PANA Institute for Leadership Development

Kevin Omi graduated from PSR with his Master of Divinity degree in May 2009.  As a person whose heritage traces back to Japan, Scotland, and Denmark, PSR provided him a unique opportunity to explore theological issues of hybridity, interstituality, historical injury, and transcendence. He is pursuing pastoral ministry in the United Church of Christ and is a member of First Congregational Church of Berkeley. He submitted this paper for the spring 2009 course "Theology in Asian American Faith Communities" taught by Fumitaka Matsuoka and Joanne Doi.

Mr. Omi says: "I was inspired to review the writings of Rev. Paul Nagano by a conversation I had with Fumitaka Matsuoka a few years ago. Rev. Nagano is part of a generation whose formative years took place during World War II, along with Rev. Lloyd Wake, Bishop Roy Sano, and many others. We have a finite amount of time to capture the ministries of these living legends who helped shape what has evolved into the rich tapestry of Asian American theology.  This paper outlines how Nagano’s personal theology evolved from the specificity of his beginnings as a second generation Japanese American in the American Baptist tradition to ever-broadening understandings of the interconnectedness of God, all Creation, and all communities.  It is our hope that a much larger and in-depth project will be pursued in the future."

Paul Nagano: Streams in the Desert

The introduction to the paper is below. To read the full-length paper with citations included, please view the PDF version here.

As I write this paper I am looking at the signup sheet for the Celebration for GTU Graduates of Color. It reminds me of Rev. Fumitaka Matsuoka’s citation of Gary Okihiro’s question, “Is Yellow Black or White?”1 As a person whose ethnicities include Japanese and Scottish/Danish heritages, this becomes, “to what extent am I a person of color?”, with the attendant opportunities to explore theological questions of identity, historical injury, narrative agency, humanity, God, salvation, grace, and eschatology. Through PSR, most notably through the opening of the windows of my heart, mind, and soul by Fumitaka Matsuoka, Joanne Doi, Archie Smith, PANA, and experiences as a Minister in Training at Sycamore Congregational Church, I have begun to find my voice as a practical theologian and pastor. I am a pastor who, despite my middle class life and mixed heritage, is increasingly compelled to say “Yes, I am a person of color”. As I do so, I begin to shed uncertainty and breathe in the strength and courage I experienced while reading Rev. Paul M. Nagano’s writings created over a 50 year time span.

Paul Nagano explored the implications of decisions about identity for his middle class congregation when he preached about Moses in the 1970s: “Either he could continue to be called the ‘son of Pharaoh’s daughter’ or identify himself with the oppressed minority—the Hebrew People.”2 Over time, Nagano spoke more and more directly about the implications of such a choice. Additionally, his understanding of the complexity of Asian Americans and the forces shaping their theologies blossomed, in response to the contexts in which he served, lived, learned, and taught.

Through the Manzanar Pilgrimage I took with Dr. Joanne Doi a couple years ago, my sense of historical injury has become both personal and transcending – transcending time, place, ethnicity, class, and faith traditions. The pilgrimage creates opportunities to reflect on theologies of the cross: the cross as political weapon, symbol of universal persecution, suffering and death; the empty but still implicitly bloody cross as symbol of the inevitability of hope for the ever in-breaking reign of God; and most of all, the cross as a reminder of the living presence of Jesus Christ. Over time, Nagano translated the particularity of his experience to look far beyond the Christian central focus on the cross and Christ, as he engaged with persons of all many faith traditions.

I was inspired to review the writings of Rev. Paul Nagano by a conversation I had with Fumitaka Matsuoka a few years ago. Paul is part of a generation whose formative years took place during World War II, along with Rev. Lloyd Wake, Rev. Roy Sano, and many others. While many of these Japanese American pastors, including my uncle, Rev. Frank Masahiro Omi3 have passed, Fumitaka and Joanne Doi, who is inheriting this project, feel a strong sense of urgency to capture some of their histories. A couple years ago I attended a meeting of the Council for Pacific Asian Theologies (CPAT), where Nagano and I reconnected. There I met John Malcomson, son of William L. Malcomson, former dean of the American Baptist School of the West. Paul credits Malcomson senior with the opportunity to think systematically about Asian American theology and ministry by offering a course on this subject. This formed the basis for a manuscript he completed in 1992 on the topic of the Asian American church and their affect on multicultural communities.4 This manuscript reflects the culmination of his education at three seminaries and fifty years of ministry as a national and local church leader.

This merely paper skims the tops of some of the waves of his writings. For a biography, I refer the reader to Jae Ryung Chung’s thesis, Paul M. Nagano and Asian American Baptist Caucus. As a result of this project, I have a much more concrete understanding of the effort and complexity involved in researching a theologian. Nagano draws upon an immense body of theology from both the West and East. Jitsuo Morikawa, Malcomson, John Cobb, C.S. Song, and Roy Sano were key influences as was his internment experience as a Japanese American pastor in the American Baptist tradition.

Read the full 21-page paper in PDF format.