our church unity isn’t based on theological doctrines, but on our shared

life together. In fact, the great majority of the church lives within two blocks of it. Half

of the church eats together in a meal co-op, where we take turns cooking for one another.

Further, for those in the neighborhood whom we serve and evangelize, creedal

statements aren’t as salient as real experiences with the sacred. We utilize the New

International Reader’s Version of the Bible because so many of our friends cannot read

above a fourth grade level. In these ways, New Hope accommodates to the American

upbringing of the “new second generation” and to the class backgrounds of those whom

we serve.8 However, one aspect of American culture that we actively repudiate is its

increasing racial and economic segregation. Instead, our ministry within our low-income

community calls us to confront sin on both the personal and systemic level.

Racial Justice at New Hope

The Civil Rights movement and values of social justice affected the denomination

as its African American congregations sought autonomy and self-determination,

according to Peterson. This same concern for racial justice is central at New Hope, as

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many of us have been influenced by the teachings espoused by the Christian Community

Development Association and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.9 Since our congregation

is primarily pan-Asian, we know first-hand of America’s marginalization of people of

color and of the privileges held by whites. And given our neighborhood context, even the

whites of our church are very aware of America’s racial hierarchy. Our German

American pastor, Dan Schmitz, jokes that when his hair is short, neighbors assume he is a

police officer because whites are seldom seen here. When his hair appears longer and

shaggier, they try to sell him drugs. He, and the rest of the church, actively work to

develop local leadership that represents the diversity of our neighborhood. The

movements of the sixties have not fully “petered out,” but have evolved to embrace both

racial reconciliation and social justice at New Hope.10

This pursuit of justice is not our own isolated value within the denomination, as

we have found out. Organizing fellow tenants, we helped our neighbors to win almost $1

million in damages and to obtain new housing for 37 families in a landmark housing legal

settlement. Using some of these funds, our members put a down payment on the duplex

in front of Oak Park, which once was an abandoned crack house. This building has

become our church preschool, office, and prayer room.11 However, we could not have

purchased this building if it were not for major funding from Berkeley Covenant Church

and its Mustard Seed Preschool. Their generosity and commitment to a younger, poorer

church demonstrated to me the Covenant value of partnership and sharing.

My first personal experience with other Covenant leaders was at a Department of

Compassion, Mercy and Justice conference in 2002. Called the “Center for Community

Transformation,” it was the best training I’ve received in holistic, Christian community

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development and evangelism. Most of the 70 attendees in Encino, CA were African

American and Latino, and I was encouraged by the like-minded sisters and brothers who

had doing urban work much longer than I.12 Mealtime stories of communal life from

members of Jesus People USA were particularly rollicking. Impressed by this event, I

later agreed to help organize and teach at two subsequent “Institutes for Community

Transformation.” Both of these concrete examples—the generosity of our sister

congregation, Berkeley Covenant, and the denomination’s institutionalized support for

community transformation—demonstrate why we at New Hope have embraced the

Covenant.

New Hope’s Incorporation of Diversity

Peterson suggests that the Covenant now employs a language of multiculturalism

more than the language of justice. Recognizing the influx of new immigrants and

targeting a generation that values diversity, the denomination seeks “to increase diversity

through a variety of means, extending beyond the homogeneous unit principle and even

into the world of multi-ethnic and multi-racial congregations.”13 To promote true

diversity within our congregation, New Hope utilizes a discourse which Kathleen Garces-

Foley and I have coined, “racialized multiculturalism”

Our sense of multiculturalism acknowledges “a nuanced understanding of

ethnicity” that Peterson recommends. Every church, even a white one, is an “ethnic

ministry.” Unfortunately, the implicit assumption that “ethnic ministry” involves only

people of color establishes our congregations as the “cultural other.” It masks the

culturally taken-for-granted ways that European American churches operate and

privileges their style of Christianity as the universal norm. As Peterson notes, reclaiming

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the cultural heritage of our denomination helps us identify the cultural particularity of

every congregation, and better enables us to then share our different perspectives of the

Kingdom of God.

To celebrate one another’s culture, New Hope consciously incorporates various

aspects of our members’ heritages in its worship style and elements. Our communion

elements, for example, occasionally consist of Cambodian rice cakes and mango juice.

These foods that are more familiar to our members help us understand better how Jesus is

our daily bread/rice. The practice of using certain foods often represents a superficial

multiculturalism where we “only taste difference,” and does not go farther in

understanding the values and issues of other ethnic groups.14 Instead, New Hope’s

worship stations over time have become deeply meaningful rituals, both ethnically and

spiritually.

At the same time, New Hope leadership recognizes the racialized power

differences between individual members within our church, as well as social class

dynamics. Celebrating ethnicity appears to place each group on equal status, without

identifying and seeking to dismantle the racial privilege of certain ethnic groups. Beyond

diversifying leadership and staff, and conducting outreach activities to build local

leadership, we have sponsored a worship project entitled, “New Urban Voices.” Led by

our associate pastor Russell Yee, this effort brought together emerging Southeast Asian

Christian leaders, a group with little voice in mainstream evangelicalism. Producing

culturally appropriate, innovative worship that addresses this group’s experience of the

divine, these types of activities exemplify our commitment to hearing and lifting up the

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marginalized. Racialized multiculturalism values both racial and ethnic distinctions,

although they operate differently in the American context.

Conclusion

As Kurt Peterson writes, the discourses employed by the Evangelical Covenant

throughout its history provide insight on how it has related to issues of ethnicity and race.

Its accommodation to American culture, missionary zeal, concern for justice, and support

of diversity each shaped its ability to draw in and integrate new congregations of color.

Similarly, New Hope Covenant Church draws from these values to address issues of

ethnicity and race in its congregational practices.

We realize that ethnic culture is not static, but involves the continuous

construction of group values and practices. Rather than simply assimilating to the United

States, we aim to hybridize the best of our American and ethnic backgrounds that reflect

God’s kingdom. In the sharing of our heritages and perspectives, we offer all that we are

in order to know Jesus and his family better.

We also understand that God’s peace demands racial equality and equity. On a

daily basis, we see how social injustices play out in our local schools, government, and

streets. So we seek God and His righteousness in and for our neighborhood. One

example is our prayer for those in our country without documents. Our neighbors simply

want to work and support their families, which are not crimes. We long for the day when

families are reunited and all have meaningful work, as in Isaiah 65. These desires are

consonant with the values of the Covenant.

As the Covenant has put its values into practice, New Hope Covenant Church has

benefited greatly from the denominational support. More significantly, the relational

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practices of the broader Covenant--through church partnerships, conference meetings,

and role modeling--have welcomed us into the fold.

As the Covenant becomes larger and more diverse, the issue of its core identity

does become more complex. A related concern is its ability to maintain its relational

character that has sustained New Hope through its inception. Given the relational

blessings we have received from being part of the Covenant, we hope to continue to

transform the denomination to better reflect God’s welcoming and harmony.

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1
To be published in the Covenant Quarterly, a journal of the Evangelical Covenant denomination, 2008. Do not use or
reprint without permission of author
2
Census tract data from the 2000 United States census.
3
The 1.5 generation includes those who emigrate to the United States before their adolescence and primarily grow up here.
4
For our ministry at Oak Park Apartments, see Russell Jeung, “Multiethnic, Faith-based Tenant Organizing” in Pierrette
Hondagneu-Sotelo, ed., Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
To learn about Harbor House, see www.hhministries.org
5
See Rebecca Kim, God’s New Whiz Kids: Korean American Evangelicals on Campus, New York: New York University
Press, 2006; Elaine Howard Ecklund, Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
6
New Hope Covenant Church’s original mission statement reads, “We will focus initially on East Oakland young adults.
Our priority is to serve the indigenous population of inner-city Oakland.”
7
Kurt Peterson, “Transforming the Covenant: The Emergence of Ethnic Diversity in A Swedish-American Denomination” ,
p.
8
See Alejandro Portes, ed., The New Second Generation, New York: Sage Foundation, 1996.
9
New Hope’s mission statement includes educational and employment development to address the structural inequities in
our community.
10
Charles Marsh, Beloved Communities: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today, New
York: Basic Books, 2005.
11
New Hope Covenant Church meets a few blocks away in a storefront non-profit building for worship service on Sundays.
12
The composition of conference attendees initially gave me a warped perspective of who makes up the Covenant.
13
Peterson, K. ___
14
Frank Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond White and Black, New York: Basic Books, 2003