While we feasted together and counted our blessings on Thanksgiving day, even as my wife’s family hails from India, we were unaware of the tragedy that was happening.

Although more were killed in the 1993 serial bombings that hit India, the terror attack last week is being touted as “India’s 9/11.”

The style and magnitude of the attack is unprecedented, many say. Mumbai has earlier endured bombings on commuter trains and public places, but this is perhaps the first time that gun-wielding men have stormed streets and posh hotels, indiscriminately opening fire on innocent civilians.

And they are not quite certain who these militants are. Or why even they would attack (because of Mumbai’s commerce)?

M. Thomas Thangaraj, professor emeritus from Emory’s Candler School of Theology, now residing in South India writes:

Our government is doing its best given the lack of both resources and sophistication.
Things are now under full control. Some of the commentators in our TV have noted that it
is time for political leaders in India to give up any use of religious rivalry to their
own electoral advantage. Religiously divisive politics is not what we need in India. We
have lived in peace with our neighbors of differing faiths for centuries, and may that
tradition continue even in our contemporary politics. It is important to appeal to and
maintain the secular character of our nation’s constitution and uphold the values of
justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity. We hope and pray that this incident does not
lead to further clashes between India and Pakistan.

We need your prayers and support.

Jeremiah 6:13,14

13 “From the least to the greatest,
all are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.

14 They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.

I know India is not Israel. So maybe to start with this passage from a Hebrew prophet is terribly out of context. But I feel that particularly during these holidays, it is very easy for us to be navel-gazers, especially since this is the season of Advent, the coming of Christ, which is only meaningful to Christians. I pray that we would be compelled to not sing of joy and peace when there is no peace. That we would not dress the wounds of others as thought they were not serious. May prophet and priest alike practice compassion and may we give gifts not of exchange, but of no recompense at all.

I pray for you India tonight. Kyrie Eleison.

Happy Black Friday. Beware the number of the Beast.

Thanks to Ed Sohn who helped me wordsmith this piece to get it right for AsianWeek. Thanks also to Julie Park and Jimmy McGee for their late night read-through. And although I know they accepted it, I haven’t seen the article on their website yet. but I’ll update when they get their new website clicking on all cylinders. In the meantime, you get the “uncut” version here first. Enjoy.

_____

Congratulations, Asian America, on the new president! You worked hard, listened and voted.  But is Obama the answer to your prayers?

For African Americans, Obama is an answer to decades of prayers, not cheap “please-don’t-let-the-Republicans-win-again” kind of prayers, but prayers borne of the civil rights movement, prayers that asked for a glimpse of what King saw from the mountaintop. While these answered prayers have little to do with Obama’s politics, they have everything to do with how the dreams of a people are formed and brought to fruition. And although Asian Americans celebrate this election by virtue of the fact that we also know what it means to be marginalized, our celebration lacks the same sense of prayer, hope and gravitas of our African American brothers and sisters.

Obama’s victory is significant, and observably so: people danced in the streets from Harlem, New York to Kogelo, Western Kenya.  But while Obama’s election provides hope for people of diverse heritages, Obama’s place in African American history is not my story.  It’s not as if we voted for an Asian American and the streets of San Francisco and Beijing are dancing.  It’s even harder to envision vibrant Asian American communities raising up and celebrating a uniquely Asian American president.

Two things are critical and indivisible in my eyes for the formation of Obama: his sense of racial identity and history, and his faith.  Every time he mentions the word “struggle” and “change,” I hear echoes of the civil rights movement.  In every concern expressed about lost jobs and the working class, I hear stories from the south side of Chicago. When I listen to his speeches, I hear the cadence of black Baptist preaching.  And in the background, I hear the influence of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It was Wright who showed the Ivy League product the needs of a community and the “audacity of hope.”  It is from the church that Obama inherits the language of the Hebrew prophets and the rhetoric of hope coming from the Apostle Paul’s epistles. Obama’s compassion for the poor and marginalized, his sensitivity for the immigrant, and his willingness to sit down with the enemy reveals the best of his racial and spiritual heritage.

Obama’s foundation in these race and faith traditions inspired many beyond racial and religious lines to elect Barack Hussein Obama president.  This phenomenon begs a host of questions for an Asian American community if we are to raise up one of our own to serve the nation someday: what race and faith traditions would come together to form an Asian American president that resonates with the entire nation?  As for the community itself, can we gather in solidarity to be a people who have not forgotten where we come from? Will our religious leaders instill in us a sense of prayer and hope for the poor among us and the immigrant yet to come?

Do we believe that one day change can come through us?

A few years ago I remember reading in the book,  Jesus In Beijing, that some in China’s elite believed that Christianity had something to do with the rise of the West.

It didn’t mention the words prosperity gospel but there was definitely a connection made between Protestant Christianity and progress, or capitalism and cross that was viewed as favorable, desirable even.

And so (h/t to this blog by the Kellers – no idea if they have a relation to the pastor of Redeemer in NYC), we find ourselves in 2008 with the “Stunning Growth of Christianity in China”:

This article written in the Economist suggests there are up to 130 million Christians in churches as of 2008. This is a huge number considering in 1949, less then 1% of China understand the Christian faith. Why the explosion? Isn’t Christianity backwards? Interestingly, the article quotes individuals saying that Christianity in China is considered modern, edgy, and progressive. It is aligned with science and rationalism. The avg. church service is very bible-study focused, word-based, and therefore idea-centered.

Furthermore, Christianity in China has helped the Chinese, not just be hard-working, but also loyal and honest. Within the current systems in China, the reasons to obey and be moral are at best weak. Most, the article says, obey out of fear. Because Christianity seems to favor the market economy and encourages honesty and good works, it is seen as capitalistic and modern. Good point. Its interesting to see that Christianity in Europe is seen as regressive, but in China it is a means to further the Chinese growth. Perhaps this is why the government has not clamped down harder on the growing church. The article is a good short read.

Quote: All this amounts to something that Europeans, at least, may find
surprising. In much of Christianity’s former heartland, religion is
associated with tradition and ritual. In China, it is associated with
modernity, business and science. “We are first-generation Christians
and first-generation businessmen,” says one house-church pastor. In a
widely debated article in 2006, Mr Zhao wrote that “the market economy
discourages idleness. [But] it cannot discourage people from lying or
causing harm. A strong faith discourages dishonesty and injury.”
Christianity and the market economy, in his view, go hand in hand.

What this is means is that Christianity in China may be reduced to setting the rules of commercial exchange, or a solidarity of ethics, whereby the Judeo-Christian principles of property rights and justice sets the table for a market economy. What happens then when the pursuit of God is sublimated into a pursuit of the market? Isn’t this the deistic tendency of capitalism somehow? And what does it mean when Chinese Christians have a difficult time discerning the God of the Hebrew Bible and the God of prosperity and consumerism?

This tendency of course may already have its precedent in Chinese American Christians and their attitudes towards their faith and their pursuit of wealth. There’s a joke that gets a laugh among seminarians and pastors-to-be to the effect of “you’re not in ministry for the money.” A cheap laugh, for sure, but what if your churchgoers go to church for the hope of money? What if we effectively marry for money? study for money? sing songs for money? preach for money? lend money for money? sell money for money? How in the world is it possible to discern at what juncture we do anything for God and not the money?

The word in English, “Money,” can sound, to Korean ears, like the question, “What is it? 뭐니”. (the actual Korean word for money is 돈 pronounced dohn as in “Don Juan” – think Spanish pronunciation not Don). And a rather hilarious video came out a few years ago with ironically profound lyrics, by playing on the words. While it devolves into a song about needing a money to attract a man, I was caught by the poetry, “돈돈 니가 뭔데.” Money, money, what are you? or because it’s said with no honorific, could also be translated, just who do you think you are?

Just what do we think of money? Is it impossible to discern what our motivations to faith are? Were we bought with a price, a price that we intend to make good on somehow in material terms? Do we couch prosperity in the language of “God’s provision” to simply avoid the problematic passages in the New Testament regarding wealth, particularly as it applies to following Jesus? When we speak of stewardship, are we really talking about risk management? It just seems so strange to ask for commitment and wholehearted zeal when our institutions seem so uncommitted to risking to the same degree. We don’t see ourselves as a Robin Hood-like distribution channel of reallocating wealth to the poor, but almost as money managers. We have built an ethic that is indistinguishable to capitalistic objectives, rather than true risk taking. Is Christianity nothing more than generally accepted principles for a market economy?

How would we prove that it’s not?

And if the epicenter of Christian growth is in China, what does that say about what Americans and Asian American Christians could prophetically voice (particularly now in a time of economic stalling) to our brothers and sisters there?

My mother says that when something stupendously absurd hits you, you’re not sure whether to cry or laugh, and this theological/economic conundrums seems to be that type of something. And to completely dismiss the profundity of this question, I will proceed to post the aforementioned video which is insanely funny because of the two girls singing the song, “Money”. So laugh and cry.

Found this by chance on Youtube and thought it was so a propos to the post. Beautiful voice and a cover well done!

At the last Amergence meeting, we watched the Grace Lee film, and having seen it, we gathered our chairs in a circle – 5 women and 5 men – to discuss. Eunjung, a PhD in women’s studies (i think?) facilitated the conversation about this film by an Asian American woman about Asian American women, and as soon as she asked her first question, I noticed that men spoke up first. The thought struck me that observations on race revealed a similar dynamic where White males did the same thing in mixed race settings and here we were doing the same thing, as Asian American males! Ouch.

And so when I got a chance, I asked the question: what is Asian American male privilege? and how does this play out in church?

It’s a big question and one that probably required a bit more thought than was possible in that type of setting. After much hemming and hawing and gnashing of teeth, Eunjung moved the conversation in the direction of where do we have privilege period. We as able-bodied, well-educated, heterosexual people have enormous privilege, we realized. And to be aware of privilege needs to sensitize us to the needs of others.

But I’d like to return to the question of women, and women in church. What things am I unaware of as an Asian American male? What privilege do I wield that you do not? Let me know in the comments if you get a chance.

A little more food for thought: h/t to jadanzzy for this Kelly Chong article on Korean women in Evangelical Christianity entitled, “AGONY IN PROSPERITY: Conversion and the Negotiation of Patriarchy Among South Korean Evangelical Women”. Here’s a few excerpts to get grease the pan (yay, overextension of food-for-thought metaphor!). Again, this is a fascinating read and I hope you take the time to read the full article:

Why do so many women, across classes and cultures, enthusiastically embrace religions whose beliefs and practices seem designed to perpetuate their subordination?….

I suggest that a good place to begin understanding the recent conversions of South Korean women is to view them as women’s response to a crisis of family and gender in contemporary South Korean society—more specifically, the contradictions of the modern Confucian-patriarchal family.

one of the most important roles played by evangelicalism for women is as a spiritual and institutional resource for coping with and resisting domestic conflicts, although women’s efforts to resolve these conflicts also result in their serious recommitment to the principles and practices of the traditional family. Given that the patriarchal family is so much the source of women’s current problems, this appears particularly ironic.

I suggest that while submission, as highlighted in some of the other cases, may indeed be viewed in some ways as a kind of strategy—especially for negotiating domestic relations—insofar as submission also involves dimensions of powerful normative consent on the part of women, it is also something far more complex, requiring a closer exploration of women’s motivations.

Korean women find themselves caught in a family system that, while modernized in certain respects, still subjects them to a remarkably traditional set of ideals, norms, and demands, generating a set of acute contradictions and conflicts in their domestic lives

The problems of Korean women—which center ubiquitously around the themes of loveless marriages, intense conflicts with mothers-in-law and husbands, and stresses of unexpected domestic burdens—are, then, all expressive of some of these fundamental contradictions of the modern Korean family and gender relations. While conversion is a highly complex process involving an interaction of various factors—religious, psychological, and social—my findings strongly suggest that these experiences of domestic crisis constitute a major background factor that plays a large part in predisposing women toward conversion.

So even though women are often consigned to support-level roles in the church, and advised, as one member put it, “to be quiet and do as one is told,” church work nevertheless provides important opportunities to pursue extra-domestic achievement, even to “exercise the mind,” particularly in a society where there are few other such avenues available for women outside the domestic arena.

Indeed, many women told me that receiving “recognition” from others, but most of all from the pastor, was one of the leading motivations for enthusiastically taking on church work, even if they often felt overburdened and exploited.

we can, at an important level, start by understanding women’s accommodation to religious patriarchy as a strategy, a means employed by women to improve their domestic situations that can have unexpected consequences. I have found, for example, that many women initially embraced submission (even if they weren’t entirely convinced of it) because they saw it as an important means of reforming the behavior of others, especially the husband.

Submission is embraced by Korean women as more than simply a strategy for resolving domestic conflicts, or even for furthering themselves within the family; it is a way of pursuing the deeply held goals of promoting family integrity, and fulfilling their obligations within it.

Although it remains to be seen what the long-term effects of the churches’ efforts will be, it is perhaps this dual role of Korean evangelicalism, as both a vehicle for helping women negotiate their domestic frustrations and for re-domesticating them for the family, that has made it, for now, an effective instrument for maintaining the cohesion of the current family and gender system.

Sudhir Vekatesh posts insightful thoughts as to “What Should South Asians Do With Their Wealth?” on the Freakonomics blog.

Here are few excerpts to sketch out his thoughts:

Young South Asians living in the U.S. (Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis are the majority). Some moved to America after college, and others (like me) were raised here. They are coming into significant personal wealth.

So, what are young South Asian philanthropists struggling with? Three things:

1. Should we give it away or turn money into power?

“You have to have power, because right now, we’re just a bunch of people who are not connected. I say we find each other, then give our money away strategically. Yes, we have money, but it doesn’t mean anything. You can’t do anything. Who will listen to you unless you get power? I think we should be looking at African-Americans. They finally got some power because they stuck together. Then people listened.”

2. Should we change perceptions or attack issues?

“We still don’t feel like Americans. I know the recipe: you come here and only when you participate — vote, protest, all of it — you become part of this country. I think we should be focusing on changing our approach to living here; we don’t see ourselves as Americans, and I wonder how we can make ourselves more a part of this country. How can you do that with money? I’m not sure, but we should be working on it.”

3. How can we work across the class and ethnic divide?

There was growing sentiment in the room that South Asians should use their education to reach across ethnic and class lines — helping spread the gospel of education and technology (i.e., closing the digital divide). They suggested bringing South Asians to New Orleans, to rural communities in Appalachia, to soup kitchens in downtown L.A., to anywhere that collective help could be provided across the ethnic divide.

Shuba invoked a popular acronym that pokes fun at people like me who lack deep connections to South Asia: American-Born Confused Desis (A.B.C.D.):

“I don’t want to use my money to help these A.B.C.D.’s become better Hindus. I mean, that’s just worthless. Our money should be used to educate other people.”

These questions Venkatesh brings up are intriguing to me as I feel most Asians can relate to South Asians in this orientation around wealth. Although we may not be in a position of philanthropy per se, I think the questions are certainly applicable before the point we feel we have so much as we’d like to give it away. Also, I think this begs questions of Asian American Christians who have come into wealth and yet should have an alternative narrative from which to operate in terms of charity. What does it mean for the our churches to prosper as well? Do our churches give money away or turn it into power? Do we change perceptions or attack issues? Or do we work across ethnic lines?

Perhaps even more convicting was the last comment – “I don’t want to use my money to help these ABCD’s become better Hindus. I mean, that’s just worthless.” I wonder if wealthy Asian American Christians would say the same thing about their children. And did you notice the use of the word “gospel” under the last question? – “The gospel of education and technology.” The gospel.

What does mean for us to spread a different gospel? If many Asian Americans see faith as fiscally irrelevant, what would it look like for us as individuals and as churches to begin to put our money where our mouth is? or rather, where our heart is? which is where our treasure is? which is not where it should be?

And one last thing, it shouldn’t take an economist to so clearly parse out these questions for us. Asian American Christians and churches need to be doing more than covering our overhead or planning our next building out in the ‘burbs. We need to think about and envision what it is we’re doing with wealth and whether or not the kingdom of God moves through us or away from us. Our churches should not be seen as tax shields or a place where ethnocentric Christians sermonize, moralize, and pontificate on Sunday morning–on that note I quite agree with the person who might say that helping people become better Christians is worthless – because becoming a better Christian needs to mean and be something different than what it does today and it should not be worthless to society, it should be a light to it.

There are so many Korean churches in the US (especially per Korean capita) that it is almost absurd to think that all of them exist for religious God-given purposes. You don’t even need to be a cynic to think that Korean churches are so prolific that we’ve had diminishing marginal returns for quite some time.

But that point aside, I had once heard that the ethnic church was often used as vehicles to sponsor potential immigrants visas and helping people get into the country. On one hand, this could be seen as a subversive act to unfair immigration practices of the US government, a big middle finger to the system that offers hope to some but not to all, but when I heard of this practice, I thought it was heinous. Namely because it was rarely subversive and the church was often manipulated or bribed into doing so. Many false churches were established legally to do this, but operated only in a home, just to get the cousin of the pastor over from Korea to be the new choir director because she could play the piano. Once she was here, then they could vouch for the family and so on and so forth.

Furthermore, I heard that because many seminaries and theological schools don’t require the GRE, people simply opted for these graduate level schools just to come here, get an master’s degree in Divinity (how pretentious and ironic), so they could legitimately acquire visa sponsorship in larger churches in the US. Perhaps the motive wasn’t sooooo ulterior, but it certainly makes it difficult as to what it is that draws such cream of the crop to ethnic churches, doesn’t it? Particularly in an ethnic minority where serving the church isn’t frowned upon.

Well, it looks like those days are over. Religious visa criteria are being revised:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that they have finished revising the religious (RI) visa application criteria . Its hoped this will curb RI visa fraud, which is on the rise, reports The World Journal. As a result, USCIS stopped issuing those visas. Before the new regulation no official document was required to apply for RI visas. Now religious organizations hiring foreign religious workers must turn in an I-129 form with the application, which is similar to the application process of H1B work visas. New RI visas are effective for only 30 months rather than three years before the change.

And while I should be happy that fraudulent churches engaging in such acts will be prevented, I’m a little mournful for those churches that were operating in a subversive sense to help broken families be reunited or circumventing an immigration system that can appear very capricious at times.

By and large, Asian Americans don’t look back to those wanting to come here, and we haven’t really been holding the door open for them either (h/t: Slant Eye for The Round Eye). So it makes me wonder, were the Korean churches acting as a type of international underground railroad for some? Or has a mockery of the church been plucked out?

Pete Rollins is on his tour through America. I’ve mentioned Pete on this blog before and really enjoyed his first book, “How (Not) To Speak of God”. But perhaps more than his book, I enjoy listening to him speak.

To cut to the chase, Pete came via some of our Emergent connections to CTS where he spoke to our class, Foundations of Evangelism (taught by Steve Hayner!), yesterday. I had the opportunity to record the conversation and wanted to share it with you. Enjoy~

Calling all Asian American Christian exiles in the Metro Atlanta area ~ there is a new gathering in town that will be meeting the first and third Thursdays of every month called Asianamergence.

This means we meet this Thursday at 7pm at Communitas (directions) in Chamblee. You can read about Thursday here on our new blog as we gather to watch the film, “The Grace Lee Project.”

This is not a new church plant. This is an experimental community to ask questions, explore, and create what it means to be an Asian American Christian.

It will be part Bible study, part emergent cohort, part discussion, part poetry/psalm readings, part pecha kucha night, and part wherever the Lord leads us. If you come, you will be both audience and participant. We want to hear every voice and encourage every question and journey together.

We would like this to be a space in the middle – a wilderness of sorts – where we can ask questions about our identity and faith, the collisions of our different cultures, and seek to the connect the dots back to a Jewish messiah.

Quite ambitious I know, but it’s only in community that we can find these answers or at least companions. And here you will find myself and a few friends (from Merging Lanes) and Danny Yang and Consider this an open invitation if this resonates with you at all. Hope to see you there.

David

A good friend I grow in admiration of every time we break bread together is Jimmy McGee. And although I’ve mentioned him on this blog before, I cannot fully express how much I learn from this man simply being in his presence and in conversation with him.

If you’ve never heard of Jimmy, I invite you to check out his first published article entitled “Re-visiting Rev. Wright.”

I recommend it particularly if you were turned off by the statements that Jeremiah Wright made that were turned into fodder for the political machine recently. My own mother felt that a Christian who made such bold, seemingly anti-American statements was not fit to pastor a presidential candidate and that a serious presidential candidate should not be found in a church like Wright’s. But the thing that many people missed out on was the fact that this man is not a raging anarchist, in fact, on the contrary, he’s thoughtful and active in service. The posture that I have come appreciate about Black theology and of Wright in particular is they have enough detachment and skepticism about the powers and principalities of this world to question them and call the US government or any government really to the carpet about these issues. They take the biblical role of prophet seriously in asking how the church is to be a light unto the world, and therefore questioning those inclinations where the world can co-opt the mission of the church. Here’s a clip from Jimmy’s article and a video of Wright’s sermon (again, I highly recommend reading it in its entirety):

The mainstream also does not understand that our critique comes from a deep love for the country and the ideas captured in the Declaration of the Independence and the Constitution of the United States. We have historically participated in every war that jeopardizes the values held in these documents. We have also fought with the hope that the freedoms we defended would be extended to our community, and our humanity recognized as equal in worth.

When the sermon of Rev. Wright was being replayed on YouTube and news services throughout the country, all of a sudden the country was “peeking behind the veil” into the second consciousness of Black folks. This consciousness is not a singular phenomenon, but a collective one….

Eventually, it became humorous to hear evangelicals join in the chorus of criticism aimed at Rev. Wright and question his position as an under shepherd caring for the flock of Jesus’ followers. I wondered how they would’ve responded to Frederick Douglas and his comments regarding Christianity within the United States in his book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave:

“… between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: …Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.”

I find this posture absent in the Asian American communities of faith – meaning that it seems that we care more about our citizenship in heaven and completely disregard any obligation or struggle that we should tend to here; or we seem to remain complicit to the authorities and play by their rules and somehow expect to “win” at this game by being good citizens as though that were to reflect the strength of our faith. And it is from our shallowness that we lament the fact that our youth are leaving the church in droves. But what do we expect, really? The language that we use about the gospel is more doctrinaire than challenging, it is more about application than inspiration. How can a gospel based on pragmatism and compliance ever give people a glimpse of the radical nature of Christ? Would we ever have the courage to turn over the tables of business in our houses of worship? Would we ever shout down our idols of prosperity and education from our pulpits, even as our robes are filled with the pomp and circumstance of those very golden calves?

We exegete a passage but cannot understand the signs, diagnose the wounds in our midst, relate to God in light of our neighbors, or expand the vocabulary of our worship. We never answer the question of how we might sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, but merely adopt the songs of the natives, as though we had no ownership and responsibility to tell how the Lord delivered us to the generations to come. We should retreat from the Promised Land into a Gilgal if nothing more than to circumcize ourselves again, to hold up the American dreams of our parents and sacrifice them all. The days of random acts of kindness should be banished. We must inquire of the Lord what it is He has created us and called us to do. We are not honorary Whites, we are not honor students, we are the called out ones. We must step into a confidence of who we are and remember who we were made to be. I’m tired of grasping for reasons why our youth are falling away and our services trite, it is not merely for lack of prayer, it is for lack of dreaming and hoping that there is more to this Christ than what we can see. There is much more we have not been willing to see or to take hold of. And in taking hold of it, we can hold others and other communities accountable to the calling God has respectively given to them as well.