Where I’m From

By Abigail Vilar

I

am from broken crayons

from happy meals and Baskin Robbins
I am from the wallpaper in the living room.
(rectangular, floral; smells like a rice cooker and Vicks.)
I am from the pothos, peony,
(that has flower buds the size of elephants).
I’m from karaoke,
high blood pressure and stubbornness,
from Delrosario and Viloria .
I’m from “Did you eat yet?” and “Practice your piano,”
From “Don’t get to dark or you’ll smell like the sun”
and also “No one will ever be good enough for you like Daddy is.”
I’m from Amazing grace and What would Jesus do?
From sunday school to private school,
memorizing, reciting, and praying,
to being dismissed because of leaving 
even though what is being preached from the pulpit 
is problematic and not reaching my heart.
The building has become the idol and its people have forgotten the one sheep.
Trusting in Him was never the issue, but placing faith in people was the mistake.
I’m continually trusting in Him, as I try to regrow my relationship with those 
who say they follow and love as He loves. 
I’m from the 209 hood and the tropical PI,
from fresh pandesal and iced coffee - always half sweet.
From the Aunt that eloped with her abuser at 19, 
the first job Dad took at Subway when he immigrated to the US,
the first tease about “what's in your lunchbox” in 2nd grade,
becoming the first-generation in my family to earn the title M.ed,
finally knowing what my grandpa physically looked like for the first time as an adult,
not knowing how many more days Dad is promised,
unlearning how to stop people-pleasing and finding my voice,
and understanding that my validation is not connected to my performance 
but I am loved regardless even if I don’t meet a stranger’s expectations.
Under my bed and in my closet are many boxes, full of cards and photos, 
and notes of appreciation and well wishes. 
It is those moments - those closed chapters - that remind me that where I have already  been has been a gift, 
and where I am going is a mystery, but I am choosing to be content in the journey of letting 
love be greater than my fear. 
Inhale, exhale, here’s to the next step.

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

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Abigail is a Filipina American educator in the Bay Area. She currently works for a public charter school that focuses on college readiness and mentors students to daily strive and achieve the best version of themselves. She earned her M.Ed in Education with teacher certification from Alder GSE and B.A. in Teaching with a Social Science concentration from HIU. She enjoys the beach on her off days, is a plant momma and dog momma to Rockie, and enjoys good food, better coffee, and great company and conversation on the daily!

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Angry Prayer: Tongsung Gido and Our Difficult Emotions

By Sara Kyoungah White

O

ne evening at church when I was a child, I left the children’s room to get a drink and passed by the closed doors of the sanctuary, where the Korean adult congregation was holding their mid-week prayer service. All of a sudden there was a loud eruption of wailing and the sound of a hundred people speaking at the same time. Mystified, and slightly worried about my parents’ well-being, I cracked open the door and peered inside.

Imagine someone you know, who is usually perfectly sane, standing red-faced in front of you, tears streaming down their face as they shout incoherently in strange ululations and make threatening physical gestures—chest pounding, fist slamming, arms waving, rocking back and forth. Multiply that by a hundred, and turn out the lights. To me as a child, tongsung gido, as I would later learn this uniquely Korean style of prayer was called, was absolutely terrifying.

I would experience it again and again, at retreat centers and in living rooms, in youth group and in college and in adulthood, in Ohio and New Jersey and California, in sanctuaries of Korean congregations that were Presbyterian, Reformed, Methodist, and nondenominational. Often it was accompanied by equally terrifying, usually male preachers who would shout at the congregation with red faces and whose rough hands pushed me into the ground in the name of Jesus.

As a child, I often wondered, “What is everyone so angry about?” I wondered what the reason was for their weeping, and how they could conjure such strong emotions almost as if on command. One moment, we would all be sitting pleasantly in someone’s living room; and the next moment, someone would shut off the lights, and everyone would peel back their masks to howl collectively into the void.

Many times when tongsung gido began, I left the room to hunt down some quiet corner, often a bathroom stall. To the sound of rushing waters—toilets flushing and faucets running—my own prayers would finally come. Usually it started with something inane, like, “God, I’m kind of scared right now.” I wondered if the delay of my prayers, and my bewilderment at tongsung gido, was because I wasn’t holy enough, or Korean enough, or maybe both.

The Pyongyang Revival of 1907 is considered the birthplace of tongsung gido, a founding element of Korean Christianity. During the revival, Western missionaries were surprised by the “mass confession and repentance, exorcism and healing, and intense corporate prayer, all of which were often accompanied by loud weeping,” writes Soojin Chung.

This style of prayer carried the Korean believers through the next century of grief. Pastor Yohang Chun writes that throughout “the Japanese colonization (1909–1945), the Korean War (1950–1953), and the institutionalized oppression caused by the military dictatorship (1961–1992)... Korean Christians prayed to God with their pains, sufferings, and broken hearts. They couldn’t pray silently and quietly. Rather, their pains, tears, and bitterness… made them cry out to God loudly.”

But growing up in Ohio as the child of Korean immigrants, I had no national holidays, no memorials to walk past each day, no history textbooks to tell me of these atrocities. The handful of fellow Korean American Christians I knew were like me, jaded by our parents’ faithful attendance at early morning prayer and really only interested in church retreats to snag a crush, saying the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning and watching Nick at Night in the evening.

I had only the seething scars of my parents and the stony silence of my grandparents, whom I saw twice in a decade. I had only the haunting sounds of tongsung gido, and the seed of anger springing up in my own heart.

*

The thing with historic scars is that they only sound sentimentally tragic on paper; in real life, it looks like culturally-acceptable impatience and rage. Just watch a Korean drama and see how families scream at each other. As a child, I had learned that anger was meant to be expressed by only adults—unpredictably, frequently, and dramatically. As a teenager, I learned that if I stomped my feet up the stairs enough times, everyone would begin to ignore it. If a teenage girl hurls a Kleenex box at the wall and no one hears it, is she truly angry? As an adult, I learned to use my anger as a test to prove the loyalty of my friends and spouse. And most dangerous of all, I learned to hide my anger like burying dynamite, sowing a minefield in my heart.

When our daughter was born, and she lay purple-red and swaddled on my chest, I made a promise to myself that she would never have memories of my rage. Before she turns five, I figured, we would break the generational curse of my people. But five came, then six, then seven, then eight. I never could keep my promise.

I was still learning then to bring my anger into the prayer room. What tongsung gido had been saying all along is this: our negative emotions have a place in our relationship with God and with each other. We are all angry. We all know the contours of despair. We have only to direct our cries heavenward, together.

The idea of anger and other negative emotions finding a place in our prayers is not unique to tongsung prayer. In fact, there’s something distinctly Jewish about it. The psalms are full of people crying out to God, roaring in anger, weeping in suffering.

But today, “Christians are never angry enough,” writes Dan Allender and Tremper Longman in The Cry of the Soul. “We have learned to distance ourselves from anger, irrespective of whether it is righteous or unrighteous.” Instead, as Allender and Longman continue later, “Our pain is to be a bridge to comprehending the pain of God.”

It has taken me many years to learn that love, like praying, does not always need to be brimming with anger and pain. But love, like prayer, is also inseparable from rage and sorrow, because rage and sorrow are also in the heart of God. This is what the adults of my childhood modeled to me in their bewildering tongsung prayer. They were walking into the sanctuary with their anger and bitterness and pain in hand, unsure if they would be going home that night. The God they cried out to was a God who heard and saw, a God who was not taken aback by their complicated, difficult emotions. He is my God too.

I no longer pray that my daughter will not see me angry. Instead, I pray that she will see a well-worn path between my anger and the throne of my Father. I pray that she will see through my life the marks of God’s transforming love, which carefully uncovers all the explosives we’ve learned to bury and makes our minefields into gardens square by square. I pray that she will see me angry enough about the right things. I pray that she, too, will know the love of a Father to whom she can bring all her pain, sorrow, and rage. And I pray she will see that in His hand, what we buried in shame and fear can rise in beauty, like breathtaking fireworks. 

I pray this like I’m bequeathing an inheritance. I pray it with tongsung prayer.

*

One year during college, I lived in an apartment above a shoe store. In the middle of a bad breakup and a crisis in vocation, I went inside my closet, closed the door, and shouted myself hoarse. I told God everything with big, messy strokes, like a child scrawling madly with a crayon on a white wall. Only after I had unstuffed myself completely and lay limp on the floor did I hear the gentle whisper of God. I was surprised to find that I, too, held this heritage of tongsung gido like an heirloom in my lap, channeling anger like a blazing rocket path to heaven.

At college retreats, I began to look around more closely at those praying on the floor beside me. I realized that not everyone was shouting or weeping. Some were sitting quietly, hands clasped, eyes closed, lips barely moving. Some were sitting in groups of two or three, just talking. It made me feel like I could simply sit there too, in all my bewilderment and introversion, and know that God would hear me too.

I had a mentor who was like a spiritual mother to me. She went around and prayed for each of us in turn as we crouched on the floor. I was used to men shoving me into the ground with the force of their hands, shouting incoherently up into the air, coercing me into emoting tears, if only through fear. But when my turn came, I was surprised at how calm and quiet her voice was, how gentle her touch on my back, how reasonable, plain, and piercing her words.

When she rose and left, it was then I began to weep. I knew with certainty then that every word I had whispered in those bathroom stalls had been heard.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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Sara Kyoungah White serves as the senior editor on staff with the Lausanne Movement. Her articles, essays, and poems have appeared in publications like Christianity Today, Reformed Journal, and Ekstasis.

More in this series:

Who is the Jesus of Advent?

By Isaiah Hobus

Japanese mosaic of Madonna and Child, Church of the Annunciation, Nazareth.

"J

esus isn’t white!?”

I will never forget the look on my college classmate’s face. I thought she was joking, but her face betrayed no hints of sarcasm. I suppose there was a point where I too had to learn that Jesus wasn’t white, despite my childhood self growing up thinking he was. I have spent much time reflecting on this comment since. I am drawn to how many people, including my friend, have encountered a Jesus who only vaguely resembles the Jesus of the Gospels. A Jesus who is often domesticated in the mediums of white depictions that are so apparent during the Advent season. Christology is at the forefront of the Advent season through the multitude of mediums we encounter–artistic depictions of Jesus, language conveying the real meaning of Christmas is Jesus, and practices centering on the worship of Jesus. The Advent season beckons us, asking: “Who is Jesus Christ to you?” Over the course of a year seeing many difficult and pain-filled circumstances, I can not help but ask this Christmas: “Does the Jesus of Advent mean anything to those who deeply experience the suffering of our world?” For Asian Americans, this includes a variety of experiences within the diaspora–perpetual foreignhood, the model minority myth, racism, sexism, tokenism, mental health, and etc. Who is the Jesus of Advent to us? 

Jesus is always interpreted through mediums–the witness and depictions of people. Thus, we each can possess different versions of Jesus. Take the Jesus of the old age colonizers of Europe. The colonizer who killed in the name of Jesus and I can both affirm the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our lives, however we possess radically different visions of who Jesus is. In other words, we hold a radically different Christology. Christology is a branch of theology that simply answers Jesus' infamous question: “Who do you say that I am (Mark 8:29)?” Theologian K.K. Yeo beautifully articulates, “Jesus is singular but Christology is plural.” There is one Christ, one Lord, and one Savior–Jesus of Nazareth. However, the universality of Jesus’ Lordship to all tribes, nations, peoples, and languages (Rev 7:9) affirms a plurality in the expression of Jesus’ Lordship among people. He, as the community of Samaritans once cried, is the savior of the world (John 4:42). The Christological danger becomes the universalization of one contextual expression of Christ–making him Christ for some and not others. 

Historically, this is the legacy of European Christendom–universalizing the whiteness of Jesus through conquest and imperialism. Evidence of the legacy of European Christendom in our land is how a homeless, brown-skinned Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, is commercialized and plastered throughout church and retail context during the Advent season as a white man. This Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection is systematized into a particular Christology, making him Christ for some and marginalizing others. This Jesus, the Jesus of European Christendom, has nothing to say to a first generation immigrant, to an adoptee, to people brutalized and killed for a virus they are scapegoated for, to women hypersexualized and fetishized for their complexion, and for those struggling with mental health stemming from their difference. I believe many Asian Americans and others resonate with the plea of Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, “I longed to meet the Jesus the Gospel writers speak about. I wanted to meet the one who embodies the Christ, who practices the ethics of love and compassion, and who provokes women to be with their inner power to rise up and resist patriarchy.” The Jesus of European Christendom in my experience can only say to the sufferings of people, “I forgive your sins.” But what sins need to be forgiven for those abused by sin and the sufferings of the world? 

In his Christology lectures, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes a distinction between seeing the advent of Christ as the actual happening of God’s revelation versus an abstract idea of God. Advent is not a proposition about God, rather, it is the very uncovering of the fullness of who God is in Jesus Christ. God is identical with a child of poverty and displacement who is born in a barn in a literal feeding trough for animals (Luke 2:1-20). This is not an abstract idea to be debated, this is the very act and being of God. The God of Advent is not a God of wealth, privilege, or status. The God of Advent is lowly–identifying with a forsaken place of our world. This is God’s omnipotence uncovered for all to see. The God of Advent is a God who, as Andrew Sung Park and other Koreans believe, identifies with han. (Koreans began to use this word following Japanese colonization–describing Korean suffering in our land and people. Han is an all encompassing trauma that lives in the hearts of people). According to the Gospels, suffering is what defines the life of Jesus all the way to his crucifixion. 

When I reflect on my Christology, I see Christ mediums that determined my view of Jesus. I see white pastors of my youth I tried to imitate who bought expensive houses, wore expensive clothing, used private jets, hid in their “greenroom,” and who chased platforms of celebrity and relevance. I see white images of Jesus plastered throughout commercialization, history, and church iconography that hid the beautiful marginality and the powerful weakness of God in Jesus Christ. I see Jesus becoming a distorted idea to fit into systems and constructs of privilege and power while simultaneously being marginalized out of the suffering of the world. 

If Jesus is solely an idea, he can be changed. I saw this as I began to study theology and the Gospels, I found a Jesus who was nothing like the Christ mediums I encountered in my youth. There was dissonance between these mediums and the witness of the Gospel narratives. This Jesus of the Gospels identified with the han of people…he, by the Spirit, brought good news to the poor, he proclaimed release to the captives, he recovered the sight of the blind, and he to proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor [Jubilee] (Luke 4:17-18). This Jesus in his final healing in Matthew’s Gospel flipped tables in the temple prophetically rejecting the greed and oppression of the religious leaders and the religious system of his day. This led those excluded from the temple–the lame and blind–to come into the temple with Jesus and Jesus heals them (Matt 21:12-16). It is in this Jesus that there is life and this life is the light of all peoples (John 1:4). 

I further the infamous question Dietrich Bonhoeffer posed from his prison cell, “who is Jesus Christ for us today?” Who is the Jesus of the Gospels and what does he mean to you during this Advent season? I see Immanuel who through the incarnate being and life of God identifies with the han and suffering of our world that many experience this Christmas season. Like the tragic stories of the births of adoptees, Jesus is not born in a home but a barn. (Luke 2:1-20). Like Asian American immigrants, Jesus is out of place and rejected in his hometown upon return, after leaving his hometown for new opportunity (Mark 6:1-6). Like Asian Americans with COVID-19, Jesus was also scapegoated and killed. Like Asian Americans, Jesus is mocked as a foreigner among people he calls his own (Jn 8:48). Jesus–rather than objectifying, fetishizing, and sexualizing women–saw, healed, and empowered a woman within a mass of people with a terminal illness cast out to the very margins of society (Mark 5:24-34). I love this Jesus dearly and if you look closely enough, you may see this Jesus in the face next to you. 

Photo by Joshua Huver

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Isaiah Hobus is a recent graduate of Bethel University with a degree in biblical and theological studies, and currently a Master’s of Divinity student with an emphasis in Christian community development at Northern Seminary. He is also a youth outreach associate at a nonprofit ministry for teens, Treehouse Hope in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where he mentors teenagers. In his spare time, he enjoys reliving his days as a college athlete in cross country and track through runs, sticking his nose in a book, and guzzling black coffee.

I Didn’t Go to Church This Year…

By Emily Leung

“And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”

Luke 2:8-15, ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

John 3:16-21, ESV

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S

o, I didn’t go to church this year. Not on Easter, not on Mother’s Day, and not on Christmas. Pretty bold statement for someone writing an Advent piece, right?

I think it’s fair to state that 2022 was a mixed-bag of a year. Filled with joys (congratulations to fellow editor Katie on getting married!) and filled with struggles (I’m sure you can think of an example). And as this year comes to a close, and we embark on the new, I am reminded of the story I imagine many heard this past Sunday,

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:11-12, ESV

Love came down. On that day, Christ the Lord came to us. And we know this to be true because,

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:16-17, ESV

You’ve likely heard these verses before. Whether in a Christmas sermon, seen written on a billboard, or heard in the Peanuts Christmas special. But why this now? Why these particular references to scripture? Well, because I didn’t go to church this year. And that pains me to say out loud. Not from a place of shame or guilt or feelings of obligation, but out of my own brokenness and the brokenness of my experiences in the local church. Over the last month, we’ve thought about what Peace, Hope, and Joy look like in our lives today. How can we find peace and hope in the midst of the realities of relationships, anxieties, and responsibilities? Where is the joy? 

Jesus! Right? I don’t know about everyone else’s Sunday school experience, but Jesus was always a solid answer growing up in mine. I was raised in church. I went to Sunday school, VBS, and even went on to study theology in a graduate program. So, as one can imagine, it’s a bit ironic that I haven’t been attending church services. Or maybe it’s a cliché…seminary student lost after completing her degree. However, I’d like to challenge that assumption – that cliché. I believe in the local church. I have hope in the call for the Bride of Christ. And it is here where I have found rest in the love of the Father. For God so loved me. For God so loved us. That the Son of God was sent here. Like the father in parable of the prodigal son – God runs to us and loves us in our mess. Sounding like a different cliché? However, I want to pause and really consider the weight of those words. It’s easy to forget the gravity of the gift given to us. The sacrifice made for us to find new life. 

Maybe you find yourself going through the motions. Or you find yourself wrestling with the “shoulds” and the “supposed to” of what you think (or is) expected of you - and this is not to say we aren’t accountable for our choices. But it’s here where we can be reminded and centered in the knowledge of what God has given to us. 

All the striving left me tired. Love already sees me. God sees me. And now I’m sitting down. I didn’t go this year. And that’s OK. We are loved completely in our entire personhood. Yes, life has complications and nuances and exceptions and even rules, but here, right now, we can be confident in knowing that the Son of God came down for us and to us. Period. I believe in the Spirit that has the ability to move through our lives with peace, hope, and joy because of God’s love. 

Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash

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Southern Californian living in the Bay Area, Emily (she/her/hers) has her BA in Media, Culture, and the Arts and MA in Theology. She loves a good thrift find and a yummy snack. Emily enjoys learning homestyle recipes she grew up eating in her Chinese-American household especially when she can use the wok she found on the street in the Sunset neighborhood, SF. You can connect with her on Instagram and Linkedin!

Where's the Joy in 2022?

By Katie Nguyen Palomares

I

don't think it's unfair to say that joy is something we're all looking for at any given moment - but especially in 2022, as we’ve all been striving to figure out a "new normal" post-COVID. If 2020 was God taking everything off everyone’s tables, then 2022 was the first year of us as a society attempting to figure out how to sit at a full table of food with other people again. Easier said than done. Amidst all of the chaos associated with simply learning how to be again, my attention has recently been captured by a short, almost side scene, in Matthew’s Gospel.

There’s a little cluster of verses in chapter 19 of Matthew’s Gospel where he depicts  “little children” being brought to Jesus and his disciples immediately trying to get rid of them. Why should Jesus waste his time on little kids? He’s got the whole world–and us–to worry about. But Jesus wasn’t cool with that. He rebukes his disciples’ best efforts to fend off the kids by saying, “Leave the little children alone, and don’t try to keep them from coming to me, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (v. 14). The ones who, out of everyone around Jesus at this point, should have ‘known better’ are the ones Jesus basically rebukes with, “Don’t mess with them or make it hard for them to get to me because it’s people like them to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs.” Like the little children, the ones brought to him by their community did at least seem to know enough that these little children needed to be empowered and brought to Jesus, not the ones who keep those who need him away.

Advent has been an interesting season for me to wade into this year: 2022 was chaotic. I found myself working at a small church that started the year in conflict that even though I wasn’t right in the middle of it, I found myself around a lot of it. Yet also in this year, I experienced the distinct joy and excitement of getting engaged and married! In a lot of ways, throughout 2022 I’ve experienced both helpful community and hurtful community and everything in between. Suffice it to say that this year entering into Advent season…I’m tired.

But also within the last year, amidst God’s bride acting less than holy, God has reminded me along the way that my hope and joy truly are found in him. Whether through a shared dinner table one night or a hangout centered around nothing but laughter and kazoos, he has reminded me exactly who he is. Even in the midst of his bride acting up. It’s been in those little moments of me just living my life that bring my mind back to the little children in that short scene in Matthew 19.

The children had the right idea–nor did they go to Jesus on their own: they were brought to him by their community. They were being supported. And it seems to me that after being brought to Jesus only to be shooed away by his closest disciples, they might understand a little of what I’ve gone through in this last year. They experienced support and empowerment by the community to be brought to Jesus as well as the less-than-helpful actions of the disciples attempting to shoo them away. It makes me wonder: What can we learn from those children?

The ones who Jesus’ own people–the ones closest to him and theoretically should have been the best representatives of his mission on earth–rejected. It was those little children, shooed away by his disciples, that Jesus lifted up as an example: be like them. The children who seemingly had some inherent understanding of their need for community to empower and enable them to come into proximity with Jesus as well as some degree of understanding that seeking him is truly enough.

Joy doesn’t look the same in every season. For some this Advent, that may look like taking the time to heal and patch up the wounds we’ve collected this year; for others, it may look like opening their eyes to see communities they’ve ignored and explore what it looks like to engage in community with them; for some, it may just look like getting out of bed in the morning on time for whatever lays ahead in the day. In whatever it may look like this Advent season, I hope you find joy in contentment, knowing the Savior is there with you and for you wherever you are, ready to join you in whatever posture you find yourself.

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

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Katie is a Mixed Vietnamese/White pastor, writer, and speaker in Austin. She works with Kingdom Capital Network as the Program Manager serving and empowering small business owners to make a kingdom impact in their communities and with AACC as the Marketing/Comms Coordinator and part of the Editorial team. She earned her M.A. in Christian Leadership from DTS and B.A. in English with teacher certification from Texas State. She also consumes books like they’re chips, can often be found bouldering on indoor rocks with her husband, or enjoying a good cup of coffee and conversation!

Those Who Walk In Darkness

By Naomi K. Lu

"T

he people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing plunder. For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the Greatness of his government and peace there will be no end” Isaiah 9:2-7 (NIV).

Prince Of Peace. The names describing the Messiah are symbols of hope, descriptions of His character, identifiers of God made human who would come to save a broken and depraved world. Two thousand years have passed since Love in human form walked with us, but our need for Emmanuel, God with us, is just as great as then. 

In 2019, the leading cause of death in Asian American youth and young adults is suicide. Depression is one of the leading causes of disability globally. Our world is dark, aching, and broken, and we can never find enough solutions and cures to all that ails us. We are in desperate need of a savior. The bright lights of Christmas, the jolly songs, and cheerful motifs can seem insulting in the face of great suffering. Our news headlines are dominated by mass killings and violence. Fear and anxiety have echoed throughout our nation, reflected in our politics and our rhetoric. The last few years have revealed the racism and injustice once hidden in the shadows of our country. For me, and I imagine for others, I have been reminded of the realities of what it means to be a person of color in this country. I am and those in my community are collectively exhausted, weary, wondering if change will ever come. We wonder if it is even possible for such brokenness to be redeemed. An ironic part of the holiday is that it represents a glaring reminder of the difference between how things could or should be, and how things are. We declare “Peace on Earth!” as division rips through our families. We smile for Christmas cards and rage behind closed doors. In my experience as a Chinese female, I am deeply familiar with saving face–the desperate need to exude calm while storms devastate within, to stave off humiliation and shame. Our holiday platitudes suggest God would rather have our masks than our hearts. That honest grief and lament have no room during “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” 

But God cannot be contained by a Hallmark card. 

The peace from our Emmanuel is not simply for those who are well. This peace is far beyond the diluted version bottled up in our culture of social media therapy, represented by cutting off toxic relationships and an extra-long bubble bath. How often do we hear the phrase “protecting my peace” as if it’s a commodity that can be stolen? True peace is not so fragile because real peace is not created by us. We seem to think that peace comes from avoiding hard things, whereas the peace of the Gospels is one that surpasses all understanding right in the middle of suffering. Peace is the stillness and grounding of our souls when nothing makes sense; it is the assurance that we are being held when all else falls apart. 

Terror arrives when I see how little I control. But peace reigns when I remember who is sovereign. 

This holiday season, may we rest in the knowledge that the God we worship is not one who is intimidated by our suffering. He is El Roi- the God who sees. The peace we are offered is not a band-aid meant to minimize our wounds, but an understanding of hope that the one who carved stars from dust is for us and our good. These present sufferings, though very real, are only temporary. The Prince of Peace lived and died to save and redeem not just our beings but also our heartaches. And it is here, in the presence of our Savior who turns darkness into light, we gain the courage to face our worries, our sorrows, our storms, our nights and still say, “It is well with my soul.” 

Photo by Luis Dalvan

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Naomi K. Lu is a Chinese-American Third Culture Kid who grew up in East Asia. An educator and a writer, she is passionate about Asian mental health, depression treatment, and suicide prevention. She currently lives in California with her three dogs.

Inhabiting the Hole of Advent: Transfiguring Asian American Futures

By Joshua E. Livingston

“This is heavy.” - Marty McFly

“My burden is light.” - Jesus

I

have always felt a vague presence of “Asianness” in Robert Zemekis’ 1989 film Back to the Future, Part II. Recently I came across an article that unpacked it for me. Written, appropriately, in the year 2015, commentator Wendy Lee describes how the film went to great lengths in order to establish its sense of futurity by equating avant garde technologies with Asian American aesthetics. While I appreciate how Asian American presence is normalized in 2015 Hill Valley, what the film gets wrong is its superficial take on what Asian American studies scholars David Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta Niu call “techno-orientalism,” that is, how “the future looks Asian and Asians look ‘futuristic.’”

This is a trope that, structurally speaking, echoes the historical logic of American opportunism with regard to Asians. Cathy Park Hong reminds us, after the immigration ban was lifted in 1965, America was strategically selective about who could obtain visas. She writes,“This screening process … is how the whole model minority myth quackery began: the US government only allowed the most educated and highly trained Asians in and then took credit for all their success. See! Anyone can live the American Dream!” In other words, the dream itself entails the commodification of “Asianness.” It’s this dream where we can find ourselves yoked to the perpetual desire for more – it functions like a “hole.” 

Over and over in the Back to the Future trilogy, Marty McFly wakes up believing his space-time shenanigans have all been a dream, only to encounter some variation of his mother: an embodied mediator of the desire of the Other. Similarly, despite our illusions of the pursuit of liberty, the American dream always seems to cradle us in desire. Advent is the season where we can find ourselves crying out from within this harrowing narrative: “How long, O Lord?” Here we are tempted to satiate ourselves with this annual reminder of “hope,” which in lieu of our habits of instant gratification, can devolve into the unsatisfying consolation of an ever-deferred commodification of desire. 

As Christians, we understand Advent as the perpetual season of hope. As it’s written in the book of Hebrews, this hope is the source of our faith. But as an Asian American, the word that sticks with me here is less “hope” than it is “perpetual.” What if we allowed ourselves a bit of linguistic free association as a way of touching on aspects of hope that we may unconsciously resist? In doing so, I hope to gain fresh insights on the season, where “hope” is transfigured as “hole,” or a way of describing the space that desire inhabits. The main question here is: Who’s desire? It is helpful to remind ourselves that desire is not a natural, biological function. It is always a learned posture, bequeathed to us, internalized via the projection of the desire of the Other, or mediated phenomena that are sometimes theologically personified as “powers and principalities.” 

So what happens if we reimagine this commodification of hope as a "hole" in the cosmos? Rather than a time that can be objectified and pedaled through holiday pleasures, perhaps it's a time on the church calendar that functions more as a negative, liminal, or as Sheldon Wolin says, “occasional” space that theologically reorients our unique perspective as disciples of Christ. Call it reorientalism.

Of course, the temptation is always to simply fill the hole. This is a symptom of the ubiquitous “societal imperative to enjoy,” as Todd McGowan describes it. The very function of desire is to accommodate a felt lack and indeed, and we’ll find every possible way to accomplish this. Perhaps the reason why the experience of the “perpetual foreigner” is perpetual is that the wheel itself never stops. What if the problem is not our perceived foreignness at all, but our perpetual propensity to play the game? Maybe the way out of this perception is not ultimate economic empowerment, but a transfigured desire that perpetuates the possibility inherent in the empty space of Advent.

As such, Advent, and the Christian faith itself, is inherently about the possibility. What’s miraculous, however, is that this very possibility is itself retroactive. It informs the everyday life of today and even transfigures the inherited traumas of the past. Does any of this relieve us of our pain and suffering? No. Not in the least. Advent as “hole” reminds us of the “dark night of the soul” through which we may identify with the Suffering Servant and find godliness, with contentment, in light of the cultural scripts, the projected fantasies, handed to Asian Americans. To paraphrase the book of Hebrews again, we confess that we are strangers and foreigners on the earth (an experience we are familiar with as “perpetual foreigners”). But if we have been thinking of the land that we have left behind (or the dream of finally assimilating into a new land), perhaps we do have this opportunity to return (or repress). However, we are reminded of the desire for a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called our God; indeed, God has prepared a city for us.

Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash

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Joshua E. Livingston is a writer and community developer residing in Indianapolis. He is the director of Cultivating Communities and the author of Sunrays on the Beachhead of the New Creation (Wipf & Stock, 2021). His writing has been featured in The Plough, The Other Journal, and The Englewood Review of Books.

'Mixed Blessing' - One and a Half Years Later

By Chandra Crane & Katie Nguyen

Chandra Crane’s book, Mixed Blessing: Embracing the Fullness of Your Multiethnic Identity, released in December of 2020. As AACC continues to journey through our “It’s Complicated” series, Chandra Crane and Katie Nguyen both share their thoughts and reflections on the relevance of this book now one a half years later as the writer and new readers continue to engage with not only her book diving into exploring Mixed identity.

Chandra’s Reflections

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year-and-a-half since Mixed Blessing first made its way into the world! Writing, publishing, and promoting a book has been exhausting, but also very joyful as I’ve been able to connect with folks from around the world who are multiethnic, multicultural, and who are monoethnic allies.

Releasing a book during a pandemic is also uniquely taxing. In addition to the global sense of fear, grief, and uncertainty, I felt a sense of loss as I wasn’t able to connect with people in person. No local launch party, no bookstore or library readings, no chance to meet new folks face-to-face.

But if necessity is the mother of invention, then quarantine is the auntie of flexibility, and I was able to use technology and creativity to connect with readers. Because I have to remind myself, that was why I wrote this book in the first place. To share the stories that I’ve been entrusted with and to help foster space for others to share their stories.

A year and a half ago, people congratulated me on “birthing” the book. While I do feel like it was a labor of love, I also felt more like a nurse-midwife and an auntie than a mother. I held the book lightly in my hands (and still do), knowing that it is not mine, but ours. So as I think about Mixed Blessing now metaphorically toddling through the world, I feel a great joy in knowing that it continues to bless readers both new and old.

If I had to choose one thing I’ve learned anew in this process (or two, as I reject false dichotomies!), it’s that God has plans for us…plans that are sometimes very different from our own goals and strategies. When prayer and grace lead us to a place where our plans overlap with the Lord’s, that is a very sweet spot indeed.

I still feel that the book is a gift and a blessing. It was a gift and a blessing to me to hear the stories I included within its pages, and it’s a gift and blessing to hear how those stories have encouraged others. As I think about the book continuing to be shared with others, I feel a great comfort in knowing that ultimately, it’s God’s book, and his stories that he is telling through people. May we all have ears to listen to his good story wherever we encounter it!

Katie’s Reflections

Within the last year, I began implementing a new hashtag into some of my posts and everyday vernacular: #MixedMagic. To some, it may seem silly, while others may simply appreciate the alliteration. For me, this phrase serves as an important marker of a specific journey I’ve been on in the last few years of engaging the work to reclaim the gift of my Mixed Vietnamese/White identity and how that part of my identity not only informs my faith, but further fans it into flame.

When I learned sometime in mid-2020 that Chandra’s book was coming out, in the midst of a world scrambling to come to grips with a pandemic, racially driven murders, and what I can only call a reckoning within the American Evangelical church, I pre-ordered Mixed Blessing immediately. 2020 is when my search specifically for language to describe my Mixed identity and faith was kicked into gear, so the timeliness of Mixed Blessing couldn’t have been better.

I’m also a serial book reader: If I don’t sit down and read a book in one sitting, I will inevitably jump sporadically between four other books before I manage to go back to finish that one. Not to mention, in the midst of 2020, I was walking through my own reckoning dealing with the slow marathon of leaving work at a White Evangelical megachurch while also juggling running a “healthy” (whatever that meant in 2020) youth ministry in a pandemic and working to finish an M.A. in Christian Leadership. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t able to make time for any personal reading until 2022, which is when I finally had the joy of reading Mixed Blessing.

Reading Mixed Blessing now is perhaps even more of a blessing than it would have been if I had cracked its pages when it was first launched…as the Church is beginning to emerge out of a time of the Lord leaving no stone, theology, or assumption unshaken, the conversations that remain (which I pray are not stamped out by fear or out of a desire to remain comfortable) are ones that can all benefit from a widened and more nuanced perspective.

The beauty of Mixed Blessing is found in the way Chandra provides language and empowerment for our Mixed brothers and sisters in Christ. In a world that prefers to discard what confuses us rather than lean in, and historically has no categories for those of us with Mixed identity, Mixed Blessing serves as a guide to Mixed daughters and sons of the King of Kings of exploring with Christ how we are uniquely created, positioned, and equipped by the Lord to bring healing, reconciliation, and truth to the world around us.

This book now, in 2022, and for years to come will continue to serve as an important tool in helping to fan into flame the power of #MixedMagic. Whether that’s through empowering our Mixed siblings to engage in our confusing, multifaceted, beautiful stories or in helping monoethnic majority and minority culture siblings begin to engage the world with imagination informed by a Kingdom more diverse than any of us could ever begin to comprehend. To my Mixed brothers and sisters: The Kingdom is here, and we have a role to play in ushering in the Lord’s grace, justice, and healing.

Photo by Nguyen Thu Hoai on Unsplash

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Chandra Crane (B.S. Education, M.A. Ministry) is a Multiethnic Initiatives Resource Specialist with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and a member of the multiethnic Redeemer Church in Jackson, Mississippi. Growing up in a multiethnic/multicultural family in the Southwest and now happily transplanted to the Deep South, Chandra is passionate about diversity and family. She is married to Kennan, a civil engineer, and they have two spunky daughters. Chandra is a fan of hot tea, crossword puzzles, Converse shoes, and science fiction. She thoroughly enjoys reading, napping, and defying stereotypes.

Katie is a Mixed Vietnamese/White pastor, writer, and speaker in Austin, TX. She serves as the Marketing/Communications Coordinator, an Editor, & is on the podcast team for AACC. She completed her M.A. in Christian Leadership at Dallas Theological Seminary and earned her B.A. in English with teacher certification from Texas State University. She is engaged in the work to care for the historically unseen and marginalized in the city of Austin, consumes books like they’re chips, can often be found by the nearest body of water, and loves a good cup of coffee and conversation!

Living with Intention: Exploring the Intersection of Mixed Identities and Faith

By AACC Editorial

Continuing our “It’s Complicated Series,” we are glad to chat with Jessica Gracewski to discuss her upbringing and how we can be intentional about understanding how our identities intersect with our faith as we seek maturity in Christ and better understandings of how we are made in imago Dei.

Jessica, thanks again for joining us here at AACC! We would love to hear about your Mixed background and how you navigated church as you were growing up? Was it challenging to find a church space that would be welcoming of you? How did you decide what type of Christian community would be the best fit?

I grew up as a Korean Japanese American transracial adoptee. My adoptive family background is majority White and the churches that I attended growing up were of dominant culture as well. I grew up in a military family that moved around quite a bit—this was both a highlight and a downfall. It was positive because it helped me to become highly resilient and able to navigate new and unfamiliar spaces with ease and comfort and could easily befriend others and find friendships. 

However, this was a downfall because I was often always the “new girl” in all of the spaces, and even when I was younger still finding and adjusting to my own ethnic identity, I always despite being known as the “new girl” that also was “adopted” and that was also often the only Asian American in any of these spaces. 

I grew up in a variety of Christian communities. They were mostly White dominant cultures until later in college, after I had begun my ethnic identity journey seriously as well as my discipleship to Jesus journey in a more intentional path. 

As I have engaged different types of faith spaces and communities, I have tried to see if there is both an intentional representation and integration of individuals and cultures as we lived out the ways and life of Jesus. This can be expressed in a variety of ways and beautiful creativity in ways that it can be expressed and lived out in groups and church communities. 

What Bible passages have been essential in shaping your views and perspectives on faithful witness and living as a Mixed Christian? And how has your lived experience given you new insights or perspectives on passages that previously seemed foreign or less relevant to you? 

One key verse for me has been Romans 6:13 “Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.”

As I reflect on this, I think about my journey of ethnic identity.  My adoption was something I had and could confront with Jesus and this was a huge turning point in my faith. I had a lot of things and memories both negative and positive on this experience that took time and years and prayer and celebration to be able to honestly look at. 

I am confident that my heritage and past play an integral part about where I discovered my vocation and love for serving God in my own unique ways. Because of my background and navigation in and around mixed-race spaces, I was able to confront and bring light to those other individuals who may be overlooked or experience injustices or confrontations despite their ethnic or cultural background. In light of ongoing violence, discrimination, and racism against AAPIs, it has been important for me to cling to this verse in Romans in order to keep my theological framework when everything in me was confronted - body, mind, soul and the experience of discrimination and collective identity as an Asian American woman. 

As you serve in an intentionally multicultural church, how do you and your fellow ministers balance the embrace of diversity while creating space for individual members' unique cultural/racial experiences and belongings in living out the beautiful diversity of the imago Dei in your congregation? 

There are a few principles or commitments we share that are important. We embrace the practice of proximity breeding empathy—we surround ourselves with those that may or may not be similar or alike to us. Second, we celebrate different cultures. We try and infuse as much as we can through intentional relationships and Christ centered love and appreciation of those we meet and intentionally build. We build a theological framework by discovering and answering, “Who is our neighbor?”

We also focus on relationships. Strong relational ties help make differences less fearful because focusing on relational aspects help make others human and for us to be able to see one another as human, brothers and sisters in Christ. And by practicing community, we have space for us to share, grieve, celebrate, lament and all the other emotions in between. 

And we seek to study and live out the implications of our fellow brothers and sisters being made in imago Dei by reflecting on how we can better practice the way of Jesus. This might mean a lot of different expressions; for example, we learn about our mental and emotional health, we learn about relational health, we do internal work in our mind, bodies and soul, we embody our spirituality and the way Jesus made us, and we bring others along in this discovery. 

What advice and encouragement can you share for Mixed folks and families who are navigating how they can both honor and celebrate their own cultures and heritages in church spaces? 

I would encourage folks to be intentional in our journey of discovering parts of things you aren't sure about. For me, it was being in community with other adoptees, especially Korean adoptees, so that I could learn more about my heritage.

And it is also about being intentional with our friends as they discover aspects of their identities. We can help them in the journey of building bridges, healing, confronting things, prayer, and friendship in their stories. For the sake of love and honor, discover the aspects of identity and heritage that might be different from you. Be curious and ask about the ways that their ethnic histories have combined together. And in doing so, we can remember and celebrate the unique differences of each of us, that we are not monolithic in any aspect of life. 

Looking back, is there advice, encouragement, shout-out, or cautions you would share with your younger self that could encourage people as they navigate being mixed in Christian spaces? 

I would tell myself and folks on their own journey that while there may be initial awkwardness and out of place or “otherness,” you will learn to celebrate uniqueness as you mature and grow and develop. And as I would encourage myself, so I hope that you would not be so resistant to the growing pains of discovering things.

I would like to thank my parents and friends who have been supportive of my journey in discovering my heritage and for making room and space and for asking really poignant and thoughtful questions, and for therapists and spiritual directors who helped me stay grounded and see how Christ anchors the discovery of identity. So I would encourage you to look for family, friends, and communities that provide you space and support you need in this journey.

And finally, I would tell myself that it’s a lifelong joy to keep going and to keep going at the pace that I was most comfortable with. Just as the discovery of identity and maturity is a lifelong discipleship to Jesus, so I hope that in our own ways, we would seek maturity in Christ and learn to discover, embrace, and celebrate all the ways that our stories matter to God!

You can view a full interview with Jessica Gracewski here:

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

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Jessica Gracewski is an Asian American transracial adoptee, spiritual director, and minister in San Francisco, California.

Celebrating Culture in a Mixed Family: An "It's Complicated" Interview with Shawna Klatt

By AACC Editorial Team

We would love to hear about your Mixed background and how you navigated your daily life, relationships, and activities as you were growing up. Was it challenging to find spaces that would be welcoming of you? What were some of the things you considered when choosing what to participate in?

As a Korean adoptee growing up in a Minnesota suburb, I was one of the few people of color. Both my older sister and my best friend were also Korean adoptees so I saw others who looked like me. My favorite book growing up was “Chinese Eyes” about an adopted girl named Becky who was teased for the way she looked. My mother was very intentional about pointing out the differences in how we looked such as her blonde hair and blue eyes and my black hair and brown eyes and how beautiful they both were. There weren’t many spaces in my community that acknowledged my Korean identity. There were probably microaggressions and racism aimed towards me, but I was more innocent and naïve as a child. I knew I was Korean American but I still wanted to fit in with my white American surroundings, so I wasn’t intentionally going to spaces specific to Korean culture.

Did you have interest in exploring your Korean American identity? As someone who was adopted, how did you identify growing up and how do you think that has changed or stayed the same as you see yourself now? Or how do you see yourself now?

I grew up attending a Korean culture camp where I was with other Korean American children and would see the halmonis (Korean grandmas) cooking the Korean food for us. It was the only place where I was celebrated and fully accepted for being Korean. My mom learned how to cook Korean food so I also grew up going to the Korean market and occasionally eating Korean food at home. When I was younger I probably identified more as American and now I’m intentional about identifying as Korean American.

What are some of the ways you chose to get involved in Asian American communities? Are you currently involved?

As an adult, I mentored a teenage Korean adoptee. We occasionally talked about being Korean adoptees but it was more of a mentor/mentee friendship, and it gave her confidence spending time with someone who looked like her.

When I worked for a large corporation, I was part of a group who started the Asian Employee Network. This experience was when I became more curious and was more immersed in the Asian culture. I was around other Asian Americans with similar experiences, and it was the first time when I felt most connected to the Asian community.

I’m a member of the Also Known As (AKA) adoptee group. Most of the members are Korean and many of them have been to Korea and connected with their biological families. I’ve never attempted to find my bio family or been to Korea, but I still feel connected to my friends who’ve gone through the experience.

I was the co-lead of my company’s Asian Affinity Network for the past few years, which has kept me much closer to AAPI celebrations, holidays, and social matters. Particularly, with the increase in anti-Asian hate, I’ve been a strong leader for my AAPI colleagues and community to build awareness and advocate for changes.

I'm so curious, what's your favorite kind of food? Do you find you prefer one style of cuisine to another? 

I love pizza! But, my next favorite is Korean. Living in NYC I’ve gotten to eat more authentic Korean dishes, have access to more ingredients, and be immersed in many Asian cultures. I’ve always preferred Asian food over American. One of my favorite memories was cooking Korean food for my family and friends. Now that my son is an adult, we’ve been cooking together and I’ve been sharing the recipes that I used to make when he was younger.

What advice and encouragement can you share for Mixed folks and families who are navigating how they can both honor/celebrate their own cultures and heritages in their day-to-day?

My advice is to love yourself and appreciate your Asian beauty. You don’t need to look or act a certain way and there’s no such thing as not being Asian enough—I’ve heard people say they’re not Korean ‘enough.’ Integrate tradition, culture, food, music, media, people, etc. into your daily lives not just as an annual tradition or on occasion. Be aware of who’s in your circle of friends and support your AAPI communities as a representative and an ally.

Looking back, is there advice, encouragement, shout-out, or cautions you would share with your younger self as you particularly navigate your own mixed identity?

I would tell my younger self to be proud of my Asian American identity in every way—including my place within my family, friends, school, work and society. I’d encourage myself to advocate on behalf of other Asian Americans and to seek out and support Asian representation around me in media, community, culture, etc. I would’ve told my younger self something that I’m much aware of now: You don’t see what’s not in front of you.

You can watch our interview with Shawna here:

For more articles in this series, please see the links below:

Church Community and Global Identity: An “It’s Complicated” Interview with Justin & Carolyn Fung

Navigating a Multiracial Marriage: An Interview with Andrea and Jarius Justus

Photo by Jakub Kapusnak on Unsplash

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Shawna J. Klatt is an Attorney, Risk and Fraud Client Manager and Team Lead for Thomson Reuters and resides in New York City. She leads the development, negotiation, presentation and implementation of client relationships including educating on the benefits of risk solutions for optimal productivity in various competitive industries. 

Shawna is a former co-lead of the Thomson Reuters’ Asian Affinity Network-NY (AAN) chapter working to increase awareness of the Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) community during the pandemic and the coincident rise in anti-Asian violence in the US through education and advocacy. She was influential in creating opportunities for AAN members including forming a mentorship program, co-hosting discussions with AAPI leaders, and external panel events focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Prior to Thomson Reuters, Shawna was a law clerk for The Innocence Project of MN and a Public Defender for the state of Minnesota.

Church Community and Global Identity: An “It’s Complicated” Interview with Justin & Carolyn Fung

By AACC Editorial

To continue our It’s Complicated series, Emily Leung interviews Justin & Carolyn Fung about navigating family life, church life, cultural identity as a Mixed family.

We would love to hear about you and your wife's church background, and especially how you began to navigate that when you began your relationship. Was it challenging to find a church space that would be welcoming of the both of you? How did you decide what type of Christian community would be the best fit for the both of you? 

Carolyn: My formative young adult years were spent at a large evangelical church in North Carolina that had a focus on church planting. When I moved to DC, I wanted to find a church that was centered on preaching the gospel and cared about church planting, and when a friend brought me to the church where Justin was on staff (even though I didn’t actually know it for a while—it’s a long story), they were in the process of planting a second parish location, so that was one of the reasons I ended up staying.

Justin: My church background is a mix: raised in Hong Kong at a Baptist church, returning to faith in college at a charismatic church in London, and discovering the justice and peace traditions in my early/mid-twenties. I was part of the team that planted The District Church back in 2010 as a non-denominational, justice-focused, neighborhood church, and then subsequently joined them on staff.

In short, we both found the church separately and decided to stay for reasons not related to each other. By the time Carolyn joined the church, we’d grown into a pretty multiracial community, with several interracial couples. So on that front, we knew that as long as we both felt comfortable at the church individually, it would be a community for us as a couple.

As you blend together each of your own cultures and heritages, what have been some challenges and joys in creating a new unique mix for you and your family? Did you have other Christian friends and families who were also figuring it out, or did you find few examples of what this might look like in church spaces? Are there any anecdotes/fun (now but not in the moment heh!) stories of ways that y'all worked to bring your own experiences into your new family? 

Justin: We had a number of Asian American friends at the church who were also in interracial relationships and marriages, so we were never without companions when it came to processing dynamics with in-laws or integrating our Asian American-ness with our faith journeys or just eating well together!

Carolyn: There was definitely an awakening for me, having been brought up only within the Black-white binary of racial categories. One of the books I read early on in our relationship was Kissing Outside the Lines by actress Diane Farr, who shares about the lessons she learned being married to an Asian American man. That was eye-opening, though not from a faith perspective. As Justin said, having good friends in our church community who were in interracial relationships and marriages was invaluable.

One early memory from when we were dating was my first dim sum experience. It was something he did very regularly with a core group of friends, while also inviting others (especially who hadn’t experienced it before). Not having had dim sum before and being a bit sensitive around different textures and tastes, I knew that if this was something that was really important to Justin—something that was ‘home’ to him—then it was something I would choose to work at in order to grow to love it—and I have!

What Bible passages have been essential in shaping your views and perspectives on faithful witness and living as a mixed family? And how has your lived experience given you new insights or perspectives on passages that previously seemed foreign or less relevant to you? 

Carolyn: I didn’t come from a church where race or ethnicity was considered—and I’ve come to recognize the white normativity and colorblindness there. But being part of a multiracial and intentionally diverse community has helped me see how much more is in that statement that humankind is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) and helped me discover how the fullness of a person’s identity gives so much more texture to a story—like the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7) or the women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy (Matthew 1) or the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). At our church, one of the passages that gets named often is Revelation 7, where we see people from every nation, tribe, and language worshiping God together. That’s the day I hope for and what we try to live out right now—in our community and in our family.

Pastor Justin, as you lead in an intentionally multicultural church, how do you and your fellow ministers balance the embrace of diversity while creating space for individual members' unique cultural/racial experiences and belongings in living out the beautiful diversity of the imago Dei in your congregation? 

Justin: For me, there’s beauty both in uniqueness and in commonality—that complementarity is found even in the Trinitarian DNA that makes up the imago Dei. So we try to make room for both and recognize the need to cultivate spaces for both individuation (to use the psychological term for when an individual develops their own identity as distinct from whatever group, usually family, they came out of) and integration (where we bring our uniqueness into a mixed space and grow and learn from one another). Just as everyone has their own individual spiritual journey and ultimately has to make decisions for themselves, so also faith must be lived out and practiced in community. That applies to ethnicity, race, and culture too. 

So, for example, we have race-based affinity groups, which might seem counter to the idea of a multicultural church, but actually the purpose is (1) for healing from racial trauma in a shared space of understanding; (2) for relationships to be cultivated that encourage racially-aware Christian discipleship; and (3) for identity formation and healthy differentiation so that we can better engage together in kingdom-reflecting community as a whole church. We want to know ourselves more fully so that we can more fully appreciate who God has made us to be and bring that fullness to share in community with others who are likewise bringing all of who God has created them to be.

For my family, we became more intentional about celebrating my Taiwanese heritage and my wife's Italian heritage when we had kids (now 6 and 4), so that we could pass it down to them. How has having kids changed your perspective on being a mixed family, and what are ways that you are trying to help celebrate each of your diversities in your family?

Carolyn: Having kids has definitely led us to be more intentional in engaging our heritages. One way we engage is definitely through food. So, with part of my family being from Maryland, Justin has learned to pick crabs at a big family crab feast. Or, in addition to trying to enjoy the foods that Justin grew up eating and encouraging our kids to do the same, I’ve also tried my hand at making homemade custard tarts, and we’ve started learning and trying recipes from his mom—things he grew up eating.

Events are also a space to engage, especially as there are always fun things to teach the kids. Lunar New Year is an example. This year, we got to not only share with our kids (well, our three-year-old at least) about Chinese New Year and Justin’s experience of it growing up in Hong Kong and about the animals of the Chinese zodiac, but we also got to participate with our kids in a Korean American friend’s dumpling-making (and eating!) party.

Justin: Relationships that have shaped us have become more important since having kids. Since we had kids—and especially since the pandemic shifted our rhythms—we’ve FaceTimed with my parents twice a week, partly so that my parents will get to see my kids grow up even though they live on the other side of the world, but also so that my kids will get to see the grandparents whom they don’t get to see as often. That’s felt like an important rooting practice. It’s also been an opportunity to be more intentional in learning and recording family stories, stories that have felt more important to know, understand, and pass on as I’ve pressed into my own ethnic and racial identity.

Pastor Justin, if you have experience growing up or serving in majority-Asian church or Christian spaces, what lessons or insights do you have for how they could be more welcoming to mixed folks and families? In other words, to Asian Christians who are not mixed, what do you wish they knew about how to best love and serve those who are mixed (personally, or through their relationships)?

Justin: I understand how and why more homogenous spaces come to be, especially for migrants, minorities, and people of color. Finding, creating, and protecting spaces where those who have not been part of the dominant culture feel seen, heard, and known has been—and continues to be—so important; in that way, the affinity groups that we have at our church are sort of a microcosm of majority non-white churches or Christian spaces.

At the same time, the story of the Bible through a Christian lens is that of God making a new family of faith, one that is characterized by grace and faith in God and the love of God for all, and so if that’s the throughline, if the vision from Revelation 7 is of a multilingual, multiethnic, multicultural community of worshipers, surely part of our calling as Christ followers is to try to live into that now. The way I see it, it isn’t just nice to worship Jesus and be formed in Christlikeness with people who are different from us; we actually need each other to experience the fullness of God—we cannot do it without each other. I guess that’s not as practical but it’s the mindset and attitude that forms the foundation for any sort of welcome or inclusiveness; it’s not something that’s just nice to have.

What advice and encouragement can you share for Mixed folks and families who are navigating how they can both honor/celebrate their own culture/heritage while creating a new integrated Mixed family space of their own?

Carolyn: There are always things to learn—and especially those moments of realization can be hard, like you aren’t as far along as you hoped or thought you were. But you’re not going to figure it out overnight; growth and growth together take time. Getting to know yourself, getting to know another person, building a new thing—all of that is a lifelong journey, which is already true in a marriage but feels even more so when it relates to culture and history—and then add kids in too. So I’d say that open and gracious communication is key.

Justin: And don’t give up. Keep trying, keep talking, keep forgiving, keep learning.

You can watch an interview with Pastor Justin below:

Photo by Daniel Tseng on Unsplash

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Justin serves as the Pastor of Leadership & Spiritual Formation at Christ City Church, where he gets to live out his passion for discipleship and spiritual formation that is evidenced by justice and peace, particularly in multicultural, multiethnic, and multiclass contexts. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he lived in London for eight years and Pasadena, CA for three years before relocating to the District in 2009. Justin lives in the Trinidad neighborhood of Washington, DC, with his wife Carolyn and their two kids.

Navigating a Multiracial Marriage: An Interview with Andrea and Jairus Justus

By AACC Editorial Team

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n this month’s Reclaim series, AACC is highlighting the diversity of Mixed AAPI Christian experiences, including the unique challenges faced by Mixed individuals and families as well as the beauty they bring to the Church. Today, we hear from Andrea and Jairus Justus about how the Lord has worked in and through their multiracial marriage.

To begin, how would you describe your racial/ethnic backgrounds? 

Jairus: My parents are both Indian (born and raised), and I was born in Dubai, UAE. We lived there until I was around eight, and then we moved to Minnesota where I grew up. I would consider myself American, but I also understand and appreciate Indian culture. 

Andrea: I am White and would say I'm culturally American and ethnically European. I'm fourth/fifth generation American but grew up aware of the different origins of my family, particularly Scottish and Swedish. 

As you started your relationship, did you have other models of mixed families, especially in church spaces? How have you blended each of your cultural experiences together within your own family? 

Andrea: Creating a unique mix of our lives was actually hard in a lot of ways. Most of my friends are either single or met their spouse in college or at church camp, which meant they shared a lot of friends and shared experiences. When Jairus and I met, we were both living very independent lives and so I was hungry for any advice the few couples I knew in similar situations could give us.

Blending cultures in a family can be as simple as choosing culturally specific flowers at a wedding or baking grandma's recipes or wearing certain clothes. I love getting to join Jairus' family traditions and hearing the things he appreciates about Indian culture, because I love learning about him and creating our unique family together.

Jairus: A lot of my family is interracial, which was helpful in seeing what challenges they went through and how they blended cultures together. At church, this was more rare, but there were a few couples that we could relate to in terms of the differences in our upbringings and how these differences may affect our reactions to each other. 

How has Scripture shaped your understanding of faithful witness as a mixed family? How have your cultural experiences given you new insights into passages that might have seemed more foreign to you? 

Jairus: When I was growing up, my parents absolutely wanted me to marry an Indian girl. It took me a while to see in the Bible that Jesus loves us all equally and cared for people regardless of their race or background. We are encouraged to have that same love, and it took me time to realize that it’s okay to feel attraction to someone who may not understand everything that I've been through culturally — It's just an opportunity to share my culture with someone else in a new way. 

Andrea: Appreciating diverse perspectives in my personal life has allowed me to see more perspectives in the Bible. One example is that in Jairus' family it’s not common to wear much jewelry because his grandparents wanted to be faithful to God when they converted to Christianity and to stand out from a culture that wasn't widely Christian. On the other hand, my family doesn’t give wearing jewelry a second thought, so it's been interesting to look at Bible verses about wearing jewelry and ask questions like, “What is the heart behind this story or teaching in the Bible, and how have people in my life lived in accordance with the heart of these verses?” These relationships encourage me to ask critical questions of how we live out our faith and appreciate our families' faithfulness. 

Was it difficult to find a church space that was welcoming of the both of you, with your unique cultural backgrounds and experiences?

Andrea: One of the things we wanted in a church was the value of diversity, which can be hard to find, especially in Minnesota. It is common to find places that have a few people of different races attending, but that's very different from a community that purposefully uplifts and values different cultures. It’s taken some searching, but we’re thankful to have both been part of church communities that are working to do this. 

What challenges to belonging have you encountered in Christian spaces? Have you encountered postures or practices in non-Christian spaces that more Christians might apply to their churches and ministries?

Jairus: I don't think I've ever been purposefully slighted or mistreated in either space, but I've had some awkward conversations in both spaces (I remember someone at church asking me about the color of my dandruff out of pure curiosity). A lot of assumptions can be made (“How was Diwali?” or “Did you do something for this or that Indian holiday?”), and it's kind of embarrassing for me to admit how “not Indian” I am as someone who was raised in the U.S. 

Andrea: As a White person who grew up in a very stereotypical "American" house, there were very few spaces where I didn’t feel like I belonged. 

I think some non-Christian spaces are getting better at valuing diversity in a way that's more than just performative, and Christian churches could learn from these approaches of teaching people how to view and talk about cultural differences. Many people don't even have the language to begin talking about diversity. It can feel hard to know how much culture we can bring into church, because some Christians like to emphasize that we're all one in Christ without recognizing that there are cultural differences that make up that one-ness. 

In the Bible, I see a God who deeply values cultural expression and connection. Holding our identity in Christ as our highest and truest identity doesn't mean that culture doesn't matter at all. I think churches that don't equip their people to celebrate diversity (in all ways, including cultural and social and neurological diversity) are missing out on the fullness of God's kingdom and character. 

What advice and encouragement can you share for mixed families who are navigating how to honor and celebrate their own heritages while creating a unique family of their own?

Andrea: Pay attention to the cultural traditions that are important to you and include them in spaces and celebrations. The only right way to do it is what works for you — celebrating your heritage doesn't have to look the same as it did for your parents. I'm thankful I grew up with a knowledge of and connection to my cultural heritage, so I look for ways to put that in our lives. 

What advice do you have for how the church might best love and serve mixed people and families?

Jairus: Be patient and give people space to make mistakes and figure things out. I think grace and communication are the two greatest pieces of bringing different cultures together. 

Photo by Jasmine Carter

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Andrea is a museum educator and oral historian passionate about connecting people with stories and each other. She equally loves summer sunshine and a good snowstorm, and could never live too far from a body of water. In her free time, she likes to read, bake, eat chocolate, and spend time outside. 

Jairus is an engineer that does R&D for a 3D printing company. He has a passion for the outdoors, forming new relationships, playing sports and most anything tech related. Currently, he's working on building a new computer, learning more about cooking by avidly watching Master Chef and the Great British Bake Off, and trying to find time for naps.

Reclaiming Mixed Identity and Dignity

By Katie Nguyen

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here is a need perhaps now more than ever for the wide range of our beautiful Mixed stories and voices to be heard. Stories often peppered with questions of belonging…Is there space for my whole story? What box do I check? Where do I fit? Why do I fit nowhere and everywhere? Even using the term “Mixed” to describe the multiracial experience is an act of reclaiming dignity and space for ourselves.

As Reclaim begins our journey highlighting and amplifying the wide breadth of the Mixed AAPI Christian experience in America, we want to remind our Mixed brothers and sisters that there is space for you.

Conversations about racial injustice in this country tend to be most often polarized into only Black or White. If it’s a particularly thoughtful conversation, the collective imagination may expand to also include Asian and Latino experiences. However, rolling up our sleeves to wade into the deeper waters of shedding light on the Mixed experience is almost always overlooked. The best we get is an attempted shoehorning into whichever culture the majority folks decide we fit “best” into, often leaving us with the feeling that we don’t truly belong anywhere.

No racial, ethnic, or cultural group is a monolith and bringing in Mixed voices to an already complicated, messy conversation seems like it would only serve to make things messier and even more complicated. However, it’s precisely this perceived weakness where our strength as a community lies. Being Mixed does not mean you are part of one culture and part of another; being Mixed means being fully you, as well as the full mix of the entirety of your ethnic and cultural background. You are wholly, uniquely you: A whole, Mixed, beautiful creation bearing God’s image. Our Lord himself is the embodied epitome of what it is to be Mixed: fully our triune God and fully human. Folks with Mixed backgrounds have the gift of bringing an inherently expanded perspective into any room we walk into simply by being our fully embodied, Mixed selves.

Over the course of the next few months as AACC invites you to engage with us in this expansive, no-size-fits-all topic, we hope you’ll be able to hear elements of other people’s experiences as a Mixed AAPI Christian that resonate with you. We’ll be hearing from different Mixed brothers and sisters in regards to relationships, families, finding your place in church spaces, navigating blending different family traditions, and that’s just the beginning. We also hope we can begin engaging in this storytelling process to widen the perspective of what it means to bring your cultural and ethnic background into conversations about your faith for anyone who reads these articles. Whether you’re here because you resonate with these sentiments, or because you want to seek how to expand your own perspective through listening, we hope this series can serve as a source of encouragement and edification for you.

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Katie is a bi-racial Vietnamese/White pastor, writer, & teacher who leads Sol Life, a joint Youth Ministry between two churches in the historically marginalized Eastside of Austin. She is currently completing an M.A. in Christian Leadership at Dallas Theological Seminary and earned her B.A. in English with teacher certification from Texas State University.

Navigating Seminary: A Q&A with AAPI Seminarians

By Emily Leung, Katie Nguyen, Isaiah Hobus, and Joshua Huver

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hen I was a sophomore in my undergraduate program, one of my Bible professors stopped me in the hallway and asked what I intended to do after I graduate. I said I’d likely apply to several churches in hopes of finding a ministry position. He seemed supportive but not enthusiastic. He said, “Well, have you considered going to seminary?” To be honest, it never crossed my mind that I should consider seminary education. Why should I? And if I did, which school or degree? Should I pursue a graduate school, divinity school, or an evangelical seminary? For many students like myself, the prospect of pursuing seminary or higher theological education is exciting, but at the same time, daunting.

Moreover, as I began perusing seminary websites, I realized that finding a seminary that actively supports AAPI students and engages AAPI perspectives in the classroom is rare. Not to mention, statistically, Asian American professors account for less than 10 percent of seminary/theological educators in the US. I can’t help but ask myself, would my identity as an Asian American be valued or diminished during my education? Is it possible to pursue a seminary that nourishes both my ethnic identity and vocational calling? 

In this final installment of our Reclaim Seminary series, I speak with three seminarians at different stages of their seminary careers: Isaiah Hobus, who just finished his first trimester; Katie Nguyen, who is in her final year; and Emily Leung, who graduated from seminary. They share their journey and advice for future AAPI seminary students.

To begin our discussion, what seminary did you attend and why did you choose your particular seminary?

EL: Hey y’all, I’m Emily. I attended Fuller Theological Seminary and graduated with a Masters in Theology. I chose to attend Fuller for both educational and personal reasons. I’m originally from southern California and at the time was living on the east coast. I was also choosing between Fuller and Princeton. For me, Fuller offered the opportunity to study with a myriad of accomplished scholars while also being closer to my family. After being across the country for a few years, I decided it was time to return. 

KN: Hey! My name is Katie Nguyen, and I essentially chose to attend seminary (instead of pursuing an MA in Literature w/ an emphasis in Chaucer/Medieval Lit) because God told me to. Seriously. I wasn’t thinking about it at all until God pretty much led me by the nose to the application and degree program sites. I ended up choosing Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) mainly because they had the most robust online distance program, as I was also about to enter into full-time youth ministry. At the time, I was just looking for a seminary that didn’t have wildly unorthodox theology, and I liked that I could pursue their MA in Christian Leadership, which is basically a Master of Divinity (MDiv) minus Hebrew and Greek.

IH: I attend Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois, a suburb right outside of Chicago. I recently graduated from my Biblical and Theological Studies program at Bethel University this past spring. I jumped straight into my MDiv program at Northern a few months later while taking a full-time job in youth ministry. The majority of my program is virtual, but for intensive courses over the summer, I go to campus. This works well alongside my job. I decided to attend Northern following the recommendation of one of my professors from Bethel who specialized in practical theology and missional theology. 

In my undergraduate program, I grew increasingly interested in thinking about ministry theologically, following the lead of this professor, and bridging my identity as a Korean American to my studies. Given its diverse faculty and wide range of programs, Northern seemed to provide the best context to stretch my thinking and pursue the questions I was asking. The final confirmation for me was a conversation I had with an alumni from Northern who told me he went to Northern to study to be a pastor. He wanted to be inside of the homes of people and sharing in the lives of others. I saw myself in those words. 

What kind of resources did your seminary have for cultivating your identity or fostering AAPI communities? Did you find them helpful? 

EL: Fuller’s Asian American Center offers many opportunities as an AAPI student. From course offerings to centering groups, I am thankful for the time spent learning and growing with my fellow classmates. Shout out to Daniel Lee, Academic Dean for the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry who leads the Asian American Center! 

KN: *insert chuckle here* None. Even though DTS is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which has a relatively high AAPI population, they don’t (and still don’t to my knowledge) really have any specific resources to help me develop an embodied identity or theology that envelops my AAPI identity. Even less so when you take into consideration that I’m bicultural, mixed Vietnamese/White. All of the work of developing an embodied theology is work I’ve done externally from my seminary as I’ve made connections to different AAPI Christian voices and leaders across the country through various methods. Shout out to Angie Hong, Nikole Lim, Michelle Reyes, Kathy Khang, & Tiffany Bluhm — all of whom have fantastic ministries worth following and getting acquainted with as AAPI seminarians — for being among those life-giving connections! We are not alone. 

That being said, something else I have appreciated is that the professors and staff at DTS are aware of ways they have caused hurt in the past and are actively seeking to listen, learn, and grow. That self-awareness has made all the difference while I’ve been at DTS.

IH: Northern has two great Asian American faculty: Nijay Gupta and Gabriel Catanus. I hope to take as many classes as possible with both of these professors. To my knowledge, the two faculty are really the only resources for AAPI seminary students at Northern. Although this is not specifically for Asian Americans, Northern has a Christian Community Development program, which revolves around ministry courses informed by social justice and racial reconciliation deriving from the gospel. This program is the emphasis for my MDiv program. I hope these courses, along with others, will continue to inform my journey of intersection with my Korean American identity and my faith. 

How has your identity as an Asian American informed your work or theology as a seminarian?  

EL: When I started at Fuller, I had moved back from a large east coast city to my childhood home. Moving from coast to coast, from a metropolitan community to a beach city in the suburbs, I experienced a sort of culture shock. I’m a fourth-generation Chinese American and I grew up in a predominantly White space. I had always considered myself more multicultural rather than Asian American. I don’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin and I have a great-grandparent who worked on the California railroads, but my last name is also a paper last name. It was at Fuller where I really had the chance to explore the intersectionality of my identity. There was so much to unpack and I hadn’t really started any of it until seminary. I am thankful for the time spent in my Asian American Ministry and Identity class and the AAPI Centering group. 

As I continue to explore what it looks like to continue to connect with people, I am grateful for the opportunities I had to be curious about my culture. Now, more than ever, I am able to lean into the harder questions surrounding race, culture, and the imago Dei. It’s a process and I encourage those who are considering seminary (and those who aren’t) to be encouraged to know that we are always in the process and to both challenge oneself and be patient with oneself in our self discovery and God-given gifts. 

KN: As I mentioned already, I haven’t necessarily had resources within my seminary experience to explicitly participate in that sort of development. However, something I’ve felt every time I’ve had an in-person intensive is that I am a minority voice amongst the majority of my DTS peers. Meaning, my background and experience is outside of the norm for DTS students in a lot of ways: being mixed, being Southeast Asian, being raised by a single mom, having a heavily matriarchal heritage of faith in my family, and even being a woman for that matter. 

Nevertheless, what I have always appreciated about my professors is that in every in-person class they have always taken time to acknowledge the need for non-White, non-male voices. Not necessarily because those are bad voices to have, but to expand what voices are speaking and heard in the realm of theology and church leadership in America. I actually felt more intentionally supported, seen, and encouraged specifically as a mixed Vietnamese female pastor by the professors at DTS than I did by the church I was working at and attending at the time.

IH: For as long as I can remember, I have professed faith in Christ, but for the majority of my life, I never knew the God I worshiped had anything to say about my experience as an Asian American. It was not until I had an Asian American professor who had our class read an Asian American biblical scholar where this thought crossed my mind. Following this, I began to read other Asian American theologians like: Sang Hyun Lee, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, and Andrew Sung Park (all of whom are Korean like myself). Reading these scholars helped me uncover repressed emotions, remember racist experiences I forced myself to forget, give language to my experience, and encounter a Christ who brought healing to my experience with foreignness. My theological imagination was completely subverted. 

Eventually, this led me to write my senior thesis on uncovering the “Christ-ness” of the category imposed on Asian American of being perpetual foreigners. In short, I found Jesus’ experience, according to the Gospels, reflecting the experience of myself and other Asian Americans particularly in Jesus being mocked as a foreigner, by people he called his own (John 9:48) and being rejected by his hometown (Mark 6:1-6). I saw Jesus perpetually existed in a third space of foreignness like Asian Americans. This Christ, that the Gospels witness toward, has deeply shaped my studies and discipleship. My hope is to pursue further study in these questions surrounding who I am and my faith in seminary and beyond.

What advice would you give for those considering seminary?

EL: Seminary is a challenging experience not only because of the academic commitment, but also the time you take to examine your own understanding of theology, biblical study, spirituality, and more. I remember hearing someone say, “seminary is cemetery,” suggesting many people lose their faith. I would challenge and encourage someone who is considering seminary to evaluate and consider the why, what, and who. 

Why are you seeking a theology degree? Why now? Why school? What expectations are you bringing into the experience? You’ll likely need to be ready for change because you’ll probably take a class or have a discussion or experience that will influence your worldview and understanding of God. Who are your people? Community is essential. Seminary can be a lonely place. Having a community of support — people who lament, celebrate, and walk alongside you — makes the experience all the more enriching. 

Finally, I want to extend an open invitation to anyone who may have further questions about my own experience and process. I am so thankful for all those who I was able to connect and speak with. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or my website! 

KN: COMMUNITY MATTERS. All caps, emphasis added. Attending seminary and studying theology can (and should be!) a beautiful experience, as you are literally dedicating your time, energy, and soul to contemplating the highest possible object of thought—our God. Attending seminary with a proper attunement to your own mental health, holding the tension of busy/less busy seasons, and remaining in God-centered, God-honoring community are all lifelines to being able to better behold that beauty. It’s when people disappear into the deep, dark hole of a purely individual pursuit of God outside of community that things begin to go wrong. 

In my first class at DTS, one of the first things Dr. K said was this: “Theology and the study and pursuit of God is best done—and should be done—in community.” That’s not a direct quote, but I think he would agree that it’s a pretty good summation of his point: the Christian life is intended to be lived out, strengthened, and sharpened in community. We need each other, and seminarians are no different because you realize that you are a Master of None at the end of your program. In that light, I’m always available to talk and support newer seminary students, especially AAPI brothers and sisters. Feel free to connect with me on Instagram. The Body needs our voices.

Overall, don’t feel like you need to check your AAPI identity at the door for any sphere you step into. It’s that exact cultural and ethnic background that I believe God is using to equip the Body now. There’s a whole community of AAPI theologians out here cheering you on! It’s time.

IH: If you are considering ministry as a vocation, in any capacity, do seminary. It matters. Now that I am in youth ministry, there is nothing I have fallen back on more than my studies and learning. For me, it has stretched, challenged, and sharpened my vocation in a multitude of positive ways. I cannot recommend it enough. If you are an AAPI person interested in seminary, know your “Asianness” is deeply loved and cherished by God; I deeply wish I understood this earlier in my life. I personally believe theology is always informed by particular identity and narrative; theology is never not contextual. It is impossible to separate context from theology. The language of our faith (theology) does not only speak to the experience and crises of our largely White theological canon, but also to the experiences and crises of AAPI folks and all other persons that make up God’s creation. Also feel free to connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn. 

For more articles in this series:

“Direction for AAPI Seminary Students: A Professor’s Perspective” by Bernon Lee and Isaiah Hobus

“Being Asian American in Seminary: The Good, the Bad, and the Hopeful” by Christy Chia

“An Asian American Seminarians Journey Homeward” by Derek Wu.

“The State of Asian American Theology in Seminary: Thoughts from an Outgoing Graduate” by Justin Nitta.

“The Need for Asian American Theological Scholarship” by Chiwon Kim.

Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash

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Southern Californian living in the Bay Area, Emily (she/her/hers) has her BA in Media, Culture, and the Arts and MA in Theology. She's a fast-talker, loves soft-serve ice cream, and can always be found with a book in her bag. You can connect with her on Instagram and Linkedin!

Katie is a bi-racial Vietnamese/White pastor, writer, & teacher who leads Sol Life, a joint Youth Ministry between two churches in the historically marginalized Eastside of Austin. She is currently completing an M.A. in Christian Leadership at Dallas Theological Seminary and earned her B.A. in English with teacher certification from Texas State University.

Isaiah Hobus is a recent graduate of Bethel University with a degree in biblical and theological studies, and currently a Master’s of Divinity student with an emphasis in Christian community development at Northern Seminary. He is also a youth outreach associate at a nonprofit ministry for teens, Treehouse Hope in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where he mentors teenagers. In his spare time, he enjoys reliving his days as a college athlete in cross country and track through runs, sticking his nose in a book, and guzzling black coffee.

Joshua Huver is an editor with the Asian American Christian Collaborative. He has an MA in Biblical Exegesis from Wheaton College and serves as a student ministries pastor at FaithBridge Church in West Chicago, IL. Connect with him on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Direction for AAPI Seminary Students: A Professor’s Perspective

By Bernon Lee & Isaiah Hobus

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uring the second year of my Biblical Theological Studies program at Bethel University, I enrolled in Dr. Bernon Lee’s class, Reading the Hebrew Bible. We spent a class period analyzing the Chinese American Biblical Scholar Gale Yee’s chapter, “‘She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn’: Ruth, The Perpetual Foreigner and Model Minority.” This was the first time in my life any aspect of my identity as an Asian American was explicitly bridged to any aspect of my faith. I credit Dr. Lee for shaping much of my discipleship to Christ and vocation by helping me heal a split inside myself that had been implicitly preached to me without words. I pray what follows has a similar impact. In this edited interview with Dr. Lee, I asked him about his background, experiences, and the importance of seminary education to explicitly engage culture and identity.

As an Asian American professor, how has your identity impacted your scholarship and teaching? 

That was a relatively late development for me. I grew up in postcolonial Singapore. Singapore was a British colony until 1963. I was born in 1968. I was born into a world where the clout of the British way still hung over all of us: its cultural norms, its sense of beauty, a sense of what is proper, a sense of what is civilized. Singapore remains until today, a nation living under the Anglo-American umbrella. All that to say, it never struck me—for many many years—as a plausible or profitable course of action to pursue Asian American interests in anything because if you live in a postcolonial world where the ghost of England inhabits the world, you know, your thinking is that the way of progress runs west. 

So much of my thinking in my early academic life was doing the stuff I saw many scholars doing, which in Biblical Studies was the historical and literary approach that came out of the German academy. But sometimes when you get older, maybe you call it the Asian American midlife crisis, I don’t know what it is, but something inside of you catches up. It is not uncommon. You realize, I have been inhabiting a White world all my life. There is an itch inside me saying, “what about your early years, this other way of thinking, these other languages that are dancing inside of my head?” It’s just back there, buried back in you for a long time, because you have been trying to grow up and live in this world under Anglo-American hegemony. There was just an innate curiosity to ask myself, “What am I doing?” I guess it comes out in my writing. What all writers do is essentially… when they write, they start from the question of, “who am I?” So I began to ask myself, “Who am I? What am I doing? What do I have to say to the world?” The natural answer to that comes out of the stuff of childhood, the Singapore stuff and how it inhabits the way I look at everything, not just Biblical Studies. 

Can you explain challenges directly related to working in an academic context as an Asian American faculty member? 

From conversations and my own experience, it is not uncommon for Asian Americans to feel we’re entering a context where we feel diversity and difference and our heritage is celebrated when we are interviewed and pursued for positions. Once you’re in, the expectation is that you will pursue a method of teaching that is very much just what evangelical scholarship does—methods conforming very much to the shape of a modern Western mold. Many of the specific interests that inform the Asian American mind in interrogating these subjects are viewed as suspect. Largely because we are exploring ways of seeing and ways of thinking that are “other” with respect to the mainstream. It is not uncommon for many Asian Americans to come into the academy in an evangelical context and, well, the complaint is typically something along these lines, “They wanted me for my different perspective but they want me to sing the same tune as everyone else. They just want me to do it [sing the tune], looking the way that I do.”

Evangelicalism, in the context of the broader North American culture, from how I see things, feels as if it’s under assault. Gatekeeping is on the mind. Everyone wants to deconstruct eurocentrism and everyone would be willing to admit that so much of what we do in just about anything is filtered through that particular vision. But the worry is that you will throw the baby out with the bathwater. If Christianity is so hitched to Western culture as it developed, and as we try to move away from that, there is a fear that we will lose the Christian message altogether. It is very hard to unhitch the wagon without spilling the goods. 

What are your thoughts on the lack of AAPI representation in seminaries? 

A former colleague of mine, a retiring professor, said to me, “Bernon, you need to keep your eye on maintaining diversity.” He was talking about gender and racial diversity. The ‘natural’ thing to do [in the white academy] is [keep] go[ing] White, he says. When I walk into the room—a bit of a confession here—my eyes are drawn to people that I think are like me. If that is what we all do quite naturally, and there’s a certain warmth in our hearts for people we think are like us (whether they are or not is a different thing altogether), I mean, doesn’t that influence the way we make decisions? If people of European ancestry are in positions of power, what goes on in my mind might be the stuff that goes on in theirs as well. 

If you are not intentional about checking that, then it’ll wield its power over us. It is not about saying that we’re just going to pick an inferior candidate just for the sake of getting someone ‘different’ from us [however we perceive ourselves]. I’m talking about those cases where candidates are close to being of equal standing, all things considered, and the majority group in an institution simply, quite unintentionally in most cases I think, just reproduces itself. We all have to check ourselves, really. 

How do we go about unraveling the claim, whether implicitly or sometimes explicitly, that Asian American Biblical/Theological studies is “liberal” or “illegitimate”?  

There is, in many minds, this mainstream and its bag of methods that are undertaken and used to integrate ways of looking at things; and then there is another bag, outside the mainstream. That’s debatable, questionable, but that’s the context we inherit. The Asian American scholar who wants to pursue Asian American interests in whatever discipline, needs to understand this construct, even as it wanes. How are you going to help people see that there is a diversity in the mainstream as well, and this distinction that we've made between this bag and this bag is, in many ways, quite arbitrary? We might go as far as to say that it’s based on a racialized way of looking at things. My recommendation is that when you undertake scholarship and teaching that is focused on Asian American issues, gender issues, socio-economic issues, class issues, you articulate an argument and a position that brings your argument together with some of the methods that are deemed to be in the so-dubbed mainstream. This is a very old method deployed by people on the fringes. If you are going to influence people in the main, in the spaces of power, you have to use their methods to make your arguments because those are the methods that are respected, well regarded. And, in many cases, they are also deeply relevant to what is happening in Asian American studies. 

So, when I undertake scholarship that touches on Asian biblical interpretation, I talk about things through the lens of poststructuralism. I use the language of psychoanalysis, of the brand of aesthetics deployed by the Geneva School of phenomenology and reader-response. Lately, trauma theory has shaped my thinking. I try to understand how the experience of something catastrophic influences the way we read things, influences the way we remember things, and therefore influences the way we write. It influences the way we think about biblical law and the historiography of the Hebrew Bible. I bring what I do into conversation with affect theory. I bring it into conversation with biblical scholars' understanding of the exilic and post-exilic landscape and how Persian and Hellenistic hegemony influenced the way Jewish scribes composed their literature. This is all stuff most consider to be in the mainstream. Much of Asian American studies is breaking ground in the sense that it’s focused on Asian American interests, but many of the methods are well worn paths of thinking in the academy. 

So, my advice to Asian American scholars is read broadly. Make sure what you are doing is thoroughly embedded in the broader discourse of the academy. Your particular pursuits should not prove myopic in the final analysis of your peers. Once you begin to use that kind of language—the well-established ways of the West—it’s just so much harder to dismiss your work and to sweep it into the margins. 

What resources and biblical scholars and theologians would you recommend for both AAPI Christians and AAPI seminary students to engage with and what encouragement can you give in this?  

It’s natural to go to notable Asian American scholars: Gale Yee and Tat-Siong Benny Liew in Biblical Studies, or Kwok Pui-Lan in theology. Certainly, read their work. Understand them well. But when you read these scholars and you check their footnotes, you see how well read they are! Tat-Siong Benny Liew is increasingly involved, I think, in expanding the footprint of psychoanalysis and trauma theory in biblical interpretation in exciting ways. If you read Gale Yee you will find a battery of sources on social scientific methods applied to biblical interpretation. You will find a rich trove of sources there. They are involved in Biblical Studies and Asian American studies, but they are not just reading in that area. Look at their footnotes and look at what they are reading. As you decide what angle of vision is going to be appropriate to what you want to do as a writer, go and read deeply in that area. Start with Asian American religious studies, pay attention to what interests you. Then, find what the movers in those areas are reading: look at their footnotes. 

But always, be mindful of the stuff that moves you. Find a way in your research and writing to channel your interests and energy. When you find that, it’ll just flow. It may take you out of Asian American studies, but that’s ok too. Read broadly, read outside of your area of interest. Pay attention to how different authors use language and the passion they have. Read good literature like Pramoedya Ananta Toer, one of my favorites, who is speaking out against Dutch colonialism in what is now Indonesia. If we can bring some of that into the academy and mix that up with good solid thinking that is interdisciplinary and that is thoroughly embedded in the rich methods of the academy, mainstream or not, magic can happen. Read broadly and let that channel your passions.  

For more articles in this series:

“Being Asian American in Seminary: The Good, the Bad, and the Hopeful” by Christy Chia.

“An Asian American Seminarians Journey Homeward” by Derek Wu.

“The State of Asian American Theology in Seminary: Thoughts from an Outgoing Graduate” by Justin Nitta.

“The Need for Asian American Theological Scholarship” by Chiwon Kim.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels

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Bernon Lee grew up in Singapore. He arrived in Canada to complete his formal education at the University of Calgary and the Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto. Before his current position as Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at St. Andrew's College in the Saskatoon Theological Union, he taught at Bethel University (Minnesota) and at Grace College and Seminary (Indiana). Currently, his research focuses on nineteenth-century biblical interpretation in imperial contexts.

Isaiah Hobus is a recent graduate of Bethel University with a degree in biblical and theological studies, and currently a Master’s of Divinity student with an emphasis in Christian community development at Northern Seminary. He is also a youth outreach associate at a nonprofit ministry for teens, Treehouse Hope in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where he mentors teenagers. In his spare time, he enjoys reliving his days as a college athlete in cross country and track through runs, sticking his nose in a book, and guzzling black coffee.

Being Asian American in Seminary: The Good, the Bad, and the Hopeful

By Christy Chia

"T

his feels so right! I’m exactly where I should be as a woman in seminary!” This thought ran through my mind during my first day on campus. Peace, excitement, and hope rose anew in me as I saw women lead freely and empowered. I had chosen Fuller Theological Seminary for its support of women in ministry, but it never crossed my mind that I should look for a seminary that cared about racial justice too.

I am now entering my last year of my M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary. In the past two years, I have seen the good, the bad, and glimpses of hope. Here is my story.

The Good

Upon starting my first quarter, I immediately connected with the Asian American Center (AAC). They have toiled to advocate for Asian Americans within both theological education and church settings, providing Asian American courses: Asian American Identity and Ministry, Asian American Theologies, Asian American Pastoral Ministry, Missional Leadership in Asian American Contexts (discontinued), and other forms of support, such as Asian American spiritual formation groups.

In my time at Fuller, I am learning what it means to be Asian American in a racialized society. I have been equipped with the language and frameworks to process my experiences and identity. I learned the value and difficulties of nuance. I am coming to recognize my privileges as well as my disadvantages. Here, I can research the topics and questions important to Asian American communities. 

I have also been empowered to lead. For the past two years, I have served on leadership with our Asian American Student Fellowship (AASF), which works closely with the AAC. I also serve on the Fuller Student Council, where I can contribute to the direction of the seminary and speak truth to power. My time at Fuller has illuminated my understanding of who I am and has given me opportunities to lead as an embodied person. However, as with any community, Fuller is far from perfect.

The Bad

Although the COVID-19 pandemic revealed anti-Asian racism to many, anti-Asian racism has existed and permeates our institutions, classrooms, and theologies. In one class, Scripture was manipulated to urge me to disregard my Chinese American Christian identity and heritage; instead, I was told to assimilate to the White-normative American church. I have encountered assigned readings of research sloppily and irreverently interpreted based on false stereotypes. I have experienced unfair expectations and grading when writing on non-White topics. It is bittersweet when terms like “Black-White Binary,” “Perpetual Foreigner,” and “Orientalism,” become part of your everyday vocabulary. On the one hand, they are finally identifiable; and on the other, they can no longer be ignored. 

The hardest part of my seminary experience has been the mental and emotional toll that comes with experiencing microaggressions (whose impact is anything but minor) – the inner turmoil of processing what happened and deciding how to respond, the abuse of dismissive gaslighting, and the guilt of missing the chance to speak up, which motivates me to speak up now but continues to haunt me. Every space becomes unsafe as I never know where the next offense will come from. The burden and exhaustion of constantly having to fight for myself and my community is crushing.

In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 brought a society-wide onslaught of anti-Asian racism. Though this was acknowledged in small pockets within Fuller, I was disappointed that no institutional statement denouncing anti-Asian racism was issued. Additionally, few professors addressed the rising anti-Asian racism to their classes. The school’s collective silence effectively erased Asian experience, surprising given its commitment to the pursuit of racial justice. Students of Asian descent – the second largest racial group at Fuller – wondered if anyone cared at all. Distressed students carried this weight in quiet isolation, unsure of where they could safely talk about it.

Anti-Asian racism with the rise of COVID-19 and concurrent racism in the classroom thrusted me into the world of racial justice, a topic my home communities had not prepared me to engage. I found myself scrambling up the steep learning curve of student activism. Luckily, I was not alone.

The Hopeful

Asian American and Asian community members throughout the seminary began speaking up and holding space for each other. They shared their experiences of racism both inside and outside the classroom. The AASF and AAC partnered to hold processing spaces for our students, staff, and faculty of Asian descent.

I leveraged my roles as student council representative and leader of AASF to highlight anti-Asian racism in meetings to staff, faculty, and administrators. My co-leads and I shared students’ classroom experiences of racism, acknowledging that our community members might lack the knowledge to recognize it. Our work culminated in a Fuller-wide educational Zoom meeting, hosted in conjunction with the AAC, where we presented examples of anti-Asian racism at Fuller and began an institution-wide conversation to address it. Thankfully, our justice-oriented administration, faculty, and staff have been largely reflective and supportive – even the President of the seminary gave us his full backing. Our Asian American community and allies throughout the institution cheered us on. 

In February, Fuller finally released a statement denouncing anti-Asian racism. The seminary also committed to focus on AAPI issues at all levels of the institution in the new academic year, a promise which is being kept. In the aftermath of the Atlanta massacre, Fuller promptly stood with its Asian American and Asian community, condemned racism in all its forms, and offered tangible means of support. These commitments spark hope while providing a concrete base from which to keep the institution accountable.

All in all, I am grateful to be here. I am making a difference, even if just a small one, building on the work of so many advocates who have and are pursuing racial justice. The fight against racism is far from new – as it is far from done – at Fuller. Decades of students, faculty, and staff of color have survived worse, have challenged Fuller forward towards racial justice, and sacrificed much to do so. The Asian American Center, our community of color, and our allies are paving the way before us and with us. We are in it together.

How should seminaries actively care for their Asian American students?

Reflecting on my experiences and that of my peers, I believe there are some ways that seminaries can better care for Asian American students. The following ideas are a starting place; the list is not exhaustive, and how it may be applied varies by setting.

1. Actively care by actually caring. No amount of institutional change will be enough if the seminary and the community within it does not truly care about each other. The first step is relational. Get to know us. Value us. Empower us.

2. Have an institution-wide theological commitment to anti-racism. It is much more common to find individuals, groups, or centers within the seminary that care about racial justice than it is to find an entire institution dedicated to racial justice, but that is what it will take. It is also important that the framework of anti-racism not only addresses anti-blackness or sees POC as Black and Brown, but also includes the diverse and unique racial experience of people of Asian descent.

3. Seek to hear the experiences of your Asian American students and expect it to get worse before it gets better. What I mean by this is, once the doors to these conversations open, what is unspoken will now be revealed – experiences of racism, critiques of institutional shortcomings, and community-members who have missed the mark. Do not dismiss or deny it, nor rush through the discomfort. It is worth it. Strengthen reporting processes to collect and address student concerns, particularly for microaggressions. Advocate on behalf of students, especially the DEI officer(s) and Dean of Students.

4. Put your money (and your power) where your mouth is. Some examples: launch and allocate sufficient funding to Asian American centers and programs, hire Asian American faculty and staff who understand Asian American identity and history within a racialized society, and have Asian Americans at all levels of the seminary.

5. Offer learning opportunities that include the nuanced Asian American experience and dispel myths. Train community members to recognize and respond to anti-Asian racism. Include required readings from diverse Asian American perspectives in course syllabi. Regularly host educational and interdisciplinary lectures and conversations.

6. Be proactive. Do not wait for student activists to hold the institution accountable. Student activism is an imposed burden, which some choose to take on, but is not their job. We should not have to organize, create a movement, and/or protest before being heard. Ask your Asian American community what is needed and fulfill it.

For more articles in this series:

“An Asian American Seminarians Journey Homeward” by Derek Wu.

“The State of Asian American Theology in Seminary: Thoughts from an Outgoing Graduate” by Justin Nitta.

“The Need for Asian American Theological Scholarship” by Chiwon Kim.

Photo by sean Kong on Unsplash

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Christy Chia is a butcher-turned seminarian (long story) from San Francisco who is wrapping up her M.Div. at Fuller Seminary. She is passionate about creating safe spaces for empowering women and people of color in the church. Christy is currently serving on the Fuller Student Council and with Fuller’s Asian American Student Fellowship. She loves to recharge by playing with dogs, working with her hands, and treating herself to a weekly meal of poke and boba.

The Need for Asian American Theological Scholarship

By Chiwon Kim

White Male Normativity in Conventional Theological Scholarship

It was the 2019 Welcome Week at Fuller Theological Seminary, and as a new student, I participated in the orientation program with the hope and expectation of my journey at Fuller Seminary. In the afternoon orientation session, the ethnic centers at Fuller were introduced. After the introduction of the William E. Pannell Center for Black Church Studies and Centro Latino, Dr. Daniel Lee presented the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry. Dr. Lee started his presentation by asking a question to the participants: “Do you know why there are many ethnic centers at Fuller?” Then Dr. Lee replied, “Because conventional theology is White male theology!” 

Conventional theology that is traditionally taught and accepted in academia is White male theology. In seminaries and churches, conventional theology is often considered normal, objective, and universal. However, conventional theology is developed in its White European contexts. It attempts to articulate who God is and how God works in its particular context, answering its own pressing issues theologically. Indeed, I appreciate some conventional theological scholars, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth. They navigate their White European context well and illuminate God’s identity and work revealed in Jesus Christ insightfully. But their theological insights do not directly speak to the heart of Asian American communities.

Asian American Context

The Asian American context is a complex and particular reality. As Korean American theologian Namsoon Kang points out, Asian Americans hold heterogeneous and hybrid ethnic heritages within Asian American communities although it is often overlooked (“Who/What Is Asian: A Postcolonial Theological Reading of Orientalism and Neo-Orientalism”). For example, finding commonalities between East Asian and South Asian heritage is difficult. Not only that, but Asian Americans also have a variety of migration stories; some migrated to the United States as colonized people during the colonial period, and others came as refugees, adoptees, workers, and international students.

As heterogeneous ethnic heritages and diverse migration stories confluence with their racial reality, Asian American contexts become more complex. Asian Americans are often exposed to blatant racism—such as violence and hate crimes—and racial microaggressions, including perpetual foreigner and model minority stereotypes, Orientalism, and invisibility. Asian Americans navigate their racial reality in a variety of ways while holding onto their ethnic heritage and migration stories. It creates particular and complex stories for Asian Americans.

This complex reality of Asian Americans is where God encounters us. Through the incarnation of the Son of God, God is revealed in the particular context of Jewish people under Rome as one who brings healing, transformation, and justice amid their lives. Jesus Christ intimately mentored his disciples, calling them in their life situation. He had table fellowship with the sinners and tax collectors and fed many people. He encountered those who were sick and healed them. He challenged and scolded a religious leadership co-opted with Roman power. Through Christ the incarnate Son, we recognize God who enters into people’s chaotic lives and proclaims the good news. God reveals God-self in the particular context of Asian Americans and brings about healing, transformation, and justice as part of God’s work witnessed in Jesus Christ. Accordingly, God works in the particular realities of the Asian American context.

Seminary Context

However, in a seminary context, Asian American theological scholarship that arises from and speaks to Asian American context is often invisible. Conventional White male theological scholarship is considered universal and even superior, but Asian American theologies are devalued as particular and eccentric. So, Asian American theological scholarship is not emphasized enough in some seminaries. In this case, although Asian American seminarians come to seminary with the calling to serve Asian American communities with God’s heart, they would not have opportunities to theologically engage in Asian American contexts throughout their degree program.

This lack of Asian American theological scholarship in seminaries has negative effects on Asian American ministries. Asian American pastors and leaders may struggle to apply conventional White theology in Asian American contexts. In this case, their ministries may not be able to illuminate how God is revealed and intimately works in Asian American communities. Moreover, their ministries cannot develop spiritual disciplines that guide the communities to witness God's work in the middle of their lives.    

The Need for Asian American Theological Scholarship

Accordingly, we need robust Asian American theological scholarship for Asian Americans. Asian American theological scholarship should name and challenge the White normativity of conventional theological scholarship. It must allow Asian American seminarians to critically engage conventional theological scholarship instead of passively absorbing it as if it is objective and universal. More importantly, Asian American theological scholarship should encourage Asian American seminarians to better understand their own context and to discern how God works in Asian Americans’ lives. In this way, Asian American theological scholarship will empower Asian American seminarians to participate in God’s heart and work for Asian Americans and invite them to experience God’s work of healing, transformation, and justice in the middle of their context.

I serve as a pastoral apprentice for adolescent Sunday schoolers at a Korean American church in Los Angeles. Through my interaction with my Sunday schoolers, I have listened to their stories. I have learned about their family dynamics and their relationships in school. Some of the Sunday schoolers shared how they felt when they witnessed anti-Asian racism during Covid-19. I also encountered their parents’ life journey, struggles in the church, and economic difficulties. Because I believe that God meets us in all these particular stories, many questions have arisen to me. How does God work in our family and church dynamics? How does God speak to the authority figures in our family and church? How does God shed light on our practices in the church, such as sharing food and table fellowship? How does God’s grace penetrate pain and suffering from our socio-economic difficulties? How does God address racial trauma and encourage us to establish love and justice in our lives? These are important topics that Asian American theology can speak to and provide answers.

Thus, we need Asian American theology so that pastors and churches are equipped to show how God speaks into their particular experiences, struggles, and needs. So let us develop the type of scholarship that can better serve Asian American communities and help them witness and experience God in their lives. 

For more articles in our Asian American’s in Seminary series:

“An Asian American Seminarians Journey Homeward” by Derek Wu.

“The State of Asian American Theology in Seminary: Thoughts from an Outgoing Graduate” by Justin Nitta.

Photo by Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash

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Chiwon Kim is a current Masters of Divinity student at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is also a pastoral apprentice at a Korean American Church in Los Angeles and serves Sunday schoolers. Kim envisions his calling as cultivating a Jesus-following community that genuinely loves God and neighbors in his context. He is interested in pastoral ministry, contextual theology, church planting, theology of the family, and the integration of theology and psychology. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking for his loved ones, singing songs with a small group of people, and watching K-dramas.

An Asian American Seminarian’s Journey Homeward

By Derek Wu

Despite the influx of Black, Asian, Latinx, and other immigrant populations now filling evangelical seminaries, the demographic of faculty and required reading remains overwhelmingly white and male. 

This reflects, as Willie Jennings identifies in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, the formative challenge that plagues theological education in the West. That is, if higher education, especially theological education, is principally concerned with the formation of the person, then the kind of “person” that Western education is set on forming is the white self-sufficient male. 

As a result, the formation of the Asian American seminarian too often means conforming to white evangelical homogeneity, rendering their Asian American identities as inconsequential for theology or ministry. 

For the next few weeks, Reclaim will be running a series of articles concerning the Asian American experience in seminary from the perspective of current AAPI students and faculty. These articles will address topics such as the lack of AAPI representation in faculty and required reading, the need for a distinct Asian American theology, the challenges of being Asian American in a majority white academic context, and ways that seminaries can improve in their engagement with AAPI students. 

To begin, Derek Wu, an M.Div. student at Princeton Theological Seminary, shares his journey of reclaiming his Asian identity and belonging, and its importance for doing the work of theology.

"I

went along with them, marveling at the beauty of their proud clean brains. I began to love my race, and for the first time I wanted to be Chinese.” – Lee, East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Leaving Home

Four years spent in the complexities of biblical studies and theology at my undergraduate institution left me with a host of uncertainties. One thing I was certain about, though—I was done with the Asian American church that had brought me up.

I was postured toward my Asian American-ness like Lee in the beginning of East of Eden. Lee, born of Chinese immigrants in America, works as a servant for Adam, the white owner of a California farm in the early 20th century. Lee is educated at an American university and speaks perfect English. Around white characters, however, Lee uses a Chinese pidgin accent and acts excessively subservient—code-switching, in today’s terms—to be understood. Caught between Asian and American, Lee admits that it is easier to play into the “Asian” caricature than it is to reveal his American features. Yet putting up with the constant condescension exhausts Lee, and Steinbeck begins the story with Lee despising his own Asian-ness.

At my undergraduate institution—an evangelical Bible college—it was easier to play into the “American” caricature than it was to reveal my Asian features. Just as Lee hid his American-ness, I hid my Asian-ness. Eventually, I came to believe that I was not meant to return to an Asian American space. I learned that theologians who worked closely with the social sciences and social identification (such as Black theology, Feminist theology, or Native American theology) were “liberal.” Students catch the assumption that liberal theologians are unconcerned with Scripture and objective truths about God—and, simply put, not worth our time.

The growing distance between thinking about God and thinking about my ethnic/racial identity felt natural to me. Due to past experiences of ostracization, my heart was already hardened toward the Asian part of being an Asian American. I didn’t want to be Asian American. Just American was fine with me. After four years at a majority-white institution with a colorless theology curriculum, my heart also hardened toward the Asian American part of being an Asian American Christian. 

I didn’t fight this hardening. If my experiences as an Asian American were irrelevant to theology and ministerial work, why would I? And what could the church of my upbringing—full of families like mine—offer to the world? I remember squirming in youth group at the thought of evangelizing to my peers. I never invited my “American” friends to my “Asian” church. Church was the sanctuary that kept separate all the foreignness I tried so hard to hide. So, turning my back on those families that brought me to faith, I took my parents’ blessing and set off for seminary on a distant side of the country. There were many reasons to leave, not one reason to stay. It was my version of the silent exodus.

An Unexpected Turn

Early on at Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) I asked a professor to direct my budding interest in Christian ethics. He told me about the growing needs in the field of Asian American theology. My heart hardened, and I scoffed so quickly I interrupted him: “Oh, I want nothing to do with that.”

A few months later, he assigned us an article on Asian American Christian ethics in class. With clear, scholarly precision, the author wrangled together rigorous moral philosophy, high culture produced by Asian Americans (Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer), the Model Minority Myth, and the parable of the shrewd manager. His work eventually led me to other Asian American Christian scholars (like Janette Ok and KC Choi) devoted to the Bible and to addressing the real-life problems of Christians like me. I found myself wading in a nascent but already rich tradition of theological scholarship that took my history and my future seriously. It dawned on me that there was no part of my life I could hide away from God’s reach.

And, for the first time in a long time, I wanted to be an Asian American Christian.

I then took “Asian American Theology” in my second year. Asian American theology is theology done by, for, and about Asian Americans. It is a conversation between those thinking seriously about the Asian American experience and those thinking seriously about theology and ministry. Generally, scholars who do Asian American theology are addressing three questions.

First, what happens when Asian cultural religiosity runs into American cultural religiosity? In Christianity with an Asian Face, Peter Phan answers this question by thinking about the conceptual relationships between indigenous Asian religions and Western Christianity.

A second question focuses on social power. How are Asian American Christians marginalized? How does the Christian tradition confront or contribute to the oppression of Asian Americans? One aim of this line of questioning is to liberate marginalized Asian/Asian American people using the resources of the Christian tradition. An exemplary book in this conversation is Wonhee Anne Joh’s Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology. Using the lived experience of Korean American women, Joh argues that their use of the Korean concept of jeong and the Western concept of Christology promotes a radical and emancipatory form of love.

Joh’s work brings us to a third kind of question surrounding the “lived experiences” of AAPI congregations. What are AAPI Christians doing “on the ground,” so to speak? What problems are they confronted with in everyday life? What do they believe about God and the church? As SueJeanne Koh explains, the aim here is to uplift the multifaceted voices of everyday AAPI Christians by describing “the theological positions, claims, and performances of Asian American Christian communities found in churches and elsewhere, regardless of whether or not they explicitly think they are ‘doing’ Asian American Christian theology.”

To take all these questions seriously, the Center for Asian American Christianity (CAAC) at PTS encourages an interdisciplinary approach to Asian American theology. An interdisciplinary approach incorporates findings from historical, sociological, and religious studies to help Christian leaders navigate the complex circumstances of everyday life. For Asian American Christians, these circumstances are transnational, gendered, and racialized. The purpose of interdisciplinary theology, then, is to address questions like, “Why are there generational or gendered divides in our church?” and “How can we extend God’s love to those marginalized by anti-Asian racism and advocate for change?” and “How can Asian American Christians justly steward their resources?” Jonathan Tran’s lecture at a recent Asian American theology conference and forthcoming Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism are excellent examples of a productive relationship between case studies of Asian American Christian experience, theories of social power, and serious theological and ministerial reflection.

Pressing Onward

An interdisciplinary approach to Asian American theology rests on the assumption that the stories of everyday AAPI people reveal and are essential to how God is working in the present. The Christian tradition rests on this assumption. We preserve the stories of the Israelites and of the saints. We share testimonies because they tell the true story of God’s hand in everyday life. If this assumption is true, storytelling is a matter of stewardship. Asian American theology—and the AAPI church—relies heavily on the leaders and servants of AAPI communities who must steward these stories well.

At PTS, AAPI groups create the space for stewarding stories. During my first year, PTS was coming to terms with its history with slavery. The seminary ignited with controversy over promised reparations. Then, the rise of anti-Asian rhetoric and violence and the Stop AAPI Hate movement brought Asian Americans into what had largely been a conversation between Black and white. Suddenly, I found myself hearing and holding the hurts that we Asian American students had long kept hidden away. Organizations like the CAAC and AAPI student groups provided grace-filled spaces for students like me to share our stories and think critically about theology and ministry under such circumstances. Despite all that weighed us down, our stories became the basis of prayers of lament and confession, for sharing our burdens, for remembering the cloud of witnesses that brought us up, and for finding the hope that was around us and before us.

Asian Americans are projected to be the nation’s largest immigrant group by the middle of the century. As was evidenced this past year, anti-Asian racism persists within structures and between persons in our society. Like it or not, conversations about race and ethnicity will certainly continue in our communities. Further, ongoing immigration means that intercultural and intergenerational conflict is not going away. It is the responsibility of those of who carry the stories of AAPI experience to raise these issues in colorblind theological arenas. Otherwise, as Martin Luther King Jr. once prophesied, the church will remain an irrelevant social club. In East of Eden, Lee notices that he is becoming “more Chinese” as he gets older. This did not mean that he spoke more Chinese or acted more Chinese. Rather, he was spending more time with Chinese people in Chinese spaces. In the same way, it is time for those of us who can serve AAPI communities to return to those spurned families and those spurned churches with softened hearts, saying, “Your stories matter to God, and so you matter to me.”

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

Editorial Note: This piece was updated on 2/27/2022 correcting a typo and updating language in some areas.

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Derek Wu has a B.A. in Biblical and Theological studies from Biola University and is currently a third-year Master of Divinity student at Princeton Theological Seminary. Derek is currently serving as the worship director of Ecclesia Church, as a researcher at the Center for Asian American Christianity, and as a lead researcher of the Imagining Church Project of the Lily Thriving Congregations Initiative. From the San Francisco Bay Area, he currently resides in Princeton, NJ with his cat Howie.

Hearing the Voices of Asian American Christians

By Joshua Wu

I

f Asian American voices matter in and to the Church, why are they so hard to find?

It is hard to find biblically-grounded books, commentaries, articles, or blogs written by Asian American Christians specifically for Asian American audiences. Even in Asian American church spaces, the resources I used were almost always written by non-Asian Americans, requiring additional work of contextualizing and translation to make it relevant to our lived experiences, perspectives, and identities.

This is also reflected in the invisibility of Asian American voices in Christian media. There are few Asian American contributors or editors in leading Christian publications. This May, during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month where many media outlets featured Asian American voices and perspectives, not one major Christian publication featured content about Asian American Christians, reflections on the state of Asian American Christianity, or explainers about the relevance of this month to the Asian American community. And only 3% of articles (2 of 74 articles published in May) on a prominent ministry site featured Asian authors.

I work for a public relations and communication marketing analytics firm. One way we help clients is to identify white space, a domain, issue area, or audience currently underserved primed for innovation and disruption. The invisibility of Asian American Christian voices is a glaring white space. We lack spaces where Asian American Christians can learn from, share, and provide culturally-relevant encouragement to live out our Imago Dei. 

To that end, I am excited for the opportunity to serve as Reclaim’s Editorial Director and lead efforts to develop media that equip, empower, and encourage Asian American Christians to reflect Christ in and through our unique cultural perspectives.

I have three priorities over the next few months.

First, we are changing the submission process to encourage more voices and perspectives to be heard. In the past, we mainly considered fully drafted submissions. Starting in June, we are transitioning to a pitch submission process where interested contributors submit short 150-300 word summaries of their submission. For more details about how to write for us, check out https://www.asianamericanchristiancollaborative.com/submit.

Second, we are reorganizing and introducing new content verticals in addition to our current sections. The new sections will review books, movies, and other cultural media from Asian American Christian perspectives, highlight current event civic and political news Asian American Christians need to know about, and welcome theological reflections from Asian American theologians, seminaries, pastors, and philosophers.

Third, we will innovate the type of content we share. Reclaim will continue to feature single-authored essays and written media articles you are already familiar with. But we will be introducing other content formats such as multi-authored roundtables, shareable infographics, and multi-format multimedia articles to provide new creative opportunities for engagement and interaction.

I want to personally invite you to join us in this new phase of Reclaim. There are at least four ways you can join us. First, continue reading, commenting, recommending, and sharing Reclaim articles. Second, consider submitting a pitch for a story. Third, consider joining our team of editors, media specialists, and content creatives. And fourth, feel free to reach out to me with how Reclaim content has encouraged you, ideas on how we can make Reclaim more relevant to Asian American Christians, or to learn more about how you can volunteer with us; I can be reached at josh@aachristcollab.com.

I believe that Asian Asian voices matter in and to the Church. And I hope that you will join us as we seek to amplify Asian American voices, equip Asian American Christians looking for culturally relevant and contextualized Christian content, and encourage the flourishing of Christians in Asian American and non Asian American church spaces. 

Photo by Alvin Ng from Pexels

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Joshua Wu is a husband, father, pastor's kid, and social scientist seeking to faithfully reflect Christ in all aspects of his life. He has a doctorate in Political Science from The Ohio State University, works in data analytics for a global communications firm, and currently lives in Rochester New York with his family. You can follow him on Twitter @joshswu.

The Skin and Scent of the God Who Came Near

The fullness of Immanuel, God with us, encompassed a physical body and a rich cultural background. This season, let’s worship all of who Jesus was.

By Tasha Jun

I

wonder about Jesus’s hands. If I saw them up close, would I notice more than the scars? Would I look close enough to remember the other details of his hands?

My mom has two cesarean section scars on her stomach from giving birth to my sister and me. Now I bear the same kind of scars as a mother of three, with two born via C-section. My mom’s are intertwined and faded now, indistinguishable from one another. Whenever I saw those scars as a girl, I would marvel at what she went through to bring me into the world. I live and breathe because she carried me, released me, and raised me. The scars that mark her middle are scars she will carry for the rest of her life on Earth. They speak stories of strength and survival. 

Her scars mean so much. But it was her Korean hands that fed me, held me, and clenched their fists in fear and prayer for me. It was her scent and skin that came near and colored in the details of my days. 

Growing up, my mom’s dark tan hands always carried the scent of garlic and gardenias. Garlic from her cooking, and gardenias from her lotion. Her strong fingers were the ones that squished the folds of a bright green ball of ssambap, to stuff my mouth full. She has a freckle on the bottom of her thumb, and when I was little I thought it was the most exquisite beauty mark I’d ever seen. Her dark hands tamed my wild black hair, bringing peace to the collision of cultures and heritage in my strands, day after day. It was her tiny hands that washed away the dirt from my everyday life, year after year. I watched her cover the missing nail on her ring finger with a fake one, week after week, and every time she worked to cover it up, I would ask her to uncover the story of how she lost it and why the top of her finger looked the way it did.

To ignore the details of my Korean culture carried in my mother’s skin and scent is to ignore her love, and reject her nearness.

Our Savior had real hands, smells, and skin. His hands held more than the scars he bore for us on the cross; they are real hands that existed beyond a theological explanation of our salvation. His hands grew from the instinctive grasp of a little baby’s hands into a man’s. Do you ever wonder what they smelled like as he was growing up? Was he right-handed or left-handed? Were his fingers hairy, freckled, or thin? They were most likely very brown – like the rest of him. Knowing this should mean something to us. His details, like ours, weren’t an accident or meant to be overlooked.

Jesus’s hands cooked fish. His hands healed the sick and stayed in close company with sticky children. He probably carried the scents of mint, dill, and cumin in the fabric of his clothes, kept the smell of roasted carp or tilapia captive in his hair, and garlic on his breath.

This is the Jesus who came near. Our Immanuel with brown hands. Our Immanuel with the smells of a Middle Eastern home, and the evidence of illness and brokenness from those he did life with.

God came near to us full with color and culture, and didn’t reject any of his humanity. His hands were open wide to the depths and details of his cultural identity.

This Christmas, as his followers of many colors and cultures, may we celebrate and worship our Immanuel, and come near enough to know the skin and scent of those around us, those who are the same and very different from us. This, too, is worship.

Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash

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Tasha Jun is a biracial Korean American melancholy daydreamer, wife to Matt, and mama to three little warriors. She’s lived and stood in places where cultures collide for as long as she can remember, and most days you’ll find her homesick and thinking about identity, belonging, and lost things becoming found. She’s been writing about those things ever since she received her first journal in the third grade.