Worship Music and Cultural Politics in the Chinese-American Church

A study is presented that examines the role worship music plays in both creating chasms and building bridges between generational and cultural groups within a specific Chinese-American Christian community - Arizona's Phoenix Chinese Evangelical Church. After language, the most apparent difference between the church's two services is the performance of worship music, with the English service primarily utilizing contemporary worship music and the Mandarin an older form of Chinese hymnody. Recognizing the complex and potentially disruptive atmosphere surrounding musical production, church leadership has developed very particular musical mechanisms through which they mediate possible cultural or political contentions among the congregation.