I recently went to a Korean wedding and noticed that Korean-Australian churches seem to be really different to Chinese-Australian churches. At this Western style wedding there was a lot of young people and people around my age. They conducted the entire wedding in Korean and there were a number of interesting Korean elements to the ceremony (e.g. nuptial song, the groom also walks in to music, father’s give speech at end of service…)
If you go to a Chinese-Australian church’s English service, chances are it would feel pretty Western, the only difference maybe being some ‘singspiration’ and asian faces but that’s about it. And if you go to a Chinese Australian wedding it will probably be pretty much just Western style.
I could be wrong (I haven’t been to many Korean churches) but from the Koreans I’ve come across anyway the way they do church seems more un-Western and distinctly Korean when compared with Chinese.
Not only so, but chances are if you meet a Korean Australian, they can speak Korean pretty well, and they speak Korean to each other. However if you meet a Chinese Australian, they might not be able to speak Chinese! well not fluently anyway, preffering to speak English to each other.
(To clarify, sorry only speaking for cantonese speakers here…)
I wonder why that is?
Perhaps the introduction and growth of Christianity in Korean was more indigenous (as wikipedia seems to suggest) while for Hong Kong (at least) perhaps still had a lot of British leaders? I dunno
Or could it be that the Chinese-English congregations in Australia have been around longer and the Chinese Australian christians have had more teaching from Westerners (e.g. uni christian fellowships). I don’t know but at my uni anyways the Korean Christians had their own Korean Christian group.
Hmm really not well thought out…what do other people think?
Grace Lung 