An Asian American Seminarian’s Journey Homeward

By Derek Wu

Despite the influx of Black, Asian, Latinx, and other immigrant populations now filling evangelical seminaries, the demographic of faculty and required reading remains overwhelmingly white and male. 

This reflects, as Willie Jennings identifies in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, the formative challenge that plagues theological education in the West. That is, if higher education, especially theological education, is principally concerned with the formation of the person, then the kind of “person” that Western education is set on forming is the white self-sufficient male. 

As a result, the formation of the Asian American seminarian too often means conforming to white evangelical homogeneity, rendering their Asian American identities as inconsequential for theology or ministry. 

For the next few weeks, Reclaim will be running a series of articles concerning the Asian American experience in seminary from the perspective of current AAPI students and faculty. These articles will address topics such as the lack of AAPI representation in faculty and required reading, the need for a distinct Asian American theology, the challenges of being Asian American in a majority white academic context, and ways that seminaries can improve in their engagement with AAPI students. 

To begin, Derek Wu, an M.Div. student at Princeton Theological Seminary, shares his journey of reclaiming his Asian identity and belonging, and its importance for doing the work of theology.

"I

went along with them, marveling at the beauty of their proud clean brains. I began to love my race, and for the first time I wanted to be Chinese.” – Lee, East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Leaving Home

Four years spent in the complexities of biblical studies and theology at my undergraduate institution left me with a host of uncertainties. One thing I was certain about, though—I was done with the Asian American church that had brought me up.

I was postured toward my Asian American-ness like Lee in the beginning of East of Eden. Lee, born of Chinese immigrants in America, works as a servant for Adam, the white owner of a California farm in the early 20th century. Lee is educated at an American university and speaks perfect English. Around white characters, however, Lee uses a Chinese pidgin accent and acts excessively subservient—code-switching, in today’s terms—to be understood. Caught between Asian and American, Lee admits that it is easier to play into the “Asian” caricature than it is to reveal his American features. Yet putting up with the constant condescension exhausts Lee, and Steinbeck begins the story with Lee despising his own Asian-ness.

At my undergraduate institution—an evangelical Bible college—it was easier to play into the “American” caricature than it was to reveal my Asian features. Just as Lee hid his American-ness, I hid my Asian-ness. Eventually, I came to believe that I was not meant to return to an Asian American space. I learned that theologians who worked closely with the social sciences and social identification (such as Black theology, Feminist theology, or Native American theology) were “liberal.” Students catch the assumption that liberal theologians are unconcerned with Scripture and objective truths about God—and, simply put, not worth our time.

The growing distance between thinking about God and thinking about my ethnic/racial identity felt natural to me. Due to past experiences of ostracization, my heart was already hardened toward the Asian part of being an Asian American. I didn’t want to be Asian American. Just American was fine with me. After four years at a majority-white institution with a colorless theology curriculum, my heart also hardened toward the Asian American part of being an Asian American Christian. 

I didn’t fight this hardening. If my experiences as an Asian American were irrelevant to theology and ministerial work, why would I? And what could the church of my upbringing—full of families like mine—offer to the world? I remember squirming in youth group at the thought of evangelizing to my peers. I never invited my “American” friends to my “Asian” church. Church was the sanctuary that kept separate all the foreignness I tried so hard to hide. So, turning my back on those families that brought me to faith, I took my parents’ blessing and set off for seminary on a distant side of the country. There were many reasons to leave, not one reason to stay. It was my version of the silent exodus.

An Unexpected Turn

Early on at Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) I asked a professor to direct my budding interest in Christian ethics. He told me about the growing needs in the field of Asian American theology. My heart hardened, and I scoffed so quickly I interrupted him: “Oh, I want nothing to do with that.”

A few months later, he assigned us an article on Asian American Christian ethics in class. With clear, scholarly precision, the author wrangled together rigorous moral philosophy, high culture produced by Asian Americans (Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer), the Model Minority Myth, and the parable of the shrewd manager. His work eventually led me to other Asian American Christian scholars (like Janette Ok and KC Choi) devoted to the Bible and to addressing the real-life problems of Christians like me. I found myself wading in a nascent but already rich tradition of theological scholarship that took my history and my future seriously. It dawned on me that there was no part of my life I could hide away from God’s reach.

And, for the first time in a long time, I wanted to be an Asian American Christian.

I then took “Asian American Theology” in my second year. Asian American theology is theology done by, for, and about Asian Americans. It is a conversation between those thinking seriously about the Asian American experience and those thinking seriously about theology and ministry. Generally, scholars who do Asian American theology are addressing three questions.

First, what happens when Asian cultural religiosity runs into American cultural religiosity? In Christianity with an Asian Face, Peter Phan answers this question by thinking about the conceptual relationships between indigenous Asian religions and Western Christianity.

A second question focuses on social power. How are Asian American Christians marginalized? How does the Christian tradition confront or contribute to the oppression of Asian Americans? One aim of this line of questioning is to liberate marginalized Asian/Asian American people using the resources of the Christian tradition. An exemplary book in this conversation is Wonhee Anne Joh’s Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology. Using the lived experience of Korean American women, Joh argues that their use of the Korean concept of jeong and the Western concept of Christology promotes a radical and emancipatory form of love.

Joh’s work brings us to a third kind of question surrounding the “lived experiences” of AAPI congregations. What are AAPI Christians doing “on the ground,” so to speak? What problems are they confronted with in everyday life? What do they believe about God and the church? As SueJeanne Koh explains, the aim here is to uplift the multifaceted voices of everyday AAPI Christians by describing “the theological positions, claims, and performances of Asian American Christian communities found in churches and elsewhere, regardless of whether or not they explicitly think they are ‘doing’ Asian American Christian theology.”

To take all these questions seriously, the Center for Asian American Christianity (CAAC) at PTS encourages an interdisciplinary approach to Asian American theology. An interdisciplinary approach incorporates findings from historical, sociological, and religious studies to help Christian leaders navigate the complex circumstances of everyday life. For Asian American Christians, these circumstances are transnational, gendered, and racialized. The purpose of interdisciplinary theology, then, is to address questions like, “Why are there generational or gendered divides in our church?” and “How can we extend God’s love to those marginalized by anti-Asian racism and advocate for change?” and “How can Asian American Christians justly steward their resources?” Jonathan Tran’s lecture at a recent Asian American theology conference and forthcoming Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism are excellent examples of a productive relationship between case studies of Asian American Christian experience, theories of social power, and serious theological and ministerial reflection.

Pressing Onward

An interdisciplinary approach to Asian American theology rests on the assumption that the stories of everyday AAPI people reveal and are essential to how God is working in the present. The Christian tradition rests on this assumption. We preserve the stories of the Israelites and of the saints. We share testimonies because they tell the true story of God’s hand in everyday life. If this assumption is true, storytelling is a matter of stewardship. Asian American theology—and the AAPI church—relies heavily on the leaders and servants of AAPI communities who must steward these stories well.

At PTS, AAPI groups create the space for stewarding stories. During my first year, PTS was coming to terms with its history with slavery. The seminary ignited with controversy over promised reparations. Then, the rise of anti-Asian rhetoric and violence and the Stop AAPI Hate movement brought Asian Americans into what had largely been a conversation between Black and white. Suddenly, I found myself hearing and holding the hurts that we Asian American students had long kept hidden away. Organizations like the CAAC and AAPI student groups provided grace-filled spaces for students like me to share our stories and think critically about theology and ministry under such circumstances. Despite all that weighed us down, our stories became the basis of prayers of lament and confession, for sharing our burdens, for remembering the cloud of witnesses that brought us up, and for finding the hope that was around us and before us.

Asian Americans are projected to be the nation’s largest immigrant group by the middle of the century. As was evidenced this past year, anti-Asian racism persists within structures and between persons in our society. Like it or not, conversations about race and ethnicity will certainly continue in our communities. Further, ongoing immigration means that intercultural and intergenerational conflict is not going away. It is the responsibility of those of who carry the stories of AAPI experience to raise these issues in colorblind theological arenas. Otherwise, as Martin Luther King Jr. once prophesied, the church will remain an irrelevant social club. In East of Eden, Lee notices that he is becoming “more Chinese” as he gets older. This did not mean that he spoke more Chinese or acted more Chinese. Rather, he was spending more time with Chinese people in Chinese spaces. In the same way, it is time for those of us who can serve AAPI communities to return to those spurned families and those spurned churches with softened hearts, saying, “Your stories matter to God, and so you matter to me.”

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

Editorial Note: This piece was updated on 2/27/2022 correcting a typo and updating language in some areas.

---

Derek Wu has a B.A. in Biblical and Theological studies from Biola University and is currently a third-year Master of Divinity student at Princeton Theological Seminary. Derek is currently serving as the worship director of Ecclesia Church, as a researcher at the Center for Asian American Christianity, and as a lead researcher of the Imagining Church Project of the Lily Thriving Congregations Initiative. From the San Francisco Bay Area, he currently resides in Princeton, NJ with his cat Howie.