By Rev. Dr. Jeff Liou
I
t’s one thing to have grown up with the sounds of kids intentionally jeering and mocking my language and physical appearance. I’ve processed it, theologized about it, and have grown into God’s goodness despite it. It’s quite another thing, however, to watch it happen to my own bi-racial kids, or the kids of fellow Asian Americans. A few years ago, one of my own children witnessed this in our church when a guest speaker and rapper came, claiming that he had received a call from God to inhabit a kind of “samurai” (Japanese) persona who does kung fu (Chinese) to make kids laugh.
But nothing really prepared me for the gut punch of these sounds coming from someone with the title “pastor” who works for the formation of children. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, my newsfeed alerted me to a video for the children’s ministry of Saddleback Church - a large network of churches in Southern California. Their impact is global and as of a recent count, 23,494 people attend one of their campuses. In this video, Pastor Steve Adams, who used to oversee all the children’s ministries across all the campuses, teaches a lesson on fishing.
The screen cuts to Steve wearing what appears to be a changshan - a traditional style of Chinese clothing. Then, the noises of racial mimicry begin as Steve begins to flail and chop the fish with a sword (of western styling) as if he were practicing kung fu and then proceeds to intentionally fumble his way through rolling sushi for which he displays revulsion after tasting it and spitting it out.
Consider the number of hands that this video from Saddleback passed through: a planning team, video shoot, editing, communications, web hosting, and children’s ministry staff, volunteers, parents, and then, finally, to children in the early stages of formation. If there was ever an illustration of how racial stereotyping does NOT come solely from an individual’s malicious intent, but from the faults within systems, this is it.
Consider also the pattern that Saddleback and other culture-shaping institutions have displayed. This latest incident is not the first by Saddleback and is situated among a number of other incidents that sparked outcries from Asian Americans - Zondervan’s Deadly Viper book, Lifeway’s Rickshaw Rally VBS curriculum, and Pastor Rick Warren’s “Red Guard” post on social media. To repeatedly replicate anti-Asian ridicule is indicative of a serious, embedded problem. Christian organizations have invested in the power of old tropes to make some feel foreign while claiming normalcy and legitimacy for themselves.
This power to define reality is of primary importance to me as a parent who cares about the formation of children. I have watched as young children attempt to navigate the social norms and expectations of their environment. Tacitly, children in situations like these are asked to choose between honoring a cultural heritage and trusting the intentions of the leader who ends up denigrating it. Few parents prepare their children to resist this awful choice. Few parents will engage their church leaders and clergy about this. The end result is that the deformation of church leaders and systems is passed on to the next generation.
This recent video from Saddleback Church reflects the ways that the church and its people are together pressed into a mold that deforms them by rejecting a wide range of human cultural gifts at the door. When concerned Asian Americans are criticized and dismissed because we “can’t take a joke,” that deformative mold is pressed even harder by the attendants of the mold itself. I am thankful for voices like those at AACC, Stop AAPI Hate, and others for seeking to disrupt this deformative process. If you’re an Asian American staff of an organization that presses a mold like this, we see you, we see your pain and frustration, and we pray with you for a better future.
However, we can’t pray for a better future without being willing to participate in its fruition. So, when we are supplied with the energy to do so, we can seek to help people take God’s precious gifts of cultural heritage as seriously as the people by whom those gifts are stewarded. That means we can educate, sometimes starting from scratch with Christians who are at the beginning of their journeys toward cultural sensitivity and respect. Insofar as we know how, we can work to welcome people without forcing them into a mold of our own expectations. For example, we can check our humor because it is such a powerful norm-setter! We can pray eagerly for trained eyes that can see into the complexities of organizational leadership. We can’t reform systems until we see the faults that allow a video like this from going out.
This reflection is, in part, a way of offering feedback that employees or members of institutions like Saddleback cannot offer on their own. Leaders may feel like there are “open doors” and good intentions for employees to give feedback and be heard, but it just doesn’t work like that. So, learning to see the faults in an organization's own systems is the humbling work of Christian leaders. Shedding light on incidents like these can help an organization examine their investment in stories and stereotypes that possess alienating power. Doing a longitudinal self-examination could not be any more important than when it comes to the ways kids have been formed and shaped as they grow into the life of the church. How have our habits, stories, patterns, assumptions and structures shaped them? Do we have eyes to see?
I have seen only a handful of practical approaches to equipping organizations like these. Many are self-satisfied to adopt statements that express their value for every human being. Few name with precision the organization’s opposition to alienating practices and attitudes. Most express a longing for better interpersonal relationships, to the exclusion of the kind of system-wide self-examination that is so obviously necessary. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (my employer) is deploying a practical training that “shifts the work” away from beleaguered and exhausted groups and onto those who have the means to invest in the work of radical, gospel inclusion - means which Saddleback Church possesses.
Note: After this reflection was drafted, Pastor Rick Warren issued an apology that can be read here. It is worth noting that the comments section beneath the post is reflective of the riven church in the US as well as the incredibly difficult job of leading and discipling at this time. The ministry of repairing broken trust (which has not yet begun) is already hard enough without the aroused antipathy of those who are triggered by what they deem to be capitulation to “hypersensitivity.”
To Asian Americans who are justifiably hesitant about this apology, let me say this: forgiveness that leads to trust places us once more in the vulnerable position of being disappointed yet again, as many of you have been. I have come to believe that this is nothing less than a work of God’s Spirit and, like many of God’s glorious works, forgiveness that leads to trust cannot be conjured by the power of our own will. The burden is not yours to bear, but the gift and freedom of forgiveness is ours to receive.
Rev. Dr. Jeff Liou serves on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as Director of Theological Formation. Jeff has also worked as a pastor, university chaplain, and adjunct professor. He earned his PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he studied the intersection of race and theology. Jeff has contributed chapters to books on Asian American Christianity and ethics in pastoral ministry. Jeff lives in Southern California with his wife, Lisa, and their two children.