Language Ideology, Christianity, and Identity: Critical Empirical Examinations of Christian Institutions as Alternative Spaces

ABSTRACT

The teaching and learning of languages has been mainly investigated within educational institutions, especially by applied linguists. However, religious spaces such as churches and church related programs have historically and contemporarily served as important alternative spaces for such teaching and learning to take place. At the same time, such institutions and the way that language teaching and learning unfold in these spaces necessitates both a critical and empirical examination which makes salient the role and consequences of power. The focus of this special issue is to provide examples of studies which seek to fill this gap. This introduction serves as a way to set up this special issue and the articles within it by making salient the themes of language socialization, language ideology, identity, Christianity, ethnography and systems of power, as well as showing how the four studies in this special issue speak to the aforementioned gap and these themes.

KEYWORDS:

• Christianity
• ethnography
• identity
• language ideology
• language socialization

Introduction

This article provides a brief introduction to this special issue. It outlines some historical and theoretical background relating to language ideology, language socialization, Christianity, identity and ethnographic research methods as a way of illuminating these themes. This introduction thus serves as context for the other contributions to this special issue on critical empirical work on Christian institutions as alternative spaces for the teaching and learning of languages.

In this special issue, we highlight critical examinations of church and church-based/sponsored language and literacy classes, programs and schools as important alternative spaces of language learning and teaching in contemporary times, with a special focus on the intersections of language ideology and identity that are underpinned by Christianity in various ways and to different extents. We view language learning and teaching from a language socialization lens and with an explicitly critical bend, meaning it goes far beyond formal language instruction in classrooms; instead, it entails socialization to use language and socialization through language in all spheres of social life (Ochs, 1986) and have effects on social life, which inherently are identity and ideology formation processes. We recognize that language classrooms and the larger societies in which they are situated alike are imbued with dominant as well as competing discourses and ideologies, which rings true for churches and church-based classes, programs and schools. Critical analyses of language use and learning in these Christian institutions foreground important implications that will resonate with all language education research and practice: The languages that we teach are always embedded and invested in a number of complex worldviews and ideologies and serve various sociopolitical economic as well as identity and ideological functions, which are often left implicit or ignored in research on mainstream educational institutions. This volume intends to bring forth some of these often hidden dimensions that become apparent only by looking at alternative spaces for language teaching and learning. This approach is especially important considering that the history of Christianity has long been entangled in and complicit with global forces such as colonialism, capitalism and globalization, as well as being at the center of social justice movements for civil rights, economic equality, anti-colonialism, and the end of Apartheid. Researching language teaching and learning in Christian institutions, therefore, allows second language acquisition (SLA) researchers to tap into this history and better explore the implications of power in the classroom.

We include here ethnographic case studies of individuals of minority and majority backgrounds using, learning, and/or teaching multiple languages in minority and majority Christian institutions in a variety of national contexts. Our ultimate goal is to encourage, indeed urge, more linguists and educationists, particularly applied linguists, whether affiliated with a particular religion or not, to study various religions and religious institutions with a critical lens. Religions not only have different doctrines, theologies, rituals, and practices, but also compete for membership. Each religion is situated in dialogue with other religions, for instance, as Aydin’s (2017) most recent work uncovers, the idea of the Muslim world was inflected by the theories of White supremacy and emerged in the late 19^th century as the antithesis of Western Christian civilization; to refute claims of Muslim’s racial and civilizational inferiority, Muslim intellectuals also played a part in essentializing and homogenizing Muslim societies. Hence, studying one religion with some depth is likely to help shed light on the understanding of other religions (Freston, 2001), even if only indirectly. For this special issue, we have chosen to focus on Christianity, and particularly, Protestantism (though not exclusively), due to its special relationship to language teaching and learning, its symbiotic relationship to colonialism, as well as its continued dominance or growing influence in many parts of the world today and its continued global impact in the foreseeable future, which will be elaborated later.

Because language is always embedded in systems of power (Bourdieu, 1991), critical here means foregrounding the analysis of power differentials in the specific churches and church-based classes, programs and schools as well as in the larger societies that we study, which are imbued with dominant as well as competing discourses and ideologies. Accordingly, we use minority and majority to refer to these power relations: Numerical majority/minority often, but not always, overlap with power majority/minority. In the context of this Special Issue, we see churches, along with church-based/sponsored language and literacy classes, programs and schools as religious or Christian institutions, in contrast to educational institutions (Han, 2011a), which mainly refer to public or mainstream secular schools in the core countries in contemporary time. Much research on language teaching and learning and bi-/multilingual development has focused on language classes in these educational institutions. In this sense, we see religious institutions as alternative spaces for language teaching and learning, and for related research; in addition to complementing mainstream educational institutions, sometimes they turn out to be more effective and productive in supporting marginalized individuals and groups (e.g., Han, 2007a, 2009, 2011a, 2013, 2014a; Kristjánsson, 2003, 2018). We use Christianity as an umbrella term even though we are aware of the historical and contemporary tensions, at times hostile conflicts and even wars, among different doctrines of Christianity (e.g., Orthodox, Catholicism, and Protestantism, which includes evangelicalism). We see Christianity as constituting religious faith, practices, as well as social and political institutions organized around their faith and worldview where religious doctrines and ideologies are embedded in texts and discourses, in practices such as rituals, routines, events, interpersonal interactions, and in institutional structures.

Theoretical and methodological approaches

Several theoretical and methodological approaches characterize our treatment of the topic in this special issue. First of all, we emphasize explicitly critical approaches that recognize and analyze the following dimensions: (a) power differentials between individuals occupying various positions in specific institutions, (e.g., as newcomers or oldtimers, language learners or formal or informal teachers, who are of power minority and majority backgrounds in terms of race, class, religion, gender, language, nationality, citizenship and immigration status, sexuality, [dis]ability, and so on); (b) languages of differential status, such as dialects and “slangs” versus the prestigious language varieties, minority languages versus dominant languages, national languages versus the current global language, and so on; (c) religions and religious institutions of numerical and power minority or majority status within particular national contexts that are inevitably under the pressure of globalization, albeit in varied ways and forms; and (d) countries differentially located on the geopolitical hierarchy globally, (e.g., the core, semi-periphery, periphery, and extreme periphery countries in the current capitalist world-system (Ferguson, 2006; Wallerstein, 2004)). With original research essays of ethnographic research conducted mostly trans-continentally in Eastern Europe, North Africa, East Asia, and North America, this special issue raises questions around the role of applied linguistics in broader disciplinary discussions of power in the core—semi-periphery—periphery—extreme periphery dynamics.

The second significant emphasis is on ideologies, specifically language ideologies and the intersections of language with racial, economic, and other social ideologies. We define language ideologies as cultural (or subcultural) system of ideas that serve as the link between language and social relations, which are loaded with political, socio-economic, and moral interests (Woolard, 1998). People may discuss their language ideologies directly, but most of the time language ideologies can be deciphered through practices: How speakers conceptualize or what they do with languages, individually, interpersonally, and institutionally. In other words, we examine language practices, or what people do with and about languages, and language discourses, or how people talk about languages. This inevitably means that we are committed to analyzing language ideologies which intersect with ideologies of other social categories, such as religion, in this case, various forms of Christianity, and other power categories mentioned above. Once again, the global scope of this special issue has allowed us to conceptualize language ideologies beyond and in connection to the North American context and explore localized formulations of language and identity as well as how global processes impact local language teaching and learning, broadly conceived.

The third significant emphasis is on empirical work, especially ethnography, as we are committed to seeing languages as they are actually used in social context and talked about by various groups and individuals in their communities. Focusing on Christianity, this special issue provides detailed accounts of the usage, learning, and teaching of languages in a range of majority and minority Christian institutions in periphery, semi-periphery, and core countries. Ethnography as a research methodology and genre of writing has allowed for other socio-economic and political processes to come forth in our previous work (e.g., Han, 2007a, 2009, 2014b; Kim, 2017), and in this special issue. The papers included here touch on the issue of the political economy of religious participation in a majority institutional context in Asia (Kim), the decolonization efforts in a bygone era that have left some residue in today’s language classroom in North Africa (Love), American Protestant missionaries learning host languages in the mission field in (formerly socialist) Eastern Europe (Sawin), and intergenerational relationships and linguistic injuries between the first- and second-Generation in a minority church in North America (Han).

Last but not least, we emphasize researcher reflexivity. Our authors have strived for critical and balanced views of the practices, discourses, perspectives, and dynamics in the Christian institutions that they study by attending to and exploring nuances and complexities, instead of one-sided simplistic portrayals. This is particularly important when researching evangelicals (for a definition, see Han 2011b, Johnston, 2017). We are mindful that, on the one hand, “no other religious group is treated with such cavalier contempt by supposedly open-minded liberals” (Johnston, 2017 p. 3), and that few non-evangelicals have conducted empirical research on evangelicals. On the other hand, only a handful of evangelicals have done empirical research, mostly collected in one edited volume (Wong, Kristjánsson, & Dörnyei, 2013; see Kubanyiova, 2013 for a sympathetic response to and critique of one session of it) but these studies have largely seemed to be oblivious that how their own religious beliefs and backgrounds had shaped their research from general research questions to the wordings of some actual interview questions. Therefore, we have asked all authors, religiously-affiliated with the Christian institutions that they have studied or not, to identify and critically reflect on how their religious and other relevant identity dimensions have shaped and influenced their research, particularly their access to and interpretations of data, and to intentionally exercise reflexivity in the entire research process, but particularly in data analysis and writing. The process has been challenging, but rewarding; admittedly, each of us is at a different stage of our respective journey, but collectively, we hope we have started on a path that other researchers may feel compelled to take a look or even come along, or chart their own paths.

Significance and past studies

The significance and timeliness of the topic of language teaching and learning, religion, and identity lies in several aspects. First, language ideology permeates all levels of language teaching and learning in educational institutions in core countries, but it has remained largely implicit or largely ignored in the field of language education in general. Second, religious institutions comprise a type of alternative spaces that can help to put the practices, policies, and underlying ideologies of language teaching and learning in educational institutions in the core countries in contemporary times into perspective. Third, dominant language ideologies today, in fact, largely originated in the cross-fertilization between colonialism and Christianity, which has meant that, historically, Christian institutions played a prominent role in language ideology formation, which makes it imperative for us to study these institutions in colonial and post-colonial times to understand its continuity and discontinuity in language issues as well as in social processes (for a more detailed account, see Han, 2018). Indeed, religion continues to work in important ways in language education in particular and in social life in general. In fact, we would argue that language is a major terrain where global and local inequalities are playing out in globalization and neo-liberalism, and critical studies of language may hold an important key for understanding how the social processes of globalization and neo-liberalism work (e.g., sorting and regulating mobility/immobility of individuals and groups). Fourth, religion plays a significant role today in language education and social life. In language education, evangelicals have continued using English and English teaching as a major means of reaching the “unreached” or those who have not heard the gospel (e.g., Han, 2007a, 2014b; Johnston, 2017; Kim, 2017, this volume; Sarwin, this volume). In fact, we have witnessed a significant interest in and at times heated debates over this issue in the past two decades, started by Julian Edge (1996, 2003). In these debates, critical work by non-evangelicals has consisted mainly of commentaries and criticism about using English Language Teaching (ELT) for covert proselytization agendas among largely untrained Christian English Teachers (CETs) (Edge, 2003; Pennycook & Coutand-Marin, 2003; Pennycook & Makoni, 2005). On the other side, most evangelical scholars have published “faith-informed research” in presses and journals exclusively serving Christians (c.f., Wong, 2014). This surge in interest in this area of scholarship was bookmarked by empirical studies carried out by non-evangelicals. These included Johnston and Varghese (2006; Varghese & Johnson, 2007) based on interviews with pre-service Christian English Teachers in the USA, which is widely recognized as the first empirical study on the debate of evangelicalism and English teaching. A decade later, Johnston’s (2017) most recent monograph based on ethnographic fieldwork in a missionary English school in Poland offers a nuanced account of the language teaching materials and pedagogies as well as the relationships established, and thus a breath of fresh air in this debate in terms of empiricality and criticality. Johnston (2017) further emphasizes that the neocolonial tendency warrants, and in fact demands, much more scrutiny; we are glad to include a review of this fascinating monography (Chao, this volume) in this special issue. Kim’s (this volume) work on South Korean missionaries reaching young North Korean refugees through English classes and English support provides an intimate account of how English has been functioning as a site of Christian contact in neoliberal time.

In terms of current research on these intersections, Han’s (2007a) three-year ethnography and subsequently a set of publications (Han, 2007b, 2009, 2011a, 2011b, 2013, 2014a, 2014b) have converged with other empirical work that have gone beyond the evangelicalism and ELT debates and built the foundation for this line of research to move in an empirical and increasingly critical direction. Situated in and drawing from multiple disciplines, this set of empirical research tends to focus on Christian institutions on the ground to analyze how these institutions often do a better job in supporting the marginalized, including (im)migrants, both in terms of language education and in general support (Chao & Mantero, 2014; Kristjánsson, 2003, 2018; Peele-Eady, 2011). As for language pedagogy, they have revealed that church-based English classes adopted inclusive curriculum content and structure which integrates content-and-language, and language use and learning are contextualized, while minority churches had more contact time, resources and capacity to organize a multitude of meaningful activities and programming to care for and socialize their members. In her work on multicultural and Chinese churches in Canada, Han has addressed some of the issues obscured by language, such as questions surrounding gender (and sexuality), nation-state, race, and generation. She concludes that overall, minority members find more acceptance and enjoy more legitimacy in these churches, and have opportunities to build more egalitarian inter-personal connections with other members, which sometimes lead to economic effects outside of the church (Han, 2007a, 2009, 2011b, 2013, 2014a). The flexibility of the language policies and practices of these spaces often indicate an inclusive institutional structure, religiously, socio-economically and linguistically—most churches are multilingual to different extents (Han, 2009, 2011a, 2013). Some minority churches have broken some dominant language ideologies, such as normative monolingualism and bilingualism as double-monolingualism, and instead have embraced an institutional multilingualism that values the multilingual resources their members bring to large public events (Han, 2011b). Other studies of minority “immigrant” churches have often reported vibrant multilingualism, which engenders issues of language ideology (e.g., Woods, 2004). In this sense, marginalized individuals have been creating and building these alternative spaces for their own and their descendants’ survival, well-being, and prosperity, which have relieved the larger society from providing important services for them.

At the same time, Han’s work also shows how dominant ideologies are perpetuated in these minority churches. Often, these communities seemed to end up embracing values more conservative than the mainstream, such as participating in marginalizing other minorities, notably women and LGBTQ (Han, 2007a, 2007b), and internalizing linguistic nationalism and racism (Han, 2014b) as well as nationalist ideologies (Han, 2011a). Some members of the mainstream churches also hold socially-conservative views, disciplining practices of gender (c.f., Jule, 2005) and sexuality (c.f., Peebles, 2005; Seale-Collazo, 2013), and mobilizing politically on these issues. Indeed, in multiple societies around the globe, conservative members of the mainstream and minority churches have been joining forces to mobilize; they have already been a force to reckon with.

Additionally, the economic effects of Christianity, imagined or having been acted upon, have underpinned the rapid growth of evangelical Christianity among minorities in the core (e.g., Han, 2007a, 2014a, 2014b; Ley, 2008) and among the masses in the periphery (e.g., Englund, 2011; Friedner 2014; Gifford, 2004; Hallum, 1996; Kalir, 2009; Okyerefo, 2011), as well as in Protestant ethics of hard work, discipline and frugality, and more recently in Social Gospel, Liberation Theology, and Prosperity Gospel. However, the majority of studies on church-based programs and classes in the tradition of (second) language education rarely engage with political economy. Therefore, the political economy of English and the global spread of evangelical Christianity needs to be considered in studies of Christianity and language teaching and learning. Kim (this volume) adds an important example of how an applied linguist of evangelical Christian conviction has struggled and dialogued with it. Other issues, such as those of linguistic diversity and viewing “Standard English” as the default institutional language in mainstream churches as well as citizenship, race, gender, sexuality when they are mapped onto language and religion need to be surfaced as well.

Finally, although it seems unnecessary to emphasize how religion remains relevant and important for many people in the mainstream (Bramadat, 2000, 2005; Gross & Simmons, 2009; Stepick, 2005) and particularly prominent among racialized minorities (Carnes & Yang, 2004; Han, 2007a; Ley, 2008; Peel-Eady, 2011; Woods, 2004), it seems critical to do so. Many semi-periphery and periphery countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have seen a spike of religious conversion after the Second World War (Freston, 2001, 2008; Hefner, 2013), and in China since the 1980s (Yang, 2005), as demonstrated in the articles in this special issue. In fact, issues of religion comprise an ever more urgent issue facing us today, as attested by the number of mass killings and terror attacks in recent years, among other events, that were at least partially related to religion. There were events that were near and far. In the USA, the Muslim ban in 2017, the burning of Black churches in summer 2016, the mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston in 2015, and the religious component in the anti-vaccination movement, contraception drugs, abortion rights, and evolution versus creation. In Canada, the mass shooting in a mosque in Quebec in 2017, the opposition to assisted death and the inclusion of gender and sexuality in school curriculum. Not to mention the old-time discrimination of Muslims globally (for example the Rohinga in Myanmar and Muslims in India), and more recent significant resurgence of anti-Semitism in the USA, Canada, and especially in Europe. This inevitably makes the study of religion significant and timely.

Overview of papers

Building on the existing literature, in this special issue we argue for furthering this direction for research on Christianity and language, which we contend would need to be relentlessly empirical in its focus as well as critical in exposing its ideological elements.

Kim’s ethnography focused on North Korea refugee young adults learning English in evangelical Christian educational institutions in South Korea, observed the co-relation between the amounts and types of resources offered by different programs, including English teaching, and whether there was a Christian requirement or not, and explored the views and relationships, including tensions, between the students and the teachers. Her findings elucidate how English works as a secular resource in religious spaces, thus serving as a site of religious contact between people of divergent goals.

The second paper by Love reports on an ongoing ethnography of a Darija (Algerian vernacular Arabic) classroom where the textbook used was created by Catholic clergymen and women in the early 1970s which took a stance of solidarity with the independent nation in the process of decolonization, leading to the adoption of its various linguistic and non-linguistic features. However, in today’s classroom with young professionals from North America and Europe studying with a local teacher, the textbook and the pedagogy from a bygone era seemed to be working in very unexpected ways.

Through an ethnography of American fieldworkers in an evangelical organization in Bosnia and Slovenia learning their host communities’ language, Sawin observed two language ideologies which he refers to as dogmatic and pragmatic ideologies play out together and shift over time in the approaches taken by the fieldworkers to their language learning and usage. He also witnessed how both the formal language policies of the organizations and the practices of the field workers shed important light on the consequences of fieldworkers’ longevity, the language ecology of host communities and the way applied linguists should consider dogmatic and pragmatic ideologies especially in missionary settings.

Finally, Han’s study of second generation Chinese Canadian youth’s language learning and practices in a church focuses on linguistic injuries that were both experienced and inflicted by youth and the institution. Drawing on the work of language and non-language ideologies and semiotic processes of differentiation and by employing meticulous ethnographic methodologies, she shows how these linguistic injuries are being structurally rather than individually and interpersonally constituted through larger societal and institutional ideologies, legislation, and policies.

In filling the particular gap with studies delving into the intersections of religion, language and identity, we also anticipate that it would help to problematize some long-standing binary concepts in SLA; for example, in-class vs. out-class learning, focusing on form vs. focusing on meaning, language socialization vs. language instruction, and language learning vs. language acquisition. Language is a terrain where inequalities play out in democratic societies, and language can and should also be a primary terrain where inequality can be tackled (Han, 2014b). We are reminded that missionary linguists and missionaries played essential role in colonialization through their linguistic description, language policy making and in designing and implementing education and language education. Indeed, “[w]atching over the purity of Christian doctrine and regulating correctness of grammar and orthography were intrinsically related as two aspects of one and the same project” of colonial rule (Fabian, 1986, p. 83). We contend that applied linguistics and language teaching and learning urgently need, and indeed have a moral responsibility, to critically study and observe how language and religion in our time of globalization play out; we especially need to be vigilant of how our everyday work may contribute to globalization in ways we do not intend or foresee.

Acknowledgements

We thank our anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful and timely feedback on the articles in this issue, appearing here in alphabetic order according to their given names: Alister Pennycook, Bing Han, Brian Morgan, Emma Ushioda, Lauren Zentz, Loukia Sarroub, Sharon Avni, Shawn Bullock, Stephen Pilijia, and Suresh Canagarajah. Peer review is a service academics do with little if any form of recognition; we are grateful to all our reviewers and we are deeply touched by some colleagues’ exceptional services.

Finally, we thank our authors for their dedicated work over a three-year span, and for their patience and perseverance over multiple drafts of abstracts for conferences and for special issue proposals, and then finally a multitude of drafts of manuscripts.