This morning, I finally read the Gospel Coalition post on "Linsanity and Asian American Christianity", and it really struck me just how much I resonated with all that the author was saying. This guy gets it. I almost cried at work because of how much he gets it. I grew up in a church with a super-conservative and fundamental head pastor with a heavily charismatic-leaning youth director. I grew up hearing more about Hudson Taylor than John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards combined. I didn't know the difference between Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists until college (and I still don't really know much about it). I've never cared too much for politics, and while I leaned right, I didn't really learn to care about abortion until just a few weeks ago, and I'm really still working through it. I wore T-shirts and shorts to church as a kid and played with all my friends, and I never really understood why so many white kids absolutely hated going to church. I've played at eaten dinner at nearly all of my family friends' houses, and I couldn't imagine a church where people (and kids especially) didn't break bread together. I now hang out with friends that have heard of but still don't really know who Pat Robertson is (Nathan, Jonny, Cory, and I were debating who/what he worked for just the other day). I grew up listening to James Dobson (or at least my parents did, much to my dismay), and I didn't really learn about his politics until college. I didn't know that cessationists even existed. I didn't know that people who didn't believe in the Trinity or in the resurrection could still call themselves "Christians". I never bought into the whole "this country is going to hell" argument of the degradation of the church. And until now, I never really realized how similar my childhood church upbringing was to so many of the Asian-Americans around the country.
Part of the recent Jeremy Lin fanatacism has made me realize how much (white) people just really don't get it. Most just don't understand what it means to be an Asian American.I was reading a Reddit thread about Lin's ethnicity, and one commenter said he was Chinese, and the next (who later revealed himself to be an Asian-American) corrected him and said he was Taiwanese-American. Then there was this storm of downvotes and comments that simply declared him "American", and that any other description of Jeremy Lin was inaccurate and offensive. Obviously, the Asian Americans on that thread tried to explain to the ignorant Redditors (kind of a redudant, I know) the dynamics of being Asian American. It's really become clear to me that people that don't regularly interact with Asian-Americans really just don't get what it means to be Asian-American. The more "progressively-minded", in their admirable desire to be inclusive, simply disregard our ethnicity, heritage, and cultural differences by welcoming us into the open arms of their proudly held identity of "American". The more segregated white, American-flag-on-their-pickup-truck types who rarely deal with us yellow people are surprised that we can speak English fluently and without accents, and immediately ask us if we were born in the States, if we speak Chinese, and what our favorite foods are.
It might just be me being second generation, and it might just be my more conservative leaning, but the former error annoys me much more than the latter. It really bothers me that there seems to be a shift towards being "color-blind" for the sake of political correctness, but in it, our culture and heritage is really lost. Preaching "American" homogeneity and being "inclusive" isn't respectful to our culture or identity, and while we don't want to be called "chinks" all the time, we want our cultural differences to be recognized and accepted as well. We are different. We know we look different. So don't pretend that we aren't. I'm not telling white people to throw rocks at Asian-Americans whenever they see us, but just like with any other cross-racial and cross-cultural interaction, trying to celebrate differences is greatly appreciated.
Moving to Fort Wayne, I've experienced a lot of people who treat me much more as an Asian than as an American, many of whom assume that I'm an immigrant. I really don't mind it too much, because most are well-intentioned and it does provide a venue for some interesting conversation (the pastor of one of the churches I visited was actually a missionary in Taiwan for some time!). That said, being Asian-American in a place like Fort Wayne really leaves me without people that worship in the same way as I do. I love great teaching, but I also like my Hillsong. Familiar hymns and classic Christian contemporary are okay, but there often just feels like something is missing for me to really feel comfortable in worship. I'm looking for a church that's interested in social justice, but I'm really not interested in mixing politics into my religion, as most of the Bible-preaching churches seem to do here. The families at the churches here seem nice, and I really don't know enough about the churches to really judge them, but it doesn't seem like "the church family" is really a family at all, compared to the tight-knit family back home in my Chinese church, with all the "Shu shu"'s and "Ah-yi's". All in all, being an Asian-American Christian here in Fort Wayne without many other Asian-Americans Christians, I feel like I'm different and alone, without others that have a similar background as me or people that worship God the same way that I do.
For those of you looking for some big new idea or grand conclusion that I'm going to make, sorry to disappoint. This was more of just a reactionary post, as the author of that GC blog post really hit the nail on the head in his description of Asian-American Christianity. I'm beginning to realize just how deep my Asian-American Christian identity is, and how it affects my worship and my church searching. I am proud to be an Asian-American Christian, and it isn't because of Jeremy Lin. Thank you God for creating me this way!
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| Thanks for the memories, MCCC! |
Fun, semi-related post - The Origin of the MCCC Mando/Canto Divide
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