Religious Language and Asian American Hybridity

Julius-Kei Kato

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137582140
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137582157
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism

In this book, Julius-Kei Kato lets the theories and experiences of Asian American hybridity converse with and bear upon some aspects of Christian biblical and theological language. Hybridity has become a key feature of today's globalized world and is, of course, a key concept in postcolonial thought. However, despite its crucial importance, hybridity is rarely used as a paradigm through which to analyze and evaluate the influential concepts and teachings that make up religious language. This book fills a lacuna by discussing what the concept of hybridity challenges and resists, what over-simplifications it has the power to complicate, and what forgotten or overlooked strands in religious tradition it endeavors to recover and reemphasize. Shifting seamlessly between biblical, theological, and modern, real-world case studies, Kato shows how hybridity permeates and can illuminate religious phenomena as lived and believed. The ultimate goal of the move toward an embrace of hybridity is afurther dissolution of the thick wall separating ideas of "us" and "them." In this book, Kato suggests the possibility of a world in which what one typically considers the "other" is increasingly recognized within oneself.

© The Author(s) 2016

Julius-Kei KatoReligious Language and Asian American HybridityAsian Christianity in the Diaspora10.1057/978-1-137-58215-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: What Does Hybridity Have to Do with Religious Language? How Asian North American Hybridity Could Converse with Religion Today

Julius-Kei Kato^{1, 2}

(1)

King’s University College, London, Ontario, Canada

(2)

Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

End Abstract

The Monocultural Mindset and Hybridity

I have never forgotten a Pearl Harbor anecdote I heard as a boy because it awakened my young self to the rich promise of an important aspect of my personal Japanese-Filipino identity, a characteristic that I will refer to here, in this study time and again, as “hybridity.” It goes like this. Shortly after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s consequent declaration of war against the Japanese empire, a Japanese-American boy in Hawaii, clearly distraught at the inevitable war between two countries, both of which he considered his own, was asked rather insensitively by a local news reporter: “So how do you feel about this coming war? Which side would you like to win?”

Saddened by the reporter’s tactless question, the boy replied, “People like me don’t like to have winners and losers. It’s just like when dad and mom have an argument. I don’t want anyone to win or lose. I just want them to make up and go back to being nice to each other despite their differences.”

Through all the years since, as I repeatedly pondered, the meaning of that vignette etched in my mind; I came to realize more and more that the reporter, with his question, exemplified—what I would call—the typical monocultural mind. Such a mental framework obviously prides itself on having a single secure world that one can call one’s very own, a world that, one hopes, emerges triumphant in any competition or conflict. On the other hand, the boy and his answer illustrated what many call “multicultural.” In the interest of defining a phenomenon in a more precise way, the term “multiculturalism” in this context should actually be more properly called “hybridity,” the key term in this study.

The anecdote mentioned here also sheds much light on the glaring contrast between these two ways of seeing and interpreting the world: One, dividing the world into opposing or at least clearly distinct camps with clear demarcations between them (something like a “clash of civilizations” ¹ if you will), and the other, trying to maintain a creative tension and balance between different worlds, which coexist and, more importantly, imbricate and intermingle with each other in a single person’s very being.

How can this general observation on “monoculturality” and hybridity be applied specifically to religion and theology? As someone whose job is the critical study of religion and theology (or, in an expression I prefer, God-talk), I have long been much intrigued by the possible applications of hybridity to the human search for ultimate meaning and faith identities, more specifically, to that branch of religious studies and theology which concerns itself with the interpretation of writings, symbols, or even events that have something to do with religion. This field is technically known as hermeneutics. At this point, I ask then: What does hybridity have to do with religion and theology or God-talk?

Hybridity and Religious Language

At the outset, let me state that I am convinced that hybridity does have a lot to do with theology, that is, with all kinds of discourses, reflections and thinking about God, the Ultimate, religious traditions, and the like. That becomes clearer if we consider the fact that the world is turning more and more into a globalized and, yes, hybridized place every single day through the wonders of technology. Given that undeniable situation, we can see that hybridity has a particularly vital role to play in the fields of theological and religious studies as well. In this study, I would like to focus on what I see as timely and urgent roles for hybridity today as a means through which we can interpret (hence, an interpretive paradigm) religion and theology. First, negatively put, hybridity can be a potent tool that can unmask the unhealthy symptoms of what should be a potent force for good—religion when it transforms from being a harbinger of hope in a troubled world to a sinister entity that can bring untold grief to people, especially those who are in the grip of an unhealthy kind of religion.

Charles Kimball in his When Religion Becomes Evil gives us an eloquent exposition of the different symptoms of warped religion. ² He lists five symptoms of a particular form of religion veering toward evil:

1. 1.
   Making absolute truth claims
2. 2.
   Demanding blind obedience
3. 3.
   Establishing an “ideal” time for cataclysmic and eschatological events
4. 4.
   Letting the end justify any means
5. 5.
   Declaring a holy war

Although Kimball’s list is by no means exhaustive, I think it hits the nail right on the head by representing the main factors which many people (critical scholars of religion among them) think bedevil religion in general and concrete religious traditions (especially the monotheistic ones) in our day. Applied to our theme here, I see an unmistakable connection between these factors and a too narrow monocultural worldview. Such a worldview does not consider entities it perceives to be “other” with enough respect and, therefore, does not have the proper checks and balances by which it can prevent itself from easily degenerating into a system which manifests the five symptoms Kimball lists as signs of a warped kind of religion.

There is a second, more positive side to hybridity’s vital role in the contemporary world. It can suggest, in a concrete manner, ways by which we can religiously or theologically view and interpret human reality to transcend the typical binary division of the world into “us” and “them” (with “us” often identified as the good guys and “them” the not-so-good guys) and, thus, promote compassion, peace, harmony, respect, and justice among entities which could be very different from one another.

To sum up, this book is about what I think are the important contributions that hybridity can make to theology and religious thought in our contemporary world, which is often described as postcolonial and postmodern. It will start with a description of hybridity, diaspora, interpretation (hermeneutics), and other related matters that are foundational to this study. True, this part may be a bit abstract and theoretical, but it is nevertheless necessary and foundational to our project. From there it will go on to, I hope, more exciting matters. The heart of this work lies in the application of what I frequently refer to as “reading (something) through hybrid eyes” to selected topics in biblical studies and Christian theology.

This Work’s Particular Goal

The different chapters in the book do not have the presentation of the latest scholarly views on a given topic as their principal aim. Rather, they intend to showcase the workings and tendencies of one particular hybrid mind in the hope that it will give readers an idea of what I think are common trends and results that can be expected when the experience of hybridity is brought to bear upon religious and theological topics. In particular, the different chapters will show what hybridity challenges and resists, what oversimplifications it seeks to complexify, and what forgotten or overlooked strands in the tradition it endeavors to recover, rediscover, and reemphasize. The goal in all this is to build a world in which the thick wall between “us” and “them” can be hammered and broken down in favor of a worldview in which the intimate connections among different worlds are highlighted instead and in which the presence of what we typically consider “other” is increasingly found within our very own selves. It is my intention to say through this work that the goal of hybridity as a conceptual tool in religious studies and theology is to show that, ultimately, in God (or in whatever name one prefers to call the Ultimate), we all—to use the Zen-Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s famous expression—“inter-are.” ³ In other words, in the greater scheme of things, we are all interconnected, and the idea of a self that is completely distinct from others is actually a dangerous illusion which is the root cause of all strife.

You may feel that I am mixing or hybridizing Christianity with Buddhism. I suggest that you get used to that because I hope that this work will bring you through many such mixtures of what are commonly considered separate things, many hybrid journeys, and if you, at some point, feel confused and disoriented by all these hybridizations, then this work may very well have achieved its aim of disrupting and complexifying what, for me, are false theological and religious simplifications and demarcations!

A Road Map for the Book

For readers who would like at this point to get a more detailed idea of the concrete themes and content of each chapter, I suggest that they jump to the conclusion of the book where I summarize the main points and arguments of each chapter. However, as a preliminary reading guide to this work, I would also like to offer the following suggestions now. The book is divided into Part 1, “Foundations,” and Part 2, “Hybridity Converses with Particular Themes.” It would be ideal to read Chaps. 2 to 4 first because they act as a theoretical and illustrative foundation for the whole book. They contain general (Chap. 2) and more detailed (Chap. 4) descriptions of what I mean by “hybridity” in this work. Chapter 2 also explains other foundational notions in this work, particularly, diaspora and hermeneutics (interpretation) and how these are related to Asian North American theology and religious discourse. Chapter 3 provides a concrete illustration of the kind of hermeneutical style at work here by comparing the story of a Sabbath Day controversy from Mark 2 with what I call the “Peter Phan affair.”

In Chap. 5, hybridity will dialogue with the phenomenon of religion and will urge us to consider religion as an important part and parcel of our collective humanity, just as a hybrid person treasures each of the component worlds found within his or her total hybrid identity. In Chap. 6, we will see how Asian North American hybridity could dialogue with its Asian parent. That dialogue will result in a kind of theological suggestion to Asia to consider itself as a hybrid entity combining the East and the West, a perspective that would help to shed light on the tensions that arise when a traditional Western kind of Christianity meets a kind of Christianity that is the fruit of a hybrid union between the East and the West.

Chapters 7 to 12 reflect my particular areas of interest and teaching, namely, early Christian history and literature and some key theological ideas that are found therein. In Part 2 (Hybridity Converses with Particular Themes), I will make my Asian North American hybridity converse with different themes in early Christian history and literature to find out what insights such conversations could produce.

Chapter 7 will show how hybridity sheds light on the fact that the heart of the Christian tradition, namely, the New Testament is in fact a hybrid entity itself. In Chap. 8, we will make hybridity look at the historical Jesus. Through that, we shall see that Jesus could very well have had an experience of searching for his real identity and mission in life through “trial and error and retrial” as he struggled to comprehend what he felt called to do in light of the prevailing deeply held apocalyptic expectations in his culture. This experience is akin to many hybrid individuals’ search for their true identities through a similar cycle of trial and error. In Chap. 9, the growing claims of early Christ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: What Does Hybridity Have to Do with Religious Language? How Asian North American Hybridity Could Converse with Religion Today
• 1. Foundations
• 2. Hybridity with Reference to Particular Themes
• Backmatter