Consideration of the significance of religious institutions in the experience of immigrant
settlement is, at best, marginalized in immigration and church history literature. The limited
amount of research that has been carried out is limited in time frame and/or by its lack of
consideration of the wider social service functions of the church. It is rarely recognized that for
new immigrants, churches can function as critical access routes to the host society or as
protective cultural communities. Churches provide stability in unfamiliar territory through the
creation of a sense of community, a sense of place and an extended family of support. This
research seeks to understand how the church has served the German ethnic and immigrant
community; how the church has aided cultural preservation as well as immigrant integration; and
finally, how some churches have re-defined themselves in the face of member 'assimilation,'
generational changes and neighbourhood transition. For some churches, their mission has been
extended beyond their original German ethnic community to local neighbourhood residents,
predominantly of Asian origin. Unstructured interviews with over twenty-five church leaders
from ten German ethnic churches in Vancouver suggest that for many immigrants, the church
provided stability and acted as a centre of social networks through which, for example,
employment and housing were found. However, the position of the church in maintaining
culture is significantly more complex; often dependent upon various factors including church age
and the histories of immigrant congregations. This research demonstrates that churches have
significant but generally unrecognized impacts on the immigrant settlement experience and that
ethnic churches can, but do not necessarily, play supportive roles in maintaining culture.
Churches that have recognized the social changes impacting their congregations have found new
models of mission to integrate new immigrant communities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8003 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Beattie, Laura Jean |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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