Give Me Your Tired, Your Spiritually Poor

by Keith Carey

Long before the Statue of Liberty greeted new immigrants in 1885, New York City had been a favored destination for the new Americans. In the 1840s and 50s, crop failures in Ireland and Germany forced many to flee for their lives. They landed in New York, a city whose population grew from 200,000 in 1830 to 515,000 in 1850. Ten years later, New York City had over a million people, most of whom were either immigrants or children of immigrants.

New York has always been the destination of many European refugees and immigrants. Even today Bosnians and Albanians live here to escape the horrors of war. But the European immigrants are now in the minority. A large percentage of immigrants come from the Caribbean islands, followed by China. And America's "Big Apple" is home to the largest concentration of South Asians in America. The welcome mat is still out for immigrants from all over the world. Let us look at three major blocs of non-Christian resistant and unreached people groups that inhabit New York today: The Jews, who arrived first, the Muslims, and the Hindus and other South Asians.

The Jews: So Close, Yet So Far
In 1654, the first Sephardic Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal arrived in New Amsterdam, soon to be re-named New York when the British took over. As maritime technology improved and the Erie Canal was opened, more Jews arrived from Europe. Though the original Jewish settlers retained a certain degree of social and spiritual power, the European Jews soon outnumbered these communities. By 1880, about 60,000 Jews lived in New York City. By 1914, the numbers swelled to 1,500,000.

In the 20th century, New York became the cultural center of America's Jewish population. Jews have left their mark on American culture through their prominent positions in the media and the arts. As the Jews began to blend in with the rest of society, they became more open to other ideas. A Christian and Missionary Alliance prayer profile for Jews in America reports that since 1970, there has been an "unprecedented response to the gospel by Jews."

Unfortunately, this trend has not applied to the conservative and resistant Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn's Borough Park and Crown Heights. Mitch Forman of "Jews for Jesus" is hopeful that creative evangelistic methods may work in the coming years. For example, he notes that many of the Jamaican and Dominican women who work in New York nursing homes are Christians. They may be instrumental in winning elderly Hasidic Jews to their Messiah. However, it will probably take a prominent insider to win these people to the Lord.

The 50,000 Burkhara Jews from Uzbekistan are also not coming to Christ. These people, whose communities are in Forest Hills and Queens, may not have the chance to hear of the Savior. Who will take the time to learn Uzbek and go to them?

New York's Muslims Multiply in the Late 20th Century
When New York was still a Dutch colony, African Muslims came, possibly as slaves rather than as immigrants. They congregated in what is now Brooklyn because of the tolerant attitude towards religion there. Many of them eventually converted to Reformed Christianity.

Before 1970, there were fewer than 10 mosques in New York City. Now there are well over 100. Today there are over 600,000 Muslims in New York City. One of the largest concentrations is the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn.

All Muslim immigrant groups have a certain number of people on the fringe of their communities who are more assimilated, and are probably the most likely to accept the gospel. But these people are very small in number, and they aren't likely to affect the larger communities.

Today, an increasing number of children of Muslim immigrants are being sent to private Islamic schools. In 1995, there were fewer than 200 children in New York and Long Island attending private Muslim schools.

Three years later there were 2,400 Muslim students attending 13 schools, with plans for building more, according to a November 1998 article in the "New York Times." These schools help Muslim children avoid the pitfalls of America's spiritually decadent youth culture, but they also inoculate them from hearing and responding to the life-saving gospel from Christian classmates.

Muslim immigrants in New York may work and go to school with native born Americans, but they seldom have social relations with them. They also maintain social barriers through Islamic customs. Though they live in New York, they are separated from those who could bring them the gospel.

Christians from within their own language group are unlikely to bring Muslim immigrants to Christ. There are Christians among the Albanians and the Arabs, but they come from a nominal background, and their Muslim neighbors despise them. Few of the Muslim immigrant groups are receptive. There are only 12 Caribbean and seven African Muslim background believers in this metropolitan area, and these are among the most receptive. Though the Iranian Shi'ites are open to the gospel, there are almost no believers among the Sunni Muslims from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Afghanistan. The outlook is bleak for winning these neighbors to Christ within the next 10 years. Who will live among them, learn their language, and show them the way to the cross? Only a handful of missionaries are now among them.

The Business of New York's South Asians is Business
The space race between the United States and the Soviet Union indirectly helped bring South Asians to our shores in the 1950s. There was a need for people with skilled and high tech backgrounds. India provided the training, and America provided the jobs. After immigration quotas for non-Europeans were relaxed in 1965, numbers of South Asian immigrants with high tech backgrounds skyrocketed. By 1990, U.S. Census figures showed 199,000 Indian nationals and 21,700 Pakistanis in the New York area. Within four years, 22,000 more people arrived from these two South Asian giants. The trend accelerated throughout the '90s as the private sector demanded more foreign-born "techies".

Though the high tech jobs attracted Indians and other South Asians to California and North Carolina, for the most part it was business opportunities that brought them to Queens and Jackson Heights, New York. Though Indian-owned businesses often cater to South Asian clients, they are also doing business with other communities. Indian jewelers cut more than 43 percent of the small polished diamonds in the U.S. retail trade.

Like many other ethnic groups, Indians have used their networks to expand their business ventures. For example, you will find people with the surname Patel running motels not only in New York, but also throughout the United States. Could Christians reach out to these Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, as they come in contact with non-South Asian communities?

At this time, few members of any South Asian community are willing to change their faith. Each religious community has established its own places of worship in New York. The first Hindu temple, built in Flushing, Queens, was dedicated to Ganesh, the god whom they believe provides opportunities and prosperity. Does that surprise you?

How Will these Unreached and Resistant Ones be Reached in the Future?
Anyone who has taken the "Perspectives on the World Christian Movement" course knows that one of the key ways that God reaches the unreached people groups is by moving them to where the church already exists. New York was at one time a strong Christian city. Too many churches that were strong in the 1960s died out in the 1970s, the same decade when many fine Christian organizations moved out of state. Simultaneously, immigrants from Hindu and Muslim backgrounds began to pour into the Empire State. Today there still are efforts to reach college students for Christ in some of New York's universities. The Hindu and Jewish communities can watch Christian TV programs in the privacy of their own homes. There are tiny, fledgling Muslim-background Christian fellowships, thanks to the efforts of a few missionaries. There is still a great need for workers who will dedicate years to reach the lost.

Pray for God to raise up hundreds of dedicated missionaries to the Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim communities of New York. Pray for openness to the gospel among these same peoples.