Reimagining Political Engagement

How can Asian American Christians embody our faith through and in our civic and political engagement? That is the core question that Joshua Wu will be addressing as he joins the AACC team as the political engagement specialist.

By Joshua Wu

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n the Chinese and Taiwanese church communities where I grew up, political engagement was devalued. Too many of us internalized the model minority myth and thought that we could succeed regardless of social and political policies; as such, political engagement was unnecessary. In the majority-white ethnic churches I have attended as an adult, political engagement was seen as divisive and secondary to preaching the gospel. In both contexts, politics was seen as the pursuit of the weak or the overly ambitious. It was a distraction that undermined unity and conformity. It was simply not what good godly Christians do.

But it is time—nay, overdue—for us to individually and collectively develop new categories, taxonomies, and imaginations of political engagement that are faithful both to the gospel truths we believe and the ethnic, cultural, and racial identities we embody. We need frameworks and resources for political engagement for Asian American Christians, by Asian American Christians, and relevant to Asian American Christians. 

Faithful political engagement needs to be grounded in the gospel and Scripture. We must bring our unique experiences and values, pains and hopes, to the Cross. It is only through biblical lenses that we live most affirmed and embraced as people made in the Imago Dei. From this starting point, two themes emerge that inform our (re)imagining of how we reflect, however imperfectly, God’s perfect presence and priorities through our civic and political engagement into a broken world. First, we are to pursue and prioritize justice in our public postures. Second, we can have eschatological hope to move us out of apathy and despair to labor with God to make his kingdom come here on Earth now.  

The imperative of justice 

To ground how we do politics, we need to know why we do politics, and for what ends. Core to that is the priority and pursuit of justice. In the Bible, we see the character of God inclined to individual, communal, and systemic pursuits of justice. As our God “shows no partiality and accepts no bribes [but] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing” (Deuteronomy 10:17-18), so we are to emulate his priorities and pursue policies and politics that care for the marginalized and undervalued of society. His mandate for us is clear. As Zechariah 7:9-10 reminds us, “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”  

And in Jesus’ first sermon in Luke 4:18-19, he declares that “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” While bringing a gospel of salvation, the teaching and implementation of his teachings also brings physical deliverance for the marginalized in society. His justice is not just the triumph over sin, but also over the consequences of sin. Being faithful to that will require engagement of civic and political realms as we seek to be co-laborers with Christ to emancipate peoples from spiritual and physical ills. 

The imperative of justice is summed up by Tim Keller in Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. He argues that the pursuit of justice is not tangential to but central to the gospel. As Keller puts it,  

“If you are trying to live a life in accordance with the Bible, the concept and call to justice are inescapable…Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs, but generosity and social concern, especially toward the poor and vulnerable. This kind of life reflects the character of God. It consists of a broad range of activities, from simple fair and honest dealings with people in daily life, to regular, radically generous giving of your time and resources, to activism that seeks to end particular forms of injustice, violence, and oppression” (18).

The call to action from eschatological hope 

Second, the Bible provides eschatological hope against apathy, despair, and inaction. As Asian American Christians, we often feel invisible and ignored in society and in our churches. Especially as the Covid-19 pandemic has led to increased anti-Asian discrimination and violence, and so many of our churches remain silent on this, it is easy to lose hope, despair for change, and feel powerless.  

But in Revelation 7:9, John provides a glimpse into the new heavens where people “from every nation, tribe, people, and language [were] standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” This is assurance that in the new heavens, there will be diversity of ethnic, cultural, and racial identities before God. And that includes us! Asian Americans will be part of the multitude of Christians and saints worshiping Jesus in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Thai, English, and all of our native languages. And that gives us hope that we will not be silent, marginalized, and invisible forever.  

Jurgen Moltmann summarizes the catalyzing power of eschatological hope in Theology of Hope. Moltmann argues that our eschatological confidence in Christ’s ultimate victory compels us to action today. This hope gives us “new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom, and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come” (22). Because we are people who can look at our present through the perspective of an already but not yet future, we see “reality and mankind in the hand of Him whose voice calls into history from its end, saying ‘Behold, I make all things new,’ and from hearing this word of promise [acquire] the freedom to renew life and to change the face of the world” (26).  

And thus, armed with eschatological confidence of what is to come, we can engage the world with a godly “‘passion for the possible,’ inventiveness and elasticity in self-transformation, in breaking with the old and coming to terms with the new” (35). And so, despite a history of being ignored and overlooked by the major political parties and fellow believers in Christ, we should, can, and must engage the civic and political world around us with an eye on eternity. 

For us and by us 

I invite you to join us in this journey of discovering, uncovering, and recovering practices of civic and political engagement grounded in Scripture and in our Asian American experiences. As I join the AACC team as the political engagement specialist, I’m excited to develop and share resources to equip, empower, and encourage Asian American Christians to embody and faithfully live out our faith in public, civic, and political arenas. We will explore frameworks, tools, and practical ways for Asian American Christians to be faithful citizens of God’s kingdom and the kingdoms of this world, starting with why we should care about politics to what and how we can be engaged. Using the best available political science survey data, I will compare and contrast where Asian American Christians’ social, cultural, and political values differ from white evangelicals and non-evangelical Asian Americans. And I will share suggestions of ways we can translate and adapt existing resources and perspectives on political engagement so that our experiences and cultures are not peripheral but core lived perspectives that motivate our engagement.  

We can be inspired by the Black Christian tradition in our journey. In Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley describes the Black ecclesial tradition as a process of engaging Scripture that is “canonical and theological at its core, placing its greatest hopes in the character of God [and] dialogical, clearly beginning with the concerns of Black Christians, but being willing to listen to the Scriptures as God speaks back to us” (165). In the same way, as Asian Americans, we should seek an engagement with Scripture and our faith that seeks to (re)center our particular perspectives, possibilities, and pain before the cross, expecting that he has much to say that is specific to who we are. 

So let us, as McCaulley writes, “wrestle like Jacob until the text deliver[s] its blessing” (165). We need to uncover biblical models of cultural, civic, and political engagement that address and inform our specific concerns. We need to interrogate and interpret what the Bible has to say about justice and equality to understand Asian American Christian responses to issues such as anti-Asian racism, xenophobia, the model minority myth, affirmative action, economic inequality, anti-racism solidarity, immigration, or white supremacy.  

For too long, we have stood idly by while cultural attitudes and social policies that cast us as the perpetual foreigner are unchallenged. For too long, we have allowed our white brothers and sisters in Christ, however well-meaning, to define what is biblical politics and so hold us captive to political norms that render us invisible and voiceless. And for too long, we have sought to find solutions, however well-reasoned, from perspectives not grounded in the truths of our faith.  

But I am confident that through intentional engagement with the Bible, careful interrogation of existing political frameworks, and thoughtful wrestling with our own pains, fears, hopes, and expectations, we will be able to engage civic and public life as fully embodied Asian Americans living out the richness of the gospel as we advocate for justice and the marginalized. Will you join us?  

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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Joshua Wu is a husband, father, pastor's kid, and social scientist seeking to faithfully reflect Christ in all aspects of his life. He has a doctorate in Political Science from The Ohio State University, works in data analytics for a global communications firm, and currently lives in Rochester New York with his family. You can follow him on Twitter @joshswu.