Review: Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective

December 29, 2014December 29, 2014 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective by Andrew Sung Park
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Black and White voices are not the only voices that need to be heard in facing the realities of race in America. Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans and First or Native Americans also need to be heard. This older work (1996) from Andrew Sung Park offers a distinctively Korean-American perspective on both racial conflict and the healing that is needed.

Park begins with a cultural anthropology of the Korean-American community centered around the concept of Han which he describes as the unbearable pain, resentment, and bitterness resulting from intense suffering, particularly from oppression and injustice. The first part explores the experience of Han during the Korean war and the division of the country, the abandonment of wives in mixed marriages with servicemen, the experience of “comfort women” and experiences of discrimination in the US context with the white church and with other racial groups, particularly in the South L.A. context. He also looks at the distinctive sins he sees in Korean communities including racism, sexism and the exploitation of labor.

Part Two explores what he sees as the need of a common vision to bridge the racial divides in our society. He speaks particularly here of an “inmost vision” rooted in the parable of the lost sheep where none are considered dispensable. He extends this inmost vision to the church which brings its expectation of the return of Christ into the present through dealing with injustices and through reconciliation with our ethnic neighbors. Before moving on, Park also looks at Western and Eastern views of the self and the difference of individualism versus one’s relation within family.

Part Three then turns to sociological analysis of models of interracial relationships, looking at assimilation, amalgamation, cultural pluralist, “triple melting pot”, and newly synthesized ethnic identities. He then applies these to the Korean-American church, suggesting that none of these are adequate. He proposes instead a “transcendent, transmutational” model where the work of Christ transcends unity and diversity polarities holding these together in paradoxical tension while transmutation speaks to internal changes in prejudice and external changes in discriminatory practice that overcome racism. The aim is the formation of a “Christic” community, one characterized by paradoxical inclusiveness (hahn), affectionate attachment (jung), and graceful gusto (mut). He believes the filial piety of Korean extended families can be a place where this community is embodied in an American culture where family is in decline.

Part Four expands on the elements in Parts Two and Three that have to do with a “theology of seeing”. This is a “seeing” that both understands the han or pain of the oppressed and also that envisions a new community through visual, intellectual, spiritual and soul seeing that contribute hermeneutics of questioning, construction, affection, and celebration that bring healing.

I have to admit that I struggled as I read this book between appreciating the sociological and cultural anthropology that explored the character of Korean-American community and its experience of race in America and what I felt were at best preliminary theological formulations that seemed to me a synthesis of Christian language with Korean and Taoist conceptions. It seemed to mean to illustrate the fine line between contextualization and syncretism and I’m not sure which side of the line this fell on. My caution comes as a result of being an “outsider” to Korean culture on the one hand, and on the other to a cursory connection between Christian theological concepts and biblical texts and ideas like han, hahn, jung, and mut. I would have liked to seen further work in “connecting the dots”. I feel that a more honest subtitle might have been “toward an Asian-American theological perspective”. Nevertheless, there is value in this work in both the description and analysis of Korean-American experience and the awareness and exploration of how cultural conceptions native to Korean-Americans might shape a theology of racial conflict and healing.

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Crying Out Day and Night For Justice

December 4, 2014August 26, 2025 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

I never saw this before.

This past Sunday, I preached on the Parable of the Persistent Widow in Luke 18:1-8. I’ve often heard others preach, and have myself taught the message of this parable that we should “always pray and not give up” (v. 1). I’ve thought in terms of things like seeing people come to faith, praying for the sick, praying about needs related to our work and our lives. I don’t think that is wrong, but as I studied this parable I was struck by the fact that the widow was seeking justice from the unjust judge (v. 3). Furthermore, in Jesus’s own application of the parable verse 7 says, “will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?” Verse 8 reinforces this theme: “I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

One of the basic things I learned about Bible study years ago was to pay attention to repeated words. They are a clue to what the writer or speaker considers important. Clearly in this passage, one of the things Jesus considers important is justice, and praying for it.

In recent months and weeks, we’ve been inundated with news stories about the death of a young black man in Ferguson, a black youth in Cleveland, and an older black man in New York City. In two of these cases, local grand juries refused to charge police with any wrongful death and there has been a great outcry in the press and in social media either decrying the injustice of these decisions and the deaths that occurred at the hands of police, or in defending the police officers, who often put themselves at risk in protecting public safety and have to make split second decisions that, if wrong, may cost them their lives or the lives of others.

While I personally have decided that it is fruitless to raise my voice on one “side” of this discussion or the other in social media, I will say a couple things. One is there is something wrong with this pattern with so many dying in the streets, some at the hands of police. It is clear to me that we still are a racially divided society. If nothing, the vehemence in the outcries on both sides of the discussion reveal we are a long way from what Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned as “the beloved community.”

It seems to me that in the predominantly white church community (the one I know best) we either resort to attempts at personal justification (“I’m not racist” or “I’m personally colorblind”). Or we attempt to join and justify one side of the outcry, and, from what I can see, simply perpetuate and deepen the divisions in our society.

None of this is to say that the bereaved and their communities shouldn’t pursue justice nor that police shouldn’t be supported in their hard work. In fact, in a society where the rule of law is upheld, our legal system should be the place where these things are adjudicated, and it is right for those who believe that justice is denied to continue to pursue it via legal means. It’s not a perfect system, but the best we humans can devise in a fallen world.

But the parable (remember the parable!) also exhorts us to prayer to God for justice as well. For those of us who are Christ-followers, obedience to Jesus means that we keep praying for justice. Our first work in these matters is to seek the Lord. But the parable also says it is to be our persisting work. And this is where I fall down. I see advances in civil rights. I see a president of African-American descent in the White House. I mistake progress toward King’s “dream” with fulfillment. And I stop praying.

What the succession of events in Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York do is challenge me to renew my efforts in prayer and become aware that this is an area where persistence is vital. As I look for God’s answers, such praying can also change me. Praying helps me listen both for God’s invitations to join him in pursuit of the “beloved community” and opens my ears and my heart to listen to other voices than simply the ones that most resonate with me, voices that need to be heard if real reconciliation and not simply self-justification are to occur.

I’ve concluded that I need to persist in crying out to the Lord to bring justice (all that that means) into the racial divides in our country. I pray the Lord’s prayer each morning and night. As I pray, “Thy kingdom come” I will include in my prayers the coming of Jesus’s just rule into our racially divided land. It occurs to me that I could be praying that the rest of my life. I hope not, but Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of saying, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” What sustains our persistence over that “long arc” is the promise of a God who will grant justice, who will bring a kingdom of shalom.

Going Deeper question: For what do you believe God wants you to persist in prayer? How is a concern for justice a part of that?

This post also appears on my church’s Going Deeper blog for this week.

I Need Diverse Books

June 4, 2014 / rtrube54 / 6 Comments

This post is inspired by the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign that developed when the first ever BookCon, which took place this past weekend, announced an all-white author lineup. The Twitter campaign that followed garnered 162 million impressions in its attempt to raise awareness of the need for more books by and about people of various ethnicities and races. This post is not about that campaign (which you can read about here), but about my own growing realization that I need diverse books.

Nope, I’m not going to try to persuade you that you need more diverse books, or your children or your school or your library need more diverse books. So take a deep breath and relax. I’m just going to share how important reading diverse books is for my own life.

For one thing, even the local world of my neighborhood doesn’t look like me. I see saris and headscarves and skin much darker than mine. I hear other languages, and even sing some of the worship songs in our church in Spanish because we have Spanish speakers who are part of our worship. Certainly the world of the university where I engage in campus ministry doesn’t look like me. We have over 3,000 students from China alone and growing numbers from India and South America. We also have students from the “hyphenated” communities in this country: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans. And there are many from all these groups who call themselves “brother” or “sister” in my faith who I believe I will spend eternity with. Better start understanding each other!

Reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow for example portrayed to me afresh what it is like to be stopped simply for driving or walking while black, and the practices of illegal searches in this country that violate our Fourth Amendment protections. Sheryl Wu Dunn’s Half The Sky reminds me of the systematic injustices and violence we do to women around the world, and how women have courageously fought back. Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, helped me look at life through the lens of immigrants encountering very different value systems and trying to hold onto something of their identities. Julie Park’s When Diversity Drops helped me see our collegiate ministry as students of different ethnicity encounter it. John Perkins books and the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. help me begin to understand the difficult experience of Blacks in America, and challenges me to match their Christ-likeness in pursuing justice and reconciliation.

This year I have been listening to a variety of voices, mostly outside my own faith community, who are writing about the future of higher education. Some of this has to do with a conference on this subject I am leading this summer. Why this is valuable for me is that if we are going to participate as responsible partners in conversations about the future of the university, we need to understand the issues and each other well. For similar reasons, I’ve read science writers like J Craig Venter on genetic research and Sir John Houghton (actually a committed Christian) on issues of climate change. Sometimes they open my eyes to issues I haven’t thought about. I don’t agree with all I read–what would be the fun in that?

I need diverse books because I believe God’s intention is to form a “beloved community” that is a mosaic of the peoples of the world. What a great design for engaging the diverse peoples and problems we confront in this world! Yet I come from a white, working class background that has shaped my outlook, for good and less than good. Beginning with the diverse narratives of the Bible, diverse books that help me understand the parts of the world that are “different” for me, and diverse friendships, I hope to be able both to offer what is unique in my own gifts and background and to welcome the abundant variety of gifted people that make up a “God sized, beloved community.”

Those are some of the reasons I need diverse books. What diverse books would you suggest I read? Who knows, you might see them in future reviews on this blog.

Review: When Diversity Drops: Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education

February 25, 2014February 25, 2014 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

When Diversity Drops: Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education by Julie J. Park
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Diversity and inclusion are big buzz words in higher education circles. Most of the time, efforts to promote diversity and inclusion are university sponsored. What Julie Park does is study the unusual instance where a campus organization on its own initiative pursues a diversity initiative, moving from a mostly white and Asian-American group to one incorporating significant numbers of African-American and Latino/a students. The group? InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at “California University” (a pseudonym to provide anonymity to the group as well as students involved in this study). This book is based on her doctoral research project studying this group.

Beginning in the years after the LA riots in 1992 this group pursued an increasingly deliberate agenda to become more diverse ethnically. Staff leaders took risks, there was more regular teaching on racial reconciliation that grounded this in a biblical rather than “political correctness” agenda, frank and sometimes emotion fraught “Race Matters” sessions were launched, and intentional efforts were made to reach new students across ethnic lines. Julie Park chronicles the up and down difficult journey toward increasing ethnic diversity through a series of interviews with students, staff, and alumni involved with the group during this period.

Cutting across this trend to increasing diversity was the passage of Proposition 209, that mandated “color blind” admissions policies at the state’s universities. This led to a precipitous drop in African-American admissions and a continuing rise in Asian-American admissions. And what she found was that this constrained the InterVarsity’s group to continue to achieve the kind of ethnic diversity it had previously achieved, despite having a multi-ethnic team of campus workers. This occurred both through restricting the pool of African American students from which they could recruit (in one year, only 96 African American students were admitted). It also created a new majority among Asian-American students. This also required a renewed process of aligning vision and strategies to reach students of other ethnicity.

While it is clear that Park at many points is very impressed with the InterVarsity group’s efforts to increase diversity, she also doesn’t flinch at noting their failures and miscues, including a very explosive “Race Matters” session that actually set their reconciliation efforts back, or an instance of “vision creep” where a relaxed focus on multi-ethnic outreach led to a drop in diversity. She gives us a well-written, carefully researched narrative of what it takes to change the culture of a group around race and ethnicity.

This is an important book both for those who work in collegiate ministry and for those concerned with higher education admissions policies. Groups like InterVarsity provide a voluntary meeting place where students can gain a greater vision for relationships across the ethnic lines that we draw throughout American society. If laws and admissions policies decrease these opportunities (which rarely happen in the church or other societal structures), where will they happen? And what should we conclude about the disparity of admissions by ethnicity? That is complicated but one thing is clear, at least to me. We are not operating from a level playing field, which seems to be the assumption of “color blind” laws and admissions policies.

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Color Blind

February 22, 2014February 22, 2014 / rtrube54 / 4 Comments

As a parent, I remember when our son was first tested for color blindness. We were holding our breath, hoping he would be able to see all the colors shown him. Thankfully he did. Physical color blindness is not usually considered a good thing. The inability to distinguish colors means a person with red-green color blindness has to make certain adjustments when driving, for example. And color perception is essential in some jobs, such as mixing paint colors.

Ishihara color test. Those with red-green color blindness cannot see the number 74.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become aware of another kind of “color blindness”. It is the effort to act as if racial and ethnic distinctions do not exist and do not have an impact on relations between different groups. I have to admit that for a time, I thought this was a good thing. It seemed consistent with Dr. King’s statement that we do not want to ” judge a person by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This is a great statement of the ideal just society. Unfortunately, this ideal has three problems at least when it comes to my relationships with a person of another race or ethnicity that as a white male I’ve become increasingly aware of. I don’t think these are particular problems of white people alone although I do think we are often the most unaware that we suffer from them.

One is that I am not color blind. I can no more not notice skin color than I cannot notice gender distinctions as they present themselves.

Two is that to try to be ‘color blind’ is to ignore the associated attitudes and experiences I have toward those whose skin color is not my own. I find I most hurt others when I lack self-awareness of these things. As a Christ follower, I believe my false and prejudicial attitudes are connected to my sinfulness–the rebellion against God that leads to estrangement not only from God but from other people. But the hope I have is that as I become aware of these prejudices, I can confess them. The truth is that I am racially prejudiced, and more than I know. Yet I find that the acceptance of Christ gives me courage to face this about myself, and the desire to become more like Christ challenges me to repent of these things and to pray that I can see “color” increasingly with the eyes of Christ.

And this leads to the third problem of being ‘color blind’. To think “mono-chromatically” about others is to miss the beautiful differences that exist among us and the unique gifts people of every race and ethnicity bring to the body of Christ–and to our multi-ethnic society. Recently I wrote about the loss to church and society of not appreciating the difference of “introversion”, and indeed our prejudices against introverts. Speaking as a white, our failure to see the gifts Blacks, Asians, Latino/as and others bring to us is likewise both a deep affront and a terrible loss.

Revelation 7:9-10 describes the future of God’s people in these terms:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (New International Version)

I have to confess that this is the scene I look forward to more than anything in my life. It is the place where the dream of a “beloved community” will be fulfilled in all its splendor and beauty. For me to live toward that day is not to strive for some “color blind” ideal but rather to ask for the vision and courage to face the ways I see those of color wrongly and repent. It is to ask for the vision to see those of color in all of their God-given beauty that I might affirm and celebrate the good gifts of God in his multi-ethnic family. I’m not there yet, but one thing I know, color blindness won’t get me there.