This journal article was originally published on March 28, 2023 on Theology Today, Volume 80, Issue 1, pages 54-73,
https://doi.org/10.1177/00405736221150397.
Introduction
This article takes Asian American Christianity to be an analytically productive religion for advancing a theory of Christian doctrine.1 This is in large part due to the trans-Pacific character of Asian American Christians who, by virtue of their racialization, make explicit the different social circumstances—from Anglo-European Christians—as well as shared ends in which Christian doctrinal commitments operate. Asian American Christians problematize the conventional wisdom assumed in the academic and public discourses concerning Christianity in the US. One of the primary set of categories in the discourses about Christianity in the US is the theological difference between evangelical and mainline Protestants. Moreover, these theological and doctrinal categories are taken to describe and define these two social groups of Christians. By centering empirical studies of Asian American Christian faith and practice, this article claims that doctrinal similarity and doctrinal difference, such as that between evangelical and mainline Protestants, do not simply explain social group similarity or difference as assumed by conventional wisdom. Instead, these Asian American case studies point to the need for a new theory of Christian doctrine that can account for the explanatory power and normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference in terms of the uses of doctrine.
Conventional wisdom assumes a view of the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference where shared doctrines explain group similarity and different doctrines explain group difference. This assumption confuses two distinct features of Christian doctrine that coexist simultaneously. First, on my view, shared doctrines do not simply explain group similarity because Christian doctrine is designed for different groups to share similar ends. This is because Christianity is a translatable and transmissible religion designed, in a sense, to travel across space and time and become embodied in different contexts. There is thus a formal character to Christian doctrine that is designed to include significant internal variation among different Christians living in different places and times. I take this internal variation within shared formal ends to be a feature of the universal or catholic church. For many, the confession that “Jesus is Lord” by believers across space and time indicates that there is one formal and universal body of Christ. Second and simultaneously, this catholic identity and formal end is always embodied in different, local social circumstances of space and time. The material differences in the social circumstances of Christians who confess “Jesus is Lord” relativizes the explanatory power and thus normative significance of doctrinal similarity or difference—that is, the doctrinal similarity or difference may not hold as much explanatory power as does the similarity or difference in social circumstances between two groups. Doctrinal similarity or difference alone does not sufficiently explain group similarity or difference, other factors, such as racialization in the case of Asian American Christians, must be considered. On my account, the normative significance of doctrinal similarity or difference is taken to be relative to the explanatory power of shared or different social circumstances.
Before we examine the case studies of Asian American Christianity, we need to get a better sense of the conventional wisdom regarding the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and disagreement.
Conventional Wisdom about the Normative Significance of Doctrinal Similarity and Difference
This section describes the conventional wisdom about the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference. Conventional wisdom assumes that doctrinal similarity and difference explain group similarity and difference. It is nearly ubiquitous in contemporary discussions of Christianity in the US to describe Christianity in theological terms such as evangelical, mainline Protestant, and Roman Catholic (see for example the 2016 Pew report discussed below). This article will focus primarily on the theological categories “evangelical” and “mainline.”
The existence of these theological categories in discourses about Christianity in the US is so common that it is simply assumed without explanation or further justification. In this section, I make explicit what is implicit in the conventional wisdom regarding the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference—namely, that evangelicals are united by a shared commitment to evangelical doctrines while mainline Protestants are united by a shared commitment to mainline doctrines and that the differences between these two groups is a function of these different doctrinal commitments. To be precise, the conventional account of the normative significance of doctrinal similarity or difference imagines that group behaviors (such as voting and other political activities) follow from these shared or different doctrinal commitments. Therefore, the normative significance of doctrinal similarity or difference is found in the power of doctrines to explain the group behaviors of evangelicals and mainline Protestants
Definitions of “Evangelical” and “Mainline”
It is conventional wisdom in the academic and public discourses about Christianity in the US to use theological categories such as “evangelical” and “mainline” to describe different Christian groups in terms of their theology.
Timothy Larsen’s definition of an evangelical is instructive. An evangelical is
(1) an orthodox Protestant (2) who stands in the tradition of global Christian networks arising from the eighteenth-century revival movements associated with John Wesley and George Whitefield; (3) who has a preeminent place for the Bible in her or his Christian life as the divinely inspired, final authority in matters of faith and practice; (4) who stresses reconciliation with God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross; (5) and who stresses the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of an individual to bring about conversion and an ongoing life of fellowship with God and service to God and others, including the duty of all believers to participate in the task of proclaiming the gospel to all people.2
Larsen’s definition is a modification of David Bebbington’s definition of evangelicalism that identifies “four distinguishing doctrinal marks: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism—that is, evangelicals emphasize conversion experiences; an active laity sharing the gospel and engaged in good works; the Bible; and salvation through the work of Christ on the cross.”3
As evident in these definitions, there are any number of doctrinal commitments that distinguish evangelical Christians from other kinds of Christians. These doctrines include Scripture, Christology, atonement, God, Holy Spirit, and mission. By using doctrinal commitments as descriptive of “evangelical,” Larsen is saying what is a commonplace across scholarly and public discourses concerning Christianity in the US: evangelical Christians cannot be understood apart from these distinct doctrinal commitments and that these doctrinal commitments define and explain who evangelical Christians are.
Mainline Protestantism, by contrast, does not share these doctrinal commitments. Mainline or liberal Christianity in the US came out of the Modernist–Fundamentalist controversy of the 1920s as evident with high-profile, public debates surrounding the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial” as well as the establishment of conservative denominations and seminaries stemming from theological disagreements.4 Mainline or liberal Christians are classically characterized by the spirit of Henry Fosdick’s claim: “[Liberal Christianity] is primarily an adaptation, an adjustment, an accommodation of the Christian faith to contemporary scientific thinking. It started by taking the intellectual culture of a particular period as its criterion and then adjusting Christian teaching to that standard.”5 Fosdick argued for a “liberal progressive Christianity” that accepted the new scientific knowledge generated by Darwinian accounts of evolution as well as biblical criticism. Fosdick was in part motivated by a concern for the intellectual viability of the Christian faith in the modern period.6 “Contemporary mainline Protestants grew out of the ‘modernist’ side of this divide and tend to be less literal in their biblical beliefs, more open to multiple pathways to ‘salvation,’ and more focused, when it comes to sharing their faith and changing society, on social structures than on individual conversion.”7
The conventional wisdom about the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference is evident through describing evangelicals and mainline Protestants in theological and doctrinal terms.8 Doctrinal similarity and difference are taken to have explanatory power for group similarity and difference. For example, according to conventional wisdom, when one asks why certain groups behave in certain ways, the answer for Christians in America is found in their doctrinal commitments.9
Empirical Data Used to Support Conventional Wisdom
From the July 13, 2016 Pew Research Center report titled “Evangelicals Rally to Trump, Religious ‘Nones’ Back Clinton,” there is helpful data regarding the voting patterns of White evangelicals and White mainline voters in the 2016 US presidential election.10 The theological categories “evangelical” and “mainline” are taken to describe and explain important differences between two groups. For the 2016 US presidential election, “White evangelical” Christians voted for Trump at 78 percent compared to “White mainline” Christians at 50 percent. That is a statistically significant difference of 28 percent. The analogous is true regarding those “White evangelical” Christians who voted for Clinton at 17 percent compared to “White mainline” Christians at 39 percent. These data indicate that there is statistical correlation between conservative theological belief and conservative political behavior and liberal theological belief and liberal political behavior. Further, among White evangelical voters a very large majority voted for Trump compared to those White evangelicals voting for Clinton by a margin of 61 percent. Among White mainline Christians, the differential between those voting for Trump over Clinton was not as significant at 50 percent to 39 percent.
This information confirms the conventional wisdom stated above concerning the normative significance of doctrinal difference, in this case the different doctrinal commitments of White evangelicals and White mainline Protestants do explain group difference. By the same token, doctrinal similarity explains group similarity within evangelical and mainline groups.11 This article asks, What does conventional wisdom assume about the explanatory power of religious doctrine? What happens when that conventional wisdom is no longer simply the case? How must our assumed understanding of Christian doctrine change? If beliefs and doctrines lack the explanatory power assumed by conventional wisdom, what explains group similarity and difference for religious people in the US?
Disrupting Conventional Wisdom: Asian American Christianity
I share an anecdote from my experience teaching Asian American theology to Asian and Asian American seminary students at a mainline Protestant seminary. I ask my international students from Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and South Korea: Do you self-identify as “evangelical”? They pause before answering and frequently say something along these lines:
In my country, evangelical simply means “Christian” as distinct from Buddhist, Hindu, or popular folk religion. But we notice that in the US “evangelical” means something very different. It usually means a White person, from the Midwest or southern US who is politically conservative and a supporter of Trump. And because we are not White nor from the US, we feel strange when the term “evangelical” is applied to us with this meaning.
Something similar could be said about some of my Asian American students who do not instinctively describe themselves as evangelical despite having been formed through evangelical institutions and spaces. I take anecdotes like this to be a case of “religious minor feelings.”
Cathy Park Hong is a poet, cultural critic, and professor of English at Rutgers University who wrote the 2020 book titled Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning.12 This book was written before the pandemic arrived in force and captured the sentiments of many Asian Americans during the racial reckoning and anti-Asian hate that embroiled the US during the pandemic (and continues to do so). In this award-winning memoir and collection of essays, Hong describes the “minor feelings” experienced by Asian Americans who do not fit the racial binary of White and Black in the US while still being racialized. The racialization that goes unrecognized becomes internalized as “minor feelings” by Asian Americans. The category of “minor feelings” seeks to make legible the racialization of Asian Americans that would otherwise remain illegible.
By analogy, I think that many Asian American Christians experience “religious minor feelings” for not belonging within the normative structure often attributed to doctrinal similarity and difference in discourses about Christianity in America. The theological binaries of evangelical and mainline Christian identity in the US assume an Anglo-European genealogy that is not native nor natural to non-White Christians, including Asian American Christians. Asian American Christians are Christians but not simply in the theological categories that dominate scholarly and public discourses about Christianity in the US. The trans-Pacific migration structure of Asian American life complicates the conventional wisdom. Asian American Christianity raises questions about the adequacy of the conventional wisdom regarding the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference.
This article is prompted by the “religious minor feelings” that non-White Christians, especially Asian American Christians, experience in theological and public discourses about Christianity in the US. I take these “religious minor feelings” as heuristic for identifying tensions, problems, and incoherence in what we commonly and conventionally understand Christian doctrine to be and to do. To gain theoretical purchase, I ground these “religious minor feelings” in case studies of Asian American Christianity to generate an alternative explanation of the nature and uses of doctrine. These empirical descriptions of the faith and practice of ordinary Asian American Christians do theoretical work in showing how the meaning and power of Christian doctrine require more explicit attention to the social circumstances and ends of the uses of doctrine. Moreover, the thick sociological, anthropological, and inductive descriptions of Asian American faith and practice do theological work by making explicit the divine action at work in and through the social practices of the universal and local Christian church.
At the heart of “Asian American identity” is its trans-Pacific migration story of those escaping war, colonialism, and poverty in Asia to make a better place for themselves in the US. There is a shared formative condition13 of trans-Pacific dislocation and subsequent racialization within the broader US racial body politic that shapes the experience, meaning-making, and aspirations of Asian Americans, including Asian American Christians. I emphasize the trans-Pacific features of Asian American identity because it is this trans-Pacific context of Asian Americans that shines a light on the assumed racial, political, and religious binaries that shape the conventional wisdom about the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference in the US.14
Asian American Christians illuminate the sedimentation and thus naturalization of how religious doctrine, social circumstances, and human action directed to specific ends are coordinated in Anglo-European Christianities. This article seeks to make those assumed conditions explicit. What is taken to be natural within a primarily White American or European context of assumed racial, political, and religious norms is shaken up by the counter-examples of Asian American Christians. What might the study of Asian American Christianity provoke in our understanding of Christian theology? This article explores that question with respect to a theory of Christian doctrine.
What Shared Doctrines Do Not Explain
Shared Doctrine and Racial Difference
Based on the claims above, conventional wisdom about the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference states that doctrines describe and explain group similarity and group difference. Those belonging to the evangelical group do so because of shared evangelical doctrinal commitments. Those belonging to the mainline group do so because of shared mainline doctrinal commitments. Those with shared doctrinal commitments behave in similar ways according to the doctrinal commitments that are shared. Those with different doctrinal commitments behave in different ways according to those different doctrinal commitments. From shared or different doctrinal premises, one expects patterns of similarity and difference for the inferences drawn. So goes the conventional wisdom. The 2016 Pew report illustrates this conventional wisdom with certain political inferences and behaviors drawn from certain doctrinal commitments. From this conventional wisdom, one expects this pattern to hold in different cases.
The case of Asian American Christians cuts against the grain of conventional wisdom. See for example the important data in Janelle Wong’s book Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change, especially her table titled “Political Positions of Evangelicals, by Race, 2016.”15 This “Evangelicals by Race” table shows the voting patterns of evangelicals by race for the 2016 US presidential election and thus controls for evangelical doctrinal commitments (the table does not specify mainline doctrinal commitments). It overlaps with the 2016 Pew report in that regard. However, the “Evangelicals by Race” data focus on racial differences in a way that the 2016 Pew report does not. New voting patterns, based on race, are introduced in the “Evangelicals by Race” data which break from conventional wisdom.
We note the top line of the “Evangelicals by Race” data where White evangelicals voted for Trump at the rate of 75 percent, Black evangelicals at 7 percent, Latinx evangelicals at 31 percent, and Asian American evangelicals at 37 percent. The statistical difference between White evangelicals and non-White evangelicals voting for Trump is pronounced. Whereas conventional wisdom dictates that those belonging to the evangelical group would behave similarly because of shared doctrinal commitments, this is not the case across racial groups. Black evangelicals demonstrate the starkest difference: a 68 percent difference between Black evangelicals and White evangelicals who voted for Trump. Shared doctrinal commitments are not reflected in shared inferences of political behavior. This applies for Latinx evangelicals and Asian American evangelicals as well but with less disparity than in the Black evangelical case. For Asian American evangelicals, 37 percent voted for Trump, which is a minority of the Asian American evangelical population and is 38 percent less than their White evangelical counterparts.16
The “Evangelicals by Race” data problematize the conventional wisdom that shared doctrinal commitments explain shared inferences such as political behaviors.17 Since the “Evangelicals by Race” data highlight racial difference, it is likely that racial difference takes on some explanatory role for the break from conventional wisdom. The following case study about the exodus of Korean American Christians from majority-White, evangelical megachurches illustrates the claim that shared doctrines do not simply describe group similarity.
The Case of Korean American Christians
McLean Bible Church (MBC) is a theologically conservative or evangelical, majority-White church.18 As reported in The Atlantic, at MBC, there are ongoing debates coming to the fore about “wokeness,” “social justice,” and “critical race theory.” These issues have been brewing since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. The proximity of MBC to Washington, DC means that national politics are difficult to avoid in this local congregation located in the wealthy, northern Virginia suburb of McLean where many of the government elite live. Not far away is Grace Christian Fellowship (GCF).19 GCF is a Korean church in northern Virginia that is part of a booming Korean ethnic enclave with Korean-owned businesses and stores catering to Korean customers.
During the pandemic, I spoke with a pastor at GCF.20 I was curious whether his church was growing or not given that immigration trends from Korea to the US over the last 10–15 years were different than in the 1980s and 1990s. The change in immigration patterns means that many first-generation, Korean-language ministry churches (GCF has both first- and second-generation ministries) have suffered a significant decline in membership in the last decade or so. English-language ministries have also generally stalled as members today have many more communities and commitments competing for their interest, time, and money as compared to thirty years ago. The pastor shared the noteworthy dynamic that his church has been growing since the Trump presidency. The growth in membership at his English ministry is counterintuitive given the declining immigration dynamics described above. This was not through the conversion of new believers but through transfer growth from other churches. The pastor identified this specific cause: Korean Americans were leaving primarily White, evangelical megachurches such as MBC for GCF.
For some of the predominantly White, evangelical megachurches, it was not uncommon for political commentary or cues to be offered in church settings (whether from the pulpit, in small groups, or around the “water cooler”). Given the political climate of suburban life in northern Virginia, much of this political commentary by White evangelicals at churches like MBC was in support of Trump as the first real Christian president in a long time or as an answer to prayer for making America Christian again. In response to this support for Trump, some Korean American Christians would offer a counter-narrative indicating that they felt alienated by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Moreover, there were some Korean American members of MBC who felt uncomfortable with the church’s lack of sensitivity around these issues. For these Asian American Christians, church was no longer a safe place to be one’s self.
Fast-forward to 2020 and topics related to the pandemic, mask-wearing, and anti-Asian hate in the US made their way into the broader culture of many evangelical churches. Korean Americans, including those attending these churches, feared for their grandparents, told their loved ones not to go out alone, and learned to be extra vigilant even while doing mundane things in public. Many White evangelicals would endorse Trump’s leadership in terms of their perception of his tough stance against communist China. The alienation and marginalization Korean Americans felt at White evangelical churches meant that White evangelical churches no longer felt like their spiritual home. The result was an exodus of Korean Americans from majority-White evangelical churches such as MBC for Korean churches such as GCF. Some found their way to ethnic churches like GCF where they felt more “comfortable.”21
I am interested in what this case study might say about the nature and uses of doctrine. What happens when groups share identical doctrinal commitments across different racial ecclesial settings? Do shared doctrines explain shared group behavior? Whereas conventional wisdom would coordinate shared doctrinal commitment with shared group behavior, in the case of Korean American Christians at MBC, we get a counter-example. Shared doctrinal commitments between White evangelicals and Korean American evangelicals do not result in shared group behavior. The Korean Americans leave MBC.22
What is instructive is that we can attribute to MBC and GCF an identical evangelical theology. For those Korean American members who left MBC for GCF, they have the exact same doctrinal commitments before and after their exodus. For example, they still believe in the ultimate authority of Scripture, the divinity and centrality of Christ, the atoning sacrifice of Christ’s work on the cross, hope in the second coming of Christ, a future bodily resurrection, and so on. None of these doctrinal commitments on the part of these Korean American Christians changed. What does evangelical similarity explain in this cross-racial case of MBC and GCF? It does not explain shared political behaviors or inferences. And in fact, the shared doctrines mask powerful racial differences and dynamics.
With the case of Korean American Christians leaving MBC and the data from “Evangelicals by Race,” doctrinal similarity loses the normative significance it has according to conventional wisdom. Pointing to doctrinal similarity does not account for shared group behavior. In the case of Korean American Christians leaving MBC and the data from “Evangelicals by Race,” we get a picture of behavior that breaks from conventional wisdom. The racial difference and shared doctrinal commitments point to the significance of race, or, more broadly, social circumstances for elucidating what doctrine does and does not do.
What might a theory of Christian doctrine need to explain in order to address both the conventional wisdom about doctrine and the case of Korean American evangelicals? Shared doctrines allow for internal variation between groups based on different uses of doctrine according to different social circumstances.
What Different Doctrines Do Not Explain
Doctrinal Difference and Racial Similarity
To reiterate the discussion above, conventional wisdom about the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference states that doctrines describe and explain both group similarity and group difference. Those belonging to the evangelical group do so because of shared evangelical doctrinal commitments. Those belonging to the mainline group do so because of shared mainline doctrinal commitments that are different from evangelical doctrinal commitments. What is explanatory of group similarity or difference are doctrines. Those with shared doctrinal commitments behave in similar ways according to the doctrinal commitments that are shared. Those with different doctrinal commitments behave in different ways according to different doctrinal commitments. From shared premises about the explanatory power of religious doctrine, one expects patterns of similarity and difference for the inferences drawn from those doctrinal commitments. So goes the conventional wisdom. The 2016 Pew report illustrates this conventional wisdom with certain political inferences drawn from certain doctrinal commitments: mainline Christians vote liberal and evangelical Christians vote conservative. The doctrinal commitments explain and perhaps even determine political behaviors. From conventional wisdom, one expects this pattern to hold in different cases.
In Jerry Z. Park and Joshua C. Tom’s 2020 article “Political Trajectories of Asian Americans: Bringing Religion In,” figure 2 titled “Asian American 2016 Presidential Vote by Religious Affiliation” shows 2016 presidential voting patterns among Asian Americans across religious and theological differences.23 Included are Asian American Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. Of particular interest are the data regarding the doctrinal differences between Asian American evangelicals and Asian American mainline Protestants. Here we have a case of different doctrinal commitments (identified by “evangelical” and “mainline”) within a shared racial formation (identified by “Asian American”). In the second and third pair of columns from the left, one will notice the very similar voting patterns across doctrinal differences. Recall from the 2016 Pew report that with White evangelical and White mainline voters, there was the corresponding 28 percent difference in voting patterns between White evangelicals (78 percent) compared to White mainline Protestants (50 percent) voting for Trump and a 22 percent difference between White mainline Protestants (39 percent) compared to White evangelicals (17 percent) voting for Clinton. Now with Park and Tom’s data from the figure “Asian American … by Religious Affiliation,” the difference between Asian American evangelicals vs. Asian American mainline Protestants voting for Trump is nearly indistinguishable (a 1.4 percent difference), and the difference between Asian American mainline Protestants and Asian American evangelicals voting for Clinton is also nearly indistinguishable (a 2.2 percent difference). The data from “Asian American … by Religious Affiliation” indicate yet another break from conventional wisdom—this time regarding the explanatory power of doctrinal difference.
One feature of conventional wisdom from the 2016 Pew report is that doctrinal difference explains different voting patterns for White evangelicals and White mainline Protestants. If one applies that same conventional wisdom to Asian American evangelicals and Asian American mainline Protestants, one would expect an analogous voting pattern to emerge. Instead, one gets a significant break from conventional wisdom. For Asian American Christians, there is no statistically significant difference in voting patterns based upon different doctrinal commitments as was the case for White Christians. Doctrinal differences in non-White Christian contexts (as with Asian American evangelicals and Asian American mainline Protestants) do not have the same explanatory power they have in White Christian contexts.
Whereas the difference in the 2016 Pew report between White evangelicals who voted for Trump or Clinton was 61 percent, the data from “Asian American … by Religious Affiliation” show the difference between Asian Americans evangelicals who voted for Trump or Clinton to be 5.7 percent. Whereas the difference from the 2016 Pew report between White mainline Christians was 11 percent for those voting for Trump or Clinton, in the data from “Asian American … by Religious Affiliation,” the difference between Asian American mainline Protestants who voted for Trump or Clinton is 9.3 percent (still less than the White differential). These data further substantiate the claim that doctrines in the case of Asian American Christians do not simply explain political behavior as they do for White Christians and that other factors (such as racial formation) ought to be considered.
The data from Park and Tom examine Asian Americans according to religious affiliation and break down Christian affiliation according to the categories of evangelical and mainline. What is different with the data from Park and Tom is the use of doctrinal categories such as “evangelical” and “mainline” within Asian American Christianity. The 2016 Pew report did not consider Asian American Christianity more generally and did not distinguish between evangelical and mainline Asian American Christianities more particularly. The introduction of different racial formations, such as Asian American compared to White, in relation to doctrinal difference, such as evangelical compared to mainline, illustrates a change in the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference. Asian American Christianity troubles the conventional wisdom that assumes White Christianity. The following case study about the doctrinal differences between first- and second-generation Indian American Christians offers further evidence that doctrinal difference does not simply explain group difference and needs to be situated relative to racial similarity and difference.
The Case of Indian American Christians
In this Asian American Christian case study, we focus on the Mar Thoma (Syrian Christian) community of Indian American Christians in the US. I draw from Prema Kurien’s ethnography of Indian American Christianity titled Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch: Indian American Christianity in Motion.24 Kurien focuses on the Mar Thoma Christian denomination, which “traces its origin to the legendary arrival of Apostle Thomas on the shores of Kerala in 52 C.E.” Kerala is a state located on the southeast Malabar Coast of India. “In the U.S., Indian Christians constitute around 18 percent of the Indian American population (Pew Research Center 2012). Syrian Christians from Kerala constitute the largest group of Indian Christians in the U.S., and among Syrian Christian denominations, the Mar Thoma church is considered the best organized and most active.”25 India is a predominantly Hindu country where Christians are a minority. Indian Christians who arrive in the US become a part of the religious majority. This trans-Pacific migration structure shapes the relationship between first-generation Mar Thoma Christians who have stronger ethnic and cultural ties with Kerala, India, and second-generation Indian American Christians who are culturally assimilated to the US (e.g., they speak English fluently and are educated in US public schools and universities). Kurien charts the exodus of second-generation Indian American Christians who leave their parents’ traditional liturgical places of worship for nondenominational, evangelical megachurches.
Upon reaching adulthood, many second-generation Indian American Christians seek a worship service in a language they understand and with sermons speaking to the spiritual and personal needs they have without driving an hour, or more, away. To these second-generation, Indian American Christians, the traditional Mar Thoma liturgy of their parents’ generation is irrelevant to their needs, spoken in a language they do not really understand, and full of ritual habits that have lost meaning for them. Growing up in these traditional liturgical spaces, they would rather hang out outside the sanctuary with their friends and return to service only to receive the Eucharist. On the other hand, nondenominational evangelical worship services are fresh, relevant, and spiritually engaging.
Kurien’s narrative hinges on the second generation’s rejection of traditional Mar Thoma theology for a “de-ethnicized” evangelical theology. Kurien uses theological differences (the distinction between traditional Mar Thoma theology and evangelical theology) to describe the exodus and the difference between first- and second-generation Indian American Christians. The key section is titled “Second-Generation Perspectives: Decoupling Religion and Ethnicity.” Kurien highlights the doctrinal difference between Mar Thoma Christianity and evangelical Christianity. For evangelical Christianity, the “theological assumptions embedded in these organizations, forms of worship, and education are very different from those of the Mar Thoma church.” Kurien highlights that evangelical theology emphasizes a “personal relationship with Christ” and a “fairly dramatic ‘conversion experience’.” “Having such a personal relationship with Christ in turn meant that ‘Jesus is the center of my life and the one that directs me in all that I do, in all areas of my life,’ in the words of one of the youth leaders. It meant knowing the Bible well and knowing how to apply it to everyday life decisions and problems.”26
I use the observations from Kurien to offer my own interpretation of the case. Kurien is right to identify the exodus of second-generation Mar Thoma Christians for evangelical megachurch spaces. But this has much less to do with assimilation into White evangelical Christianity and much more to do with using evangelical worship for their ends as second-generation Indian American Christians. Rather than viewing evangelical theology as a de-ethnicized theology, we should instead understand the embrace of evangelical worship as a function of a specific form of Indian American immigrant experience.27 For second-generation Indian American Christians, their end is to find a worship service in a language they understand, with messages that are relevant to their life situation, with liturgical practices that are not foreign to their cultural context as assimilated Indian Americans, and in a geographical place that is not overly inconvenient. Nondenominational, evangelical megachurches happen to provide exactly that kind of worship in a way that works well for the specific needs of second-generation Indian American Christians. What Kurien underdevelops in her narrative is that while there is a shift in liturgical settings and doctrinal commitments from first- to second-generation Indian American Christians, this doctrinal difference is relative to a shared racial formation of being Indian American. Kurien’s claims about the loss of ethnic identity for second-generation Indian American Christians worshipping at evangelical churches obscure the shared racial formation of second-generation Indian Americans with their first-generation parents, and it obscures how their racial formation differs from White evangelicals. It is more helpful to see that the needs, desires, and ends of these second-generation, immigrant Indian Americans are practically fulfilled through evangelical worship. They do not embrace evangelical worship simply for the evangelical doctrine and thus the descriptions of group similarity (with White evangelicals) and group difference (with first-generation Indian Americans) cannot simply be explained by reference to theological doctrines. By focusing on the loss of ethnic identity with second-generation Indian American Christians who embrace evangelical theology and worship, we lose sight of the expression of Indian American identity in different form and within a shared racial formation across first and second generations. It happens that evangelical worship more adequately meets the needs, desires, and ends of second-generation Indian American Christians than their parents’ more traditional Mar Thoma liturgy. In both cases, Christianity (in its different doctrinal forms) serves the practical needs of different kinds of Indian American immigrants.
Concluding Sketch of a Social-Practical Theory of Christian Doctrine
What are we to make of the nature and uses of Christian doctrine given the cases of Asian American Christianity described in this article? Asian American uses of Christian doctrine complicate the conventional wisdom about the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference. Conventional wisdom (especially regarding religion and politics in the US) states that group similarity and difference can be explained in terms of shared doctrines or doctrinal difference. However, racialized social circumstances (subjectively experienced as “religious minor feelings” by Asian American Christians) indicate that other features about the uses of Christian doctrine are not captured in this conventional wisdom. These “religious minor feelings” are productive for articulating a new theory of Christian doctrine.
It is a commonplace among Christian theologians as well as for many ordinary Christians to claim that Christian doctrine has normative authority. If Christian doctrine did not have normative authority, Christian communities across space and time would not catechize or instruct new believers in the faith. If Christian doctrine did not exercise normative authority, Christians would not recite the Nicene or Apostles’ Creeds. If Christian doctrine did not exercise normative authority, seminaries would not teach doctrinal theology as part of the professional training of future Christian leaders. Doctrines do have normative authority in the Christian community—or else we would not act as if they did. This article affirms the normative authority and power of Christian doctrine. What the article asks is how the normative authority of doctrine works.
George Lindbeck gives an account of the normative authority of doctrine in terms of a cultural-linguistic theory of religion and a regulative understanding of Christian doctrine.28 On Lindbeck’s account, doctrines are analogous to grammatical rules of the Christian religious language. Just as languages have grammar rules, so the Christian religion has doctrinal rules. Rules are norms, and so Lindbeck gives one account of how the normative authority of doctrines work. For Lindbeck, the normative authority of doctrine should be considered from the perspective of ecclesial grammar rules.
The problem with Lindbeck’s account, and this is a problem with postliberalism in general, is that the implicit ecclesiology is too formal and divine action is immaterial. The criticism from the ethnographic theological perspective of Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen is that postliberals assume an idealized or disembodied church.29 Or on my account, postliberalism assumes only a formal church shorn from social circumstances and thus theorizes an idealized church dislocated from material histories that have political significance. In short, social criticism and power analysis are lost in postliberal discussions of doctrine.
By highlighting the religious minor feelings of Asian American Christians and the empirical studies of the faith and practice of ordinary Asian American Christians, an alternative account of Christian doctrine can be formulated—one that I am calling a social-practical theory of the uses of Christian doctrine.30 Stated in schematic form, on this social-practical account, the normative authority of doctrine is a function of the mutually recognized formal ends as well as the social circumstances of the uses of doctrine.31 This social-practical account follows Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault in conceiving the meaning and power of Christian doctrinal concepts in terms of their use.32 Of particular significance is the ecclesial use, which explains the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference. In short, we ought not consider the explanatory power of religious doctrine apart from their social circumstances and ends of use.33
I conclude this article by sketching two essential components for understanding the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference. The conventional wisdom this article criticizes assumes that group similarity or difference can be explained in terms of doctrinal similarity or difference—often with minimal attention to social circumstances such as racial formation. Conventional wisdom argues for the normative authority of Christian doctrine in terms of its explanatory priority. This too implies a view of the church that is formal and a view of divine action that is immaterial and disembodied. From the perspective of a social-practical theory of Christian doctrine, the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference is explained through the social circumstances and ends of the mutually recognized uses of Christian doctrine. In other words, if we focus on doctrines as Christian grammatical rules shorn from their particular and material embodiment in space and time, we lose the social matter through which the meaning and power of the uses of doctrine take hold. We also lose a social and material account of divine action in the uses of Christian doctrine. In other words, we end up with an idealist and idealized account of doctrine implicit within conventional wisdom—idealist because ideas as such are taken as explanatory primitives and idealized because racial formations are not fully accounted for.
Instead, the cases of Asian American Christianity show us two things. In the case of non-White evangelicals and their voting patterns (see the “Evangelicals by Race” table referenced in note 15 above) and the case of Korean American Christians leaving MBC, shared doctrinal commitments do not simply explain shared inferences or group behavior. More needs to be said about different racialized social circumstances and thus the different uses made of shared doctrines. Another way to think about this is that shared doctrines allow a shared formal identity as Christian that simultaneously admits significant internal variation across social circumstances of use. In the case of Asian Americans who have different Christian doctrinal commitments but have similar voting patterns (see data from Park and Tom, “Asian American … by Religious Affiliation,” referenced above, as well as the case of Indian American Christians with different doctrinal commitments and a shared racial formation, doctrinal commitments as such do not simply explain group inferences or behaviors. With this second set of Asian American case studies, the normative significance of doctrinal difference is relativized according to the shared racial circumstances of the uses of doctrine. Religious and doctrinal identity alone cannot explain what racial formation, and its attendant political economy,34 explains through social circumstances of use. Against the grain of the conventional wisdom that seeks to expand the normative significance and explanatory power of doctrinal disagreement, the implication from the second set of Asian American case studies is that doctrinal differences within shared racial circumstances are differences relative to those shared social circumstance, and thus the meaning and power attached to these doctrinal differences are not universal, necessary, or natural.
I offer two closing theological caveats. One about ecclesiology and the other about divine action.
First, this social-practical theory of doctrine draws upon an ecclesiology that is simultaneously universal and local. It is nothing new to affirm the transmission of the Christian faith across space and time through the teachings of the prophets and the apostles. This universal and catholic mark of the body of Christ is grounded in the apostolicity of its teaching and witness. Moreover, this catholic mark is aptly formal in so far as the one body of Christ exists across space and time. This formality allows the body of Christ to be recognizable across space and time irrespective of local social circumstances. It is the work of the Holy Spirit that enables this recognition, by Christians across space and time, of their own participation in a continuous Christian conversation established by Jesus and the apostles and passed along through ecclesial practices.35
At the same time, the catholic body of Christ is always embodied in local space and time. The formality of the universal body of Christ allows for significant internal variation and diversity. Confessing faith in Christ in different places and times increases the internal variation of the universal church. The different social circumstances in which different Christians confess a recognizably Christian faith endows that shared Christian confession with different meaning and power. The different meaning and power of Christian doctrine is a function of the different social circumstances and ends of use. An account of this local and embodied ecclesiology, where the presence of Christ exists through the work of the Holy Spirit, has become minimized both in the conventional wisdom about the normative significance of doctrinal similarity and difference as well as in postliberal discussions about the nature of doctrine that assume an idealized or disembodied ecclesiology. The local and particular embodiment of the church matters for explaining the normative significance of doctrinal similarity or difference. Once we lose sight of the different ecclesial embodiments of the Christian confession, we lose sight of how doctrinal difference and similarity take on normative significance.36
Second, this article has highlighted empirical and ethnographic accounts of Christian faith and practice in order to gain analytic purchase on a theory of Christian doctrine. While the sociologists and anthropologists of religion may appreciate the use of ethnography, the theologians may be skeptical. The skepticism may run like this: “This empirical description of local Christian communities is interesting, but ‘you wonder where the divine action went’ (to paraphrase Robert Jenson).37 Isn’t this social-practical theory of Christian doctrine simply another attempt to reduce talk of God to talk of humanity in a loud voice?”
There are two theological responses to this objection. I can only briefly indicate them here. First, my understanding of social practice assumes a doctrine of providence in which natural events are at the same time a participation with divine action. Classically understood as concursus, all creaturely actions, including the use of concepts and ecclesial practices, are a cooperation between God and creation.38 This means that descriptions of natural creaturely action are at the same time theological descriptions. There is no hard-and-fast division between empirical description and theological description. This is an important caveat that helps license ethnographic theology as theological. Second, in so far as the church is the body of Christ and the practices of the church are empowered by the Holy Spirit, there is no ecclesial practice as a witness to Jesus Christ that is not shaped by divine action.39
Footnotes
1. In 2021, the Pew Research Center reports that Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial demographic in the US. Abby Budiman and Neil G. Ruiz, “Asian Americans Are the Fastest-Growing Racial or Ethnic Group in the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, April 9, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/09/asian-americans-are-the-fastest-growing-racial-or-ethnic-group-in-the-u-s/. The 2012 Pew Research Center report indicates that 42 percent of Asians in the US are Christian. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths” (Pew Research Center, July 19, 2012), https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/07/19/asian-americans-a-mosaic-of-faiths-overview/. According to the 2020 Census, there are 24 million Asians in the US. US Census Bureau, “Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: May 2022,” Census.gov, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2022/asian-american-pacific-islander.html. If the 2012 Pew report continues to be accurate (that 42 percent of Asians in the US are Christian), this means that there are roughly 10 million Asian American Christians, which is a significant population especially when compared to other main religions in the US such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. These webpages were accessed December 7, 2022.
2. Timothy Larsen, “Defining and Locating Evangelicalism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, ed. Timothy Larsen and Daniel Treier (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007), 1.
3. Larsen, “Defining and Locating Evangelicalism,” 1, citing David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 2005 [1989]).
4. J. Gresham Machen left the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary because he took it to be modernizing and liberalizing and founded Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929. This is what Machen had to say about liberal Christianity in the opening pages of his 1923 Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987 [1923]): “This modern non-redemptive religion is called ‘modernism’ or ‘liberalism.’ Both names are unsatisfactory; the latter, in particular, is question-begging. The movement designated as ‘liberalism’ is regarded as ‘liberal’ only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism—that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity. The word ‘naturalism’ is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophical meaning. In this non-philosophical sense it describes with fair accuracy the real root of what is called, by what may turn out to be a degradation of an originally noble word, ‘liberal’ religion.”
5. Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?,” Christian Work 102 (June 22, 1922): 716–22.
6. See John Woodbridge, “Charles Woodbridge and the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy,” The Gospel Coalition, accessed December 7, 2021, www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/charles-woodbridge-fundamentalist-modernist-controversy/.
7. Janelle Wong, Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change (New York: Sage, 2018), 11.
8. See for example Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford: Oxford University, 2000). In the section defining evangelicals, Emerson defines evangelicals in terms of a distinctive set of doctrinal beliefs: “[E]vangelicals hold that the final, ultimate authority is the Bible …. evangelicals believe that Christ died for the salvation of all, and that anyone who accepts Christ as the one way to eternal life will be saved. This act of faith is often called being ‘born again’ and is associated with a spiritually, and often more broadly, transformed life …. evangelicals believe in the importance of sharing their faith, or evangelizing” (3). Religious identity is cast in doctrinal categories that exclude overlap with other religious identities such as Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant. See also Russell Jeung’s work where he takes “evangelical” and “mainline” as doctrinal categories that are helpful in representing and explaining religious differences among Asian American Christians. “Most scholars agree that evangelicalism has three tenets: (1) the literal interpretation of scripture; (2) a born-again experience; and (3) the commitment to converting others …. These tenets have their own inner logics that translate into a peculiar form of American religiosity that is engaged with this world, therapeutic, and market oriented. Significantly, these logics frame how evangelicals respond to race relations and how Asian American evangelicals think of themselves.” “Just as evangelicals have organizational logics that frame their understanding of race and panethnicity, mainline liberals have general theological orientations that govern their congregational values and practices …. The three main traits of ‘lay liberalism’ that structure racial understandings are its belief in tolerance, its historic ties to community, and its prophetic morality.” Russell Jeung, Faithful Generations: Race and New Asian American Churches (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2005), 64, 84.
9. “Study after study shows a strong association between evangelical identity and conservative political attitudes. Corwin Smidt, for instance, argues that evangelical Protestants constitute a distinct religious tradition in U.S. society because of their unique theological beliefs and worship style, and he further contends that adherents share a set of conservative political beliefs. Clyde Wilcox and Carin Robinson argue that religious orthodoxy helps to explain distinct patterns of political conservatism among evangelicals …. Based on much of the literature on religion and politics, then evangelical identity is strongly associated with political attitudes owing to shared theological beliefs, cultural commitments, and religious messages.” Wong, Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics, 3–4 (italics added).
10. See especially the table titled “Large advantage for Trump among white evangelical Protestant voters, for Clinton among black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics” from the 2016 Pew report, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/07/13/religion-and-the-2016-campaign/. Accessed December 7, 2021.
11. The conventional wisdom works—it has explanatory purchase for White Christians. What I do not address here is that White evangelicalism and White mainline Protestantism are distinct ethnic cultures in the US within a shared Anglo-European racial formation and history. One ought to remember that J. Gresham Machen was a southerner for whom the “War of Northern Aggression” was a very near memory and for whom secession was an honorable decision both for the south and for his leaving Princeton Theological Seminary; see Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates, Religion in America Series (New York: Oxford, 1991), 38–53, esp. 51–52. Identifying a broader Anglo-European racial formation, with its different ethno-religious cultures, is important for understanding how the conventional wisdom works. On the related point of the European ethnic roots for US church denominations, see especially chapter 5 of H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: Henry Holt, 1957). For a historical analysis of different confessional and doctrinal developments within a shared European Christendom or Christianization project, see Scott H. Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004). My thanks to Gregory Lee and William Yoo, respectively, for these references.
12. Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (New York: Random House, 2020).
13. See Alan Patten’s non-essentializing account of culture in terms of shared formative conditions, in “Rethinking Culture: The Social Lineage Account,” American Political Science Review 105, no. 4 (November 2011): 735–49, https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305541100030X.
14. See the same orientation in Helen Jin Kim, Timothy Tseng, and David K. Yoo’s excellent overview of “Asian American Religious History,” in The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History, ed. David K. Yoo and Eiichiro Azuma (New York: Oxford University, 2016): “The study of Christian traditions in Asian America reveals a need for a more nuanced discussion that not only acknowledges theological and racial binaries, or dichotomous categories such as assimilation versus hybridity, but also moves beyond them to reflect the full range and complexity of Asian American Christian lives. In part, this complexity and comprehensiveness need to come from acknowledging transnational connections as Asian American Christian traditions are placed within their global contexts” (367).
15. See table 2.3 in Wong, Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics, 21. Hereafter, this table will be referred to as “Evangelicals by Race.”
16. “Asian American and other non-white Protestants tend to identify as evangelical, but they do not look like or act like white evangelicals.” Carolyn Chen, “Asian Americans and the Future of Protestantism in the U.S.,” Center for Asian American Christianity, November 3, 2022, https://caac.ptsem.edu/asian-americans-and-the-future-of-protestantism-in-the-u-s/. Accessed December 7, 2022.
17. A caveat is that the comparison between evangelicals and non-evangelicals within each racial group in the “Evangelicals by Race” table gives some explanatory power to evangelical doctrinal commitments. Also, we should note that the differences in voting patterns regarding same-sex marriage (bottom line of the “Evangelicals by Race” table) is not as pronounced for evangelicals across racial difference. My thanks to Daniel Pedersen for drawing attention to these caveats. Taken as a whole though, the data from the “Evangelicals by Race” table still problematize the conventional wisdom regarding the normative significance of doctrinal similarity.
18. This is the evangelical megachurch that opens Peter Wehner’s October 24, 2021 The Atlantic piece titled, “The evangelical church is breaking apart: Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/evangelical-trump-christians-politics/620469/. Accessed December 7, 2021.
19. This is a pseudonym for the church.
20. Conversation with author in July 2020.
21. “Comfort” is an ambiguous term. If someone feels marginalized in a community, they may say they feel uncomfortable and leave. If someone feels they are treated as an equal in a community, they may say they feel comfortable and stay. I take talk of comfort to indicate whether someone feels that they are treated with the love, respect, and worth that is due them in congregational settings. I take “comfort” in this case to be related to justice (and not simply a neoliberal, consumer orientation for personal preference). When a racial-minority leaves a majority-White church to belong to an ethnic church, perhaps it is because the ethnic church is where they feel they are on equal footing with others, where they are accepted without having to adopt a majority-White cultural perspective, and where they do not have to answer the question “where are you from?” or respond to the comment “Oh, you speak English well.” Comfort in this sense would simply mean a space where racial marginalization and exclusion are diminished or less frequent.
22. Carolyn Chen attests to these demographic developments. “American Protestantism has become less white. And Protestants of color are not wholeheartedly embracing the conservatism of white evangelicals.” Chen, “Asian Americans and the Future of Protestantism in the U.S.”
23. Jerry Z. Park and Joshua C. Tom, “Political Trajectories of Asian Americans: Bringing Religion In,” AAPI Nexus 17 (Fall 2020): 9. www.aapinexus.org/2020/10/15/article-political-trajectories-of-asian-americans-bringing-religion-in/. Hereafter, figure 2 will be referred to as “Asian American… by Religious Affiliation.”
24. Prema Kurien, Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch: Indian American Christianity in Motion (New York: New York University, 2017).
25. Kurien, Ethnic Church, 3.
26. Kurien, Ethnic Church, 115–16.
27. I concur with Prema Kurien’s more qualified comments in 2021 that “religion is always understood and practiced through culture” and that the “religious traditions embraced by the children of immigrants are not truly ‘culture-free.” Prema A. Kurien, “Culture-Free’ Religion: New Second-Generation Muslims and Christians,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 36, no. 1 (January 2, 2021): 107, 105, https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2021.1894742. My thanks to Derek Wu for reference to this article. I further concur that the embrace of evangelical religion by second-generation Indian Americans “is part of a larger and complex process of adaptation and resistance to Western society engaged in by the new second generation” (119). I emphasize racial formation, however, to draw the relevant distinction that even when Indian American Christians occupy evangelical structures (such as evangelical church worship), they do so through an Indian American racial formation that is not reducible to White racial formation. In the case of their worship at evangelical megachurches, second-generation Indian American Christians are not simply becoming White. Evidence that pushes against the “becoming White” narrative of Asian American participation in evangelical institutions and structures is found in the previous case of Korean American evangelicals leaving MBC and the data from “Evangelicals by Race.”
28. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).
29. Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen, eds., Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics (London: Continuum, 2011); see chapter 3.
30. On this account, social practices (what humans do in relationship with each other that is mutually recognized as normative) explain the meaning and power of concept-use including the uses of doctrine. This social-practical theory of the uses of doctrine draws upon a literature that includes social-practical theories of religion, ethics, and semantics. I highlight the following works for reference: Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1994); Stephen S. Bush, Visions of Religion: Experience, Meaning, and Power (Oxford: Oxford University, 2014); Molly B. Farneth, Hegel’s Social Ethics: Religion, Conflict, and Rituals of Reconciliation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2017); Kevin Hector, Theology without Metaphysics: God, Language, and the Spirit of Recognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2011); Aaron K. Stauffer, Listening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Value, and Broad-based Community Organizing (forthcoming); and Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2004).
31. The different contexts of Asian American Christians are addressed through description of their social circumstances. “Theology never occurs in a vacuum but always within a specific context. Thus one needs to carefully examine the different historical, social, and political contexts within which we are developing our theology.” Grace Ji-Sun Kim, “Asian American Feminist Theology,” in Liberation Theologies in the United States: An Introduction, ed. Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas and Anthony B. Pinn (New York: New York University, 2010), 134.
32. See for example, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) and Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. by Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980).
33. I am developing a book-length project on a social-practical theory of the uses of Christian doctrine. The project seeks to advance conversations in Christian theological method as well as Asian American Christian theology.
34. For an account of Asian American racialization in terms of political economy see Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (New York: Oxford, 2021).
35. See for example Andrew Walls on the cross-cultural transmission of the Christian faith: “Christian faith is missionary both in its essence and in its history …. The conviction that Jesus is Lord and the testimony that Christ is risen cannot mean that much unless they are to be shared …. It is a feature of Christian faith that throughout its history it has spread through cross-cultural contact; indeed its very survival has been dependent on such contact.” Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 255–56. Studies in world Christianity are highly productive for provincializing Anglo-European uses of Christian doctrine. “Scholars of world Christianity vigorously challenge Western-centric approaches and models that pervade academic discourse. They invariably utilize interdisciplinary methods of inquiry and fresh modes of theoretical analyses to re-envision Christianity as a global religion that from its inception grows and recedes across multiple centers.” Jehu J. Hanciles, “World Christianity Interrupted: Green Shoots and Growing Pains,” in World Christianity: History, Methodologies, Horizons, ed. Jehu J. Hanciles (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2021), ix–x. My thanks to Easten Law for reference to the Hanciles volume.
36. See for example Lamin Sanneh on the cultural inclusion of the Christian faith through the use of vernacular translations of the Scriptures. “[I]n the Christian tradition there was an early move to relinquish Jerusalem as the geographical cradle of the faith. This led, on the one hand, to the growth of centers of Christian activity in various parts of the empire and beyond, and, on the other hand, to the employment of multiple languages in the propagation of the faith …. Christianity-in-translation evokes its Gentile beginnings, and by that path of cultural inclusion upheld God’s faithfulness toward all peoples.” Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, revised and expanded ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009), 274–75.
37. Robert W. Jenson, “You Wonder Where the Spirit Went,” Pro Ecclesia 2 (1993): 296–304.
38. For a detailed discussion of concursus in providence see David C. Chao, Concursus and Concept Use in Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Providence: Nature, Grace, and Norms (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
39. Versions of this article were presented to the University of Aberdeen Systematic Theology Research Seminar in December 2021 along with the Asian American Theology Working Group convened by the Center for Asian American Christianity. I am grateful for the feedback I received from those discussions.
