The chapter examines the socio-ecclesial or practical theological situation of Asian Americans, of which Korean Americans are a part and out of which Korean American evangelical diasporas seek their unique cultural faith formation—the topics of the following chapters.1 The Asian American socio-ecclesial context is a hard one to analyze because of its cultural complexity. Mainly, the complexity comes from the dual identity or double consciousness of Asian American life—being Asian on the one hand and American on the other. This hybridity without a doubt complicates the cultural investigation of Asian American Christianity. At the same time, however, that hybridity is a key research focus, which will reveal core values of living, the apparent spiritual struggles, fundamental cultural and racial conflicts, and emotional, psychological, and religious issues of Asian American life.2 Below, I explore that puzzling Asian American Christian context, relying on three major Asian American scholarly figures (or groups).
Three Descriptive Voices
Sang Hyun Lee: Liminality and Marginality
In From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology, Sang Hyun Lee (S. Lee, henceforth) presents his theological analysis of the Asian American context from his own Korean American point of view, especially its bicultural nature. S. Lee’s contextual theological method is ecclesially focused and draws heavily on confessional norms and expectations (e.g., what would Jesus, as our faith model and himself as a person from margins, say and do in the marginalized contextual situation like ours?). It has the feel of an applied ecclesiology.3 Two concepts, however, are particularly significant for us in his writing: liminality and marginality. Based on symbolic anthropologist Victor Turner’s positive conception of liminality, S. Lee argues that being situated in two different cultures is a profound and complex experience in which new or creative possibilities of life are born.4 S. Lee believes in particular that this experience of cultural liminality in the Asian American context can produce three invaluable benefits: (1) openness to the new or hidden potentials of society, (2) the emergence of communitas, and (3) a creative space for prophetic knowledge and subversive action.5 S. Lee realizes that since Asian American Christians live in this unstructured, open-ended liminal space, they have a certain potential to come up with very new spiritual ideas, social structures, and cultural expressions that can contribute to the breadth, depth, and width of the existing society’s cultural life. Besides, these new hybrid Asian American Christians can help the emergence of communitas, thanks to which people from all racial and ethnic groups can create a community of harmony, justice, and peace. Last but not least, thanks to the freedom from and critical response to the existing social structure, Asian American Christians who experience liminality can serve as prophetic agents of God vis-à-vis the oft-unjust dominant culture.
Notwithstanding the possible benefits of cultural liminality, S. Lee finds that Asian Americans are not full beneficiaries of it yet. The reason for this is their inevitable experience of systematic marginalization and discrimination by the dominant culture, which socially, politically, and economically suppresses their liminal potential and possibility, so that they often completely retreat from the public social arena out of fear of total eradication.6 S. Lee believes that marginalization can be overcome by relying on and proclaiming the gospel message of Jesus Christ who once lived in a marginal place, yet completely overcame it.7
Asian American theology in general focuses on such subjects as identity establishment, multicultural faith or social conscience, feminist-liberation, religious diversity, racial conflict and reconciliation, faith in the era of globalization, and so on. According to S. Lee, among these various themes, the most fundamental is the establishment of a unique Asian American (Christian) identity. He contends that the Asian American identity crisis, which happens due to people’s oscillation between Asian and American cultures, is so fundamental to the Asian American mind and faith that the starting point of most Asian American theological discussion is a deep concern with it. Jung Young Lee (J. Lee, henceforth) agrees with S. Lee that the marginal status of Asian Americans, which requires the building of a new positive identity, has become the key theological concern in the Asian American context. Both theologians confessionally interpret the marginal status of Asian Americans as biblical (e.g., Jesus once lived at the margins) and positive (e.g., Jesus gathered up and transformed the marginalized into his own people), in this way proposing a new and transformative Asian American identity formation in Christian faith. We will see later how this identity issue has contributed to the first socio-ecclesial code of faith within Korean American diasporic evangelicals, namely, the Wilderness Pilgrimage code.
Fumitaka Matsuoka: Social Transformation from the Asian American Church
The issue of cultural marginalization and forced retreat articulated by S. Lee above is one of the key focal points in Japanese American theologian Fumitaka Matsuoka’s Out of Silence: Emerging Themes in Asian American Churches. In that double cultural jeopardy, he points out, the Asian American church has served two functions for the people who are part of it. First, the church has been the reservoir of the original Asian cultural and linguistic heritage. In these churches, the people celebrate their own culture and practice their own language that, outside of the church, cannot be celebrated or practiced fully. Second, the church has helped the people’s cultural integration into American society and the local community. The church not only teaches American culture and language, but also provides help that is physical (e.g., providing a ride to the remote hospital), economic (e.g., monetary transactions among people), or informative (e.g., information about cheap rental property) in nature.8 Matsuoka finds these two social functions very helpful and necessary, yet not enough. For him, these functions or roles are too passive to make real social or spiritual changes in or out of the Asian American church, in the light of the larger American society. Because of their “ghetto” reality, the Asian American Christians and Asian Americans in general have been silent or silenced in the broader culture.
Matsuoka encourages the church to get out of its own ethnic and cultural enclave in order to both demonstrate its legitimate social place in the wider dominant culture and, more importantly, to envision and strive to achieve a new American social reality of racial reconciliation, political equality, and socio-economic justice based on the lessons of Christian scriptures or the message of Jesus Christ. Matsuoka agrees with S. Lee that Asian Americans can envision this new kind of transformed American reality because they are now living in the creative space of the “state of liminality.”9 That is, although Asian Americans seem to live in a fixed reality defined by the powerful dominant culture, they are wide open to new ideas. Especially when they ground themselves in the vision of the Kingdom of God, they have the possibility of serving as God’s transforming agents in American society.10 Matsuoka is not naively optimistic in believing that Asian Americans are the only legitimate agents of this social transformation or the only ones fully capable of it. Rather, like S. Lee, his optimism lies in the power and authority of the Christian faith in Jesus the Incarnate, who once served and still serves his people in concrete human history as a realistic hope for the broken world.11
As Fumitaka Matsuoka and also Frank Y. Ichishita ably demonstrate, Asian American theologians have sought to spread the idea of a racially reconciled America from the Asian American multicultural perspective.12 As Matsuoka admits, however, this reconciliation movement is still weak in the Asian American circle, due to Asian Americans’ narrow social concerns, the extremely marginal status of Asian Americans in society, and the need for and lack of reconciliation among Asian Americans themselves. Domestically and ecclesially, Matsuoka realizes, Asian American Christian life has been so focused on matters of identity and survival that it has had little concern for the church’s theology as public theology that can contribute to larger social, multicultural, and interreligious understanding. The other considerable problem is that although certain practical theological themes as public theology are shared in academia, they have not yet reached local church contexts. For instance, in many local churches, the feminist-liberative or racial-liberative movement is so alien that it does not get any serious attention from ordinary churchgoers. Nor is the Asian American theological perspective being taught at most American seminaries today. Unless it is seriously taught, not only for Asian Americans, but also for Euro-Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and all others at the educational institutions, it will be hard for Asian American Christianity to make a substantial contribution to American practical theological or the ecclesial mainstream in the near future.
Postcolonial Gender Liberative Theologies
Over the past decades, Asian American women scholars have come up with their own practical theological insights that really touch on the everyday lives of Asian American women in ways that earlier allegedly androcentric theologies did not. Below, I introduce the key practical theological themes among many others that those scholars have developed.
First, a growing number of Asian American women take postcolonial and liberative perspectives seriously, especially regarding biblical interpretation. As Hyun Kyung Chung recognizes, these women have learned and practiced the non-western style of biblical hermeneutics in making their own biblical testimony as their new identity in faith. Especially, their feminist approach to Scripture has produced unique interpretations of the Bible. A good example is Chung’s articulation of new images of Jesus. Against the most prevalent Jesus image as the Son of God among Asian Americans, Chung proposes alternative images of Jesus as liberator, political martyr, worker, mother, midwife, grain, and, most intriguingly, female shaman who knows the innermost spiritual scars of “her” people.13 Chung’s intention is clear: she wants to create biblical interpretations and symbols that not only can overturn the androcentric oppressive use of the Bible vis-à-vis Asian American women, but that can also really meet their spiritual and liberative-theological needs. Chung articulates seven theological characteristics of Asian American women’s spirituality or spiritual foci. She notes that this spirituality is:14 While this feminist-liberative aspect is still weak in the Asian American ecclesial context, its influence and application are expected to soar as the numbers of highly educated Asian American women pastors and theologians from progressive seminaries increase. Why do they need this particular postcolonial and liberative hermeneutic? The answer is obvious. These women, alongside women of other colors in a similar situation (even including a considerable portion of white women), need their own biblical interpretation and theological hermeneutic that specifically address their life situations and struggles, as the socially, culturally, and theologically marginali...
- concrete and total: concrete reality considered. Total life of body and soul;
- creative and flexible: creative and flexible in breaking patriarchal structures. Flexibility is also openness to new ideas;
- prophetic and historical: justice and peace for all oppressed and exploited people in history;
- community-oriented: no individualism. A community where all live in the fullness of life and in harmony;
- pro-life: while men often kill others for their “-isms,” women tend to prohibit and fight back any unreasonable violence;
- ecumenical, all embracing: unilateral Christian triumphalism rejected. Ecumenical spirituality welcomed; and
- cosmic, creation-oriented: concerned about the whole creation including animals, plants, water, the earth, air, and the rest of the universe. The concept of the divine Mother is suggested.