APARRI 2006

Democracy and Its Discontents: Religion and the Underside of Pacific Asian North America

 

Articulation, Performance, and Practice: Religious Knowledge in New Contexts

  • Joseph Cheah: Racialized Construction of Knowledge and Demystification of Asian Buddhism

  • Himanee Gupta-Carlson: "Everybody Has A Right to Pray and Well, We Live Here": The 2003 National Day of Prayer Controversy in Muncie, Indiana, and the Limits of Tolerance

  • Jonathan H. X. Lee: Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation U.S.A.: Crossing and Negotiating Religious, Inter-Ethnic and Inter-Racial Relations, Linguistic and Cultural Diversities, In and Throughout American Civil Society

  • Jennifer B. Saunders:  Sundarakand Katha: Performance and Bhakti in Hindu Atlanta

Religion and Collective Identity

Activism in a Religious Key

  • Mushim Ikeda-Nash: Buddhism as the Foundation for Activism

  • Helen Kim: Niseis of the Faith: Theologizing Liberation in the Asian American Movement

  • Roy I. Sano: Defiance, Resistance, and Rebellion: Examples of Historic PANA Christian Expressions

Declaring Faith, Claiming Community

  • Angelica Bailon: Kababayan Catholicism: Community, Identity, and Filipino Diasporic Nationalism in Metropolitan New York, 1982-1998

  • Philip Tan: Survivors of the Killing Fields: Spirituality and Beliefs

  • Trangdai Tranguyen: What the Pho Are You Doing With Your Faith?

New Struggles to Define "Church" in the 21st Century

  • Erika Muse: Contentious Divides and the Legislation of Morality: Defining Homosexuality, Traditional Marriage, and Civil Rights Among Chinese Christians of Massachusetts

  • Julie Song: Addressing the "Silent Exodus": An Examination of Second-Generation Korean Americans Who Have left the Ethnic Church

  • Winfred "Fred" Vergara: Mainstreaming: Asian Americans in the Episcopal Church

Panels:

Exorcising Fundamentalist Demons: Asian American Evangelicals Engaging Politics, Social Justice, and the Common Good Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity

New Research on Old Themes: Rescripting Asian American Religious History, University of California at Santa Barbara

Abstracts:

 

Racialized Construction of Knowledge and Demystification of Asian Buddhism
Joseph Cheah, Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, CT, jpcheah@aol.com

While Said's study of Orientalism focused upon Islam and the Middle East, his theory of Orientalism as a specific outcome of imperialism and colonialism is especially pertinent to what had been written about Victorian Buddhism as an object of scholarly study in the West. The Saidian concept of Orientalism provides a context for examining the extent to which the Victorian culture overshadowed the culture in which Buddhism originated. In other words, the Western interpretation of Buddhism was determined not so much by the culture in which Buddhism originated, as by the Victorian context in which the discourse of Euro-American Buddhism was created. This position recognizes the project of modernity of the Enlightenment era, in which knowledge and culture of the indigenous people became as much part of colonial exploitation as raw materials and other natural resources. Such knowledge was often extracted and appropriated by the colonial administrators and Orientalists from the non-Western others and, then, re-presented to the Westerners. This paper examines such a racialized construction of knowledge in the Orientalists' representation of Asian Buddhism. I will focus in particular on how Asian Buddhism had been demystified by the Orientalists who separated the sacred texts of Buddhism from its rituals and practices. I will exemplify this by examining the appropriation of Buddhist manuscripts by academic Orientalist scholars and the re-presentation of Buddhism through the framework of Protestantism by Euro-American converts and sympathizers.

"Everybody Has A Right to Pray and Well, We Live Here": The 2003 National Day of Prayer Controversy in Muncie, Indiana, and the Limits of Tolerance

Himanee Gupta-Carlson, University of Hawai'i - Manoa, Honolulu, HI, himanee@hawaii.edu

This paper offers a reading of a controversy that erupted in 2003 among residents of Muncie, Indiana, over how to celebrate the National Day of Prayer. The article looks at how the prayer day events, portrayed in media as a controversy between evangelical Christianity and a multiculturalist tendency to honor a diverse range of faiths, evoked a range of themes: how immigrant and diasporic identities come to be articulated within the concept of nation; how our understandings of religious tolerance are problematic; and how fundamentalist religious identities are constructed within a multiculturalizing America. The article draws on feminist theories to show how the themes articulated above come to be constituted through gendered relationships of power. In suggesting that gender serves as a vehicle for organizing a multicultural polity within a Christian-dominant framework, the article concludes by proposing a use of feminist theories to rearticulate commonality within multicultural diversity. Feminist theories, thus, are seen as strategies for an understanding of religious tolerance that is more attentive to the instabilities of difference. 

Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation U.S.A.: Crossing and Negotiating Religious, Inter-Ethnic and Inter-Racial Relations, Linguistic and Cultural Diversities, In and Throughout American Civil Society

Jonathan H. X. Lee, gojonjongo@gmail.com

The Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation was founded in 1966 by Venerable Master Cheng Yen and thirty female followers. This year, it celebrates its fortieth anniversary, as one of the world's largest non-profit relief and charity organizations. Worldwide this lay Buddhist organization claims more than 5,000,000 followers, with branches in thirty-nine countries. Compassion Relief is intimately involved in providing social, educational, charitable, and medical relief to the underprivileged and underserved, throughout and beyond Taiwan, reaching the United States, the world, and even into the geo-politically sensitive Chinese mainland. Compassion Relief's transnational structure grows larger and more intricate daily, and its global mission of environmentalism, healthcare, education and culture, and disaster relief extends worldwide. San Dimas, California is home to Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation U.S.A.'s headquarter, established in 1985. In this paper, I seek to examine the role of Compassion Relief U.S.A. in negotiating inter-ethnic and inter-racial relations, linguistic and cultural diversities, and the re-imagination of community boundaries, in and throughout American civil society, vis-à-vis its various relief efforts in the United States, and its implications abroad.

Compassion Relief has transplanted its "just do it" socially engaged Chinese Buddhist relief work into the "new American religious landscape." Compassion Relief's fourfold mission encompasses disaster relief, medical and general healthcare, education and culture, and environmentalism, together reflecting a global orientation. Compassion coupled with upaya (expedient means), two central teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, guide its relief efforts to serve clients without regard to age, sex, race, ethnicity, class, or religious affiliation. Although a religious institution, its primary goal is not evangelical, but rather, it is to bring "compassion" into "action" to assist those in need. In the early nineteenth century, French sociologist Alex de Tocqueville observed and admired American society because of its voluntary associations and civic society, which continues to this day. Although, social service work is nothing new to Compassion Relief, its relief work in American society has impacted the role of religion in the public sphere and, further, it has comprehensively redefined notions of race and ethnicity, interfaith dialogue and practices, making diversity meaningful, and by extension, has brought new attention to Buddhism and civic service, which legitimates Chinese Buddhism in particular, and Buddhism in general in American society.

This paper seeks to discuss how Compassion Relief's work crosses, transcends, and negotiates the boundaries of religious, linguistic, inter-ethnic and inter-racial relations, including cultural and national identities. First, I will examine Compassion Relief's medical and general healthcare outreach in California, Hawai'i, and New York, in addition to its bone marrow bank, which have provided an outlet for a relatively new ethnically Chinese immigrant Buddhist mission society to transplant itself onto American mainstream society. A discussion of Compassion Relief's educational and cultural outreach will follow, reflecting degrees of "acculturation," civic responsibilities, and inter-ethnic cooperation. Third, I will examine the national attention gained by Compassion Relief's outreach after the horrific terrorist attack of 9/11, and the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina, affecting the boundaries of international U.S.-Taiwan relations. While racial and ethnic tensions ran high in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Compassion Relief's work provided a platform for new discussions of inter-ethic and inter-racial relations between African-Americans and Asian-Americans in general, and Chinese-Americans in particular. Finally, I will analyze the multiple complexities and implications of Compassion Relief's outreach in American inter-ethnic and inter-racial relations, linguistic diversity, multiculturalism, and the interfaith environs of a pluralistic society.

Sundarakand Katha: Performance and Bhakti in Hindu Atlanta

Jennifer B. Saunders, Denison University, Granville, OH, saundersj@denison.edu

About twice a month, often on Sunday mornings, ten to twenty families of north Indian origin meet in a suburban Atlanta home to recite the Sundarakand, the fifth chapter of the Ramcaritmanas. Tulsidas' sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana relates the story of Ram, an incarnation of Vishnu. In this paper I will argue that reciting the Sundarakand evokes a shared feeling of bhakti or devotion to Ram, creating a cohesive community in Atlanta. The specific content of the Sundarakand is secondary to many of the other functions its performance and the gathering around it serve. In analyzing this performance I examine the community's comprehension and apprehension of the text to understand participants' shared experience.

When participants recite the text so quickly that many cannot follow along or strategically recite only every other line, they are performing the narrative as written in the text but receiving the text as they imagine it - a composite of the story they know with the recognizable words they recite. The performance's meaning is created through a combination of the performers' understanding of the received text and the emotion this understanding and the form of the performance evoke, what James N. Baker refers to as apprehension. Baker suggests that nouns are more prominent than verbs in apprehension, a social process in which participants focus on knowing and remembering. The names and epithets that recur in Tulsidas' work and the tradition of repeating God's name in Hindu practice support an argument that the names recited during the Sundarakand Mandali have indexical meaning for participants and create a mood of devotion within this Hindu context. Through this shared bhakti experience, the Sundarakand Mandali thus helps to create a family out of strangers and a home out of American suburbia. This paper is based on fieldwork I conducted from 1999 to 2004 in Atlanta.

Buddhism and Democracy in the Asia Pacific

Archana Barua, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India, archana@iitg.ernet.in

"The Buddha lived in a time and place very different from 21st-century America. Nevertheless, his teachings embodied many of the ideals held dear by Americans. Buddhists take refuge in the Triple Gem, comprised of the Buddha, the dharma (his teachings), and the sangha (his community)," says one of the world's great living legends, the Dalai Lama. Quoting from the great sermons of the Venerable Master Hsing Yun , the Dalai Lama sees in the Triple Gem the ideal of democracy. The Buddhist ideals of the sangha and dharma are based on democratic principles with the centrality of spiritual and moral order of life irrespective of one's belief or non-belief in a particular god or gods. The Dalai Lama especially refers to the democratic principles of relationship within the sangha that gave central emphasis to human dignity and individual human worth over class, caste, or rank. It is no wonder that Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan (Chinese Zen) Buddhism was a woodcutter before being appointed Patriarch. Decision-making in the monastic sangha is based on democratic principles, and disputes are settled by the impartial code set down in the Vinaya, the Buddha's rules for monastic life. It is not that these age-old noble ideals of Buddhism are confined only to the religious and the spiritual realm. Even today they have great impact on the minds and thoughts of many political and spiritual leaders from Gandhi to Mandela, and to many others in Vietnam, Tibet, and other countries whose only means of resistance to tyranny and brute force lie in the Buddhist ideals of compassion and nonviolence. As the great UBCV Patriarch the Rev. Thich Huyen Quang observes, "Political regimes always contend that they will last forever. Yet has there ever been a political regime that has lasted forever? Buddhism, on the contrary, has never claimed to be eternal. Yet it has spread and flourished now for several thousand years." In this paper, "Democracy and Buddhism," I shall make an attempt at understanding the deeper impact of Buddhism in shaping democratic ideals in the world scenario with special reference to the Asia Pacific.

The United Church of Christ and Native Hawai'ian Redress

Niccole Coggins, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA, nkanecoggins@yahoo.com

This paper is a portion of my masters thesis, an investigation of how religious denominations reconcile themselves to past racial injustices. The specific focus for this investigation is the 1989 - 1997 apology, redress and reconciliation between the United Church of Christ and Native Hawai'ians.

What do people remember? Is the truth somewhere in the middle? What is complicity? Who gets to define it?

The intent of the methods I have chosen is to grasp the historical and sociological context of the process of apology, redress and reconciliation, and to have those closest to the process "say themselves" before others do it for them. "You try and keep on trying to unsay it, for if you don't they will not fail to fill in the blanks on your behalf, and you will be said" (Trinh 1989, 80). The main method will be individual interviews with persons who were central to the decision and reactions to the process. As well as minutes from the 1989 - 1997 UCC General Synod Conferences and the 1990 and 1993 'Aha Pae'aina.

Abject Strangers: U.S. National Identity Post-9/11 and Alien/Nation

Anne Joh, Phillips Theological Seminary, Tulsa, OK, anne.joh@ptstulsa.edu

Through the lens of postcolonial feminist theory on politics of difference and Julia Kristeva's notion of the abject and the stranger/foreigner, much has been written about the significance and the impact of 9/11 on U.S. foreign policy. Such attention was and continues to be necessary as our policies on war, invasion, terrorism, and torture continue to inflict suffering on many peoples and nations despite persistent calls for change. As much as attention on foreign policy is necessary, this paper hopes to show that just as important will be critical examination of our domestic policies since 9/11, especially as it pertains to the construction of national identity done at the cost of constructing the U.S.'s own Other/Foreigner/Alien/Stranger.

Concepts of the abject and the stranger found in the works of Julia Kristeva will be examined through the lens of feminist postcolonial politics of difference. This paper will argue that it is crucial we understand that the U.S. national identity, by necessity, constructs itself through the construction of its abject.

According to Kristeva, abjection can be loosely defined as an operation of the psyche through which the identity of the individual or the collective is shaped by exclusion or expulsion of that which threatens the borders of that particular individual subject or the collective. Abjection is the improper, the unclean, the "disorderly," that is required to be expelled in order for the subjectivity to find its proper acceptance into the symbolic/law world. However, the abject "attests to the impossibility of clear borders, lines of demarcation or division between proper and the improper, the clean and the unclean…." In order for the construction of the subject to take place it must have an abject as an other. Such psychic violence provides "a structural account of the interweaving between the unconscious psyche and the socio-political."

Through Julia Kristeva's understanding of the abject and the stranger, this essay will further examine the link with national identity and it\'s creation of the stranger/abject. Since 9/11, U.S. national identity has undergone significant crisis, and, in order to attempt recovery of itd "mythic identity," the U.S. has not only created the abject/stranger elsewhere but right here within our own body politic. Moreover, an argument can be made that throughout the history of the formation of U.S. national identity, it has relied for its validity on the construction and maintainence of the abject within the boundaries of the nation. The process of abjection, from the individual to the collective, occurs with the deepest denial and expulsion of a part of its own self. Abjection takes place through many types of exclusion, such as homophobia, sexism, racism, classism, regionalism. The abject, a part of one's primordial self, expelled and abjected, haunts the psyche and reminds the self and the collective just how precarious our identity might be. How then, might it be possible to have an individual or a national identity without the brutal process of abjection? This paper will propose that unless we each look deeper into ourselves and discover the stranger/abject within each of ourselves, we will continue to construct identities that are deadly.

Nature and Han

Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Moravian Theological Seminary, Bethlehem, PA, gjskim@moravian.edu

There is a serious problem in the way North Americans live, as we consume 40% of the world's resources while we represent only 6% of the human population. We simply take for granted the everyday material goods that we possess while the rest of the world sees goods not as a necessity but as a luxury. North Americans live with too many goods and our standard of living has skyrocketed during this past century. Sallie McFague states that for all the earth's people to enjoy a Western middle-class lifestyle, four more planets the size of the earth would be necessary as the resource base. As we try to maintain our comfortable lifestyle, we take so much away from the earth without giving anything in return.

When we consume too much we are sinning against others in the world as we are causing others to go hungry, or be naked, or be homeless. This causes han. Han is an important theological motif which can be used to help understand the current condition of our world. Han describes the depths of human suffering as one sins against another. Han is a deep spiritual pain that rises out of the unjust experiences of the people.

The western world needs to understand that if we are the source of han, we need to work towards good stewardship in a globalizing world and the challenges it presents to democratic government. We need to address the increasing social and economic injustice and the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. This is a big task which we all need to work towards creatively and cooperatively. How are we going to deal with our han and the han which we cause others and the earth? These are serious questions that we need to address and answer as we all struggle to live as Christian in a consumer society. 

Buddhism as the Foundation for Activism

Mushim Ikeda-Nash, patricia@ikeda-nash.com

Mushim Ikeda-Nash is one of three women who are the subjects of Acting on Faith: Women's New Religious Activism in America, Rachel Antell's documentary film that is being presented at Plenary II of this year's APARRI conference.

Ikeda-Nash--a diversity facilitator, an editor of Buddhist scholarly texts, and the former chairperson of the San Francisco Zen Center Board Committee on Diversity and Multiculturalism--will speak on the place of Buddhist practice in her activism work.

Niseis of the Faith: Theologizing Liberation in the Asian American Movement

Helen Kim, Stanford University, helenjinkim@gmail.com

This paper was written as a senior honor's thesis for the department of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. It looks back to the Asian American Movement in the 1960's and 70's when university students were fighting for Ethnic Studies and protesting the Vietnam War, in order to understand the role that progressive Asian American Christian activists played in this social movement. In particular, the research focuses on three Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) figures -- Reverend Paul Nagano, Reverend Lloyd Wake and Bishop Roy Sano - and traces their theologies of liberation and liberating activism both within and without the church. This research fills a gap in the growing literature on the Asian American Movement that has scant documentation of the involvement and impact of religious figures in the social movement, and ultimately makes the case for the greater inclusion of research on religious activism in Asian American Studies.

Defiance, Resistance, and Rebellion: Examples of Historic PANA Christian Expressions

Roy I. Sano, United Methodist Church, bishoprsano@earthlink.net

I propose to present a paper for the record on historic PANA Christian expressions of resistance and rebellion against imperialism, and their bearing on current situations and efforts.

I will begin with a succinct description of early 20th century examples of Korean independence movement against Japanese imperialism and immigrant labor movements against international operations of agribusiness. These efforts provided models for resistance and rebellion against imperialism during the resurgence of Asian American Christian identity and action which emerged from the late 1960s.

For more recent efforts, I will briefly describe select instances from the early 1970s. They include resistance and rebellion against US based international military, diplomatic, and economics ventures in Asian which are associated with PANA Christians. This will include efforts in opposition to the war in Vietnam and support for labor movements against US based corporate ventures in Asia in the early 1970s.

I hope these brief references will encourage more advanced historical research in the future into the PANA churches which were crucial to their community development and their contributions to US society and culture.

A lengthier portion of the paper will report support from the early 1970s for international dimensions of the human rights struggles against US puppet dictators in South Korea and the Philippines.

The report will include operation of little known international networks, activities of several individuals, the analyses of political economics, and the theological and ideological ground on which they were based.

The emergence of US neo-colonial imperialism in the Cold War efforts are different at several points from US imperialistic efforts today. I will claim, however, the report and analyses of earlier PANA efforts offer potential leads into analytical, philosophical, and theological grounds for action today in the post-Cold War era.

Kababayan Catholicism: Community, Identity, and Filipino Diasporic Nationalism in Metropolitan New York, 1982-1998

Angelica Bailon, Fordham University, New York, NY, angelica.bailon@gmail.com

Of the over two million Filipinos in the United States, approximately 170,000 live in the states of New York and New Jersey. A significant number of that population resides in area surrounding New York City, many of whom come to the urban center to pursue careers in medicine and business. According to one historian of the Filipino American community, eighteen percent of registered nurses in New York City are of Filipino descent.

While this community is the third largest concentration of Filipinos in the United States outside of California and Hawaii, they are not recognized as being a significant community in this region. Political activism remains infrequent and contained. However, one arena in which the Filipinos of New York-New Jersey have been able to exert their identity and agency is the Roman Catholic Church. In this paper, I examine how Filipinos have used practices "diasporic religion" to not only claim their place in American society, but to maintain and fortify their ties and their "place" in Philippine society, particularly during in the midst of the People Power revolution and the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos.

This paper also looks at the institutional response to the Filipino American New York-New Jersey community. In doing so, I analyze the various negotiations which occurred between Philippine Catholic pastoral leaders and the hierarchy of the Archdiocese of New York and the Archdiocese of Newark in this struggle to be recognized as valuable and productive members of the American Catholic Church and by extension, of American society. Additionally, this paper is meant to expand the discussion of members of the Filipino Diaspora to include those "east of California" and show how this particular population of Filipino Americans maintain a sense of Filipinoness and transnationalized their notions of community and identity while still claiming their place as members of the American citizenry.

Survivors of the Killing Fields: Spirituality and Beliefs

Philip Tan, California State University at Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, ptan@csulb.edu

Introduction:

Most Cambodian refugees who immigrated to the United States in the 1980s and 1990s were victims of the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. They endured atrocities and witnessed killings in their homeland. In addition to suffering from post-traumatic stress and depression, they had to adjust to life in the U.S. Their resettlement and adjustment have been difficult.

This presentation examines the lives of Cambodian survivors of the "Killing Fields" as they age. The paper is concerned with (1) the ways in which spirituality and religious beliefs have evolved through their lives and (2) the influence of religion and spirituality on well-being and their outlook.

This presentation is based on (1) interviews with Cambodian immigrants who came to the United States as refugees and who are now 60 years and older and (2) participant observations of ceremonies held at a Theravada Buddhist temple and other locations in Long Beach, CA.

Overview of Findings:

  • To validate their survival, explain the hardships they endured, and assure themselves that their lives can be restored to wholeness, survivors employ a system of ethics based on religious principles.
  • Survivors use prayer and religious devotions to regain control over their lives.
  • Chastened by their experiences, survivors have become weary of trusting others.
  • Religious beliefs help survivors to feel positive about the future. They are convinced of an existence of a greater order that transcends them; they look ahead with a certain degree of hope and optimism.

What the Pho Are You Doing With Your Faith?

Trangdai Tranguyen, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, trnguyen@stanford.edu

What the pho are you doing with your faith? It is not an easy question. There is no easy answer. There is no one answer. There won't be just one. But are all voices equal? Who gets to speak? About what? What forges the venue? Who is interpolated, and by whom/what? When is ethnicity and faith viewed as intimidating to those in power? How would the periphery dislodge the democratic pretense? Whose discontent will it be? Intra-faith and inter-ethnic discourses to be discerned.

Sentiments of post-Katrina Vietnamese Americans. Perspectives of Catholics in Stockholm. Buddhist Vietnamese attitudes in Uppsala. Faith cuisine - Vietnamese flavor - promises to spawn the tastes of the different spiritual traditions. There will be banana cheese, bitter melon omelet, and white berries ice cream. This presentation is based on the Vietnamese American Project (1998-2004, CSU Fullerton) and the Vietnamese Diaspora Project (2004-2005, Fulbright Fellowship).

Contentious Divides and the Legislation of Morality: Defining Homosexuality, Traditional Marriage, and Civil Rights Among Chinese Christians of Massachusetts

Erika Muse, Albany College of Pharmacy, Albany NY, musee@acp.edu

Following the 2003 Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health decision, the State of Massachusetts has legalized and performed same-sex marriages. This remains a contentious practice among many sectors of American society including Chinese Christians. In short, both the State of Massachusetts and the Chinese Christian community wish to legislate morality by (re)defining marriage. Both camps evoke the fundamentals of democracy in their respective claims to the development of "proper" society.

This paper outlines two underlying points of dialogue with regard to same-sex marriage: Firstly, is marriage a civil right? And secondly, do homosexuals constitute a minority group? In a democracy, it is argued that we are afforded rights and protections. It has been called into questions whether gay rights falls under constitutional protection. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts states yes, Chinese Christians argue no. The churches call upon democratic principles in support of their faith and the godly definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman: That while society permits homosexual marriages, these practices are not moral. The State of Massachusetts positions its stance on morality within the Constitution which argues for the morality of equality and that no group shall be made "second class citizens." These divergent themes of morality and democracy confound the debates over the viability of same-sex marriage.

Rallies nationwide depict the intentions of Christian and non-Christian Asian Americans in upholding traditional marriage. This paper further engages this ongoing debate and examines cultural aspects of the Christian Chinese American Community which inform this dialogue. 

Addressing the "Silent Exodus": An Examination of Second-Generation Korean Americans Who Have Left the Ethnic Church

Julie Song, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, songjh@uci.edu

This paper is a part of a larger, ongoing project that contrasts second generation Korean Americans across several religious institutions. Based on in-depth interviews, I argue that a part of the "silent exodus" (those leaving their ethnic churches) is in part due to generational clashes in immigrant churches and the pressures associated with them.

Mainstreaming: Asian Americans in the Episcopal Church

Winfred "Fred" Vergara, wvergara@episcopalchurch.org

This paper deals with the demographics, immigration history, and theology of Asian Americans and their struggle for inclusion in American church and society. The author offers fresh insights into the reality of racism and how the church can be an instrument of healing and reconciliation through the solidarity of all marginalized ethnic groups into a new mainstream.

Panel: Exorcising Fundamentalism Demons: Asian American Evangelicals Engaging Politics, Social Justice, and the Common Good

  • Russell Moy, Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity, Panel Moderator, rmoy@isaac-na.org
  • Russell Jeung, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA,  rjeung@sfsu.ed
  • Dean Adachi, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, dadachi@gmail.com
  • Viji Nakka Cammauf, Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity, viji@isaac-na.org
  • Timothy Tseng, Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity, timtseng@isaac-na.org

Asian American Protestantism is becoming increasingly evangelical and Pentecostal in character. What are the prospects for Asian American evangelical engagement in politics, social justice, and common good? This panel, comprised of scholars and practitioners in the Asian American evangelical community, will offer some frameworks for understanding and interpreting recent Asian American evangelical efforts at public engagement. It will also suggest the coming of age of a new generation of Asian American evangelical and Pentecostal leaders who are repudiating the separatist ethos defined by American fundamentalism. Thus, within the Asian American evangelical community, a reformist movement that seeks to more positively engage the public arena is emerging.

Papers included:

  • "Occupational Hazards: Staying in the 'Hood - Youth Ministry in SF Chinatown", Russell Jeung and Dean Adachi
  • "Reoccupying the Compassion Landscape in India: The Little Flock Orphanage in the Wake of the Tsunami Tragedy", Viji Nakka Cammauf
  • "Preoccupation with Family Values: Thomas Wang, Chinese American Evangelicals, and the Religious Right", Timothy Tseng

Panel: New Research on Old Themes: Rescripting Asian American Religious History

  • Rudy V. Busto, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, Panel Moderator, rude@religion.ucsb.edu
  • Chrissy Lau, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, clau01@umail.ucsb.edu
  • Thu "Mimi" Khuc, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, mimikhuc@umail.ucsb.edu
  • Wilburn Hansen, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, wnhansen@hotmail.com
  • Matthew Kester, Brigham Young University Hawaii / University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, kesterm@byuh.edu

This panel presents new research in Asian American religious history and rescripts our understanding and expectations about how religion ought to behave in Asian America. Rudy Busto will introduce the panel and offer a perspective on how scholars might go about writing Asian American religious history. Chrissy Lau investigates the religion gap in the narratives about the Asian American Movement. She will inquire not only into why religion is absent in the Movement historiography, but she will argue that acknowledging Christianity's role in the Movement requires that we rethink the Asian American Movement. Mimi Khuc uncovers the trajectory of race in the construction of "American Buddhism" and reveals how "New Age" elements in the tradition are conveniently and problematically obscured. By focusing on the development of Vietnamese/ Vietnamese American Buddhism, she questions the "orientalist" labeling of Vietnamese religiosity.

Wilburn Hansen explores the meanings in a pre-WW II Hawaiian Shinto Temple that enshrined the Japanese Imperial Admiral Togo, native Hawaiian King Kamehameha, and U.S. President George Washington. Hansen argues for a particular and local understanding of the immigrant Japanese Hawaiian community that is bound up with issues of nationalism and a nascent tourism economy. Finally, Matthew Kester explores the intersection of religious, racial, and nationalist narratives surrounding the movement of Pacific Islanders to the Salt Lake Valley and western North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He will investigate the narratives around migrants whose key purposes in leaving their homeland is to fulfill religious, not economic, obligations. The panel represents the diversity of Asian American traditions, ethnic groups, and disciplinary approaches.

Papers included:

  • "Christianity and the Asian American Movement: Clash or Coalition?", Chrissy Lau
  • "Buddhism in America: (Racial) Agendas, or How Vietnamese American It Is to Be a New Ager", Thu "Mimi" Khuc
  • "Shinto in the Hawaiian Diaspora: Economics Masquerading as Nationalism at a Pre-Pacific War Hawaiian Shrine", Wilburn Hansen
  • "Mormonism and the Pacific Diaspora: Narratives of Race and Religion", Matthew Kester