APARRI 2003

Crossing Over: Negotiating Boundaries of Race, Religion, and Nation in Pacific Asian North America

 

Theologizing Faith at the Boundaries

  • Christine Keun-joo Pae: "Asian Immigrant Women in the United States: A Theological, Ethical, and Cultural Discourse on Humanity" (Yale University Divinity School)
  • Moses Penumaka: "Negating Boundaries: An Indian Theological Perspective" (Graduate Theological Union)
  • Jennifer Ryu: "Problems, Solutions and Promises in Hagar: A Model for Negotiating Boundaries in Race, Religion and Nation" (Starr King School for Ministry)
  • James Zo: "The Hidden Issues of Equality and Outreach in the Chinese Immigrant Experience" (Logos Evangelical Seminary)

"Reading" and Religion: What's in a Text?

  • James Chuck: "Chinatown Stories of Life and Faith: A Preliminary Content and Thematic Analysis" (American Baptist Seminary of the West)
  • Himanee Gupta:"Reading 'Hinduism' in Moulin Rouge" (University of Hawai'i)
  • Jonathan H. X. Lee:"Imagining the Empress of Heaven in Transnational Space and Community?" (University of California at Santa Barbara)

Framing Faith: Theology, Gender, and the Church

  • Jannette Wei-ting W. P. Gutierrez: "Negotiating a Way Out of Nowhere: The Voice ofAsian and Asian North American Women in Christian Education" (University of Georgia)
  • Wonhee Anne Joh: "Theologizing Hybridity/Negotiating for a Feminist Christology of Jeong" (Drew University)
  • Pui-Yan Lam: "Race Relations in the Denominational Context: A Study of Asian American Ministry in a Mainline Protestant Church" (Eastern Washington University)
  • Hong You: "Becoming Different Chinese Christians: An Ethnographic Study of Chinese Immigrants' Conversion to Christianity" (University of Chicago Divinity
    School)

Activism and Ethnicity in the Evolving Asian American Church

  • Claudine del Rosario (San Francisco State University/University of San Francisco) and Joaquin Gonzalez (University of San Francisco): "Counter-Hegemony Within a Hegemon: Activism Within the Filipino American Catholic Church"
  • Russell Jeung (San Francisco State University) and Karen Yonemoto (University of Southern California): "Christian Stir-Fry? Asian Americans Cooking Up Multiethnic Churches"

Religion and Civic Life

  • Yun Cho: "Becoming a Faith?: Anti-Americanism in South Korea" (Claremont Graduate University)
  • Elaine Howard Ecklund: "The 'Model Minority' as a Civic Category for Evangelical Korean Americans" (Cornell University)
  • Erika Muse: "The Role of Chinatown Faith-Based Organizations in Confronting the Racialization of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome" (Albany College of Pharmacy)
  • Jaideep Singh: "American Apartheid for the New Millennium: Men of Profile" (University of California at Berkeley)

2 Young, 2 Restless: The Negotiation of API Religious Identity

  • Michael James: "Critical Faith": A Pedagogy for Youth Leadership (PANA Institute)
  • Rebecca Kim: "Negotiation of Ethnic and Religious Boundaries by Asian American Campus Evangelicals" (Pepperdine University)
  • Trangdai Tranguyen: "Vietnamese Youth Convention 2003 (VYC 03)"

Panels:

Abstracts

Asian Immigrant Women in the United States: A Theological, Ethical, and Cultural Discourse on Humanity

Christine Keun-joo Pae, Yale University Divinity School
keun-joo.pae@yale.edu

This paper theologically and ethically considers human dignity of Asian immigrant women in the United States. While Asian Americans are recognized as a model minority in the United States, many Asian immigrant women often experience marginalization, gender discrimination, racism and xenophobia because of the lack of communication skills and cultural understanding.

The ethical consideration on Asian immigrant women's human dignity begins with a consultative question: "What makes a human person a fully human being?" Based on the theological and the philosophical understanding of a human being, this paper suggests a principle: each human person should be treated as an end for her/himself not as an object for others. When each human person is treated as an end, she or he practices her or his human capabilities which enable her or him to choose who she or he is and what she or he wants to be. Basic education and economic needs should be provided in order to let the underprivileged practice their human capabilities. What we call injustice in the context of Asian immigrant women is the system that prevents them from practicing their human capabilities and treats them as objects for others.

The roles of religion for Asian immigrant women are to empower them not to lose their self-esteem and to lead them to speak out on their experiences of injustice and human indignity. Religious discourses should awaken compassion toward these women in society. At a practical level, Asian immigrant women should continue to speak out and establish solidarity with other groups of people for political justice. This paper finally suggests the possibility of feminist dialogue on multiculturalism based on compassion.

Negating Boundaries: An Indian Theological Perspective

Moses Paul Peter Penumaka, Graduate Theological Union mpenumaka@psr.edu

Addressing the question of boundaries, crossing over, and/or negotiating boundaries is a complex theological issue. Boundaries tend to be dualistic or dialectical in tension. Negotiating boundaries raises methodological problems. Who will negotiate, for whom, what is the criteria, and what happens to those who cannot and do not want to negotiate. Will negotiating boundaries create new boundaries of inclusion and exclusion? One popular approach is to transcend the boundaries while the boundaries continue to exist. To develop a non-dualistic and non-dialectical approach by negating boundaries is a theological issue. Whether this is possible and necessary is a big question. This paper attempts to address these questions of boundaries from an Indian Christian theological perspective.

Problems, Solutions and Promises in Hagar: A Model for Negotiating Boundaries in Race, Religion and Nation

Jennifer Youngsun Ryu, Starr King School for Ministry jryu@sbcglobal.net

The tale of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar has been told countless times throughout the centuries. Only in the last ten to twenty years, however, has it been interpreted by women and historically colonized people and refocused through the neglected character of Hagar.

By retelling this story from my current theological location I am able to recast this triad into one of Problem, Solution and Promise posed against a backdrop of national, racial, and religious boundaries.

Hagar is a problem for her family of origin; she is a solution to her oppressors who strip away her humanity; then her humanity is fully restored through God's promise. Her experience parallels the lives of many Americans of Asian descent who are regarded as a problem, as well as a solution as we struggle to negotiate boundaries of race, nation and religious identity.

Like Hagar, Asian Americans have been granted a promise by God. A promise beyond one of liberation or physical and emotional survival, but a promise of the eternal presence of God in our lives. This promise compels us to acknowledge the interdependence and interconnected fate of all people who are overlooked, ignored, despised, imprisoned and belittled. God's promise is our hope--the hope of a just society in which every person's individual identity is honored while our shared vision of a community connected to God transcends those very particularities.

The Hidden Issues of Equality and Outreach in the Chinese Immigrant Experience

James Zo, Logos Evangelical Seminary zojames@les.edu

Education as life's highest purpose has driven Chinese families to migrate to the West. They go through tremendous hardship to send their children to school. Yet, these most unequally treated dwellers are often labeled racists by society at large and, most ironically, by their own children. They are the new voiceless people. Many real issues of equality are hidden beneath "popular" equality discussions. Equality is not achieved by simply putting people together. Powerful people can be highly equality-minded yet remain potentially dangerous in cross-cultural encounters. "Fruits of inclusiveness" is not an idea to adopt, but a tedious discipline to live by. Power can produce quick results that may have long-term positive impact. An authentic biblical theology calls us to live our lives to bridge today's divided world.

Chinatown Stories of Life and Faith: A Preliminary Content and Thematic Analysis

James Chuck, American Baptist Seminary of the West Jaschuck@juno.com

In the year 2000, the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco sponsored a project to preserve and to share the life stories of persons connected with the church. The 64 persons who agreed to participate were asked to talk about parents, growing up, schooling, marriage and family, work, and faith, and to include a retrospect.

This material was published by the church early in 2003 under the title Chinatown Stories of Life and Faith. This presentation will provide a preliminary content and thematic analysis, and suggest different levels at which these stories may be read and utilized.

Reading 'Hinduism' in Moulin Rouge

Himanee Gupta, University of Hawai'i
himanee@hawaii.edu

This paper offers a contrapuntal analysis of the popular film Moulin Rouge, focusing specifically on inter-relationships between a Hollywood representation of Hinduism that the film portrays against a series of counter-narratives that emerge on race, historical imperialism, and American neo-liberalism within Moulin Rouge's visual, oral, and musical texts. The paper draws primarily from Edward Said's use of that method in Culture and Imperialism. However, in doing so, it suggests that such a method of analysis might be applied to a project within Asian American Studies as well as Asian Pacific American Religious Studies of recovering concealed stories within dominant narratives. Said describes contrapuntality as a re-reading of a "cultural archive" with an awareness of a dominant discourse and of other discourses "against which (and together with which) the dominant discourse acts." (Said, 1994: 51). Contrapuntality adds to this project by showing not overt disruptions but subtle disjunctures. In doing so, it reveals a certain counter-understanding of how religious, social and political themes typically associated with immigrants of Asian and/or Pacific ancestry come to be interwoven yet not immediately visible in the popular culture of mainstream American (and/or Judeo-Christian) life.

Imagining the Empress of Heaven in Transnational Space and Community?

Jonathan H. X. Lee, University of California at Santa Barbara jonathan_lee@umail.ucsb.edu

The local and global dimensions of Chinese-America have changed and continue to experience rapid transformation sociologically, politically, economically, linguistically, culturally, and religiously in recent decades. This has resulted in unprecedented demographic changes and fragmentation along class, language, and religious lines among the various ethnic Chinese communities in the United States. The accelerated process of globalization, fueled in no small measure by rapid advances in telecommunication, transportation, internet technology and by growing transnational financial, commercial, and cultural-religious ties, has helped cement connections and forge new relationships which have transformed the various ethnic Chinese communities across national boundaries and transformed them in ways previously not imagined.

In this paper, I will examine the current transnational nature of Tianhou/Mazu's veneration by communities of devotees in the United States and in Taiwan. I will do this by exploring the relationships among transnational identity, transnational religion, and transnational qi as they are manifest in the pilgrimage of the U.S. Tianhou/Mazu from the San Francisco Ma-tsu Temple U.S.A. to her mother temple in Beigang, Taiwan. Vivian-Lee Nyitray's probing and critical inquiry on the re-configuration of Tianhou/Mazu's religio-cultural and political sovereignty guides my current exploration. She says: "The multiple and powerful forces of modernization and shifting world populations have redrawn the boundaries of Tianhou/Mazu's concern. What remains to be seen is the final map of the goddess' sovereignty: Will it be so localized that Chinese people worship Chinese Mazu, Taiwanese people worship Taiwanese Mazu, and North American devotees worship a Canadian or American or Mexican Mazu? Or will Tianhou/Mazu's sovereignty shift from the identity politics of nation-states and ethnic origins to a conceptual realm of common culture?"

This paper will attempt to address Nyitray's questions with a transnational discourse.
Before I continue my discussion of current transnational phenomena, it is important to briefly discuss the goddess herself. Then I will move on to survey the history of Tianhou/Mazu in the U.S. in relation to the history of the first wave of Chinese-American immigrants. Then, I will discuss relevant trends in current transnational Chinese emigration in relation to the creation and development of a transnational community, and by extension a transnational goddess. Lastly, I will discuss some preliminary observations on the transnational and changing veneration of Tianhou/Mazu in the U.S.

Negotiating a Way Out of Nowhere: The Voice of Asian and Asian North American Women in Christian Education

Jannette Wei-Ting W. P. Gutierrez, University of Georgia jannettewg@netzero.net

Although women constitute the majority of Asian and Asian North American Protestant churchgoers, the principal leaders and pastors are still predominantly men. Very few Asian and Asian North American Christian women are encouraged and some even are barred from leadership or pastoral roles across all denominations due to the patriarchal ideology of Christianity. In spite of this, some women who received systematic and formal theological education become faculty members who investigate and confront the patriarchal teachings that exclude Christian women from fully participating in all activities of the church and the construction of theological knowledge. Some women are still striving to gain a voice in their daily practice as racial-minority Christians. This literature review will focus on the history of Asian and Asian North American women in theological education, including formal and informal learning in all educational settings. Its presentation is intended to provide a space for Asian and Asian North American Christian women to share with their learning experiences as a racial minority in a white-dominated America.

Theologizing Hybridity/Negotiating for a Feminist Christology of Jeong

Wonhee Anne Joh, Drew University
joh@fordham.edu

As theology must grapple with the promising and yet problematic implications of privileging either particularity or universality, positionality suggests multiple refractions. While one may not dwell extensively upon one's situation, our theologizing is always and inescapably intertwined with not only our "roots" but also with the inevitably diverse "routes" that persistently shift our positions. Even as we are critical of views from "everywhere" epistemology, we are also mindful that our ways of knowing are always done from "somewhere."

Whether this "somewhere" is in the uncontested centers, in the perilous margins, on the striking and unsettling boundaries or in the indeterminant interstices, it seems necessary to repeatedly and persistently gesture to the complexity and significance of positionality. On this profoundly splintered yet insistent pull of our present dilemma, David Tracy has noted that "postmodernity releases the voices of the subjugated knowledge; the voices of all those marginalized by the official story of modern triumph. Often postmodernist are proud and ironic in their centerlessness . . . . Having killed the modern subject they too must now face their own temptation to drag all reality into the laughing abyss of that centerless, subjectless but very Western labyrinth." This essay will examine the power of postcolonial hybridity for constructive theology. I will conclude by introducing my postcolonial Christology of Jeong as an alternative feminist theology of the cross.

Race Relations in the Denominational Context: A Study of Asian American Ministry in a Mainline Protestant Church

Pui-Yan Lam, Eastern Washington University plam@ewu.edu

In my presentation, I will discuss some tentative findings from my ongoing research on the Asian American ministries in a mainline Protestant denomination. The purpose of my research is to examine race relations in denominational context through the experience of Asian Americans. Specifically, I attempt to investigate: (1) the state of Asian American ministries, (2) inter-racial dynamics at congregational, regional, and national levels, (3) representation of Asian Americans in leadership positions, and (4) the influence of denominational structures on the development of Asian American ministries.

Becoming Different Chinese Christians: An Ethnographic Study of Chinese Immigrants' Conversion to Christianity

Hong You, University of Chicago Divinity School youhong@uchicago.edu

I conducted an eight-month study of a Chinese Christian church from the fall of 2002 to the spring of 2003 in a Midwestern suburban area. I started by observing and participating in a cell-group of this church. I spent a lot of time with the members in their cell-group meetings, Sunday worship services, group-leader meetings, etc. The members were a group of Chinese students, researchers, professionals, and immigrants who converted to Christianity after they came to the United States. Most of them were recent converts, though they had been in the States for almost a decade. The cell-group I observed most often was in a city and all the members were somehow affiliated with a renowned university.

I went into my field with hopes of finding similarities or patterns to explain why the subjects all converted to Christianity and what identity they constructed during the process of conversion. As time passed, not many explanatory similarities among them emerged. Their conversion did not happen in a typical, average, conservative protestant Christian Church with a relatively long history, but in an aggressively evangelical, charismatic church with a relatively short history. I began to ask why the subjects were so different instead of constructing a similar identity. How did their conversions happen? In what context did their conversions take place? What made their conversions possible after they struggled for so many years? When I began to look for answers to these questions, I began to be able to see what was before me but what I had previously not been able to see.

In this paper, I argue that when they come to the United States and face huge social and psychological changes, some Chinese immigrants lack sufficient cultural, traditional, and ethnic resources, so they seek alternative resources. The dynamic, energetic, lively characteristics of CCASS (the church at which I conducted my ethnographic research) attracted them to this foreign faith and at the same time made their construction of new identities (religious and social), and reconstruction of their old identity (ethnic Chinese) possible in the process of Americanization within the context of religious pluralism. Through questioning and critique of their old worldview and belief system, the conversion to their new belief system-Christian faith-took place. Instead of a unanimous identity, they re/constructed different identity/identities through the process of conversion.

Counter-Hegemony Within a Hegemon: Activism Within the Filipino American Catholic Church

Claudine del Rosario, San Francisco State University/University of San Francisco tripclaudine@hotmail.com
Joaquin Gonzalez, University of San Francisco jaygonzalez@hotmail.com

Is religion really the "opiate of the masses" (Karl Marx) or has it become a location for awakening the masses to social justice issues? The Church played a significant role in Spain's colonization of the Philippines, which gave validity to Marx's claim. As a civil society, the Church helped to create and maintain the "consent" that is needed to perpetuate hegemony. But, ironically, throughout the centuries, the Church has also been a place where acts of resistance and struggle inevitably take place. This paper examines the history of the Church as a hegemon in the Philippines and its emergence as a site for counter-hegemonic projects through case studies in the San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American community. Drawing from Gramsci, Marx and Weber, we will discuss the transnational and domestic manifestation of hegemony and counter-hegemony by looking at how the influx of Filipino migrant workers has impacted local churches, and, consequently, the Bay Area Filipino American community as a whole.

Christian Stir-Fry? Asian Americans Cooking Up Multiethnic Churches

Russell Jeung, San Francisco State University rjeung@sfsu.edu
Karen Yonemoto, University of Southern California kareny@usc.edu

This pair of papers will explore the roles, relationships, and identities of Asian Americans participating in multiethnic congregations. The presenters' papers examine how Asian Americans cross boundaries of race, ethnicity, and culture to develop new solidarities while maintaining their own identities.

Becoming a Faith?: Anti-Americanism in South Korea

Yun Cho, Claremont Graduate University yunjcho@hotmail.com

This paper provides for discussion a reflection on the anti-war movement and anti-Americanism in South Korea today. I start by questioning how the Iraq war affected the mentality of Asian/Pacific Islanders (API) outside the U.S. Before and after the Iraq war began, APIs showed a strong reaction against the war. This anti-war trend appeared to be part of anti-Americanism, which existed before the war began. The focus of this paper is on South Korea, where the issue is more complicated given the current situation with North Korea.

The word "anti-Americanism" seems to have emerged from among leftwing intellectuals in the U.S. during the 1960s. Anti-Americanism in South Korea, however, has a different aspect than that in the U.S. Recently, anti-Americanism worsened with the current social and political context of Korea. There were three recent events, which motivated the current trend of anti-Americanism: (1) the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake city in 2000, (2) the "axis of evil" appellation created by U.S. President George W. Bush, and (3) the tragic death in 2002 of two Korean school girls due to the U.S. military activity. Anti-Americanism could be a reaction toward the current power relations between the U.S. and Korea, but it also could be Koreans' perceived bigotry or hatred toward others. By analyzing these three events, I attempt to explain anti-Americanism among South Koreans today.

The "Model Minority" as a Civic Category for Evangelical Korean Americans

Elaine Howard Ecklund, Cornell University
emh5@cornell.edu

Who do Korean evangelicals think of as worthy of help? Through over eighty interviews with second-generation Koreans in different evangelical congregations, this paper examines the impact of a church's ethnic composition on social practice of the "model minority." Those Korean Americans who participated in a second-generation Korean congregation were more likely to embrace the model-minority stereotype. This structured how they viewed other ethnic and racial groups; they rhetorically expressed a desire to help their immigrant parents and less desire to help those they viewed as not hard-working. Although they shared the same social class position as those in second-generation Korean congregations, Korean Americans in multiethnic churches did not see themselves as model minorities, but emphasized their commonality with other ethnic and racial groups, and used spiritual resources and rhetoric to justify providing social services in their community. This work challenges previous research on the intersection between evangelical religious participation and the model minority and has relevance for how scholars might structure future studies of the relationship between religious participation and civic identity categories among second-generation Asian American immigrant groups.

The Role of Chinatown Faith-Based Organizations in Confronting the Racialization of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Erika Muse, Albany College of Pharmacy musee@acp.edu

My topic examines the racialization of SARS by the non-Chinese population in Boston and how faith-based organizations are responding to issues among the Chinatown population with regard to the illness and its medical, social and economic repercussions. The mission of these organizations is to serve the community and they have a significant impact on information and services available to all members of the community. SARS has become associated with the Chinese in the United States to the point where there are a growing number of "word of mouth" warnings among the general public to avoid Chinese restaurants and Chinatowns. Ironically, Boston Chinatown is, to date, free of SARS. Despite this however, recent reports have indicated that there has been a 50% drop in Chinatown business.

Historically, over the past 200 years of Chinese immigration to the United States little has changed with regard to the fear instilled in whites in the face of exoticized and little understood disease patterns among this ethnic group. Chinatowns have been seen historically as bastions teeming with frightful pathogens and inscrutable Chinese who seek to degrade the white population with disease. In the same light, the global spread of SARS , the PRC's mismanagement and fudged statistics and a general fear of the
"other" have rapidly combined to produce a powerful social barrier to the Chinese in this country.

Historically, faith based organizations such as churches and the YMCA/YWCA established in Chinatowns across the U.S. have sought to instruct the Chinese in modern American Protestant standards of hygiene and moral values. These organizations have had a significant impact on the improvement of the quality and longevity of life in the historically impoverished and isolated community. I will examine ways the churches and Y's in today's Boston Chinatown are confronting the racialization of SARS and the practical ways the organizations have attempted to alleviate the myriad factors contributing to the stress and anxiety among the Chinatown population.

American Apartheid for the New Millennium: Men of Profile

Jaideep Singh, University of California at Berkeley SinghPlant@aol.com

This article argues that a distinct new class has been established in the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The lives of this racialized group's members are defined and circumscribed by a lone component- their phenotype. As a consequence of the actions of various functionaries of the state (the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local police forces, etc.) as well as new legislation passed in the months since the attacks, a new form of the wretched system of white supremacy created and enforced by southern whites after they violently overthrew the Reconstruction following the Civil War has been put into place. This new form of Jim Crow has been transformed for the new millennium.

A key component of this new system of American apartheid is the fact that the civil liberties of the members of this class-indeed, their very freedom- can be suspended, revoked, or circumscribed on the whim of virtually any white person. To make matters worse, many whites are maniacally petrified of the "Men of Profile" (MOP) who comprise this degraded class.

The Bush Administration has fanned the flames of the pervasive national paranoia that has developed since the attacks - a fear particularly manifest among white Americans-in order to expand and consolidate the power of the state. Disturbingly, a crack has appeared in the nation's collective moral opposition to the continuing use of race as a law enforcement tool. Recognition had recently emerged among some white Americans that the use of race by the state has essentially been employed as a tool to suppress people of color and sustain white supremacy. Now the use of race in law enforcement is being rearticulated in a newly disgusting manner, with the support of the majority of white America.

"Critical Faith": A Pedagogy for Youth Leadership

Michael James, PANA Institute mjames@psr.edu

"Critical Faith" is a methodology for youth leadership in the tradition of the work of the late Paulo Freire. The methodology couples Freire's theoretical framework of education for critical consciousness-which seeks to generate consciousness and foster critique of self and the world-with spiritual and theological curiosity and faith experience.

Critical Faith offers an alternative paradigm to conventional faith-based youth education and leadership development. Many approaches use a religious education model in which development is fostered through a set of instructions, the transfer of religious ideas, or various forms of catechism. The worst of these utilize indoctrination and religious prescription.

Critical Faith poses questions to young people in a way that provokes their deepest convictions and commitments. It introduces them to paradoxes and possibilities in the abstract territory of ideas and the concrete realities of daily life. It opens and ignites their spiritual agency as subjects of their own faith journey, and not objects of religious prescription. It reintroduces them to that which belongs to them. The theological implications are profound for the whole church, notwithstanding age or level of faith development.

Theories and practices of the critical faith methodology from the first six months of the PANA Institute's Represent to Witness Asian American and Pacific Islander Youth Program will be shared.

Negotiation of Ethnic and Religious Boundaries by Asian American Campus Evangelicals

Rebecca Kim, Pepperdine University
gulliver@ucla.edu

On a southern California college campus, an African American student started attending an Asian American Christian club. But after three meetings he stopped coming. Likewise, two white men walked into another Asian American Christian meeting after hearing the "praise music" from outside. After ten minutes, they walked out. Incidents like these are disturbing to local Asian American Christians. It points to a tension between their ethnic and religious identity-the desire to stay within separate ethnic enclaves on the one hand and the desire to take part in the larger religious community and go beyond separate ethnic boundaries on the other. As Raymond Williams (1988) writes, "the ecumenical is always in tension with the national and the ethnic, as most religious groups appeal to some form of universalism" (279). Through a study of the growing numbers of Asian American college campus evangelicals, this presentation will examine how this tension is both experienced as well as negotiated to continuously make separate ethnically homogenous religious congregations possible.

Vietnamese Youth Convention 2003 (VYC 03)

Trangdai Tranguyen, Center for Oral & Public History, California State University at Fullerton tntd9@hotmail.com

After 28 years away from home, 5,000 young adults in the Vietnamese Diaspora will gather at the historic Vietnamese Youth Convention (VYC) held on the UC Irvine campus over Independence Day weekend this year. This groundbreaking event marks the very first time since 1975 that there has been such a large gathering.

VYC promotes encounter experiences between youths in the Vietnamese Diaspora, who will come to enhance their ethnic bond, celebrate faith hand in hand, fan the fire of fellowship, and, as one, embark on the Road of Hope. It is a festival of faith, a celebration of love, and a gathering for all Vietnamese youths and young adults around the globe, who will come to share their conviction in God and a commitment to exemplify the Vietnamese spirit. It attempts to cultivate genuine faith in everyday life among Vietnamese Catholic young adults through presentations, leadership and ministry workshops, group prayer and sharing, the Way of the Cross, Taize prayer, and liturgical celebrations. The three-day convention also aims at (1) creating a dialog for young people to come and share their concerns and experiences, (2) providing interactive spiritual/religious training and enrichment, and (3) shaping opportunities for the youth to re-commit to living out their Catholic faith and the Vietnamese spirit in everyday life.

Initiated and co-organized by youth ministries across America and supported by the Vietnamese American National Catholic Federation, VYC 03 invites all Vietnamese youths, regardless of religious orientation. Says Fr. Hung Duc Tran, VYC 03 and Youth Ministries Chaplain: "... I believe that you, the Vietnamese Catholic youths, inherit the gift of faith from the Vietnamese martyrs, especially from the young model Saint Andre Phu Yen. You must have yearned for the opportunity to proclaim your faith in a 'cool' and youthful manner... The world is asking for your light, dear Vietnamese Catholic youths. That's why Christ invites you to be the salt of the earth and light of the world. VYC 2003 awaits you to bring your light and fire so that together, we show Jesus to the world and warm up every corner of the universe."

PANEL: Crossing Burmese Borders: Ethnicity, Gender, and Migration

Panelists:
Joseph Cheah, Graduate Theological Union (Panel Organizer) jpcheah@aol.com
Tamara C. Ho, University of California at Los Angeles (Panel Organizer) tammyho@signs.ucla.edu
Piyavani (Megan Cowan), Tathagata Meditation Centre meganlouisecowan@hotmail.com

This panel will examine how migration affects ethnicity and gender by analyzing religious practices and identities. Focusing on Burma, these papers will offer new perspectives on Burmese and American practices of religion as they cross national and racial boundaries.

In "Crossing National and Linguistic Boundaries in the Adaptation of Burmese Buddhism in America," Joseph Cheah illustrates the nexus between religion, race, and nation in the adaptation of Burmese Buddhist religious practices to the U.S. urban context.

In "Women of the Temple: Burmese Buddhism and Gender," Tamara Ho discusses Burmese gender traditions and investigates how gender and power are negotiated through Buddhist rituals in Burmese American temples in Southern California.
In the third presentation, Sayalay Piya, also known as Megan Cowan, discusses her study of Burmese Buddhism as an Anglo-American who became a Burmese Buddhist "nun." She will also share her experiences working with Burmese monks and other ethnic Buddhist groups in the U.S. This panel, then, presents the various ways in which Burmese American identities and Buddhist practices translate and change as they cross national, ethnic, and gender boundaries. By juxtaposing some of the heterogeneous ways in which immigrants from Burma negotiate the ideological opportunities and limits of the U.S. with a view of how Americans engage Burmese Buddhism, this panel adds a rarely discussed set of perspectives into the study of Asian Pacific Americans and religion.

PANEL: The Flesh Made Word: Reading Religion in the Literatures of Asian America

Panelists:
Jane Naomi Iwamura, University of Southern California (Panel Organizer) iwamura@usc.edu
James Kyung-Jin Lee, University of Texas at Austin (Panel Moderator) jkl@mail.utexas.edu
Min Hyoung Song, Boston College songm@bc.edu
Sandra Oh, University of Miami sandraoh@asamst.ucsb.edu

Asian American novelists, poets, and writers provide us with an unparalleled glimpse into the world of Asian Americans through their literary works. And through rich imaginative expression, these authors often illuminate the spiritual dimensions of Asian American experience, as well as reveal the social, political, and historical environment in which religious meaning is allowed to take shape. Asian American literary critics have, for the most part, eschewed religion as a serious and extended category of inquiry. As a result, this panel represents one of the first to investigate the relationship between Asian American literatures and religions and will take up the following questions: How can an understanding of religion illuminate the reading of a literary text? In what ways are the religious aspects of these works linked to literary convention and form? And how can Asian American literature and literary studies spark theological imagination and enliven the study of Asian American religions?

PANEL: Identity, Healing, and Participation: Emerging Themes in Filipino American Catholic Theology and Ministry

Panelists:
Faustino (Tito) Cruz, Franciscan School of Theology (Panel Organizer) tcruz@fst.edu
Christina Leaño, Franciscan School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union christinaleano@yahoo.com
Ofelia Villero, Franciscan School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union siegville@syracuse.net
Francine Redada, University of California at Los Angeles fredada@ucla.edu

Christina Leaño reflects on issues of identity and liminality, as a second-generation Filipino American who has been actively involved in actions for social change, such as in the movement to clean up the former US military bases in the Philippines. She illustrates how movements for social justice shape what it means to be Christian and how
Christianity mutually affirms, challenges, and renews such movements.

Ofelia Villero examines the historical, religious, and cultural roles that indigenous healers and healing practices in the Philippines have played in the liberation of oppressed communities. She explores how indigenous healing forms, informs, and transforms a theology of liberation for Filipino Christians in the United States.

Francine Redada examines how a Filipino American annual devotion to Our Lady of Peñafrancia, a prominent patron saint to many Filipino Catholics, demonstrates the maintenance of Filipino identity though belief in the Catholic faith. She investigates how this religious celebration within a Filipino American social organization contributes to the cultural identity of Filipinos in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tito Cruz proposes an approach to theological reflection (experience-theory-experience) toward socio-ecclesial participation and transformation. Such an approach promotes a "public church" that intentionally engages disciple-citizens in making decisions that affect their lives and the well-being of their communities.