Why it Matters: The Need for Asian American Theological Scholarship

By Bek Wright

As part of a periodic series entitled “Why it Matters,” our editors will go into our archives to re-feature a previously shared piece and discuss how it is still relevant today.

If you have spent any time in the church, there is a good chance that you would be able to name both historical and modern theologians off the top of your head. For myself, as an example, names that would come to mind would be C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Timothy Keller, and Thomas Merton. Those names bring comfort and wisdom to myself, and I am sure to many Christians, and have been used by God in countless ways. Regardless, those names and most of the past and present voices in theology share a common thread, as voices of conventional theology, they also are voices of white male normative theology.

In “The Need for Asian American Theological Scholarship,” Chiwon Kim highlights how the domination of white male voices has shaped what has been accepted as “conventional theology.” Kim explains that “conventional theology is often considered normal, objective, and universal… ‘it’ is developed in its White European contexts. It attempts to articulate who God is and how God works in its particular context, answering its own pressing issues theologically.” It is this reality that impacts how pastors, seminaries, and churches discuss and encounter God. As a seminary student Kim notes how many Asian American theological stances are seen as eccentric and are often pushed to the wayside and devalued. This in turn impacts Asian American ministries and pastors as they struggle to have meaningful spiritual growth that speaks to one another’s heart and experiences with white conventional theology at the center. 

Because white male conventional theology has dominated Christian theological development, we miss God’s intentional diversity of making each brother and sister within the culture and bodies that he created us. As the church, we miss out on the understanding that comes from another context. Kim implores that there is a need for more Asian American theological scholarship so that seminarians can feel emboldened to invite Asian American Christians to experience God’s healing, holiness, justice, and transformation within their own experiential context. God made humans diverse and different from one another; as AAPI’s we carry experiences and an understanding of God that speak directly to our culture and upbringing that is not innately understood by those outside of our context.

This piece matters because as AAPI Christians it highlights how we have a unique perspective and understanding of God based on our diverse contexts. As a Filipina-white Christian woman, I can remember the first time I read an article written by a Filipino American theologian. In a two page article, he spoke into both the beauty and hurt that came with my Filipino upbringing in an American context. As I read the words that he wrote, it was as if he looked into my life and said “I understand.” He celebrated and challenged aspects of our shared Filipino context that would flourish or hinder my understanding of God. This is the impact of representative theological diversity that Kim calls for.

You can read the full article here. 

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

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Bek Wright is a biracial Filipina-white woman with a bachelors and masters in social work. She is a passionate social worker addressing issues of health and education equity in Des Moines, Iowa. When she is not cooking or “buying too many spices” she can be found going on long walks and making travel itineraries for her next hiking trip.