Asian American Equipping Symposium at Fuller Theological Seminary (Nov. 2-3, 2009)

REGISTER ONLINE HERE

Some highlights from Dr. Young Lee Hertig (scroll down to view updated schedule)

October 22, 2009

Dear Participants,

We are so excited about your participation in the first Asian American Equipping Symposium co-sponsored by Fuller Theological Seminary and ISAAC (Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity) on November 2-3, 2009.  On Monday November 2, onsite registration will start at 1:00pm just outside of Payton 101 at Fuller.  On Tuesday, we will meet at the University Club on campus.

Let me share with you some highlights of the AA Equipping Symposium:

1)    Dr. Jonathan Tran will offer us inspiring lectures on both challenges and hopes of Asian American Christianity which will generate wider discourse both in Academia and Asian American churches.

2)    Panelists will be followed by Dr. Tran’s lecture interacting with the themes covered in his lecture.  The panelists include faculty from Fuller’s three schools and local Asian American Pastors.  On Monday the panelists include Dr. Jehu J. Hanciles (School of Intercultural Studies), Rev Dr. Mark Lau Branson (School of Theology), Dr. Miyoung Yoon Hammer (School of Psychology), Rev Dr. Kenneth Fong (Evergreen Baptist Church LA), Rev Dr. Michael Lee (YoungNak Celebration Church).  On Tuesday the panelists include Dr. Charlene Jin Lee (Faculty at SFTS), Rev. Dr. Timothy Tseng (Executive Director of ISAAC), Rev. Melanie Mar Chow (USC Campus Pastor for JEMS), Rev Benjamin Shin (Talbot Seminary, and EM Pastor of Open Door Church), Rev. Charles Lee (the lead cultural catalyst and pastor for New Hope South Bay Church and Los Angeles).

3)    At the Monday night banquet, President Richard J. Mouw will address a keynote speech on “Theological Imagining With Asian American Churches.”  Also Drs. Se Yoon Kim and Yea Sun Kim will be awarded the “Asian American Scholarship/Leadership Legacy Award.

4)    There will be special music and liturgical dance at the banquet (Ashley Thaxton and Noah Lau Branson, and Debra Williams)

5)    Closing Worship will take place on Tuesday at 2:15 with a Charge from President Richard J. Mouw.

6)    There will be a Business meeting at 3:00pm on Tuesday, November 3 for those who want to collaborate with next year’s Summer Equipping Program and the second annual Asian American Equipping Symposium in the fall of 2010.

In God’s grace,

Rev Young Lee Hertig, PhD

Director of ISAAC-SoCal and AAWOL (Asian American Women On Leadership)

OVERVIEW

This year’s symposium, “Living Out the Gospel,” will address continuity and change in the on-going development of Asian American church ministries. It will specifically question the difficult and often painful relationship between innovation and faithfulness in the lives of Asian Americans and Asian American churches. What reconciliation is possible between generations that define themselves by, on the one hand, immigration, tradition, and family, and on the other hand, individualism and autonomy, integration, and friendship by internet? If newly emerging Asian American churches remain loyal to their first-generation predecessors, will they be able to continue to move forward? What are Asian Americans sacrificing by leaving behind their mother churches and striking out on their own? What will “the Gospel” look like within the “living” context of changing Asian American identities, problems, and dreams? Richly theological and deeply personal, this year’s symposium will prove to be constructive.

This year’s lecturer will be Dr. Jonathan Tran (PhD Duke University) who is assistant professor of theological ethics in the Department of Religion at Baylor University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world. A former ministry practitioner with Asian American churches and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, he is author Faith on the Edge (IVP, 1999), The Vietnam War and Theologies of Memory: Time and Eternity in the Far Country (Blackwell, Fall 2009) and Theology and Foucault (T & T Clark International, Fall 2010). Emigrated from Vietnam at an early age, Dr. Tran’s journey into Christianity has been coupled with an ethnic awakening that has thoroughly influenced his theological life.

2009 Symposium Schedule

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2

1:00 pm   Registration

1:30   Introduction and Announcements (Young Lee Hertig and Mary Given)

1:35   Welcoming address by the President Richard J. Mouw

1:45   Dr. Jonathan Tran, lecture 1: “Why Asian American Christianity has no future: The Over Against, Leaving Behind, and Separation from of Asian American Christian Identity”

2:45   Break

3:15   Panel & Q&A

4:15   Break out session

6:00   Banquet at the Tournament of Roses House/Wrigley Mansion

Banquet Schedule­

6:00   Reception at the Tournament of Roses House
6:30   Congregational Songs led by Fuller Asian American Worship Team (Elisa Oh, Elliot Chung, and Rebekah Chang)
6:40   Welcome & Announcements: Young Lee Hertig and Mary Hubbard Given
6:50  Invocation by Rev Dr. Heemin Park
6:55   Dinner
7:30   AA Scholarship/Leadership Legacy Award to Drs. Se Yoon Kim & Yea Sun Kim (Presented by President Richard J. Mouw)
7:35   Dr. Se Yoon Kim’s Response
7:40   Inspirational music and liturgical dance, “In This Very Room” (Ashley Thanxton, Noah Lau Branson, Debra Williams)
7:45   Keynote address, Dr. Richard J. Mouw, President, Fuller Theological Seminary: “Theological Imagining with Asian American Churches”
8:00   Introduction to Lecture II “Asian American Church as Future” (Dr. Jonathan Tran)
8:20   Words of Encouragement & Benediction (Bishop Steven Leung)
8:30   Inspiration music: Ashley Thanxton, Debra Williams, Noah Lau Branson

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3

9:00 am   Dr. Jonathan Tran, Lecture II: “Why Asian American Christianity is the future: Holding it together in Yellow Christianity”

10:00   Break

10:15   Panel & Q & A

11:15   Break

11:30   Breakout session

12:30    Lunch

1:45p    Break out session plenary

2:15p    Closing worship led by (Angel Wu,  Dave Yu, Hannah Lee)

2:15    Congregational songs led by Asian American Worship Team

2:25     Charge by President Richard J. Mouw

2:40    Congregational response

2:45     Announcement and Benediction

2:55    Closing Hymn

3:00    Business meeting (open to all who would like to support ISAAC So. Cal.’s future programs)

Online Registration: CLICK HERE

The Symposium

The Asian American Christianity Symposium has been established in order to address the unique challenges facing Asian American Christians and churches in all their generational, cultural, and theological differences. Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity (ISAAC), the Urban Initiative, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Fuller’s Office of Alumni/ae and Church Relations. Fuller Seminary serves the largest and most diverse Asian American population in the United States, the annual symposium will provide an invigorating series of lectures by leading Asian American voices in theology and ministry.

The Objectives of the Symposium

• To engage in conversation with Asian American theologians and practitioners.
• To investigate and invest in the complex relationships between Asian American Christians, Asian American churches, and predominantly white seminary education.
• To challenge and construct Asian American theologies for the church.

REGISTER ONLINE

Just Desserts: Russell Yee reflects on immigration policy, hard work, and fancy desserts

Russell Yee is a pastor at New Hope Covenant Church in Oakland and teaches at Fuller Seminary – Northern California. He also serves as a member of ISAAC’s Board of Directors. Here are his reflections on KQED-FM 88.5, a San Francisco Bay Area public radio station (KQED airs short opinion segments from listeners called “Perspectives”):

www.kqed.org/epArchive/R909150737

N.B. He did NOT write the online intro that uses that “a” word (“assimilation” . . . )

September 15, 2009

There I was, invited as a guest aboard a full-sized cruise ship plying North American waters. While on board I found myself thinking about our attitudes towards immigration.

On this particular ship, the crewmembers were mostly Indonesian and Filipino nationals in their 20s and 30s. Talking to them, I learned that they work 11 or more hours a day every day for up to a year, with no days off.  Many of them spend these long seasons away from their own young children, who are left with relatives.

These crewmembers are hired in their respective homelands at differing market-rate wages, often after paying large sums to hiring brokers and training schools.  There on the high seas, on ships flying flags of convenience, the only labor law is the law of supply and demand.

As an Asian American man with young children, I couldn’t help but notice how much I and these crewmembers resembled each other–indeed, there was a moment when someone mistook me for a crewmember.

So why was I the one on the asking end of a request for another fancy dessert? Mostly because two and three generations ago my ancestors and my wife’s ancestors had taken risks and made sacrifices to immigrate to these shores, and worked hard here, and raised our parents and then us in turn to do the same.

Of course we need well-regulated borders and fairminded, enforceable immigration laws. But I believe we have so much to give and to gain from still being the destination of hope that America was for my ancestors and so many of yours too.

I believe we have so much to give and to gain by investing in the education and lives of immigrants, as well as investing in the lives of everyone already here for however many generations.

Meanwhile I hope my own kids will learn the values of thrift, sacrifice, service, and hard work.  Maybe I’ll send them to work on a cruise ship.

With a perspective, this is Russell Yee.

The Task of the Postcolonial Theologian by Steve Hu

Some thoughts from Steve Hu, an ISAAC volunteer. Steve is currently a pastoral intern at Rutgers Community Christian Church where he also serves as a leadership coach. He received his dual Master’s of Arts in Old Testament and Missional Theology from Biblical Seminary (Hatfield, Pennsylvania) in 2007. This commentary was originally posted on the Postcolonial Theological Network on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/topic.php?uid=23694574926&topic=10504

Almost 30 years have passed since Edward Said’s Orientalism was first published in 1978. What first emerged as a school of literary criticism, postcolonialism came to embody a field of critical discourse and analysis centered on power, privilege, identity, and the relationship between East and West. Postcolonial theory has gained prominence as a critical methodology in secular disciplines, yet it is still making headways within the walls of the Church. When postcolonial theory is employed as a methodology in theological discourse, the resultant product is always categorized as “third-world” theology. Such categorization, Franz Wijsen notes, renders any theology that employs postcolonial theory as “exotic fruit” that merely supplements “traditional” European theology. This delineation only perpetuates colonialism in theological discourse and the dualistic categories of what’s normative and marginal. The theologian who employs Western categories is often blind to such colonialism, and the theologizing that he practices is all but irrelevant to the colonized.

The dualistic categorization of the normative and marginal obfuscates the enterprise of theology by predetermining what is acceptable theological discourse. This act is inherently political, and by delineating theological discourse, theologians are no longer theologians, but they become powerbrokers who mute the voice of those in the margins. While the number of postcolonial theologians remains few, recent works by Mayra Rivera, Joerg Rieger, Kwok Pui-Lan, and Jonathan Tan indicate theologians are seriously examining this methodology as a source for theology. The number of scholars working in this field is on the rise, yet the majority of these scholars still remains in the Catholic and mainline segments of the Church. Evangelicals are slow to take seriously postcolonial theory as a starting point for theology. The reasons for this are too many and complex to describe here. However, in this essay I hope to encourage my fellow evangelicals to cease regarding postcolonial discourse as an accessory of theology. Postcolonial discourse should no longer remain in the theological periphery. Rather, engaging and listening to those in the margins will further inform and enrich our theological enterprise. It is out of a personal commitment that I say this: as an Asian American evangelical, I’ve discovered that postcolonial discourse grants me voice that is normally not heard by those sitting at the theological roundtable, a table that long has been the domain of Westerners and privy only to those who can speak its predetermined discourse. This table has been so embedded in Western forms and categories that when I attempt to converse, my words, as Tite Tiénou notes, “are perceived as threats to orthodoxy.” Yet no one will disagree that theological enterprise is conversational in nature, that it is an ongoing multi-lateral exchange between the biblical text, tradition, reason, and context among various dialog partners. It is time that those sitting at the theological roundtable cease to exclude marginal voices from this conversation. The inclusion of marginal dialog partners not only will give voice to the voiceless, it will also produce rich fruit for our theological conversation.

As an Asian American evangelical residing in North America and as one who represents those voices in the margins, I ask my fellow evangelicals to consider seriously postcolonial discourse as a starting point for theologizing. In our globalizing world, the Church cannot afford not to consider the multiple contexts in which theology begins. The task of theology always has its origins in a particular context, and is done for that context, by that same context so that the result is always something relevant in that context. If our discourse continues to remain in the domain of the West, the resultant theology would be powerless to address the issues of the global church. What will this new theologizing look like? Here I will describe five starting points necessary for the new kind of theologizing to be done for today’s world. This list of loci is by no means exhaustive, but they must be incorporated into our theological enterprise in order for it to be relevant.

1) The life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The beginning of any theology must consider the life, death, and resurrection of Christ himself. Incarnate in human flesh, Christ embodies all aspects of the postcolonial: contextuality, marginality, and hybridity. Christ came not as a man without a cultural heritage, but as a first-century Jewish carpenter who lived and breathed the Mosaic laws of the Old Testament. He was not culture-less, but was fully embodied in a cultural context in which he knew and engaged so well. Christ was an outsider, a working class average joe, and was not privy to the roundtable of privilege, power, and the ruling class. Yet he continuously challenged the systemic evils that the elites perpetuated, questioning their piety and bringing to light their hypocrisy. Lastly, Christ in his personhood concretized both God and man, divinity and humanity, and yet he was sure of his mission and purpose on earth. In Christ there was no confusion of purpose and identity. Christ’s hybridity points us toward the multiple identities which postcolonial theology must consider, that even our own identity in this world is fluid, not monolithic.

2) Contextuality. Today’s theologian must think and act like a cross-cultural missionary and take into account the place in which his reflections are located. As Wijsen observes, today’s theology must be constructed in “the context of multicultural societies and a globalizing world.” Theology is at once global and local, and it reflects upon the divine and speaks to the unique earth-bound locale from which theology begins. No one can escape the contextuality of theology. Contextuality is necessary for the theologian to faithfully appropriate the message of the Gospel in culturally relevant forms so his audience may understand what he is attempting to communicate regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The theologian’s task is never done in a vacuum; he is always guided by his context, mindful that he is always theologizing from that context.

3) Marginality. As globalization continues to shrink the world through economic, political, and technological advances, it simultaneously creates new local conditions. Those who do not have the means to adapt and change with the dynamic processes of globalization are left behind and pushed to the margins. In these locales, marginality may also result from exclusion from the political process. Another situation in which marginality arises is the process of migration. As the son of immigrants from Asia, I know very well what it means to live in the social and economic margins of mainstream society. I am always questioned by others about my origins and never accepted as part of the majority culture. Nevertheless, my experience has given me a unique perspective of the world, a perspective that Christ himself had when he lived as an outsider in first century Palestine. Yet, as Gary Okihiro notes, the struggles of disenfranchised minorities have helped preserve the egalitarian ideals of liberal democratic societies. This important contribution by the disenfranchised has been missed by those engaged in theological discourse. It is the dialectics between the margins and mainstream that fuels fruitful conversation. Theologians would gain much insight if they lend a listening ear to marginal voices. Thus, today’s theologians must identify with those in the margins and recognize that their voices add insightful reflection to the theological process.

4) Heterogeneity and hybridity. The issue of identity should also have a place in today’s theological discourse. As globalization continues to create new realities for humanity, individuals must negotiate, navigate, and bridge multiple contexts in order to live and belong. In this dynamic process, new identities are forged, often from various sources. Thus, identity in the age of globalization is one of hybridity and synthesis. Speaking from my own social location as an Asian American, my identity is multi-faceted and cannot be relegated to a monolithic category. I stand to have my feet in different worlds, one in the old and the other in the new, and I posses a hybridized identity that is informed by my unique social location. In a word, I am in-between, or “betwixt,” embodying both worlds at once. This hybridized identity informs me how my faith is perceived, conceptualized, and practiced in my community. The relationship between faith and identity is bilateral, with faith informed by my identity and my identity maintained by faith. Any theologian engaged in today’s theological enterprise cannot disregard the hybridized identities individuals embody. Our theological enterprise must take into account the various social locations from which identities are synthesized so we may remain relevant to speak the truth of Christ’s life into those contexts.

5) Activism and service. Lastly, the postcolonial theologian must make his theologizing an act of service in order to give voice to the voiceless. As Jonathan Tan points out, this theologizing can never be “abstract” that remains in “the intellectual arena” removed from the realities of people’s lives. He goes on to say that “one problem about classical academic theologies as conceived in the Christian West is that they are often either articulated apart from, or in priority over community life, practice, and spirituality.” A theology espoused in this manner actually does disservice to the people. Any practicing theologian must take into consideration the “struggles, dreams, and aspirations in a particular place and time.” Such theology will indeed give voice to those who are hurting, to those who are oppressed, to those who are victimized and alienated, to those living in the margins. The theologian is not just a scholar who sits in the ivory tower; he is an advocate, a voice for the unheard, one who betters humanity through his work.

What I have described are five simple and fundamental starting points for any theologian who wishes to engage today’s world. Gone are the days when theologians sit alone and dream up categories for their systematic theologies. Today’s new theological enterprise requires collaboration among different perspectives and conversational partners who reside in the margins of society. Until theologians can engage and listen to multiple perspectives and utilize postcolonial insights, our theological enterprise will remain provincial at best, with our theologies developed only for the Western ghetto. Such theologies will also be powerless to speak to the contexts of our globalized world. Only engagement with postcolonial methodology will result in a theology that is relevant and capable to embody the truth, the person, and the diversity of God.

Contact Steve Hu

Summary of ISAAC 2009 Internship Program (East Coast)

by Andrew Lee, ISAAC East Coast Regional Director [contact Andrew]

In order to help meet the need for leaders for second-generation English language ministries in Chinese churches, ISAAC initiated a paid internship program this summer in the New York metropolitan area. This program was funded by a grant from the Fund for Theological Education.   Students contemplating the prospect of vocational ministry were offered the opportunity to serve in their respective churches in order to sample a taste of full-time ministry.

ISAAC FTE internship program

The five ISAAC interns this summer were college students Rosalie Chung (Long Island Alliance Church), Jason Lee (Monmouth Chinese Christian Church), Daniel Shih (Boon Church, OCM), Jin Tian (Brooklyn Community Christian Church) and Joyce Wong (New York Chinese Baptist Church).  Jesse Eng (Grace Faith Church), a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, joined the interns for their weekly meetings.

The congregations represented by the interns are geographically diverse, ranging from suburban New Jersey to inner city New York to suburban New York.  It was an eye-opening experience for the interns to visit each other’s churches to see how ministry was conducted in a different setting and to learn how church space could be utilized in a new manner.

pastors and mentors

The students were guided and mentored throughout the summer by their pastor, by a lay leader in their church and by ISAAC Eastern Regional Director, Dr. Andrew Lee.  At the weekly meetings led by Rev. Lee, the interns discussed selected readings from ISAAC’s Asian American Christianity Reader, deliberated on the meaning of call, and bonded together as they shared, encouraged, prayed and fellowshipped together.

As a result of this summer experience, the concept of calling took on new meaning for each intern.  For some, the end of the internship does not signal the end of their service.  Jason, a spring graduate of Rutgers University, informed his church leaders that he was quitting his part-time job and volunteering the rest of this year to serve full-time in his church because his part-time job “gets in the way of ministry.”  Likewise Daniel, a recent graduate of Gordon College, will continue serving at his church until he leaves for a two-year pastoral apprenticeship in Australia next January.   Jin, a junior at Philadelphia Bible University, committed to returning to Brooklyn each weekend to assist at her church.

The participating pastors and lay mentors also had uniformly positive evaluations of the summer experience.  Each felt it was a worthwhile investment of their time.  It provided them an opportunity to guide, teach and train their interns and to get to know them better.  In turn, their own skills were sharpened by the experience of mentoring another person.

Another facet of this summer program included a worship service at each church where calling was the theme for that day.  Each church was challenged to instill a culture of encouraging its own members to consider vocational ministry.  Here, too, the pastors and lay mentors believe their churches were positively impacted.  Moreover, the entire internship experience has opened the eyes of church leaders and young people to the potential of leadership through young adults.  ISAAC will offer this internship program in the New York City Metropolitan Area again in the summer of 2010.

3rd Annual Bay Area Pastors’ Retreat for Asian American English Ministry leaders

Theme:  Renewal!
When:  Mon.-Tues. (Sept. 21-22, 2009)
Where:  San Damiano Retreat Center, Danville, CA
Guest Speaker:  Doug Stevens, Founder of The Renewal Project will be speaking on his favorite theme of renewal!
Cost:  $130/person

We’re excited about everyone getting together to learn and grow in a concentrated time together.  This year we will have Doug Stevens, the founder of The Renewal Project to share with us from his experience and life.  Doug has been a longtime friend and has been in pastoral ministry as well as parachurch ministry for more than 30 years.  Sensitive to the cultural and changing nature of our times, Doug lends a biblical and prophetic voice to what God is doing in and through his church. You can read more about Doug’s ministry here: http://www.renewalproject.org/ .

Please register by September 7 if you will be attending the Sept. 21-22 retreat as that will help us with planning, etc.

Blessings,

Johnson Chiu

To Register, clink this secure link and complete the on-line registration form: https://fs16.formsite.com/sanacs/form662985063/secure_index.html

ISAAC sponsored lectures and talks – Fall 2009

ISAAC will co-sponsor the following lectures, panels, and symposiums.

Wed., Sept. 23 | 4 PM | UC Berkeley, Moses Hall, 223, IIS Conference Room
Religious Policies in the People’s Republic of China featuring Dr. Fenggang Yang Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and Director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society, Purdue University. Dr. Fenggang Yang is the author of Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities (Penn State University Press 1999), co-editor (with Tony Carnes) of Asian American Religions: The Making and Remaking of Borders and Boundaries (New York University Press 2004), and co-editor (with Joseph B. Tamney) of State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies (Brill Academic Publishers 2005).
This lecture is co-sponsored by U.C. Berkeley’s Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, and Department of Sociology. For more information, go to the RPGP website or contact Tim Tseng.

Sept. 24

ISAAC Research Seminar featuring Dr. Fenggang Yang and local researchers in Berkeley, CA. Contact James Chuck.

Oct. 21

Oct. 21 | 4 PM | UC Berkeley, Moses Hall, 223, IIS Conference Room
Filipino Faith: The Role of Religion in Diasporic Communities in America and Beyond featuring:
- Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III, Associate Professor of Politics; Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program, University of San Francisco and author of Filipino American
Faith in Action (New York University Press) and Religion on the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana (Duke University Press).
- Benjamin Pimentel, Author of Pareng Barack: Filipinos in Obama’s America; former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle
Co-sponsored by U.C. Berkeley’s Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program. For more information go to the RPGP website or contact Tim Tseng.

* * * *

Nov. 2-3

Nov. 2-3 | Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA
Living Out The Gospel: Asian American Perspectives and Contributions: An Asian American Equipping Symposium featuring Dr. Jonathan Tran, Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Baylor University, and local pastors and scholars. Co-sponsored by Fuller Theological Seminary and the Urban Initiatve. Download informational flyer: AAEquipping Symposium_Nov 2-3. To register click this link or contact Young Lee Hertig.

Asian American Christianity Reader – now available!

I’m delighted to announce that the Asian American Christianity Reader has been published! As a joint project with Pacific Asian American and Canadian Christian Education (PAACCE) we believe that both scholars and church leaders will benefit from the Reader. Whether you are a theological educator, a pastor, a college professor, or para-church staff member, this Reader will be useful introduction to Asian American Christianity.

Description

This textbook is an interdisciplinary collection of scholarly and religious articles about Asian American Christianity, past and present. Its four sections – contexts, sites, identity, and voices – offer in-depth understanding of both Catholic and Protestant traditions, practices, theologies, and faith communities. It also highlights diversity and complexity across lines of gender, generation, denomination, race and ethnicity in Asian American Christianity. Both scholarly and accessible, the essays in this reader will be useful teaching resources for educators and church leaders.

What some people are saying about the Reader:

Mark Noll of the University of Notre Dame calls it “a real boon for understanding contemporary American religious life.”

Andrew Sung Park of United Theological Seminary says “this Reader  is informative, inspiring, transformative, and indispensable.”

Jung Ha Kim of Georgia State University says “I strongly recommend this reader for anyone who wants to understand the dynamic process of (re)making religion in the United States.”

Amos Yong of Regent University School of Divinity says “Students and scholars will learn a great deal, and no theological library should go without it.”

Charles J. Lee, Lead Pastor of Acts Fellowship Church in Austin, Texas calls it “a wonderful resource! a tremendous collection of articles that will help anyone to better understand the nuances of ministering to the Asian American population. It gives great insights into a wide range of issues and topics. Great job!!!”

Anselm Min of Claremont Graduate University notes that “Non-Asian American theologians and pastors in North America as well as the white leadership in the North American churches will also find valuable resources of information about what is going on in Asian Christian communities. I recommend it with great enthusiasm.”

Joel Carpenter, Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity, Calvin College believes that “it belongs on many a scholar’s desk and in any library that supports religious studies.”

The Reader is 352 pages and costs $28.00. Go to www.aacreader.com for more information.

Order your copy today!

Click here to view Contents
Click here to view list of Contributors
Click here to view all Endorsements

Please note: ISAAC will send a complimentary copy of the Reader to donors who give or have contributed at least $500 since the summer of 2008.

Sincerely,

Timothy Tseng
Executive Director, ISAAC

* * * * *
ISAAC Fall Calendar
Please check isaacweb.org for more details

• Sept. 12: Fund-raising banquet in Pasadena, CA. to support the Asian American Equipping Symposium to be held at Fuller Theological Seminary in November. Contact Young Lee Hertig.
• Sept. 21-22: Bay Area Asian American English ministries Pastors retreat – co-sponsored with The Leadership Connection. Contact Johnson Chiu.
• Sept. 23: ISAAC-co-sponsored lecture at U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Fenggang Yang will talk about Religious Policies in the People’s Republic of China. Dr. Yang is the author of Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities (Penn State University Press 1999), co-editor (with Tony Carnes) of Asian American Religions: The Making and Remaking of Borders and Boundaries (New York University Press 2004), and co-editor (with Joseph B. Tamney) of State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies (Brill Academic Publishers 2005). This lecture is co-sponsored by U.C. Berkeley’s Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, and Department of Sociology. Contact Tim Tseng.
• Sept. 24: ISAAC Research Seminar featuring Dr. Fenggang Yang and local researchers in Berkeley, CA. Contact James Chuck.
• Oct. 21: ISAAC-co-sponsored panel at U.C. Berkeley: Filipino Faith: The Role of Religion in Diasporic Communities in America and Beyond featuring:
  -Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III, Associate Professor of Politics; Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program, University of San Francisco and author of Filipino American
  Faith in Action (New York University Press) and Religion on the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana (Duke University Press).
  -Benjamin Pimentel, Author of Pareng Barack: Filipinos in Obama’s America; former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle
  Co-sponsored by U.C. Berkeley’s Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program. Contact Tim Tseng.
• Nov. 2-3: Asian American Equipping Symposium featuring Dr. Jonathan Tran, Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Baylor University, and local pastors and scholars. Co-sponsored by Fuller Theological Seminary. Contact Young Lee Hertig.

The late Ron Takaki, Him Mark Lai, and other influencers

The passing of several important scholars in this past year has given me occasion to pause and reflect. Robert Handy, an American Baptist church historian, and Kosuke Koyama, theologian and advocate for Asian contextualized theology, passed away earlier this year. Both were strong influences for me while I was at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Dr. Handy encouraged me to enter the Ph.D. program in history of Christianity when I was uncertain of my scholarly abilities. Dr. Koyama served on my dissertation committee and encouraged me to enter the academy. I’m grateful for both of these men because they showed me that one could be both a scholar and church leader.

Three important historians passed away recently as well. I did not know John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009) or Ron Takaki (April 12, 1939- May 26, 2009) personally. I’ve corresponded with Him Mark Lai (Nov. 1, 1925- May 21, 2009) on a few occasions. These three historians profoundly shaped my thinking about race and multi-culturalism in America. Through them, I  learned not only about the hidden histories of African Americans and Asian Americans, but also how to reframe American history through the perspectives and experiences of racialized peoples. Him Mark Lai’s grassroots approach to Chinese American history linked colleges to local ethnic communities and challenged the elitism of university education. Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore, his much acclaimed  history of Asian Americans, demonstrated that the racial landscape of American history was always diverse – even before the landmark 1965 Immigration Act that allowed Asians to immigrant on an equal basis as European immigrants.

Furthermore, Takaki and other Civil Rights Era historians (they used to be called revisionist historians) also began to ask why ethnic and racial diversity were not reflected in American histories and popular culture.  The first book by Takaki that I read was Iron Cages, a sophisticated analysis of the ideology of white supremacy and the practice of white privilege in 19th century American culture. Before it became common to employ Edward Said’s Orientalism as a theoretical tool for analyzing Euro-American texts, Takaki demonstrated that paying close attention to historical documents can yield powerful critical interpretations of the use of privilege and power to create racial differences and hierarchies. Today, Soong-chan Rah’s scathing criticism of Western, white privilege in American evangelicalism [see his The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (InterVarsity, 2009)] will not make many white evangelicals happy, but that critique rests on the solid work of historians like Franklin, Takaki, and Lai [as well as some sociologists who see it operating in multi-racial settings today. See my review of Brad Christerson, Korie L. Edwards, and Michael O. Emerson, Against All Odds: The Struggle for Racial Integration in Religious Organizations (New York: New York University Press, 2005) 185 pp. ISBN: 0814722245 at: http://isaacblog.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/review-against-all-odds-the-struggle-for-racial-integration-in-religious-organizations/]

Their passing comes at a critical time for Asian American Christians – especially evangelicals. Our most thoughtful Asian American evangelical leaders don’t really know what to do with these historians from the Civil Rights Era. Asian American evangelicals tend not to think about their ethnic identities or public issues affecting Asian Americans – the very issues that Civil Rights Era historians focused on. Acting as if the model minority myth is reality, many embrace individualism, consumerism, and materialism (the other aspects of Western Cultural captivity that Rah critiques). Even those who are passionate about missions or social justice leap-frog the Asian American experience. Further complicating the Civil Rights narratives  is an increasing scholarly recognition that racial identities are more fluid, transnational, and complex than they were understood to be a generation ago. All this, along with the reality of multi-racial marriages, a growing number of hapa children, greater Asian American social mobility, and a general embrace of racial non-recognition and globalization have challenged the the anti-discriminatory vision of Civil Rights Era historians. Is it any wonder that many of our Asian American evangelical leaders have a difficult time bridging past and present?

So what should  church leaders, theological educators, scholars, business and non-profit leaders do? Shall we repress the past as leaders in China appear determined to do on this 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests? Shall we ignore history and move on because the past is not directly relevant to our ministry, research, business, career, or causes? Or shall we continue to remind this generation and our children of the sins of human history such as the Holocaust, the Nanking massacre, the Japanese American concentration camps, Jim and Jane Crow, etc.? Leaders today are entrusted with the souls and the aspirations of the next generation. It is easy to write off the voices of the past as irrelevant for this generation and the future. But the responsible leader in Asian American settings will attend to the lessons of Lai, Takaki, and Koyama.

- Tim Tseng

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/education/31takaki.html?_r=1

May 31, 2009
Ronald Takaki, a Scholar on Ethnicity, Dies at 70
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Ronald Takaki, who made it his life’s work to rewrite American history to include Asian-Americans and other ethnic groups excluded from traditional accounts and who helped start the first doctoral program in ethnic studies in the United States, died Tuesday in his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 70.

The cause was suicide, said his son Troy. He battled multiple sclerosis for years. “He struggled, and then he gave up,” his son said.

Mr. Takaki, whose Japanese grandfather immigrated to Hawaii in the 19th century and worked on a sugarcane plantation, became a leading scholar of ethnicity and multiculturalism in works that challenged ethnic stereotypes and chronicled struggles of non-European immigrants.

His works like “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America” (1993) became seminal texts in emerging fields that he helped institutionalize by establishing a doctoral program in ethnic studies in 1984 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 30 years.

Don T. Nakanishi, the director of the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Berkeley Web site: “Ron Takaki elevated and popularized the study of America’s multiracial past and present like no other scholar, and in doing so had an indelible impact on a generation of students and researchers across the nation and world.”

Ronald Toshiyuki Takaki was born in Honolulu and, in his youth, spent most of his time surfing. On the beach, he was known as Ten-Toes Takaki for his hang-ten style.

He found his vocation while earning a bachelor’s degree in history at the College of Wooster in Ohio. While in Ohio he married Carol Rankin, who survives him. Besides his son Troy, of Los Angeles, he is also survived by another son, Todd, of El Cerrito, Calif.; a daughter, Dana Takaki of Chester, Conn.; a brother, Michael Young of Thousand Oaks, Calif.; a sister, Janet Wong of Chatsworth, Calif.; and seven grandchildren.

He continued his education at Berkeley, where he earned a master’s degree in 1962 and a doctorate in history in 1967. He was deeply influenced by the Free Speech movement at the university and by the civil rights struggles in the South. “I was born intellectually and politically in Berkeley in the ’60s,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2003.

He wrote a dissertation on slavery in the United States and returned to the subject in his first book, published in 1971, “A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade.”

At U.C.L.A., Mr. Takaki taught the university’s first black-history course, created in response to the Watts riots. When a student asked what revolutionary tools he would be teaching, Mr. Takaki said: “We’re going to strengthen our critical thinking and our writing skills. These can be revolutionary tools if we make them so.”

In 1971 he became the first full-time teacher in Berkeley’s new ethnic studies department, where he taught a highly influential survey course that took a comparative approach in describing racism as experienced by different ethnic groups in the United States. In addition to helping establish the graduate program in ethnic studies, he helped put in place the requirement that all undergraduates take a course intended to broaden their understanding of racial and ethnic diversity. He retired in 2003.

His many books include “Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th-Century America” (1979), “Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans” (1989), “Democracy and Race: Asian Americans and World War II” (1995) and “Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II” (2000).

* * *

May 22, 2009

UCLA Asian American Studies Center
Him Mark Lai: Dean of Chinese American History, Passes (1925-2009)

Him Mark Lai, the internationally noted scholar, writer, and “Dean of Chinese American History” was born on November 1, 1925 in San Francisco’s Chinatown.  His ten books, more than 100 essays, and research in English and Chinese on all aspects of Chinese American life are published and cited in the U.S., the Americas, China, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

Lai was a member of Amerasia Journal’s editorial board for more than 30 years and a contributing writer.  Among his works published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press are: A History Reclaimed: An Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Language Materials on the Chinese of America (1986); in 2000 Amerasia Journal published his autobiographical essay: “Musings of a Chinese American Historian.”

With the writer Ruthanne Lum McCunn, historian Judy Yung, and editor Russell C. Leong serving as the co-editors, the UCLA Asian American Center Press will be publishing his autobiography in 2009-2010.

* * *

Him Mark Lai was born in San Francisco Chinatown to immigrant parents from Nam Hoi District, Guangzhou, and attended local schools including Francisco Junior High, Nam Kue Chinese School, and was graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1947 with a degree in mechanical engineering and until his retirement worked for Bechtel Corporation.

In late 1949, he began volunteering for Chung Sai Yat Po, the first daily paper to support the People’s Republic of China, and became a member of organizations active in persuading students to return to China to serve the new government.  He also joined the Chinese American Democratic Youth League, more familiarly known as Mun Ching, where he met Laura Jung, a new immigrant, whom he married in 1953.

According to Ruthanne Lum McCunn:

“Lai joined the Chinese Historical Society of America soon after its founding in 1963.  These events, together with contemporaneous changes in the status of minorities spurred by the Civil Rights movement, led Lai towards developing a Chinese American identity, and in 1967, he accepted a proposal by Maurice Chuck, editor of the bilingual East/West, the Chinese American Weekly to write a series of articles on Chinese American history.  This marked the beginning of Lai’s career in reclaiming the Chinese/American experience-a fortuitous confluence of his passion for history and his deep commitment to his bicultural heritage and democratic principles.

His East/West articles - revised and annotated-became the cornerstone for the classic A History of the Chinese in California, A Syllabus, co-edited with Thomas W. Chin and Philip P. Choy, as well as the basis for the first Chinese American history course in the United States, which Lai team taught with Choy at San Francisco State College in Fall 1969 and which resulted in another classic Outlines: History of the Chinese in America.  Lai’s first scholarly essay, “A Historical Survey of Organizations of the Left Among the Chinese in America,” published in the Fall 1972 issue of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars – together with subsequent revisions-remains a standard reference.  So do Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940, co-authored/translated with Genny Lim and Judy Yung; Lai’s “Chinese on the Continental U.S.” in the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups; his From Overseas Chinese to Chinese American: a History of the Development of Chinese during the Twentieth Century (in Chinese) and articles in the Encyclopedia of Chinese Overseas and Huaquiao Huaren baike quanshu [Encyclopedia of Chinese and people of Chinese descent overseas];  his studies of Chinese newspapers and schools, district associations, and communities in the Pearl River Delta.”

Indeed, almost every researcher or scholar who has studied Chinese Americans during the past forty years is indebted to Him Mark Lai’s pioneering and lifelong work based on primary Chinese-language sources.  According to editor Russell C. Leong, “Him Mark Lai gave Chinese Americans a voice in history because he listened to ordinary people both in America and China and trained himself to read what they felt and thought–in the Chinese language. His legacy challenges us to listen, to think, and to feel more deeply–to untangle, to clarify, and to refine the historical and political record of our lives here.”

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center is also grateful for Him Mark Lai’s support of the work of others as a long-standing member of the editorial committees of Amerasia Journal and of Chinese America: History & Perspectives, the two leading scholarly journals which have collectively published the most materials on Asian Americans and Chinese Americans during the past four decades.

-Russell C. Leong
Editor, Amerasia Journal, UCLA

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https://www.utsnyc.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1519

Union Mourns
Professor Emeritus Kosuke Koyama, Intercultural Theologian

The Rev. Dr. Kosuke Koyama, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Ecumenical Studies, died on March 25, 2009, at BayState Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, after a long battle with esophageal cancer. He was 79. The immediate cause of death was pneumonia, said his son, Mark.

During the 16 years he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Koyama made a name for himself as an important figure in the development of global Christianity.

He was an early proponent of multiculturalism and religious pluralism, long before those terms came into common parlance. He taught courses in Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism – and showed students how these faiths could inform Christian commitment.

“I feel a mission to teach about different religious traditions,” Koyama said. “I think it’s the Christian thing to do.”

Chris Herlinger, a 1993 Union MA graduate whose work with the humanitarian agency Church World Service has taken him to numerous predominately Muslim countries, said Professor Koyama was “way ahead of the curve in having students look beyond the limits of our own faith borders.

“A full decade before 9/11 and its aftermath, Professor Koyama was almost alone at Union in alerting us to the realities of religious pluralism in the world. I’m not sure everybody fully understood or appreciated that at the time, but I think we do now.”

Kosuke Koyama, known as “Ko” to his friends, was born in Tokyo on December 10, 1929, at a time when Japan was already active against Manchuria and China. He survived the bombings, violence, and destruction of the war years, and later wrote that he was baptized “not so much from an awareness of my personal sinfulness as from the immediate experience of the destruction of my country by war.

“The minister who baptized me told me that the God of the Bible is concerned about the wellbeing of all nations, even including Japan and America,” he wrote. “To hear this at the same time that we were being bombed by America was quite startling. This was my first ecumenical lesson.”

Koyama graduated from Tokyo Union Theological Seminary in 1952. He then chose to pursue his theological studies in the United States. At Drew Theological School he earned the Bachelor of Divinity degree cum laude in 1954, and at Princeton Theological Seminary he completed the Th.M. and Th.D. in 1959. (He would later refer to his nascent thinking at Drew and Princeton as his “New Jersey theology.”)

Upon graduating from Princeton with a dissertation on Luther’s interpretation of the Psalms, Koyama was sent by the United Church of Christ in Japan (Kyodan) as a missionary to the Church of Christ in Thailand. As Dale T. Irvin wrote in his introduction to The Agitated Mind of God: The Theology of Kōsuke Koyama (a festschrift presented to Koyama on the occasion of his retirement from Union), in Thailand Koyama “found himself exploring a theology that began not with Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, or Karl Barth, but with the needs of farmers among whom he worked. Out of this commitment to being a neighbor to the northern Thai farmers was born the ‘waterbuffalo theology’ that would permanently enter the name of Koyama in the register of twentieth century contextual theologies.”

In 1968 Koyama moved to Singapore to take up the position of dean of the South East Asia Graduate School of Theology (SEAGST), which had come into being two years earlier − an outcome of a historic theological education consultation held in Bangkok in 1956. At this conference, Koyama later wrote, “We consciously began the process of decolonization of theology. The selfhood of the Asian church became a subject of serious discussion.”

At SEAGST, “All of the professors were people of two cultures (‘fork and chopsticks’). We explored together the nature and limits of cultural accommodation of the Gospel not from the North Atlantic theological perspective but from the contexts of diverse local cultures in Asia.”

In 1974 Koyama was appointed Senior Lecturer in Phenomenology of Religion at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. It was there that he received a phone call from the Rev. Dr. Donald W. Shriver, Jr., then Union’s president, inviting him to become Professor of Ecumenics and World Christianity. The first Asian appointed to the faculty at the Seminary, Koyama began teaching there in February 1980. He was later installed as the first incumbent of the newly established John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Chair in Ecumenics and World Christianity.

At Union Koyama had a profound effect on both his students and colleagues. “To say that Kosuke Koyama made his imprint on ecumenical church meetings, in unnumbered intercultural theological dialogues, and in intense classroom discussions at Union and around the world, is to forge an understatement,” Dr. Shriver wrote about Koyama’s years at the Seminary. “In his quiet, persistent way of speaking and writing, humor which cloaked his seriousness, fidelity to Gospel teaching, and readiness to listen long before he crafted another of his eloquent metaphors, he was an exemplary educator and Christian witness to all who knew him.”

And New York had a profound effect on Koyama. There he encountered Jews and African Americans for the first time, an experience that forced him to respond theologically to “the fact of enormous violence suffered by these two peoples.” He sensed, he said, “that my identity would be directly threatened if I did not come to terms with the twofold encounter… The experience of blacks and Jews challenged the heart of the Christian faith as I understood it at that time.”

Throughout his life Koyama went from encounter to encounter, hammering each into a contextual theological endeavor. He beat swords into plowshares, evoking King Zedekiah – “his eyes torn out, and taken into exile.” He wrote about a theology of the cross “in which love, becoming completely vulnerable to violence, conquers violence.” He carried on a deep theological dialogue with Buddhism, studied Judaism and Islam, and again and again returned to reflect upon the encounter between East and West.

When he stepped down as Professor Emeritus in 1996, he said he didn’t like the word “retire” and preferred, instead, to think of himself as “reappearing” through “new empowerment from the Holy Ghost.” He continued his encountering and endeavoring to the end.

In a final tribute, to Koyama, his former student Dale Irvin, now President of New York Theological Seminary, offered this remembrance:

“Koyama once remarked to me that one reason he enjoyed reading a particular work by Thomas Merton was that he could pick it up and begin reading anywhere, in any direction, and the book still made sense to him. Koyama found in Merton’s work a profound circularity in which beginning and end met in a cosmological rather than eschatological way.

“The logic was not linear and progressive, but circular and unfolding. Perhaps the same can be said of the life of Kosuke Koyama. It remains an unfolding event, circulating from the global to the local and back to the global dimensions, dancing between the cosmological and the eschatological dimensions of religious life, yet doing so with a certain agitation as he seeks to follow the God who spoke from the Mountain.

“Koyama is with that God now, and with the Christ he so passionately followed in his life,” Irvin concluded. “I am sure they are dancing together.”

Kosuke Koyama is survived by his wife of 50 years, Lois Koyama, and his children: James, who lives in Honolulu; Elizabeth, who lives in Moscow; and Mark, who lives in Western Massachusetts. He is also survived by his five grandchildren: Matthew, Isabel, Sophie, Amos and Silas.

Read President Emeritus Donald W. Shriver’s tribute to Prof. Koyama.

* * *

Union Mourns
Robert T. Handy, Church Historian

Henry Sloane Coffin Professor Emeritus of Church History at Union Theological Seminary

The Rev. Dr. Robert T. Handy, Henry Sloane Coffin Professor Emeritus of Church History at Union Theological Seminary, died at Crane’s Mill Retirement Community in West Caldwell, New Jersey, on January 8. He was 90 years old.

During the 36 years he taught at the Seminary, Handy made a name for himself as an impressive scholar of American church history, an exceptional teacher, and a gifted administrator.

“From the very first I knew him to be one of a cluster of faculty who could be counted on always to put the good of the school above their own good,” said former UTS president Donald W. Shriver, Jr.  As a member of Union’s presidential search committee, Handy in 1975 had helped to bring Shriver to Union.  Shriver in turn appointed Handy dean of the faculty in 1976, a post Handy held for two years.

“By the end of those two years, he felt obliged to return to full time teaching of church history,” Shriver reminisced recently in an email, “but by then he had restored many fractured relationships among faculty, administration, students and board.

“Bob was a born reconciler,” Shriver continued.  “He brought to academic work the skills and commitments of a Baptist pastor as well as the training of a disciplined scholar.  His is a combination rare in the halls of academe, rare among human beings, too.”

Handy’s students and colleagues have long since acknowledged him as a leading historian of American church history.  His work on church and state, on religious liberty, on nineteenth-century attempts to establish a “Christian America,” and his labor with fellow Union professors David W. Lotz and Richard A. Norris, Jr., in revising and updating Williston Walker’s standard, A History of the Christian Church, produced books that are still in use and considered classics.  Among his great contributions to the Seminary was A History of Union Theological Seminary in New York, published in 1987 as part of Union’s sesquicentennial celebration.

Handy’s tenure at Union as a member of both the faculty and the administration gave him particular insight into the critical issues affecting the Seminary during his time.  He also successfully illuminated events of other eras of Union’s past, particularly the troubled times of the Charles A. Briggs trial in the late nineteenth century.  An exacting and tireless researcher, Handy spent countless hours in the Seminary’s archives, fact-checking details and building on the work of earlier scholars of Union’s history, among them former Union president Henry Sloane Coffin and faculty members G.L. Prentiss and Charles R. Gillett.  The result was a readable and entertaining history, both objective and accurate, yet tempered by Handy’s respect and affection for the sons and daughters of Union Seminary.

Robert Handy was born on June 30, 1918 in Rockville, Connecticut and attended Brown University, where he majored in European history and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1940.  He earned his Bachelor of Divinity (later upgraded to a Master of Divinity) at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in 1943.  He was ordained a Baptist minister in May of that year.

At the time, Handy was still looking for a way to combine his two interests, history and the church, into one vocation.  “A congregation in Illinois,” he later wrote, “which I then served as minister for two years, enabled me to take some courses at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago ‘to fill some gaps.’

“At first I had no plans to earn a further degree,” he continued, “but a wise dean advised me to put whatever work I did on a doctoral program anyway…  Then, during an interim of nearly two years while I was serving as an Army chaplain, I concluded that my attraction to both ministry and historical scholarship could come together in the role of church historian.”

After leaving the Army, Handy returned to Chicago Divinity School, where he completed his doctorate in 1949.  The following year he was invited to join the faculty of Union Theological Seminary for a three-year term, “primarily to assist John T. McNeil and Paul Tillich in their foundational surveys of church history and the history of Christian thought, but also to teach courses in the modern and American periods.

“Little did I know that the three years would stretch into twelve times that number to the time of retirement,” he later marveled.  Handy’s full reflections on his career were published in Religious Studies Review in April 1993.  He taught at Union from 1950 to 1986, retiring as Henry Sloane Coffin Professor of Church History.

In 1989, Handy’s colleagues and former students published a festschrift in his honor, Altered Landscapes: Christianity in America 1935-1985.  While not a conventional festschrift because the contributors were not all former students of his, nor were they all professional historians, the volume celebrated  the man all the contributors considered their mentor.

“Every one of them… knows his or her indebtedness to the lifelong scholarly career of Robert Handy,” wrote the book’s editors in the preface.  They went on to praise “his strict adherence to the technical canons of historical inquiry, his sensitivity to the practical needs of Christian people, his signal labors on behalf of a sophisticated understanding of American church history, and his appreciation for the conceptual ties of history with many other disciplines.”

Teacher, author, colleague, friend, spiritual helper – Handy was all these and more.  “We know that as a historian he loves the truth of history,” the editors concluded.  “He loves as well the people who make history.  Indeed, among those scholars whom we know, we know of none who better joins the love of truth to the truth of love.”

Peggy Shriver, wife of the president emeritus, had this to say: “Once a student of Bob Handy, always a student of Bob Handy!  He cared for them, nurtured them, was solicitous of their careers and lives, and was always ready to be helpful and encouraging.

“Although I was never his student,” she went on, “I sometimes turned to him in my position as Assistant General Secretary of the National Council of Churches.  So I know how kindly and helpful he could be.  I also know how important he was to my husband during those early years of leading the seminary through some difficult times.”

Transitioning INTO Ministry workshop – Alameda, CA (May 30th)

Are you considering serving the Lord in ministry?

What does it take? What considerations are essential? Come to the ER Center’s next workshop on “Transitioning INTO Ministry” and learn from seasoned veterans in church and parachurch such as Louis Lee, Stephen Quen, and Ken Carlson. Learn from their journeys and better equip your church to send others into Christian ministry.

Who is this workshop for? It is for people considering ministry. It is for church leaders who want to help their churches be more effective in sending and receiving future ministers. It is for those considering seminary and those who may consider ministry as a future call. It is also for seminarians who would like to be learn from experienced pastors in Chinese and Asian American settings. In sum, it is for anyone concerned about the kingdom of God and its work through servants.

Date: Saturday, May 30, 2009
Time: 9:00 am – 2 pm (lunch provided)
Location: Bay Area Chinese Bible Church, Alameda Campus, 1801 North Loop Rd., Alameda, CA  94502
Cost: $30 per person ($24/member church)

How to register: Because of the very specific purpose of this workshop, we request that you register by sending an email to Johnson Chiu (email Johnson). Include in the email:

1. The name, email or phone number of a pastor or leader who can recommend you.

2. A very brief paragraph introducing yourself. Also discuss why you believe you may be called to ministry in Chinese and Asian American settings.

* * * * *

Tentative  Schedule

9:00 am        Welcome (Johnson Chiu)
9:15 am        Introduction of the topic (Tim Tseng)
9:30 am        Speaker #1 (Ken Carlson)
10:15 am      Group discussion
10:45 am      Speaker #2 (Louis Lee)
11:30 am      Group discussion
12:00 pm     Lunch Break
12:30 pm     Speaker #3  (Steve Quen)
1:15 pm      Group discussion
1:45 pm      Panel Q & A
2:00 pm     Close/Announcements

One-Day CONFAB Event – May 2 (Berkeley, CA)

You are cordially invited to a one-day

CONFAB INTERCHURCH EVENT

On Saturday, May 2, 2009 ( 9:30- 3:30 )

At the Berkeley Chinese Community Church
2117 Acton St. Berkeley (510) 549-2222
Parking available in the church parking lot

Purpose: To provide an opportunity for English-speaking adults from Chinese historic Mainline churches an opportunity for fellowship & sharing.

Theme: HONORING OUR RELATIONSHIPS

Exploring how family & extended Clan, teachers & mentors, spouses & friends have contributed to the persons we are today. This small group interactive experience will be facilitated by Rev. James Chuck.

$15.00 per person includes lunch. Make checks payable to “Confab.” Register with the designated registrar for your church. Individual registrations may be sent to James Chuck, 33 Linda Ave., #1701, Oakland, 94611.

We need your name, address, zip, phone, & email address. Questions? Call (510) 655-5100; or jameschuck1@gmail.com

What is CONFAB? Confab is the abbreviated designation for the National Conference of Chinese Christian Churches in America. Confab was organized in 1955 to bring together Chinese churches from time to time for fellowship, inspiration, and learning. The current programmatic emphasis for Confab is the strengthening of relationships between the historic Mainline Chinese churches in the Bay Area. The current Confab cabinet includes Carole Jan Lee (chair), Byron Chan, Fred Hee, Paul Hom, Adlai Jew, Esther Lee, Jean Low, Don Ng, Sebastian Ong, Alan Wong, & Yale Yee