Asian American theology Archives

Doing Asian-American Theology, Daniel D. Lee. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: A book laying out a framework for doing Asian-American theology considering both the shared and diverse cultural contexts of Asian-American peoples.

For too long we would “do theology” without cultural modifiers. It was assumed that the theology that arose from European and American contexts (at least among the dominant culture) was theology. Only in doing mission did the awareness arise that there was a lot in the theology of European-Americans that was contextual, and out of context in indigenous settings. To truly be embraced in indigenous contexts, the faith had to be translated not only into the language but also the culture of the people.

Daniel D. Lee contends that this concern for context is no less true for Asian Americans who believe, and in this book he attempts to set out the cultural context that frames doing theology as an Asian American. “Neutral” theology really is White theology, and risks the loss of distinctive Asian American cultural identity and the contribution of Asian Americans to the global and national mosaic of the church. Just as Jesus entered the world as a Jew in all the particularities of Jewishness, so the particularities of being Asian American matter.

Before we launch into the framework Lee proposes, we should note his definition of Asian American theology. He writes:

“Asian American theology is about God revealed in Jesus Christ in covenantal relationship with Asian Americans qua Asian Americans. Thus, Asian American theology is about Asian Americans as human covenant partners with God.”

For Lee, particularity matters and can be lost when we are blind to the cultural normativities latent in so-called “neutral theologizing.”

The framework he then proposes is what he calls the “Asian American Quadrilateral.” The four themes he articulates are:

Asian heritage. These are the cultural, religious, and philosophical inheritances that inform an intuited sense of “how things are done.” As there are many Asian peoples, this is hardly monolithic and sometimes conflicting. There is a danger of essentializing or giving way to stereotypes (e.g. the “tiger mom”). He develops the use of cultural archetypes such as Confucian filial piety, some consonant with the faith, some distorted by fallenness, some neutral but which may be considered through the eyes of faith.
Migration experience. This addresses the immigrant or refugee experience, acculturation and assimilation, intergenerational conflicts and identity formation.
American culture. This addresses everything from American cultural and theological heritage to colonialism to the secular and post-modern turn of the culture and what it means to live amid different ways in which “things are done” and how the Asian and American aspects of one’s identity are integrated personally and in congregations.
Racialization. This involves understanding the process of racial identity formation, the black/white binary, the particular experience of microaggressions Asian Americans experience, often summed up in the “perpetual foreigner” status.

After devoting a chapter to each theme, Lee offers two concluding chapters where he begins to do some theological formulation around identity and the church. He first discusses fragmented and integrated identities in the Asian American experience and the trauma of self-editing that comes with living bi-culturally. He believes healing comes when mental categories to describe one’s experience, such as the Quadrilateral, are developed, leading to storytelling that constructs a coherent narrative of one’s life, and spiritually formative communities where narratives are shared, affirmed, and offer insight.

Finally, he addresses the idea of the Asian American church, addressing the flaws in various proposals of multi-racial churches, particularly that these often lead to being blind to the structural aspects of racism as well as submerging identities, often for the sake of White normativity. He draws on Rowan William’s idea of “mixed economy” to explore the various layers of diversity that may exist within a community, going beyond race and ethnicity. Drawing on the Quadrilateral, he proposes contextual communities for Asian heritage, transitional communities for migrant communities, missional communities for American culture and liberational communities for racialization. Some will come more to the fore than others at times and they will exist in tension with each other.

The subtitle of this work is important to make sense of what Lee is doing. “A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice” helps one see that before one engages in the work of theology proper, one must be aware (and self-aware) of the context within which it is being done so that theological reflection both reflects and engages one’s Asian American identity and the Asian and American contexts in which that is lived out. As an onlooker in this enterprise, I look forward to see what is built upon this framework and how it enables Asian American Christians to flourish, the wider church to see Christ more fully, and the wider culture offered a fresh witness to the God who has been revealed in Jesus Christ.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

The Future of Evangelical Theology, Amos Yong. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: An exploration of the contribution that has been made and could be made from
Asian-Americans to evangelical theology, with particular attention to context and the author’s Pentecostal perspective.

Euro-American voices have long dominated evangelical theology, such that some may consider the two synonymous. The landscape has changed. In addition to the presence of many people of color in the North American context contributing to the theological dialogue from their own context, there is a growing church in east and southeast Asia, as well as in the global South that now represent a numerical majority of evangelical Christians in the world, and are beginning to exercise a voice in theological discussions.

Amos Yong’s book is a contribution from the Asian and Asian American perspective. Also distinctive, and important in global discussions of evangelical theology are the voices of Pentecostal believers, and Yong represents this stream as well. In fact he describes his own perspective as an Asian American pent-evangelical perspective!

His first two chapters chart the contemporary global scene of evangelical theology, including the voices of Asian theologians in chapter one, and those of the Asian American diaspora in chapter two. He then asks why the evangelical Asian American voice has been relatively “unenergetic” compared to mainline and Roman Catholic voices, considering both the white North American contribution to this problem, and how Asian American evangelicals have internalized this tradition. This is central to his argument in the book. He writes,

“The argument unfolded here is at the heart of this book: it claims to address not only challenges confronting Asian American evangelicals but also the blind spots of evangelical theology especially in its American incarnations. If it is successful, then we shall see that the ‘problem’ for Asian American evangelical theology is simultaneously the problem of evangelical theology itself–there is no way to address either without addressing the other” (pp. 29-30).

In chapter four, Yong turns to the Pentecostal voices in Asian American theology and the unique contribution that the Pentecostal experience brings to understanding the many voices in the conversation in a context where the missional impetus of the Spirit’s empowering creates contact across so many cultures.

Chapters five and six were, I thought, among the most interesting in the book, in exploring what an Asian American pent-evangelical theology brings to questions of immigration, centering on themes of migration in a Pentacostal reading of Lukan migration narratives, and the experiences in the Asian American context around money, migration, and mission.

Chapter seven is Yong’s attempt to sketch a programmatic vision for pent-evangelical Asian American theology that encourages Asian American voices in dialogue with other North Americans and also engages with other voices in the global South. This is followed by a more personal epilogue in which Yong charts with ten binaries ways in which he, perhaps mirroring the experience of “hybridity” of other Asian Americans, finds himself between _____ and _____.

Speaking from a Euro-American perspective, I welcome work like this. So often, we are unreflective of how our own cultural context (which we often fail to distinguish from the gospel of the kingdom) has shaped our theology, even our theological categories. I appreciated the more extensive sketch of an Asian American pent-evangelical theology of immigration. Our inability to think this way, and often blindness to how so much of the Bible is a narrative of migrations and diasporas, is one of the areas where our Asian American fellow believers might help us see parts of the Bible that our own context may have obscured. We need voices like Yong’s, not only in the theological formation of the Asian American diaspora, but to see the world beyond our own, often Euro-American, perspective. I share his hope that his book would encourage other Asian American evangelical and Pentecostal theologians to find and use their voices.