The Reproduction of Growth-Oriented Churches: Korean American Churches and the Politics of Infrastructure

Abstract

This article uses an approach based on the politics of infrastructure to demonstrate how Korean American churches still function according to a growth-oriented ideology that prioritizes the growth of individual churches, despite calls for them to adopt a more active role in helping the Korean American community since the 1992 Los Angeles riots. To analyze this phenomenon, the article addresses a conflict that arose over a parking lot site when the senior pastors preaching and leadership, intangible elements of church infrastructure, failed to translate into tangible infrastructure. I define the charismatic leadership of the senior pastor, represented by his preaching and regarded in Korean American churches as the main form of infrastructure driving church growth, as intangible infrastructure. I then examine how, when this intangible infrastructure translates successfully into church growth, linguistic and material infrastructure become a part of transcendental religiousness and remain invisible and, by contrast, how, when such translation fails to take place, the human and secular qualities of infrastructure become visible as objects of dispute. This article focuses specifically on the parking lot site that became a key cause of conflict in one Korean American church and how the site acquired prominence in the course of the churchs internal dispute.