Review: Doing Asian American Theology

May 25, 2023May 24, 2023 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

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.

Review: Reading the Bible Around the World

February 13, 2023February 12, 2023 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Reading the Bible Around the World, Federico Alfredo Roth, Justin Marc Smith, Kirsten Oh, Alice Yafeh-Deigh, and Kay Higuera Smith. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: A globally representative team of authors discuss the diverse social locations of different cultures that shape their reading of scripture, developing the student’s awareness of the importance of context in biblical interpretation.

There was a time (and I was influenced by this tradition) where we learned to study scripture with Euro-American interpretive tools often labelled the historical-critical method. It was an attempt to bring a kind of scientific precision to the study of texts that would lead to “assured” interpretations that were privileged above those of other interpreters because they arose from a supposedly rigorous process. Yet such interpretive work was done by people who often were blind to the way their worldview shaped their conclusions, including such things as a radical skepticism of the miraculous or the spiritual world. It was also blind to ways one’s position as part of a dominant, colonizing culture shaped one’s reading of the social and ethnic dimensions of the text. Most of this was also done by men who brought the prejudices of their gender to how they read passages about women and relations between the sexes.

The introduction of this work discusses the sea change that has occurred in biblical interpretation as scholars from every part of the world have engaged the biblical text, bringing the unique sensitivities of their cultural contexts. Women are joining men. Latino/a, Asian, and African scholars are joining Euro-Americans in studying the biblical text. The growing awareness of social location and how this shapes interpretation has led to rich conversations about the different ways we may read the biblical text, the different nuances or features we notice, and the particular applications we make shaped by our context.

In the following chapters, interpreters from different cultures describe and model what this looks like. Each describes particular interpretive emphases that shape study of the biblical text that arise in their cultural context. Then they demonstrate how this works out in their reading of Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the loving neighbor who happens to be a Samaritan, and their reading of an Old Testament passage of their choice.

Frederico Alfredo Roth discusses Latin American approaches, and the influence of liberationist approaches, a concern for the poor and the migrant, and for praxis have in approaching texts. Alice Yafeh-Deigh discusses colonial and post-colonial influences as well as tribalism and patriarchal concerns in reading texts from an African perspective. Justin Marc Smith discusses classic approaches of Euro-Americans, the anti-supernaturalism underlying many readings, and how the post-modern turn brought awareness of the social location of readers and growing self-awareness to Euro-American interpreters. Kirsten Oh recounts the intersection of orientalist, anglicist, and nativist readings of scripture, as well as the influence of underlying Confucianism and the current post-colonial context. Kay Higuera Smith rounds out the discussion with an exploration of the situation of diasporic peoples, often leading to creolized or hybridized readings.

It was more difficult to compare the different readings of Old Testament passages because each chose unique passages (and one did not include this). The Latin American reading of Deuteronomy 24:17-22 was especially aware of the treatment of the marginalized in this passage. The African reading of Esther emphasized the strategies both women used to subvert patriarchal dominance, an issue also wrestled with by African women. The Euro-American reading of David and Bathsheba looks at this primarily from the perspective of David and David’s sin, not seeing the incident through Bathsheba’s eyes. The Asian reading of Ruth focuses on issues of Ruth as “model minority,” combined with her invisibility at the end of the narrative, while also recognizing her distinctive character of hesed.

What was more interesting to me was the reading of Luke 10:25-37. While there were nuances of difference, particularly in application, I was struck by how similar all the readings were. All were aware of the Jew-Samaritan dynamic and drew on this in the discussion of neighboring. Yet the combined discussion offered a much richer reading of a familiar story. It suggested to me that reading with our global neighbors, when it is focused carefully on the same text leads, not to radically disparate readings, but rather fuller readings exposing aspects of the biblical text we may overlook. For example, the Latin American approach raised the question of why the unsafeness of the Jericho road was tolerated. Isn’t addressing this also a matter of loving neighbor?

The subtitle of this book is “A Student’s Guide to Global Hermeneutics.” I think this text accomplishes that task well. The overview of interpretive distinctions of different cultural contexts combined with examples, as well as reflection questions makes this a helpful text in an academic setting. It is also a helpful introduction, especially for North American Christians, to the growing global conversation about how we read scripture together. The suggestions for further reading allow one to go as far as one wants in that exploration. And what will one find? What is suggested here is a richer, deeper, and perhaps renewed engagement with scripture.

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

Review: A Multitude of All Peoples

May 5, 2020September 4, 2025 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity, Vince L. Bantu. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: A well-documented study of the global spread of ancient Christianity, controverting the argument of Christianity as White and western, and contending for the contextualizing and de-colonizing of contemporary global Christianity.

Often in Christian witness with people from Western countries, the challenge is whether someone can believe intellectually or volitionally, or dealing with ways they may have been put off by the church. In other parts of the world, or with people from those parts of the world or from minority cultures, the issue is that Christianity is thought of white and Western, and it would be an abandonment of one’s culture to believe. In significant part, this arises from mission efforts that have been both culturally captive to the West, and often been the Trojan horse for colonizing efforts.

This book addresses this challenge in several ways. One is that it traces how the early church in the West diverged from other believers in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The fusion of church and state that began with Constantine marked the beginning of the separation from churches in the East. The framing of orthodox Christian belief at Chalcedon in Hellenistic language distanced believers who spoke of Christian faith in different heart languages.

Then in successive chapters Bantu traces the indigenous Christian movements in Africa, in the Middle East, and along the Silk Road. The exclusion of Miaphysites, those who would say that Christ exists as one person and one human-divine nature, separated the Africans and others from the West. What Bantu shows is the vibrant indigenous churches that developed in each of these parts of the world–the Copts in Egypt, the Ethiopian Church, the Maronites in Lebanon, and the Armenian Church, the early church in India tracing its origins to St. Thomas, and churches along the Silk Road.

The book summarizes the history of each of these indigenous movements that at one time, or even down to the present have been a vibrant Christian presence (consider the 21 Coptic martyrs brutally killed in a videotaped Isis message). The history is accompanied by images of church buildings and artifacts from these churches. The history and archaeological evidence make a strong case for the trans-cultural, global character of early Christianity that existed from the earliest centuries through the first millennium, long before western mission movements.

Likewise, the history of the interaction between the early churches of the West, and sister churches in Africa, the Middle East and Asia offer lessons for today. Chalcedon, from the perspective of these churches, rejected their understanding of Christ and the Christian faith, insisting on a Hellenistic framework for this belief. Bantu shows how indigenous churches responded to the rise of Islam, and sometimes were able to frame Christian faith in ways that were doctrinally sound and yet sidestepped the controversies surrounding God and his Son.

At the beginning of the third millennium of Christianity and the unprecedented global spread of Christianity, the message of this book more important than ever. At times, churches outside the West still struggle under Western theological and cultural domination. In other places, indigenous leadership is framing culturally contextualized yet theologically faithful approaches that advance the gospel. Will Western churches relinquish control in the former instance and affirm and learn from the latter? This book both offers historical evidence that indigenous churches may thrive, and that Christianity from its very beginnings was not exclusively white and Western.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul’s Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World

December 12, 2014December 13, 2014 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul’s Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World by Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Relevance and faithfulness. Any teacher of any religious tradition is faced with this tension as they move from one cultural context to the next. One has to connect both with the thought world and life experiences of one’s hearers in terms they readily grasp, and one needs to faithfully communicate the substance of one’s religious beliefs without compromising their essence.

The authors of this book believe the Apostle Paul’s Mars Hill discourse provides a very helpful model for how one may do this in the case of Christianity. Athens represented the intellectual center of the Roman empire and was a crossroads of the various beliefs commonly held in Paul’s day from the worship of a pantheon of deities to the more refined philosophies of Epicureanism and Stoicism. The authors observe how this is not unlike our own context which they see steeped in both post-modernist assumptions about truth and materialistic naturalism. (I am surprised that they did not give more attention to Eastern influences in our society and the pantheistic monism that characterizes many discussions of “spirituality.”)

One of the first questions the authors answer is whether Paul succeeded in this task. Some commentators have argued that Athens represented a failed strategy of “contextualized preaching” from which Paul retreated when he went on to Corinth and decided to preach nothing but “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” They show how Paul’s message, while using the language and letters of the Greeks, actually reflected ideas rooted both in the Hebrew scriptures and the preaching of Christ elsewhere. And, like elsewhere, some believed while others did not. There were many other cities, like Philippi that Paul left with just handfuls of believers.

Through a detailed study of the content and rhetoric of Paul’s message, the authors show that Paul knew his audience, knew their leading thinkers, and framed the gospel in terms they could grasp, yet without shrinking away from controversial contentions, most notably, the idea of the resurrection. They conclude that we may also pay attention to the instances of “unknown gods” in our culture, the signals of awareness of the transcendent in our hearers, the process people undergo in their journey to faith, and the important work we may need to do in challenging the idolatries of our day. Ultimately we must also point to Jesus as the climax of history and the one who fulfills in his life, death, and resurrection our highest ideals.

This is a helpful contribution to the discussion of Paul’s Mars Hill message and whether it may serve as a model for contemporary Christian witness. The authors not only defend this contention but show in very practical terms how this might work out in a twenty-first century context.

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