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Embracing Every Tongue, Tribe, and Nation

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Basic RGBRecently, I was a part of an initiative to help the evangelical church become aware of and understand its limitations in the area of cultural intelligence and sensitivity, particularly in its relationships with its Asian American brothers and sisters. In the wake of this initiative, I wrote a number of blog posts explaining the reasons behind my involvement and why it’s important for the larger church to increase its cultural IQ. Please feel free to peruse and comment!

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From the Christ and Pop Culture blog:

I am not, by nature, a rabble-rouser. I’ve been teased and marginalized by others countless times due to my Asian ethnicity (despite the fact that I am a natural-born American citizen), but no matter how much these incidents stung, I would say nothing and keep the memories deep inside. Whether it was due to my own insecurities, a desire to avoid conflict, an inability to articulate an adequate response, a fatalistic perspective that nothing I could say would change anything, in all those moments I kept my mouth shut. Doing so became my instinctive and self-protective response.

I share this to provide some context as to why a 40-something Asian American woman who has not historically been one to raise my voice when confronted by racial and cultural insensitivity did so through the open letter to the evangelical church that was recently released by a group of Asian American Christians. As part of the organizing committee who spearheaded this effort, I want to bring clarity to our motivations for releasing the letter and hopefully dispel some of the misconceptions about the letter and about those of us who were involved in its crafting.

(Read more at “Why I Raised My Voice (And Encouraged Others to Do the Same)”)

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From Ed Stetzer’s blog:

I was born in Spokane, Washington, and I’ve lived all my 40-plus years in the United States. If you never met or saw me before but heard me speak, you would likely assume that English is my first language, and you’d be correct. I love watching the NFL, I vote and pay my taxes, I make an amazing apple pie—I’m American, through and through.

But more times than I care to count, I have been treated like someone who doesn’t belong here, solely because of my heritage as the daughter of two Korean immigrants. My husband is also of Korean descent so my children, too, are Korean by blood, but also 100 percent American as I often remind them. Even so, my 11-year-old eldest son broke my heart recently when he told me that he doesn’t think girls will like him because he is “not American enough.” And I know he’s not getting that message from anyone in our family.

(Read more at “How High Is your Cultural Intelligence?”)

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From the Evangelical Covenant Church:

Earlier this week, a coalition of Asian American pastors and church leaders released an “Open Letter to the Evangelical Church” decrying the use of stereotypes that they say have hurt their community. Two Covenanters, Kathy Khang and Helen Lee, drafted the letter and sought the signatories.

Major media outlets across the country have run stories about the letter, which is attracting additional signatories every day. To view the letter, click here.

The women decided to write the letter following two recent depictions of Asian Americans, one by Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren, and another by Exponential, a church planting group, during a conference at Saddleback.

A video at the conference showed a white pastor joking that he made his apprentice do menial activities. The apprentice responds by doing a parody of the “Karate Kid” that includes the pastor speaking with a Chinese accent, and the two engaging in karate before bowing to each other.

(Read more at “Covenanters Call for Dialogue on Asian American Stereotypes”)

(Illustration credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/mstay)


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