PANA's Civil Liberty and Faith Project
The goal of our Civil Liberty and Faith project is 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 offer 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 invite members of the larger API community to join the 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.
Throughout the year we hold public events — community conversations, public lectures, vigils, worship services, film screenings — that engage the complex voices of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on key topics of civil liberty and faith.
We foster API liturgical innovation, both at the altar and on the streets, that gives expression to the depth of spiritual meaning and politcal inspiration in API communities engaged in public witness and struggle for civil liberty.
We nurture 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 join our email list to receive more news of upcoming events, and to explore the links below to learn more about the many facets of PANA's Civil Liberty and Faith project:
- Academic Courses: the Classroom in Community
- 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.
- Community Conversations: Public Events and Dialogue
- See the PANA Calendar for descriptions of both past and upcoming events.
- Please join our email list to receive email notices of upcoming events.
- Pilgrimage to Manzanar
- Our third annual pilgrimage is planned for April 24–27, 2008
- 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 website
- 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
- Theology of Struggle in Diaspora website
- USA-Philippines Ecumenical Advocacy Network (USAPAN)
- API Faith and Justice Gathering
- Capturing the Moment & Renewing the Movement of the Heart, October 20–21, 2007
Current news and reflections on our activities can also be found on the PANA blog.
PANA's Civil Liberty and Faith project is coordinated by PANA's Program Director, Rev. Deborah Lee, 510-849-8260, dlee@psr.edu, and funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.