I don’t surf YouTube as much as some others. I did watch this entire 6-minute clip from The View. I get to watch The View maybe once a quarter, and like it for being a talk show that sometimes candidly addresses about the world we live in and its culture, especially allowing different opinions to be voiced without neatly tidying it up at the end.

Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck were singled out on this one episode, for being the most vocal. The whole 5-women crew addressed the issue of Jesse Jackson using the “N” word. While it sounded like a double-standard for African-Americans to have the right to use the word in public and/or private, Caucasians didn’t have the right to use the word.

What caught my attention and prompted me to post, is the remarks that surfaced at the 3:45 mark. Whoppi explains how “… we live in different worlds!” while Elisabeth wants us to live as if we were in the same world.

To some degree, we all live in the same society and the same nation. BUT, there are differences for those who live in the world as a minority vs. one who lives as the majority ethnicity/race. It is this majority cultures’ insensitivity (aka “white privilege“) and lack of acknowledgement of these differences that is particularly troubling. Troubling to some, anyways. This blind spot spills over into the church and into how we do theology.

When my fellow Asian Americans don’t acknowledge the differences of being a minority in a majority culture, that disappoints me all the more.

I’ve been thinking a lot in terms of excavation and imagination. Excavation is the act of going back to seek, to uncover that which has been cast under the skyscrapers of modernization and urbanization in order to re-trace our steps as Asian Americans to be more ourselves. Imagination is the act of stepping forward into what can be and could be, based on where we’ve come from.

For some time now, I’ve been sure that this process is a long one, and rather difficult at that. In my personal explorations, I find myself running up against a ceiling (or floor, if you choose to stay with the excavation metaphor) where both excavation and imagination seem to stop short, where the road seems to end.

I wonder what happened before my parents’ generation. And where it has led in the land which they have left. It begs the question of what kind of collective trauma the nation went through when Japan occupied the country and when the country was torn in two when the Korean War broke out. So much of our dysfunction seems to stem from these events.

It doesn’t seem very hard to assume by looking at that trajectory of crisis, Korean/Korean American churches reflect the trauma made to the society and nation as a whole. It’s not merely that Korean American churches are at a loss for how to contextualize the Christian message and implications therein, it’s that Korea as a whole has lost its sense of self somewhat.

I was doing some loitering on the Internet and found The Western Confucian, who confirmed some of my suspicions with the following article (originally posted on Seoul Times).

For those who like to skim, the emphasis marks are mine.

It seems that I’m not the only one who’s run into this ceiling…er…floor.

South Korea’s old Taegukki (太極旗), national flag

The Taegukki (太極旗), the national flag of the Republic of Korea, is perhaps the world’s most beautiful. It is certainly the world’s most philosophical. At its center is the Taegeuk, known in Chinese as the Taichi (太極), symbolizing the “Supreme Ultimate.” Thus, an idea first formulated by the Taoist sage Chuang Tzu (莊子) in the fourth century before Christ is symbolically represented on the flag that flies over the world’s most Confucian country. Yet, the people who live under this flag seem to have lost touch with this “Supreme Ultimate.”

The Tao (道) is difficult to define in English and is thus left untranslated. “The Way” is its literal translation, but unmodified by other nouns perhaps “The Way of Nature” is a better. Perhaps it is best to think of the Tao in terms of what it is not. Koyaanisqatsi, “life out of balance” in the language of the Hopi Indians, is its polar opposite. Yet koyaanisqatsi is precisely what one finds in modern Korea, once known as “The Lang of Morning Calm.” How, then, did Korea lose her Way?

During the last fifty years, the southern half of this peninsula has undergone the rapidest development the world has ever witnessed. The country went from sub-Saharan levels of poverty to become one of the world’s richest countries in a mere five decades. The achievements of the Korean people in the last two or three generations are indeed remarkable and not to be dismissed. However, it cannot be denied that a half-century of modernization and industrialization has exacted its toll, and it has been a heavy one. These same processes ─ erroneously termed “Westernization” because the West was the first to suffer them ─ ravaged Christendom as well, but the nations of the West had centuries, not decades, to deal with them, if however unsuccessfully.

Agrarian peoples were uprooted from the lands that sustained them and held the bones of their ancestors. From their villages with their ties of kinship and affinity, they were forced into cities that mushroomed at a pace allowing no time for planning for the future. Many found in churches the sense of community they had left behind, explaining the growth of Christianity in this country as evidenced by the sea of red neon crosses of the Seoul night cityscape. Often, the newly urbanized Koreans saw their new urban neighborhoods razed and themselves and their nuclear families stacked in characterless high-rise apartment complexes, having long forgotten the beautiful hand-made homes in which their parents and grandparents were born and raised. People seldom know those who live on the other side of their living room wall, and the “key money” system encourages people to change their abode every couple of years. Deprived of extended and varied human relationships, people increasingly find fulfillment in things.

Westerners who look to the venerable traditions of the East for an alternative to the materialism that has prevailed in their own civilization for the last 300 years would be shocked and saddened to find the same modernist vice prevalent in a country as ancient as Korea. Keeping up with Kims is the order of the day. Consumerism has trumped humanism. Appliances, technological gadgetry, and other distractions have replaced human relationships. Even humans are commoditized, as evidenced by the popularity and acceptance of plastic surgery in a country where a hundred years ago people would not cut their hair because it had come from their parents.

The decline in culture is seen in every field. Disposable ditties by disposable K-Pop producer-created ensembles of pretty teenagers have replaced the timeless p’ansori canon. The literati of old gathered to share tea and compose poems, today’s illiterati “meet” at Internet cafés and communicate with each other with a mix of emoticons and gibberish known as “Alien Language” (외계어 ─ 外界語).

Competition has replaced cooperation. The last vestiges of Confucian Capitalism ─ capitalism with a human face ─ disappeared with the IMF ten years ago. Job security is a thing of the past in the neo-liberalized economy. And nowhere is competition fiercer than in education, which now begins in the womb for the one in three children who are not aborted; parents can only afford to have one or at most two horses in the race, such are the costs of educational competitiveness.

This last point leads us to the most indicative factor in the decline of any nation or species, its birthrate. Korea’s is at the bottom worldwide, hovering above one child per woman, at close to half the 2.1 replacement rate. The Year of the Golden Pig has caused a infinitesimal increase, but Korea needs a Century of Golden Pigs to stave off what people decades ago correctly termed “race suicide.”

O Tempora! O Mores! O Corea!

The list could go on and on ad nauseam and ad infinitum, and it is not exclusive to Korea. The other sinitic countries of East Asia have experienced or are experiencing the same cultural decline, and, as mentioned earlier, the West has experienced it to the point that some speak of it as the post-West. And in this call for Korea to embrace her philosophical roots, accuse not the author of a species of Orientalism, of expecting the average Korean to be a fossilized Taoist sage or Confucian gentleman. No. But a foreign observer of America should not be faulted if he were to point out the country’s culture of death, her anti-Christian foreign policy, and her abandonment of her founding principles of liberty in exchange for a National Security State. It is fair to hope that every country live up to her noblest ideas.

How, then, can Korea find her Way? First and foremost, she must recover the traditions of her rich culture. Clothing makes the man, and why should Koreans only don the hanbok (韓服) on holidays, if ever? Architects should abandon Bauhaus for the Korean house, the hanok (韓屋). But in addition to such surface level changes, philosophical changes are necessary. There is much insight to be gained from the “tridharma” of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. And let us remember that the first Christians called their religion “The Way” and that the “Word” (λόγος) in the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel According to John was first translated into Chinese thusly: “In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God.”

Is there hope that Korea is finding her Way again? The ubiquitous “well-being” movement is surely a sign of hope, as is the growing demand for holiday time and leisure activities. One can find hope in the principles of New Urbanism incorporated in new neighborhoods planned on a more human scale. The phenomenal growth of Catholicism is another hopeful trend.

There is hope with every Korean who drops out of the rat race to do something unique and different, but, sadly, many of these simply emigrate to greener pastures for a simpler life. There was hope when Wal-Mart was chased from the country with its scaly tail between its legs, and there is hope every time a Korean chooses not to patronize McDonald’s or Starbuck’s. But Koreans are not choosing traditional markets, restaurants, or tea houses over these foreign chains; they are merely choosing Korean imitators.

Nationalism, itself a foreign import and a product of the inglorious French Revolution with which commenced many of the ills described above, is not the answer. The answer is in the “Supreme Ultimate,” the Tao.

Congrats to Bruce Reyes-Chow, who was elected moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) on Saturday, June 21st!

Here is a great quote from Bruce at the GA:

…nothing is too hard or too wondrous for God. If the church steps out in faith rather than clinging to survival, to be more intent on being faithful than on being right, to be together based on our common covenant in Jesus Christ rather than by property or pensions, then we will be able to live into a future in which we are a vital and vibrant presence in the world.

Bruce is pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco and is a prolific, insightful blogger. It looks like the banner of his blog can now read “pastor/geek/dad/follower of Christ/moderator.”

As a Presbyterian myself, it is a breath of fresh air to see the denomination move away from what can often be an insular old boys’ network and towards a different picture of what the future might be. This is more than just saying, “Let’s start using this internets I’ve been hearing about to keep those young whippersnappers inside the church” — Bruce is fully engaged in culture 2.0 and it will be interesting to see how he can help turn the ship around.

To many Presbyterians, the fact that a young, urban, Asian American church planter could become the new face of the denomination is nothing short of miraculous.

In a recent conversation with anakainosis from Merging Lanes this week at the nearby James Joyce Pub,(oh yes, Happy Birthday, Dan Ra), we reached brief moments of lucidity with regards to Asian American church: “There is no culturally-neutral expression of the Gospel”, the rationale for an Asian American church is not so much to re-create our cultural bias and therefore stigmatize a particular view of Christianity further, but to to remind ourselves that every culture, whether we assimilate in to White Evangelical American Christianity or assume that there is something to the indigenous Asian responses to the Gospel, has limitations (consciously or unconsciously) to allowing transformation of that culture.

However, the goal is not to eliminate culture, but similar to what Peter Rollins says about Christianity being an atheistic theism (or an irreligious religion), what we should strive for in our conversations about culture is to make it an acultural culture. We oppose the calcification of Asian and American cultures precisely because they are both self-preserving, and the Gospel is not. But neither is the Gospel a despiser of culture, therefore we seek to create something in the midst of the twilight which we embody – neither completely Eastern nor Western, Asian nor American. The beauty is that we can be honest and authentic about the very transplant that has occurred and discuss the dislocation as a personal and social phenomenon, not merely as a spiritual one. Furthermore, we understand even this location of “establishing” some Asian American church as transient – we are in motion as it relates to this Christ and the Spirit (wind, breath) of God. 

The real challenge then is not to re-write history or to re-invent our identity, but from this moment begin to commit to the creation of culture transformed as the DNA of Christ becomes hard-wired, transcribed into our genes one strand at a time neither erasing who we were created to be nor denying that we are being fashioned into something more (and yes, I am mixing my metaphors here). What the Gospel has been unable to do (albeit it has been a relatively short history for Asian conversions to Christianity, although we can make a strong case that the West has not fared much better), is puncture a core barrier of culture. Sure, we accept moralism and borrow language for hierarchy and order, but we refuse to be transformed at the nucleus. This is precisely why even the zealots with the best intentions still re-create empires that bear none of the true ethos of Christ in the end. We were not called for dominion in that sense, or perhaps as we have consistently presumed, we think too highly of ourselves to begin with. We were called to be generative, and regenerative, born again, healed again, called again, forgiven again, and sent again. We were not called to reproduce the Tower of Babel as though that were the solution to the kingdom – gathering the masses of people under one language, one banner, and one edifice. We were called to be the “living stones,” the very material – with all the particular properties that go into building materials of varying texture, composition, density and color (i.e. race, ethnicity, and culture). 

And…then I don’t remember what else we talked about, and I have to clarify for his sake, some of this is extrapolation from our conversation, but keywords were “diversity of doctrine”; the fear of reproducing empire; and creating community for (lack of) creation’s sake. Then we drank “flaming Dr. Peppers” and I went home.

But sleep easy, we’re got this figured out. I just can’t remember it right now. 

Continuing on from the video on David Choe, is this video I found about graffiti on the streets of Shanghai. Graffiti is all about expression and it’s wonderful to hear mainland Chinese talk about creativity in a way that I think most “churched” people do not articulate. There’s an awareness of ideas, identity, and expression that is amazing. Perhaps this is why people associate the church/Christianity with backwardness, but I believe that we have the theological language to inform, encourage, and support creativity and expression.

When we create we bear the image of God most fully. Even when we graffiti. 

May we be as daring as these artists in Shanghai.

h/t to DJ for finding this one….

Asian American Pastor Speaks Only English

Chicago native of Korean descent also knows no martial arts

HOUSTON – The employment of James Kim as youth pastor at Mt. Olive Baptist church here has resulted in some disappointment among church members, but not for the usual pastoral dissatisfaction reasons.

“When I saw that we had hired him, I was so excited,” said church treasurer Lilly Rudd. “I thought we could finally start an outreach to the Chinese and Filipino populations of Houston, but when he opened his mouth I noticed there was no accent at all – even his l’s and r’s were all pronounced right. That’s when I had to ask him if he even spoke Chinese at all. I was completely speechless when he told me he’d never even been outside the US.”…. Click on the link above to read the entire parody…