Internalized Oppression in Chinese Australian Christians and Its Mission Impact

Abstract

This paper argues that Chinese Australian Christians have unaddressed wounds of internalized racism and a colonized and colonizing mentality that adversely impacts their evangelistic witness and mission work by elevating Anglo-centric Christianity and subordinating their own ethno-racial status. Drawing on theoretical analyses, the sources of internalized racism and colonial mentality in Chinese Australians are first outlined within their ancestral countries of Hong Kong and Malaysia, and then their host country of Australia. Second, the essay explains how Anglo-centric Christianity impacts Chinese Australian Christians in the academy and then in missions, perpetuating prejudice towards one’s own ethnic group, complicity in racialized systems, as well as elevating Anglo-centric Christian thought as biblically normative. Third, the paper shows how the rise of Asian Christianity could further privilege Anglo-centric theologies at the expense of indigenous and/or Asian theologies. Consequently, internalized racism and a colonial mentality negatively affect the mission endeavours of Chinese Australians, particularly to new Chinese migrants and other people of colour. Finally, proposed ways to combat internalized oppression will be offered so that Chinese Australian Christians and other diasporic Christians living in the West do not perpetuate systems of racial injustice in the name of Christ locally or overseas through mission.