Let us embrace the roots we’ve come from; And stand on the shoulders of our elders; The roots we grow from; The roots we rise from

We all have losses that have shaped us, from losing something we loved to lacking something (or someone) we needed. Only by taking the time to witness, name, and hold our Grief, can we find the strength to release it to grow into something more.

From a critical-historical point of view, then, it is not enough for the Asian American church to address the Western church’s historical lack of reckoning with its social sin of colonial complicity. To become the church as it is called to be, the Asian American church should also engage in a historical reckoning of its own complicitous legacies, such as authoritarian and neoliberal complicity. If the Asian American church honestly acknowledges that there is a historical and genealogical linkage between its original root in Asia and its present status in the US, it can begin to see more clearly what it should do to create and develop its distinctive political theology.

So then, can I, as an Asian American, trust Scripture? According to the wonderful contributors of The New Testament in Color, the answer to that question is “Yes!” Yet, not only I as an Asian American can trust Scripture, so too can African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and others.

Migration and immigration are among the key issues of our political moment. Immigration is a complex issue with more factors than are often considered in short sound bytes, but a clear call in the Scriptures is to care for the “sojourner in our midst.”

When injustices arise in the world, some churches speak up while others stay silent. In one of Jesus’ parables, a priest and a Levite see a man on the road who has been robbed, attacked, and left for dead. Their response is to pass by on the other side. What is the difference between them and a church that remains silent? Are they not the same? Both choose to disregard suffering and look away.