Reading the Bible Through an Asian American Lens: Introduction

1st of a 4 part series adapted from a final research paper for my Asian American Theology course

2016 was a wakeup call to the Asian American church.  Whether the call is heeded or put on snooze is up to us.  No political party can claim a monopoly on Christian values and politicians lie, but surely when the majority of what a person speaks is found to be false, believers ought to stand for what is true.[1]  Nevertheless, in 2016 US Americans, with a clear majority of White evangelicals, [2] put into the highest office of the land such a person.  Just in case Asian Americans still felt that all of this had nothing to do with them, 2020 came to reveal that, with a virus invisible to the eye and careless words spoken by those in power, they could just as easily be viewed again as the “yellow peril.”  How could we be reading the same bible and as people of color come to such vastly different conclusions? 

Justo Gonzalez gives a helpful analogy of the interpretation of scripture,[3] in that we are all looking at the same landscape but depending on where we are standing we are able to see more clearly that which is near to us.  It is not that what we currently see in scripture is invalid but rather to admit that we have blind spots in our vision.  There are those who saw the writing on the wall well before but 2016 really forced us to grapple with the huge blind spots revealed in dominant White Evangelical theology, a theology that too many Asian American Evangelicals have received uncritically.[4]  If evangelicals are true to their namesake we must recover what is good news for a broken world, not just for the privileged, not just for the life to come but for the lives of all people here now (John 10:10). So, what is that Asian American Christians may be able to see from their social location that can be helpful to the Church?  I see at least three lenses that Asian Americans can bring to the conversation with the experiences of collectivity, invisibility, and liminality.   After first addressing some context and caveats, I hope to examine each lenses’ definition, their potentials and problems,[5] their application in the reading of scripture, and possible paths forward.

CONTEXT AND CAVEATES

Why engage particular lenses?  As much as we would like to claim a universal perspective on truth we as humans have limited perspective and so we are all a little “near sighted.”  God alone can see it all.  God has given us special revelation in scripture to universal truths but that was mediated through the particularities of the Jewish people.[6]  Then we read and theologize about this particular context from our particular contexts.  Hence it is better to acknowledge our contextual perspectives and together work toward our part in the bigger picture of universal truth.[7] 

Who are we talking about?  Asian America is comprised of a vast array of people groups, languages, histories, and experiences that have found themselves in America from different socio-political realities.[8]  The term “Asian” is a racial construct imposed upon those with heritage tied to Asia.  Nevertheless, from this plurality the term “Asian American” was claimed by those with Asian heritage living in North America[9] as a term for solidarity and empowerment.  As an Asian American, it is important to recognize differences within Asian America but we also need to move toward finding the common ground that we share to work together in a society that would marginalize us. 

How can we read scripture?  Much of the existing literature regarding an Asian American approach to scripture focuses on methods of interpretation (the frames).[10]  However, I would like to articulate the shared content of Asian American experience (the lenses) to see application of scripture more clearly.  I realize this is a risky move as we walk the fine line of not wanting to essentialize by erasing particularities but neither do we want to paralyze movement to endlessly splitting hairs of particularity.  We at some point must move from deconstruction to the harder work of construction.[11]  Although there may be more lenses[12] and there are certainly exceptions, I will focus on the following three lenses in proximity to the Asian American experience.

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1. The Bible Through an Asian American Lens: Collectivity
2. The Bible Through an Asian American Lens: Invisibility
3. The Bible Through an Asian American Lens: Liminality

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[1] 73% of statements by Donald Trump are listed as “mostly false” to “pants on fire” as of this writing.  Compare with Hillary Clinton at 27% (PolitiFact, a non-partisan fact checking site).

[2] 81% of white evangelicals, along with majority of self-identified Christians (58% protestant/other Christian,) Martinez and Smith.  “How the faithful voted: A preliminary 2016 analysis.”  To be fair, there is some analysis that suggests that for people who not only claimed to be Christian but actually hold evangelical belief the majority was not as pronounced (Smietana, “2016 Exposes Evangelical Divides”). 

[3] Gonzalez, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes, 17-20

[4] Alumkal, “Scandal of the ‘Model Minority’ Mind.”

[5] It is important not to idealize Asian heritage or the past as Morisada Rietz writes about in “A Hapa Identifying with the Exodus, the Exile, and the Internment”

[6] Even the truth God has given us came to a people in a specific historical and cultural context – to the Jewish people in Israel through Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages. 

[7] “The universal is always mediated through the particular AND The particular must always be in service of the universal” (Lee, D.D. Lecture: Contextuality and Normativity)

[8] The topic of migration alone reveals that some came to the US by free choice, others by necessity as refugees, and others for whom the US came to colonize them. (Lee, Lecture: Origins and Transpacific)

[9] Generally, those of East, South, and South East Asia.  Regarding Pacific Islanders, though Asian they have advocated for distinction as they have significantly different experience of America (Ishisaka, “Time to Retire the Term API”)

[10] Incorporating other disciplines such as Asian American studies and post-colonial criticism – akin to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral that sees that work of theology as consisting of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience (Lee, Lecture: Asian American Subjectivity).  For a good summary of literature on an Asian American biblical hermeneutic see Lim’s “Critical Methods and Critiques.”    

[11] Bringing in different disciplines broadens our understanding of theology but these must be built from the foundation of the “norming norm” of scripture (Lee, Lecture: Asian American Subjectivity) 

[12] Andrew Yueking Lee is one of the few I have found to connect Asian American experience and biblical content and offers a few more of what I call “lenses” (Lee, AY. “Reading the Bible as an Asian American”)