Hey, wait a minute. Come back. Yup, when I pose the threat of the subject line, white America seems to have decided to leave it. Is being an angry Asian person the answer? In my opinion, no. However, will being the traditional, gentle, quiet Asian person be the answer? Obviously, not.
If we want to have a voice in how America looks at us, we need to stop putting the burden on everyone else and start putting it on us. We can’t sit back and wait for our savior to come from our peers and represent us if we have the opportunity to collectively do this now.
We can’t call Francis Chan or Dave Gibbons to be a spokesperson for Asian-Americans if they aren’t called to do so. What are we waiting for? What are we afraid of? Unfortunately, we have developed a certain complacency in the world we live in. Even though we quietly voice our opinions to our peers, we rarely voice our opinion to the rest of the world. However, when we do, we tend to be angry about it.
We must be the change we wish to see in the world. Do we try hard to understand what it’s like to be a Caucasian person, with all the rights afforded to them by American culture, and realize that their struggles and inner demons are no different than ours? We each misunderstand each other. We each live in a world of have and have not. We both strive for understanding of our contexts and we both have years of history that will be hard to change. However, if we as Asian-Americans reach out and share our culture in a way that commands respect, we may be met with respect. When we make it about us and them, it doesn’t really cause change, because the arguments have been the same for decades.
This process will most-likely be a long and slow one. There will be offenses and disrespect along the way. It will go both ways. We as Asian-Americans can be too sensitive at times, yet Caucasian-Americans can be way too insensitive at times. The reverse can be true as well.
I’m hoping we can stop being angry and start by finding a starting point. Continuing from where we left off doesn’t seem to be working. We should strive for common ground first, acknowledge some of our past issues, and find a way to move forward. Instead of waiting for the have’s to invite us to the party, why not start small within a group of our peers and build some momentum? After seeing all that has come to a head unbelievably quickly and surprisingly vocal in response to the Deadly Viper/Zondervan insensitive marketing fiasco, this could be a great chance to begin a fresh dialog where we invite Mike Foster & Jud Wilhite to the table, rather than watching them initiate and run with the ball. If we’re ready to talk, it seems like there may be some people (now) willing to listen.
A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. – Prov. 15:1.
In light of “Deadly Viper v. Asian Americans,” I have to confess that I was quite hopeful that all of this angst could be quickly alleviated if there was direct contact between Soong Chan Rah and Mike Foster. From my purview, things went from to room temperature to boiling very quickly. I’m not sure if it was the abrupt emails exchanged between Rah and Foster, the fact that social media (this blog and tweets included) really amplified the dialogue to a frenzied lather, or if it just felt that way.
Here are a few observations I want to make:
Mike Foster is obviously a busy man. And in his quick responses to Soong Chan’s initial email probe, it seems that he assumed that Rah was trolling. He mentions “an agenda” that he perceives Soong Chan is using to ensnare him and is dismissive. Now, I know that tone is very hard to discern from online text, but I wonder if he had taken a little bit more caution in responding to Rah on those first few exchanges, we would be at a different place right now. “A gentle answer…”
Now, to be fair to Mike, he probably was not aware of the Rickshaw Rally fiasco. or about the Skits The Teach blunder or about the internal discussion that Camy Tang generated. He had no idea that Rah and other Asian American Christians were highly sensitized to the matter. I know Mike’s not a repeat offender, but this is a repeat offense by Christian publishers, and honestly, they should know better by now. (Zondervan, if you haven’t noticed by now, Soong Chan Rah is a friggin’ watchdog, so you might want to get some multicultural training or at least read a few IVP books, something, gyah). So suffice it to say, at least when it comes to Christian books, we’re probably not the best ethnicity to mess with right now.
Mike is also used to criticism and witch hunts. I’m sure he got thick skin from his work with XXXchurch. Maybe Soong Chan came on a little strong, pulled out the monkey fist questioning too quickly. Perhaps out of habit, he was just trying to put Rah and his comments in his place.
That being said, I’m guessing Mike is a little bit taken aback. Honestly, I think a lot of bystanding, well meaning white folk were a bit taken aback. “Ninjas are cool! We want to be like you! Kung fu kicks ass, we want Christian leaders to kick ass! Why on earth would we be offending ass-kicking ninja leaders? We wish we came from the land of ninjas!”
Obviously, they want us to look at the content and ignore the promotional/marketing and other “catchy” things that are peripheral to the book. And of course, they probably want us to be “big” about this, post-racial even, you know, give them some credit for the good things this book is addressing, cut them some slack for cultural ignorance. Geez, it was all in good fun. Maybe they want to write this off as a spiritual attack on what is clearly God’s gift to the young, emerging ninja leader.
They didn’t expect the wrath of the Asian American subculture, after all, we are “sub”-culture, right? Right? And “you’re Christian and I’m Christian and you’ve gotta give grace and you know that I have no malicious intent…”
But that’s the thing that’s so hard, You’re Christian and I’m Christian and we just can’t get there yet, not easily. I mean, sure, we’re called to forgive, but it doesn’t seem fair if Asian Americans are always the ones doing the forgiving. And so what?
Because the painful truth is you don’t need the Asian American demographic to sell your book. You can do fine without us. You don’t need us at your conferences, or to log on to your site, and enter the “mancave”. You don’t need any “Manswers” from us. Honestly, that’s probably what’s so frustrating about this. You don’t need us. Heck, Francis Chan doesn’t even need us. All we’re asking for is some respect. And from some our Asian American brothers and sisters, we’re asking for a little self-respect.
Mike Foster and I had a brief and cordial chat during “Online Man Cave” time tonight. When I asked whether something could be done, he replied he was working on something and was hopeful for a good ending. I know he didn’t mean any harm. I know he thinks this is being blown way out of proportion, that this is way too divisive of a conversation to be constructive; but man to man, I’m really eager to see how this plays out. I’m anxious to hear Mike’s and Zondervan’s response. Because the way I see it, this has little to do with you or Rah, but a lot about Christian ways of re-orienting white privilege, about giving respect to people you don’t have to account for.
And so for tonight, we wait for an answer. A “manswer,” even. A better manswer. A more thoughtful manswer. An manswer with actions.
And unfortunately, in that waiting for an answer, the anxiety grows, the suspicion mounts, the tension feels more palpable and all the tweets, the blog posts, the facebook status updates, the links, the comments…it feels like our wrath has turned away the answer. Perhaps we have spoken a harsh word in asking for justice, and you are asking for grace, not knowing that we have eaten a thousand insults before this one.
But I am hopeful.
in case you’ve missed it, zondervan has released another leadership series with the theme of Deadly Vipers: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership. here’s a link to the zondervan info page. on their main site, the chapter headings by themselves are pretty offensive.
among their promo items, a ridiculous, did-they-really-do-that? facebook video. i recommend you click over and leave your thoughts…
soong-chan tried to start a dialogue with one of the authors, and he was pretty dismissive.
Here’s just a glimpse of Prof. Rah’s opening night plenary session at CCDA.
I just got back from Cincinnati, Ohio on Sunday. I attended my first Christan Community Development Association Conference there and had a great time.
I was really privileged to be a part of a workshop on my first outing thanks to a friend, Ruth Arnold, who works at 2nd Mile Ministries in Jacksonville, Florida. She invited me and some other folks to discuss the topic: “Building Synergy in Cross-Cultural Relationships”. Here’s a quick list of the panel: Ruth Arnold
Alvin Sanders
David Park
Juanita Irizarry
Scott Lundeen
Mandia Gordon
Here’s the description of the workshop:
An accurate reflection of God’s Kingdom includes people living, worshipping and working together in synergistic relationships. That synergy is often broken because of misunderstandings, ignorance and a lack of communication. This workshop promotes synergy through understanding and dialoguing about tough subjects related to race and economics.
Any conversation on race is difficult to have, and is particularly hard if you’re doing it under the pressure of an audience. It’s also hard if you don’t know your fellow panelists either. But we did the best we could and engaged the audience as much as is possible in the 70 minute timeframe. So it’s not a perfect recording, but have a listen if you’d like.
from the blog of fuller president, richard mouw:
The subject of showing honor to ancestors is an important theological topic for Asian young people who are the first in their family lines to come to a faith in Christ.. Many of them struggle in very personal ways with the issue.
The topic came up again for me the other evening in a discussion here in Shanghai. A gifted young woman, our translator-guide for this round of visits in China, spoke glowingly of her own recent baptism. On her father’s side, she told us, her coming-to-faith is a very positive thing. It means that Christian identity has now been passed on through six generations.
Not so, however, for her maternal line. Her mother had become a Christian at the time of her marriage, but the rest of her family remained Buddhist.. However, now a maternal cousin of the young woman was recently baptized, and this has caused a bit of a family crisis.
The issue is the young man’s role in family ceremonies honoring ancestors. When the family gathers at the cemetery on such occasions, the expectation is that this young man, an only child who therefore carries on the male line in the family, will take the lead in the ritual honoring his forebears. When the young man informed his mother of his intention to be baptized as a Christian, she was distraught—primarily because she saw him as abandoning a necessary familial role in these ceremonies.
The young man went to his pastor for counsel, and received what I consider to be sage advice. It’s OK to continue in this role, the pastor said, as long as the young man is very clear about the difference between honoring ancestors and engaging in an act of ancestor-worship in such a context. Again, good advice. Indeed, it fits the kind of counsel that the Apostle Peter gives in his First Epistle: Christians are to “honor (timao) everyone,” but we are to “fear (phobeo) God” alone (I Peter 2: 17).
But there is a larger challenge, one that causes some distress for many younger Chinese Christians. It was put to me in a poignant manner by a seminary student after a lecture I had once given on a campus here in China: “I was the first in my family line to hear and understand the Gospel,” she said, “and I am so happy to have found Christ. But I feel like I have betrayed my ancestors in accepting a faith that tells me that all who have gone before me are now in hell. Can you help me?”
I gave her the easy answer first. The question of the redemptive status of those who have never heard the Gospel proclaimed is a mystery, I said. We certainly cannot be sure that God sent all of her ancestors to hell. All we can do is to trust in divine mercy and commit their souls to God’s care.
That seemed to help a little, but I decided to go another step. I recalled for her the story in Luke 5, about the friends who brought a young paralytic to Jesus for healing. The house where the Savior was teaching was so crowded that they had difficulty getting to him, so they found a way to lower their friend through the roof into Jesus’ presence. This is how Luke reports the Lord’s response: “When he saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you’” (Luke 5:20).
My presidential predecssor and mentor of blessed memory, David Allan Hubbard, once preached a profound sermon on this text. He emphasized the fact that it was the faith of the young man’s friends that impressed Jesus: the Savior forgave the young man’s sins “when he saw their faith.” There is a profound mystery here, Dr. Hubbard said; we cannot understand it, but that we can act upon. Sometimes, he suggested, it may be important that we exercise faith on behalf of those who seem incapable of faith themselves, in the hope that the Lord will honor our faith in reaching out to them with forgiveness.
So I told the seminarian who asked me for theological help that she can honor her ancestors by exercising faith on their behalf. This means thanking God for them, and for the way they—many of them at least—acted positively in the light of the truth available to them. She can ask the Lord to honor her faith on their behalf, and commend them to the divine mercies. She seemed greatly encouraged—even comforted—by that counsel.
Am I (and David Hubbard) overreaching theologically? Perhaps. But I worry less these days about overreaching theologically and spiritually when the topic has to do with the wideness of God’s mercy. More importantly, if we are going to pray for the cause of the Gospel in cultures where honoring ancestors is a major theme, we owe it to Christians in those cultures to wrestle seriously with the theological questions posed by that honoring.
Those of you who know me well know that I have a love for liturgical worship. In the last few years, I’ve found myself drawn to Anglo-Catholic and Orthodox expressions of worship. The icons, rich artwork, incense, ritual, mystery, and a deep sense of beauty is what draws me nigh. Every ritual practiced in these liturgies have meaning and history. There’s a purpose for everything that is done. I also appreciate that in high church settings it is the Eucharist, not the sermon, that is the high point of worship. Thus, partaking in the Eucharist weekly is important to me. All these things I do not experience in a low-church, namely evangelical (even most mainline denominations), environment. However, one major issue I have with these high church expressions is the lack of whole body interaction with liturgy. For example, in the Greek Orthodox Divine Liturgy, the male priestly figures do all the ritualizing while the congregants sit/stand and observe or receive.
Lately, I have been asking myself, “What would a rich, deep liturgy for Asian Americans look like?”…
Wouldn’t it make sense for Asian American Christians to experiment with such a worship style? Our long cultural heritage points to religious practices deep with intention, deliberateness, meaning, and mysticism. Would recapturing that in a form of ritualistic liturgy, where there’s no spatial division between clergy and congregant, no 40-minute sermon, no front man for the band, be faithful to who we are as Jesus followers and as Asian Americans?
What would it look like where all are participating in rituals that is familiar, meaningful, and communal to all those who worship together?
What would the practices be that combine a deep sense of cultural re-imagination with the mystery and the beauty of the Gospel?
What would the worship space look like that can heighten the sense of awe in worship God together?
And can Asian Americans even begin to worship in this way?
Thoughts…?
HT to @djchuang for this video of Ed Stetzer talking with Ray Chang. I met Ray a few months back in Chicago, but didn’t get much of a chance to speak to him. There’s been talk that he might come visit Atlanta soon, and if he does, I’ll be waiting. 
Missiologist and researcher Ed Stetzer (and a group of pastors) are on a Taiwan vision trip. They’ve observed several things that make the Gospel obviously and visibly different than what the Gospel looks like in a typical mostly-Caucasian majority-culture American evangelical context.
Ed blogs in Ancestor Worship and Taiwanese Christians about an interview with Robert Young in this video — Contextual Response to Ancestral Worship (7:37)
And, this video in blog entry, Meeting and Learning from Pastor Chen (6:18)
Does this suggest that the Gospel should look differently among Asian Americans?
In this blog post, I’m using the term “Gospel” broadly, in the sense of how the Gospel and its implications is lived out in particular contexts of an ethnic and/or racial grouping. And in so exploring and forming, even the language and terms used to explain the explicit and implicit theologies may need adaptation too.
… on his way to becoming the next Rob Bell? (Sorry, couldn’t resist tipping my hat to the last NG.AC post about Francis Chan. You know which one.)
Flannel, the folks behind the Nooma series (featuring Rob Bell) are launching another DVD series called We Are Church featuring Francis Chan. From their site (you can read the full post here, and watch a short clip of Francis talking about it):
…you might already know that Nooma was the beginning of a much bigger vision – a vision that encompassed working with many highly creative speakers to communicate the way of Jesus to the world.
Early last year, we committed to pursuing the larger vision and began a search for additional speakers to champion new projects. The search process included wonderful conversations with ministry and seminary leaders, publishers, Christians bookstore executives, authors, pastors, and more that helped us identify well over 100 candidates… in the end, we felt God leading us to Francis Chan.
I have enjoyed the Nooma series with Rob Bell – the content, aesthetic, communication style and length (seriously, let’s keep our Bible study DVDs under 30 minutes!) have been a good fit for our church community. I am looking forward to seeing what they do with Francis Chan, if they can capture the energy and passion of his live delivery. Francis’ short film Stop & Think has a similar vibe (and clocks in at a very reasonable 15 minutes!) — a good sign for the future of this partnership with Flannel. Stop and think for yourself below.
If this We Are Church series has a similar impact as the Nooma series, perhaps Francis Chan will become a household name in the way Rob Bell has. While I’m sure that’s not Francis’ goal — by all accounts, he is a genuinely humble follower of Jesus — I would love to see an Asian American find a platform like that to speak to both the church and our culture.
