PANA Institute for Leadership Development

The goal of the Civil Liberty and Faith project has been to amplify the voices and perspectives of progressive Asian American and Pacific Islander (API) religious leaders engaged in the work of increasing civil liberty for all, and in bringing about greater inter-ethnic and interreligious understanding.

These API voices receive very little attention in the mainstream media and are underrepresented in America’s public and religious discourse; however, their unique experience and knowledge offers a critical voice on the issue of civil liberty, which we define as the state of both individual freedom and communal well-being embodied in social equality, economic justice, and religious freedom.

Programs

We have offered academic courses at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Designed to genuinely engage the students with the larger community, our courses physically move the location of the classroom down off our "Holy Hill" at the Graduate Theological Union and out into local Bay Area API congregations and other meaningful settings. We have invited members of the larger API community to join seminarians as co-learners and co-teachers, so that the class becomes a vibrant mixed learning community that crosses lines of class, profession, ethnicity, religion, and generation.

Public events—including community conversations, public lectures, vigils, worship services, film screenings—have engaged the complex voices of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on key topics of civil liberty and faith.

We have fostered API liturgical innovation, both at the altar and on the streets, to give expression to the depth of spiritual meaning and politcal inspiration in API communities engaged in public witness and struggle for civil liberty.

We have nurtured networks of progressive API witness, theological reflection, and leadership. We are proud to have been instrumental in the founding of the Network on Religion and Justice for API LGBTs (www.NetRJ.org) and to play a part in the USA-Philippines Ecumenical Advocacy Network (USAPAN). On October 20-21, 2007 we held our first API Faith & Justice Gathering, entitled "Capturing the Moment & Renewing the Movement of the Heart."

To Learn More

We invite you to explore the links below to learn more about PANA's Civil Liberty and Faith project:

• Academic Courses: the Classroom in Community
  • Spring 2009: "Theology in Asian American Faith Communities" with Dr. Joanne Doi and Dr. Fumitaka Matsuoka (includes Pilgrimage to Manzanar)
  • Fall 2008: "California Immigrant Theologies," with Dr. Joanne Doi (includes Pilgrimage to the Sacramento River Delta)
  • Spring 2008: "America's Internment: Manzanar," with Dr. Joanne Doi, M.M., and Dr. Gordon Lee
  • Feb 2008 (non-credit): "Pilgrimage to Sacred Sites of API Immigration in the Sacramento River Delta," with Dr. Gordon Lee
  • January 2008: "Asian-Pacific Islander Diasporic Political Theology in the Context of Empire Building" with Dr. Eleazer Fernandez
  • Spring 2007: "America's Internment: Manzanar," with Dr. Joanne Doi, M.M.
  • Spring 2007: "Presumed Guilty: Race, Religion, and the Post-9/11 Racialized State," with Jaideep Singh, PANA CLF Visiting Scholar-in-Residence
  • Spring 2006: "America's Internment: Manzanar," with Dr. Joanne Doi, M.M.
• Pilgrimages to sacred sites of API American history
  • Manzanar site of WWII internment of Japanese Americans
  • Sacramento River Delta region, site of historic rural API communities
• Network on Religion and Justice for Asian American and Pacific Islander Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People (NRJ-API-LGBT)
  • For more information, visit the NRJ-API-LGBT Web site
  • In God's House: Asian American Lesbian and Gay Families in the Church — this groundbreaking film, with subtitles in several Asian languages and a resource guide for congregational study, was produced by PANA's Civil Liberty and Faith Project
• Philippines Focus
  
  • USA-Philippines Ecumenical Advocacy Network (USAPAN)
• API Faith and Justice Gatherings
  • API Faith and Justice Gathering I, "Capturing the Moment & Renewing the Movement of the Heart," PSR, October 20–21, 2007
  • API Faith and Justice Gathering II, "Between Hope and Hard Times," PSR, January 24, 2009
• API Clergy Consultations
  • API Clergy Consultation I, "Journeying Together Toward an Empowering and Transforming Ministry", PSR, October 8, 2008, Dr. Eleazar Fernandez, keynote speaker
  • API Clergy Consultation II, "Theologizing Asian American and Pacific Islander Faith Journeys," Wesley UMC, San Jose, March 25, 2009, Dr. Eleazar Fernandez, keynote speaker

PANA's Civil Liberty and Faith project has been funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.