Community-Engaged Strategies for Recruitment of Korean Americans in Community-Based Research Studies

With increasing numbers of researchers targeting ethnic minorities to address health disparities, it is important to address the unique needs of Korean American (KA) older adults—a “hard to reach” yet one of the most rapidly increasing ethnic and age groups in the nation. The purpose of this paper is to describe the main barriers to research participation and to identify facilitators for recruitment of older KAs. We have analyzed recruitment data pertaining to more than 10 community-based KA research studies we have conducted for the last ten years. There were a number of unique recruitment challenges in regard to the culture, language, and sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. Examples of effective recruitment strategies included: aligning the research agenda with the priorities of the community; establishing collaboration with ethnic churches and ethnic media; recruiting and training bilingual volunteers and community health workers; and placing liaison research staff in the community.

Korean Immigrant Fathers’ Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Their Parenting Involvement

This paper examines Korean immigrant fathers’ lived experiences of their parenting involvement by using interpretative phenomenological analysis of seven participants who were recruited through Korean ethnic churches in a Midwestern city. In semi-structured interviews, we explored five main areas affecting Korean immigrant fathers’ perceptions and attitudes toward parenting involvement and found the following issues to be especially salient for participants: limited acculturation progress, economic difficulties, low self-esteem, experiences of intergenerational conflict, and involvement in religious faith and church activities. This study contributes to the field’s understanding of Korean immigrant fathers’ perceptions of intergenerational and intercultural conflicts when raising their Americanized children and underlines for mental health providers the importance of providing culturally competent parenting education on the topic of positive fathering.

Ministerial formation policies of the Northern Theological Seminary of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa:

This article investigates the theoretical and practical effectiveness of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa’s (URCSA) ministerial formation of the Northern Synod. The URCSA is part of the Reformed Movement (Calvinism) that was established by the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) of South Africa that mainly came from the Netherlands to establish itself in South Africa and later established ethnic churches called daughter churches into existence in terms of a racially designed formula. After many years of the Dutch Reformed Church missionary dominance, the URCSA constituted its first synod in 1994 after the demise of apartheid. It was only after this synod that the URCSA through its ministerial formation tried to shake off the legacy of colonial paternalism and repositioned itself to serve its members; however, it fell victim to new ideological trappings. This article is based on a study that traces some basic Reformed practices and how the URCSA Theological Seminary of the Northern Synod dealt or failed to deal with them in its quest for the ideal theological ministerial formation.

Body, Space, and Migrant Ties

In this chapter I contribute to a multi-scalar analysis of migrancy, by analysing the ways in which migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon experience and shape spaces in embodied ways. I focus on sexual and spatial ties forged in public spaces like ethnic churches, and private spaces like apartments. I argue that these ties, fundamentally embedded in the migrant’s body, are employed for forging conjugal and sexual ties and forming work alliances with colleagues. An analysis of these ties deepens conversations around the migrants’ body as a scale of power and resistance, and challenges the portrayal of MDWs in the Arab world as ultimate victims of abuse. At another level, these ties challenge the boundaries between the private-public and sacred-sexual.

Black Churches and Their Attitudes to the Social Protest in the Civil Rights Era: Obedience, Civil Disobedience and Black Liberation Theology

The article focuses on the diversity of attitudes that Black churches presented toward the social protest of the civil rights era. Although their activity has been often perceived only through the prism of Martin Luther King’s involvement, in fact they presented many different attitudes to the civil rights campaigns. They were never unanimous about social and political engagement and their to various responses to the Civil Rights Movement were partly connected to theological divisions among them and the diversity of Black Christianity (a topic not well-researched in Poland). For years African American churches served as centers of the Black community and fulfilled many functions of ethnic churches (as well as of other ethnic institutions), but the scope of these functions varied greatly – also during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Therefore, the main aim of this article is to analyze the whole spectrum of Black churches’ attitudes to the civil rights protests, paying special attention to the approaches and strategies that are generally less known. * Funding for the research leading to the results of this study was received from the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) on the basis of the Decision No. 2018/02/X/HS5/02381 for MINIATURA 2 project: “Polityczno-społeczna rola Kościołów afroamerykańskich na Południu USA.” I gratefully acknowledge this support.