Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch: Indian American Christianity in Motion by Prema A. Kurien (review)

A lively body of research on immigrant churches has examined how religious institutions foster immigrant settlement and promote the preservation of ethnic identity by offering coethnic communities information-sharing and networking opportunities. In particular, studies on second-generation East Asian Americans find that second-generation adults attend separate services within immigrant churches, distancing themselves from the ethnic practices of immigrant churches. However, little attention has been paid to other Christian groups that show different migratory trajectories within specific historical and cultural traditions. By focusing on the multigenerational features of Indian American Christians, Prema Kurien’s case study makes a unique contribution to this line of literature.

What characteristics distinguish Mar Thoma Church (MTC) in Kerala, India, and Mar Thoma Parishes (MTP) in the United States from other ethnic immigrant churches? How do first- and second-generation members develop religious and ethnic identity differently, and navigate the various divisions surrounding the generational divide? To tackle these complex questions, Kurien draws on multisited field observations from the United States and India, having conducted more than 140 interviews with first- and second-generation lay members, some achens, and their wives. Drawing on multiple qualitative data, Kurien provides a comprehensive portrayal of multigenerational congregations, including tensions and dilemmas in class, occupation, gender, and generation, and of the continuing transnational relationships between churches in India and the United States.

The book is devoted to offering a comprehensive account of micro-, meso-, and macro-level explanations. Kurien considers various levels of actor, including individual migrant nurses and their family dynamics, theologically progressive church leaders, and transnational networks of achens across nations. Chapter 1 presents the rich history of the Mar Thoma (MT) denomination and the unique backgrounds of Syrian Christians within Indian nationalism. Chapter 2 offers a detailed discussion of the migration of MT members to the United States and their settlement, employment, struggles, and coping strategies, showing that the church functions as “a translator” of American society. A rich description follows, showing how two groups, highly educated cosmopolitan professionals and less affluent nurses, immigrated to the United States along diverging pathways. A fascinating finding is that working-class couples with more traditional gender ideologies turn out to be more egalitarian than couples in professional positions. For example, while nurses and their husbands still uphold the traditional gendered division of labor, the husbands participate more in household work than before. In addition to this, Kurien shows the complex tensions among people within the church, such that husbands of nurses attempt to maintain social status in response to downward mobility, while professional men tend to exhibit more powerful leadership, resulting in conflicts within the church.

Chapter 3 analyzes the intergenerational divisions resulting from the divergent models of religion that the two generations espouse. The first generation compromises religiosity to maintain ethnic tradition, with the aim that their children grow up with Indian identities (e.g., language and tradition), whereas the second generation separates religious identity from ethnic identity, cherishing religiosity as foremost a personal quest. This different meaning making with Christianity results in intergenerational tensions in the context of multigenerational worship services, which both generations attend together. The second generation calls for the abandoning of ethnic languages, idealizing the concept of “de-ethnicized” relations and multiculturalism. However, the first generation values a model of preserving Indian tradition, languages, and rituals. Kurien analyzes how the intergenerational rifts are associated with their different interpretations of religiosity in the context of different upbringings and life experiences.

Chapter 4 focuses on how three groups within the MTC perform gender and normative Christian identities in different ways, leading to other types of tension between the groups. First, female-led migration, such as in nurse families, has resulted in the downward mobility of husbands and their nontraditional gender roles at home. Religious institutions have become an important space for the husbands to recover their wounded masculinity. Yet men and women...