Why are missionaries in America? A case study of a Korean mission movement in the United States

Abstract

Why are missionaries coming to the United States? Why is the country that is a top missionary-sending nation also a top missionary destination? Based on an in-depth case study of one of the largest missionary-sending agencies in South Korea that sends many of its missionaries to the United States, this article explores five reasons for the phenomena of missionaries in America. These factors include the perennial importance of the Great Commission among impassioned majority-world evangelicals as well as their framing of the United States as a “great nation,” the “modern Rome,” and a dominant “Christian nation in crisis” in the late 20th century.

Keywords

Reverse missions Korean missionaries American missionaries global Christianity world Christianity

Introduction

Many Americans identify as Christians, and the United States consistently sends out the greatest number of missionaries. It is surprising, then, that the United States is also a top missionary destination. In 2010, it was estimated that the United States received more Christian missionaries than any other country (Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 2013: 76; Johnson and Ross, 2009). Part of this puzzling reality is that many countries that the United States sent missionaries to in the past are now sending their own missionaries back to the States (Hanciles, 2008; Kim R, 2015; Wuthnow, 2009). Korea is an important example of this phenomenon. American Protestant missionaries first entered Korea in 1885 at a time when Christianity was banned and persecuted within the nation. Less than a century later, South Korea has become one of the largest senders of missionaries around the world, and among the destinations for these missionaries, the United States is consistently ranked in the top 10 (Kim R, 2015; Korea Research Institute for Mission (KRIM), 2004, 2006).

This development is part of an emerging movement of Christians from the Global South going to Europe and North America as missionaries. Churches and Christians from the Global South, namely Latin America, Africa, and Asia, which were at the receiving end of Protestant and Catholic missions from the late 15th century to the late 20th century, are now eagerly sending missionaries to Europe, the United States, and Canada (Adogame and Shankar, 2013; Catto, 2008; Jenkins, 2011; Kim R, 2015; Olofinjana, 2010; Währisch-Oblau, 2009). Europe now receives more missionaries than Africa, and there are thousands of missionaries operating in the United States. In 2010, the United States received approximately 32,400 Christian missionaries, which is more than any other country (among countries with more than 100,000 in their population) (Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 2013: 76; Johnson and Ross, 2009).

Responding to these growing mission movements to the West, this article addresses the fundamental but often unanswered question of why missionaries are being sent to America. Through a case study of the largest non-denominational mission agency in South Korea, University Bible Fellowship (UBF), that sends many of its missionaries to the United States, this article examines why Korean missionaries have been drawn to the United States to proselytize Americans. UBF is an international campus ministry that originated in South Korea, which focuses on sending self-supporting missionaries out to college campuses across the world.¹ UBF may be a bit distinct from other Korean mission organizations in its particularly intense focus on evangelism on college campuses, but they are fundamentally like other conservative Korean evangelical missionary organizations that emphasize evangelism, disciple-making, and church planting as part of their primary mission work (Kim R, 2015; Moon, 2003, 2008).²

The data for this article are based primarily on interviews, participant observations, and content analysis, which were conducted between 2008 and 2012.³ They include face-to-face interviews with UBF missionaries and leaders, participant observations of UBF chapters, and content analysis of UBF published materials. To understand how UBF may compare with other Korean churches and mission organizations, informal participant observations and interviews were also conducted at several mission-oriented Korean churches in the Los Angeles area as well as at international mission gatherings organized by Korean mission societies besides UBF.

Based on these data, this article investigates the phenomenon of Korean missionaries who have been engaged in cross-cultural evangelicalism (proselytizing outside of the Korean diaspora) in the United States since the 1970s. After briefly describing the types of Korean missionaries in America along with the research methods for this study, I provide five major reasons for why missionaries are in the United States to evangelize Americans. The results of this article can be used to aid our understanding of why other enthusiastic evangelical Christians from outside of the West may venture to western nations as missionaries.

Korean missionaries in America

Korean missionaries in America can be categorized into two broad groups: those who come primarily as immigrants and engage in mission work and those who come specifically as missionaries and do the same. Included in the first group are Korean Americans in Korean immigrant churches as well as those who are in the growing number of second-generation Korean American churches, which are cross-cultural in their evangelism efforts and church planting in the United States (Kim S, 2010; Kim and Kim, 2012a, 2012b; Min, 2010; Min and Kim, 2005).

Among the 4000 or so Korean churches in America, there are Korean evangelicals that believe they should not simply enjoy their lives in America and socialize with other Koreans in ethnic religious enclaves. Instead, they believe that their role is to be the “salt and light” of America through their faith and devotion, and that they should evangelize locally as well as internationally. For example, the late Reverend Kye-Yong Kim, the first senior pastor of Young Nak Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles (one of the oldest and largest Korean mega-churches in the United States), prayed on behalf of the Korean immigrant church: “. . . we are selected as Your Chosen people and [we] came to America and received precious missions to send our missionaries and deliver the gospel to the world by building churches and getting trained here, in America” (Kim, 1989, cited in Lee, 2007: 110). His view was that Korean immigrants should plant churches, spread the gospel, and send out missionaries to the world from the United States. As such, Korean immigrant churches tend to prioritize sending out missionaries and funding mission efforts. In a survey conducted by the Korean American Coalition and Korean Churches for Community Development in 2003, Korean Churches in southern California combined supported missionaries in 85 different countries. Of the 149 churches surveyed, the average number of missionaries that the churches sent out was 7.37 and spending on “missionary support” ranked third after salaries/compensation and building facility maintenance.⁴

Korean immigrant churches also take part in “outreach” activities and seek to draw their ethnically diverse neighbors into their churches. For example, one of the large Pentecostal Korean churches in Los Angeles (the city with the largest Korean population in the United States) has a separate Spanish service, conducts outreaches to the local Spanish-speaking community, and has a Spanish-speaking pastor in their leadership. Another large Korean congregation in southern California, Grace Korean Church provides Spanish, English, Chinese, and Japanese translations for their worship services, seeking to invite their non-Korean neighbors to church. All the while, famous Korean pastors in Los Angeles broadcast that the future of the Korean immigrant church is a multicultural church, and encourage their Korean parishioners to bring their ethnically diverse neighbors and coworkers to church.

The second-generation Korean American church is also drawing in broader audiences with all of the services held in English and with pastors trained in American seminaries and raised in the United States. In her study of second-generation Korean American churches in Los Angeles, Sharon Kim found that over 30% of the members are non-Korean Americans. While the majority of these non-Korean Americans are other Asian Americans (about 25%), 10% are non-Asians (Kim S, 2010). These Korean American churches also have a variety of service and mission projects that extend beyond the Korean community (Kim and Kim, 2012a, 2012b). In addition, there are growing numbers of Korean American pastors who have been sent out from these second-generation churches who purposefully plant multiracial churches that reflect the increasingly racially diverse American demographic. For example, Pastor Kevin Haah, who used to be part of a large Korean American church, planted the multiracial New City Church of Los Angeles in 2008, which has significant numbers of Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, as well as Asians. Located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, New City Church is a prime example of a multiracial church that reflects its diverse neighborhood.

Besides the Korean immigrant churches and the growing numbers of second-generation Korean American churches that are engaged in evangelism and missions, there are Korean evangelicals from South Korea who come to the United States for the sole purpose of missionary work. These Korean immigrants fall under the classic definition of missionaries as individuals who are sent specifically from one place to another in order to convert or proselytize the population. As missionaries, some work with the existing Korean diaspora. For example, Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC) sends missionaries to the United States in order to serve Korean students who are studying overseas. In addition, others work as professional clergy outside of the Korean community like the growing numbers of Korean pastors who are working in various American Protestant churches and associations that extend beyond the Korean diaspora (Kim G, 2015).⁵ Korean missionaries also work with minority populations in the United States, such as various Native American communities.

In this mix of missionaries who are sent by a church or a mission agency in South Korea as missionaries to the United States are missionaries from UBF whose goal in the United States is to convert Americans outside of the Korean diaspora. Korea UBF sends missionaries to the United States for the purpose of “campus mission”: preaching the gospel and raising disciples among young Americans on the college and university campuses across America. Although UBF missionaries focus on campus evangelism, these missionaries are examples of some of the fervent evangelicals from outside of the West moving to western nations like the United States to engage in cross-cultural evangelism and bring spiritual renewal.

Methods

This article is based on an in-depth study of the largest non-denominational missionary-sending organization in South Korea, UBF, which also sends many of its missionaries to the United States (Kim E, 2015; Moon, 2003; Park, 2002, 2012).⁶ KRIM’s surveys from 2000 as well as 2006 place UBF as the second largest missionary-sending organization in South Korea in terms of numbers of missionaries sent. Approximately 10% of Korean missionaries are from UBF, and the top destination country for UBF Korean missionaries is the United States.⁷ According to UBF’s 2008 statistics, UBF’s 1414 missionaries were serving in 88 nations and 595 (42%) of its missionaries were serving in the United States.

The primary data for the article consist of 108 personal interviews of UBF Korean missionaries, leaders, and members. Most of the interviews were conducted with Korean missionaries, but several interviews were also conducted with the non-Korean leaders of the organization, including the American co-founder of UBF, Sarah Barry. Participant observations were also conducted for over four years at several of the largest UBF chapters in the United States and in South Korea, where I gathered UBF documents such as mission reports, missionaries’ testimonies, and other UBF publications. I also attended several UBF international conferences and conducted participant observations in UBF chapters in parts of Europe and Latin America.⁸ Besides UBF gatherings, I took part in other international Korean missionary gatherings through the Global Inter-Missions Network. I also conducted participant observations at various missions-oriented Korean churches in the Los Angeles area.

UBF is an international evangelical campus ministry from South Korea that focuses on world campus mission. It was founded in Korea in 1961 amidst the national unrest, devastation, and disillusionment that came about following the Korean War and they sent out their first missionaries in the 1970s. Much like the beginnings of Korean Protestantism itself, UBF began with the meeting of a Korean Christian and an American missionary: Samuel (Chang Woo) Lee (1931–2002) and Sarah Barry (1930–present). After the Korean War, Lee graduated from a Presbyterian seminary and was ministering to college students when he met Sarah Barry. Born in the American South, Barry entered war-torn Korea in 1955 as a young white-American missionary sent by the American Presbyterian missionary society of the Southern Presbyterian Church. The two evangelists (who were never romantically linked) joined forces to share the gospel with Korean college students crushed by economic hardship, socio-political turmoil, and national heartache following the Korean War.

With chapters on every major college and university campus in South Korea, UBF focuses on sending out self-supporting missionaries to college campuses across the world. UBF has been sending missionaries to the West since the late 1960s, focusing on cross-cultural discipleship (evangelizing non-Koreans) and church planting. There are close to 600 Korean missionaries in 86 UBF chapters in the United States. With approximately 100 “native,” mostly white Americans who are active leaders in the ministry, U.S. UBF has evidently had some success in evangelizing outside of the Korean diaspora in the United States.

Why are Korean missionaries in America?

The United States has long been seen as a country that sends missionaries, not one that receives them. As one of the white-American UBF staff explained in the following quote, Americans are troubled that missionaries are in America: “The first problem [for Americans] is why are missionaries coming to America and the second problem is why are Korean missionaries here?” Even today, with increasing numbers of religious “nones” (those without a religious affiliation) and “dones” (those who are “done” with religion), the majority of Americans identity as Christian, and the United States still sends out the greatest number of missionaries in the world. Therefore, the presumption is that America does not need missionaries. Moreover, why does a country like Korea send missionaries to the United States? Why is South Korea, which has a lower proportion of Christians and has been the receiving country of many US missionaries, sending missionaries to America? Although currently, a lower proportion of Americans identify as Christian than in years past, roughly 70% of Americans continue to identify with some kind of Christian faith,⁹ and the United States “remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world.”¹⁰ Meanwhile, nearly half of the population in South Korea has no religious affiliation and Christians make up only about 30% of the population.¹¹

In the following section, I offer five reasons for why missionaries are being sent to America based on my research on UBF Korean missionaries and their work in the United States. These factors include, the perennial importance of the Great Commission among impassioned majority-world evangelicals as well as their framing of the United States as a “great nation,” the “modern Rome,” and a dominant “Christian nation in crisis” in the late 20th century.

Factors that draw Korean missionaries to America

Obeying the Great Commission: “Go and make disciples of all nations…”

Ever since the founding of UBF in Korea, UBF evangelicals have been enthusiastic about obeying the Great Commission and making disciples of all nations. The early members of UBF envisioned themselves at the vanguards of an emerging Korean missions movement. They were more serious and passionate about world mission than the other already evangelical and mission-minded Protestants in Korea. They promptly wrote down a list of all of the nations in the world and boldly prayed to send self-supporting missionaries to each and every one of the countries (Schafer et al., 2009). Immigrating to another country, however, was not an easy matter for South Koreans in the 1960s and 1970s. Korean evangelicals in UBF were thus “willing to go to any nation that would accept them” (Schafer et al., 2009: 124–125). At that point in time, doors to the United States were open for immigration.

The first UBF missionaries to the United States in the 1970s entered the country with visas made available through skilled-labor shortages in America and the loosening of immigration restrictions. UBF missionaries who were enthusiastic about going out to any nation to preach the gospel entered the United States much like the majority of Korean immigrants who entered the country in significant numbers following the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. Enacted in 1968, the immigration act abolished the racially biased national origins quota system, aimed to unify families, and draw skilled laborers into the United States.

Following Apostle Paul in the modern Rome

Missionaries did not come to America, however, simply because it was a nation that happened to open its doors for immigrants at that time. The United States was a particularly desirable missionary destination because the country was viewed as the “modern Rome”—the most powerful nation in the world. The United States was the superpower and therefore a logical base for launching a world mission movement.

An article on UBF’s mission work in America explains that the Korean missionaries “were especially eager to go to the U.S. because of America’s dominant role on the world stage” (Schafer et al., 2009: 124). Just as Apostle Paul hoped to preach the gospel in Rome (Acts 19:21, Romans 1:15), UBF missionaries wanted to raise disciples in “modern Rome” and send out missionaries across the world from the United States.

Both Samuel Lee and Sarah Barry, the founders of UBF, moved to the United States in the late 1970s and established UBF’s headquarters in Chicago. The organization’s “official” world headquarters is in the United States. Moving to the United States and raising disciples in America would enable UBF to make significant strides in preaching the gospel and sending out missionaries across the globe. Back in the 1970s, when UBF first started sending missionaries to the United States, Korea was a developing nation, and Korean citizenship provided limited entrée into the countries of the world. An American citizenship opened far more doors and came with greater cultural, social, and political power and prestige. It was thus reasoned that UBF would be able to successfully send out missionaries to the rest of the world once it was headquartered in the United States. Korean missionaries could become US citizens and go out to other nations. They could also “raise” disciples among American college students who would also be able to move throughout the world as missionaries.

Korean missionaries in UBF are not alone in their belief that the United States is a strategic launching station for missions. Other Korean evangelists believe that the United States, the “modern Rome,” is a critical base for world evangelism. In the 2008 Korean World Mission Conference in Wheaton, Illinois, Reverend Henry Koh, the coordinator for Korean missionaries in the Presbyterian Church in America, delivered a call to missions titled, “The 21st Century World Mission through Mission to America.” According to Reverend Koh, the United States is a prime mission field because the country, as the “modern Rome” is: “the center of politics, military, economy, science, industry and commerce, scholarship and culture of the world in the 21st century” (Koh, 2008: 2–3). All roads lead to the United States and everyone, including non-believers from countries inaccessible to missionaries, can be found in there. Thus, one can evangelize the world within the United States and send missionaries from various ethnic backgrounds back out to the world as missionaries from the United States to their own nations of origin and beyond.

The “great nation”

When asked why UBF missionaries are in America, the director of one of the UBF chapters quickly said it was because of “Jesus’ command to preach the gospel and make disciples of all nations.” When asked again why many of the UBF missionaries were in the United States in particular, he explained further:

If you are looking for an answer other than spiritual reasons . . . There are various reasons like children’s education, the desire to see the world’s best country, the wealthiest country . . . Almost everyone wants to come to America.

Many people are drawn to come to America, the “great nation,” including missionaries.

South Korea’s political, economic, military, and religious linkages to the United States have also made the United States a popular destination for Korean emigrants, including the missionaries in my study. Missionaries from UBF were part of a ministry that was cofounded by an American missionary (Sarah Barry) with connections to the United States, the country known to South Koreans as the great nation of modernity, mobility, and opportunity, “the land flowing with milk and honey” (Abelmann and Lie, 1995; Kim R, 2015). College-educated Koreans in their twenties and thirties who left for the United States as lay missionaries in the 1970s and 1980s sought the same educational and economic opportunities that other Korean immigrants were seeking in the “great nation.” Many entered graduate schools in America and became professionals in the fields of medicine, science, and business as they simultaneously pursued their missionary work.¹²

Like many other missionaries from the Global South, UBF missionaries are tentmaking missionaries. They must financially support themselves as they pursue their missionary work. As one of the UBF directors has put it plainly, “If the missionaries can’t support themselves, they have to go back to Korea.” Therefore, UBF missionaries must go to countries where they can not only evangelize and do ministry, but also support themselves financially and provide for their families. This reality makes the United States an attractive missionary destination owing to the opportunities available to them there. The United States is a top destination for Korean emigrants; it is also a primary destination for self-supporting Korean missionaries. The factors that draw Korean immigrants in general to the United States have also drawn UBF Korean missionaries to America, the “great nation.”

Revitalizing the “Christian” nation

Like other evangelists from the Global South in the United States, Korean missionaries in UBF describe America as a “Christian” nation in trouble. The United States, the nation that has been viewed as the exceptional Christian nation in the West, has lost its spiritual fire owing to growing materialism, consumerism, humanism, and sexual immorality. It is no longer a “city on a hill,” or a “beacon of light,” and it may even become like the now secular and “dark continent” of Europe. The following is a typical prayer for America in UBF worship services:

Lord Heavenly Father . . . America was once a city on a hill . . . a light to the world, a missionary-sending nation, but America has turned far away from you, seeking after money, pleasure, and power . . . give us mission vision to send out Bible teachers to all U.S. college and university campuses . . . may you change America once again to be a city on a hill, a missionary-sending nation!

Its Christians and churches are great in number, but they are lacking in spiritual fervor and mission zeal. A UBF leader shared: “American Christian churches don’t talk much about world mission; generally, you can go to hundreds of churches [in the United States] and not hear about world mission.” He added that while there are many Americans who say that they are Christian, “very few” are practicing evangelists who are serious about world mission.

Korean missionaries in UBF would therefore readily agree with other nonwestern missionaries in the United States, like the African evangelists described in Jehu J. Hanciles’ book Beyond Christendom:

America is now a mission field because it does not have the fire that she once had and continues to go downhill . . . American Christianity is too comfortable . . . The church is supposed to be an example to the world, but the church in America cannot be distinguished from the world . . .The U.S. is a great mission field because God is not a priority here. (2008: 347)

Especially pertinent for a campus ministry like UBF, the drop in Christian affiliation, happening among Americans of all ages, is particularly acute among young adults.¹³ Compared with a fifth of the broader U.S. population, a third of young adults (those under 30) are estimated to be part of the “nones,” those who are religiously unaffiliated.¹⁴ Moreover, while the United States has the greatest number of Christians in the world, it is also the country with the third largest religiously unaffiliated population in the world.¹⁵ Missionaries are therefore needed in America. The United States is objectively a mission field.

UBF missionaries are therefore in the United States to spiritually revitalize America. The missionaries in UBF plan to accomplish this task through personal evangelism—diligently evangelizing and raising disciples on the college and university campuses of America, where the “nones” are plentiful and where they believe the battle against materialism, hedonism, humanism, and secularism is particularly fierce.

Once the UBF missionaries began meeting students on the university and college campuses of America, it quickly became apparent that missionaries really were needed in the United States. The American college students the Korean missionaries encountered lacked faith. Even those who had grown up attending church were unsure of their faith. They did not believe in the absolute authority of the Bible and were not certain about what they believed. A longtime UBF member described the culture of relativism in America and its churches: “The Bible was reinterpreted again and again, and in the end there was no truth, no absolutes. It was ‘Everyone find your own way,’ ‘I’m okay, you’re okay.’” Along these lines, the missionaries found that young adult Americans did not read the Bible, let alone study it. American students commonly told the Korean missionaries: “I grew up in the church, but I never really studied the Bible.” Young Americans were not devoted to Bible studies, and they were certainly not interested in being impassioned evangelists. Instead, they seemed lost in a culture of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” where premarital sex and no-fault divorce were the norm and where “conservative family values” seemed like a distant memory. Korean missionaries therefore believed that they had every reason for being in the predominately “Christian” nation.

“More than conquerors”: From rice Christians to history makers

From the beginnings of UBF’s mission movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Korean UBF missionaries’ efforts to evangelize and revitalize America was also part of a mid-20th-century Korean evangelical drive for personal and national uplift in an effort to transition from “rice Christians” to “history makers.” By sending missionaries out to the world, Koreans believed they would be able to transition from being poor “rice Christians” who relied on the material, financial, and political provisions of other nations to being “history makers” on the world’s stage. By sending missionaries to the United States, the modern “history maker” and the nation that sent many of its provisions, troops, and missionaries to Korea, Korean evangelicals in UBF could also be history makers.

The UBF’s founders, in sending out lay missionaries throughout the world, were driven by a sense that Korea had to shift from a dependent aid-receiving country to an independent giving nation. A Korean missionary in UBF described the early decades in South Korea following the Korean War:

All Korean church members were full of [the] receiving spirit. They received the gospel, missionaries, all kinds of aid, love, comfort. [We were] full of beggar’s mentality. [We were] rice Christians, our hands shrank towards us like that of a leper who knew only how to receive, not how to give.

In the mid-20th century, South Koreans were accustomed to receiving aid from other nations, especially the United States. The Korean government could set its annual budget only after the U.S. Congress approved the amount of aid to Korea. Some of the first words American soldiers heard when they arrived in Korea from the Koreans were: “Hello, give me chocolate and give me gum.” The UBF emerged at this point in history. The Korean founder, rallying young Korean college students at some of the top universities in Korea, told them to overcome their dependent “rice-Christian spirit” (particularly in relation to the United States) by becoming self-supporting missionaries and going out to the world as God’s new spiritual generals and history makers.

Inherent in their push to advance from “rice Christians” to history makers, the leaders of UBF believed that God would bless Korea when it became a missionary-sending nation. They believed that God had blessed the United States because it was a great “Christian” nation that sent so many missionaries out to the world, including Korea. Similarly, God would bless Korea once it became a missionary-sending Christian nation.

They also believed that God would bless individuals for following the Great Commission. Many UBF missionaries’ personal biographies recount the fatalism, sense of meaninglessness, and lack of direction they experienced before their religious conversions. After their conversion, they found new hope and meaning. They were empowered and inspired to be “more than conquerors,” to become great through the power of the gospel. Genesis 12:1 and 2 were commonly cited in the missionaries’ testimonies on their decision to go out as missionaries:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”

The promise of national uplift and personal blessings to be “fathers and mothers” of many nations propelled Korean missionaries onto the world stage.

By going out to the world as missionaries, mid-20th-century Koreans believed they could become history makers—they could be transformed from a people who had had much of their history shaped by stronger foreign powers to a people who could spiritually conquer the world and chart their own destiny. By evangelizing Americans in the United States, the dominant history-making nation of the twentieth-century, they could most certainly become history makers. Even after South Korea became a developed country, Korean missionaries continue to send many missionaries across the world, including to western nations like the United States, which seems to suggest to Koreans that they have arrived—that they are engaging in a history-making enterprise on the global stage.

Conclusion

One of the pioneer Korean missionaries in UBF recounted the response of one of the first Americans that she met when she introduced herself as a missionary to the United States in the late 1970s: “A missionary…to America? I never heard of such a thing.” Even with various surveys and publications noting that the United States is becoming a “post-Christian” nation in need of missionaries, Americans may still be perplexed by the presence of missionaries in America.¹⁶ In this article, I discussed some of the major factors that have drawn a certain group of Korean missionaries to America. For the mid-20th-century Korean evangelicals in my study who were enthusiastic about world mission, the United States was the “modern Rome,” the “great nation” and the “Christian nation in crisis.” Preaching the gospel and raising disciples in such a country would not only help Korean evangelicals to fulfill the Great Commission, but also help them to advance as true history makers and spiritual conquerors, in God’s redemptive history.

In the current era of “everywhere to everywhere” missions, other impassioned missionaries from outside of the West may be driven by a similar mix of spiritual and secular impulses to be missionaries to western nations like the United States.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received primary grant support from the Lilly Endowment and the Louisville Institute.

Notes

Author biography

Rebecca Y. Kim is the Frank R. Seaver Chair of Social Science. She is Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Ethnic Studies program at Pepperdine University. She specializes in immigration, race, and religion and has published widely on such topics, particularly related to Asian Americans and Korean Christianity. She is the author of God’s New Whiz Kids? Korean American Evangelicals on Campus (New York University Press, 2006) and The Spirit Moves West: Korean Missionaries in America (Oxford University Press, 2015).

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