Part Two with Michael Chen on Collective Liberation and Asian American Theology

This is part two of a conversation with Michael Chen of AAPI.Liturgy. Recorded on April 30th, 2021

Find Michael Chen on instagram @aapi.liturgy

Michael Chen lives in Philadelphia with his wife Rachael and their two boys. He is a graduate of Princeton Seminary where he earned his Master of Divinity, and is currently working on a PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy at Eastern University. As a long time campus minister, he has a heart for helping people live more fully into their unique identity and vocation. In his free time he likes exploring cities and eating dumplings. Also, he is a karaoke champion.

Maggie offered a recap of last week: We talked about collective trauma, what it is and how that impacts the way we view healing. We explored what it means to be Asian, a name that encompasses a vastly diverse group of people from 50+ countries. Michael reflected on his own experience of growing up and working in predominately white spaces and how race has been somewhat of a binary construct of black and white. Through his work and research getting his PhD he started AAPI.Liturgy where he seeks to create a space to expand, explore and examine what it means to be both Asian American and Christian.

Currently Michael is researching for his PhD and the overarching questions for him has been: What does it mean to Asian American and Christian? What is Asian American theology? Michael says “The term ‘Asian American’ comes out of the 60’s. It’s a protest identification really trying to capture the essence, fervor of the Civil Rights Movement.” His big question is, “What happened?”

Michael grew up in a Chinese Church that was somewhat divided. There was a Chinese congregation that was Mandarin speaking. With the influx of Chinese immigrants they grew a Cantonese congregation. And then the children of those immigrants needed their own congregation, and so they formed an English congregation. There were three congregations within one church and they just “did” church and the topic of what it means to be Asian or Asian-American in Church was not a topic of discussion. Michael was around Asians weekly and yet there was no exploring the deeper meaning of their sense of isolation, of being marginalized, of experiencing micro-aggressions or being stuck or feeling stuck in predominately white spaces and structures. “So we talked about Jesus… and we were just with one another which on a level was wonderful and great but in the back in my mind I had that question of ‘what does it means to be Asian American’ that never made it into the church space.”

It was this inquiry got filtered through literature and sociology classes, and through Seminary (at Princeton) where he studied white theologians—Calvin, Kuyper, Augustine, Luther…. The question, “Is there an Asian American theology?” was never given much room. Michael began to wonder, has anyone written on Asian American Theology? In his research he came across a math professor who was doing research and writing articles on Asian American Liberation Theology. He found the early course readers of the 70s, at the beginning of Asian identity as a political identity as a movement, as well as the conversation that was happening around Black Liberation Theology, the work of James Cone, [Gustavo] Gutierrez. At last it seemed he had found them—"Here are folks that are thinking about and talking about the experience of marginalization! People who are looking at the biblical narrative and finding themselves in it."

Michael gives the example from the Japanese-American Rev Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa who converted to Christianity from a Buddhist background. He was interned in Arizona during WWII and began preaching the gospel at the internment camp. After this experience he went to seminary and eventually pastored a predominately white church in Chicago. At that time the sentiment was, “A Jap will always be a Jap. The Japanese will always be suspect.” Michael notes that for Morikawa to be in that position of widespread prejudice and to subsequently see the church grow, it is a powerful move of the spirit. When Michael read some of Morikawa’s writing around the Asian American experience in the Exodus story, it was the first time he had seen or heard anyone thinking about Asian liberation in light of the Biblical narrative. It brought so much deep emotion for him and inspiration in thinking about the Asian American story in light of the movement from slavery into freedom — He asks, “Where are we now in our Exodus journey? And what does mean to become a priesthood of believers with our particularity, with our story, with our art, with our culture, with our poetry, with our faces?”

Danielle is struck by how in the United States we have collected vast ethnicities of people groups into continents. She’s says it is almost as if we (in the US) can not bare the particularity in their ethnicities. And yet she feels that as we come into the spaces of story there can be solidarity. She names for her, being Mexican is her particularity, she finds so much solidarity and inspiration in the stories coming out of Cuba Colombia, Argentina and other countries in South America. It moves her and makes her feel like she too can express her self and her story. Danielle remarks that it is in this continent grouping that happens in the United States, that for Michael as a [Chinese] man, he ends up looking towards other ethnicities within the continent grouping that the US has labeled “Asia” to find pieces to put together to form a theology.

Michael says yes, and it is in part redemptive for his particular family story. His maternal grandfather was imprisoned by the Japanese in Taiwan, which was under imperial Japanese control. His grandfather spoke English as a translator, which during WWII made him suspected of having allegiances and ties to the United States. He spe