Spirit Life

Grace Ji-Sun Kim

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781506484518
• eBook ISBN: 9781506484525
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Spirit Life centers on the Spirit as an avenue for better understanding God and reconciling with our faith. The Spirit is present in the Old Testament as ruach and in the New Testament as pneuma. When the field of theology was prominently German-led, theologians used the word geist to talk about the spirit. As an Asian-American theologian existing in the liminality between multiple cultural spheres, Kim finds it necessary to retrieve and disseminate Asian words and religious symbols into the mainstream discourse to revolutionize the accessibility and global understanding of God today. One important Asian concept is chi, translated as wind, breath, spirit, energy, much like ruach, pneuma, and geist. Chi is a fitting term for coming to know God as the Spirit as it effectively conveys God's presence in the world. As such, we can move toward a nondualistic theology that provides an abundant space for everyone, including the marginalized and the subordinated, paving a path toward liberation and radical demarginalization.

In the My Theology series, the world's leading Christian thinkers explain some of the principal tenets of their theological beliefs in concise, pocket-sized books.

1

Racism, Sexism and White Christianity

Immigration

MY LIFE TURNED upside down on January 18, 1975, when my mother, older sister, and I boarded a plane in Korea and flew to Toronto, Canada. My father had left a month earlier to find housing and welcome us when we landed in Toronto Pearson Airport. We packed our essentials into two red bags per person and left our extended family and country of birth to live in a faraway country. Our world, way of life, and religion changed. We had no idea what was in store for us, but my young parents viewed immigration as an adventure toward a good and prosperous life in Canada.

Our lives changed dramatically as soon as we landed in Toronto on that bitterly cold January day. My first language, Korean, was neither spoken nor welcomed in this frigid land. Step by painstaking step, I had to learn the English language, adjust to a new culture, and adapt to a different way of living much different than what I knew in Korea. I could no longer sleep over at my grandparents’ home or play with my many cousins. Rather, I was isolated with just my immediate family members.

After spending two weeks in Toronto, we moved to London, Ontario, a smaller city about two hours to the west of Toronto. In London, we met other Korean immigrants who lived in small, cheap, cockroach-infested apartments, ironically called Frontenac, which was far from the upscale, gorgeous Le Chateau Frontenac hotel in Quebec City.

We were among the many Korean immigrant families who ended up in the three, identical Frontenac apartment buildings which each had six floors and ten units on each floor. This was known as a transitional living situation before Korean immigrants found a more pleasant place. However, our family lived in that apartment from my kindergarten year until I was in eighth grade. I shared a small, dingy room with my sister for nine years, which was not easy, but we had no choice.

Some may think that a five-year-old child can adjust quickly to a new country, that I could become a ‘Canadian’ overnight. This was not the case for me or my family. Immigration took a toll on me, from struggling to learn English, adjusting to the cold climate, and getting used to white people all around me who did not quite understand who I was. It was a difficult adjustment that our tiny family had to make, and it became difficult for my parents to learn English and live in a culture that did not welcome us.

My parents often felt like ‘children’ trying to communicate with gestures, facial expressions, and smiles. It became grueling for my mother as she just could not learn enough English to hold a steady conversation. She also had difficulties acclimating to the frigid winters and longed for her homeland and to be with her own parents and siblings.

Church

While we lived in those apartments, a young Korean immigrant couple, Mr and Mrs Kim, invited us to church and drove my sister and I there every Sunday. We liked attending church as we were able to make new friends with Korean immigrant kids our age. A year after my sister and I went to church, my parents started attending, perhaps out of boredom or curiosity. But once they started, they got ‘hooked’ on church, attended every Sunday, and stayed all day long. On a typical Sunday, our family went to worship, then to Bible study group, and then to a church member’s home to eat dinner. I enjoyed having dinner at different church members’ homes as it reminded me of the fun that I had with my cousins back in Korea. I couldn’t wait until Sunday nights to play with my Korean church friends. My parents went to Wednesday night Bible study, then to Friday night church gatherings, and to early morning prayer meetings on Sundays at 6 am. The church eventually became our extended family as we celebrated birthdays and anniversaries together as if we were one big family. The church was the center of life for the immigrant community. We told our hometown stories, shared Korean recipes, and cooked Korean food together. During these celebrations, I missed my large family back in Korea.

Eventually church consumed our lives. My dad drove my sister and me to various white Anglo English speaking churches around London, Ontario. My parents probably thought it was both free babysitting services and free English classes. Hence, my dad drove us to Missionary Alliance Church on Friday nights for games and fellowship, Sunday mornings to a Baptist Church for Sunday school, and a different smaller Baptist Church on Sunday evenings for worship. As a family we attended the Korean Presbyterian Church in the afternoons. Many of the Korean immigrant churches rented churches from a white church and hence had to hold worship in the afternoons after the white church finished their worship service. Every week was a busy church week for our family. For our small family, there was no way of being and living without the church. These early church experiences impacted my Christianity and theology as it was very conservative. Conservative Christian practices and teachings were the norm in my childhood, and it was only later in my adulthood that I began to challenge and deconstruct white Christianity which was so ingrained in my childhood.

School Life and Racism

I was placed in kindergarten in the middle of the school year in February 1975 without any knowledge of English. As a child who couldn’t speak English or understand it, going to school proved very difficult. I was constantly made fun of due to my Asian features. This mocking of my Asian difference was difficult to endure as I had never experienced it in Korea. Racism, discrimination, and marginalisation put a stain on people’s lives. It is harsh to endure. Racism is painful. It diminishes one’s spirits and forces one to face daily discrimination during recess and in the classroom.

When kids call you derogatory names such as ‘Jap’ or ‘Chink’ it is painful. When kids insist that there is no such thing as a Korean, it damages your soul and well-being. That is exactly how I felt daily being called derogatory names and hearing ‘ching-chong’ yelled to my face. As I recall such terrible memories, how do I overcome and become the full being that God has created me to be?

Facing racism daily made my childhood years an overwhelming time. It was difficult to overcome some of the trials and difficulties of daily discrimination, racism, and xenophobia which I faced as an immigrant child growing up in the small white city of London, Ontario. Racism wears down one’s soul. It breaks one down and it becomes difficult to resist the problems it creates.

I did not have the language or the courage to fight back against the racism, which was present in the school yard, on the streets, and in the apartment building where I lived. I felt like a punching bag for white kids to make fun of and taunt. I felt powerless. They all thought it was a big joke to make fun of me and the other immigrant kids. But racism hurts, destroys our being, and breaks down the soul. We must try our best to resist and recover from the destructive powers of racism. This is not accomplished overnight. It takes tremendous effort to dismantle white supremacy, fight discrimination, and end marginalisation. Fighting racism and discrimination needs to happen in society, schools, workplaces, and churches. So much racism is embedded in culture and Christianity. Therefore, it becomes crucial to disrupt it in our theology and church doctrines. A dominant white Christianity does injustice to the world which is not white.

White Christianity

I grew up with white Christianity and did not know any other forms of Christianity could exist. White Christianity was taught to me at my Korean Presbyterian church as well as all the extraneous churches that my dad drove my sister and I to attend throughout the week. White Christianity is what I breathed and believed; it painted a white God and a white Jesus. We even had the classic Head of Christ image by Warner Sallman in our living room throughout my childhood and teens. The consequences of a white God and a white Jesus is that white people then believe they are better than people of color as their whiteness puts them closer to God.

Whiteness is a cultural, political, and religious aspect of North America, Europe, and much of the world, which presents a hierarchy of people according to their skin color with the darkest being at the bottom. Whiteness looks at people of color and accuses them of cutting in line to receive unearned entitlements which white peopl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Racism, Sexism and White Christianity
• 2. Hybrid Theology
• 3. Spirit-Chi Theology
• Conclusion