ANCIENT WOKE PREACHER CLIPS: Dr. Jonathan Tran of Baylor University is talking "white theology," "whiteness," "centering," and more in this ***2009*** lecture (his bio says he joined Baylor in '06) titled "Why Asian American Christianity Has No Future":
"We need to always remember that Christianity isn't Christianity + you Christians don't do amazing things because your expectation is that the world *will* come to an end, but rather...because you believe, in Christ, the world *has* come to an end..."
"To be American is to be racialized...to be understood as a Race-American: African-American, Mexican-American, Asian-American...You would be very hard-pressed to say what exactly it is that makes you Asian-American but you know for certain you are not black, Mexican or white."
"America is not our home...in the same way that 🇺🇸 is home, for example, for the Irish...To the extent that America looks something like persons of Nordic facial features, then Asians...will always be considered outsiders...This is the testimony, of course, of the internment."
You know "whiteness." What about "multiethnic pan-whiteness"?
"Shedding of ethnic identity + committing violence against non-whites purchased one's passage into whiteness...I fear that for the Asian-American church, something of these realities are starting to come into play."
Words as weapons!
"Making fun of and mocking 1st-gen Asian immigrants, very often our own parents, becomes a rite of passage of leaving behind Asian-ness and becoming Asian-American. I validate my membership within Asian America by doing violence to non-Asian Americans."
On one hand, segregation is bad ("We, the nations, have been called into God's covenant promise through Israel"). Yes + amen.
On the other hand, integration is bad ("we will shed all the particularities that make us Asian...We'll sacrifice our
color at the altar of whiteness").
Most of this essentially turns into IFB-esque "the younger folk are abandoning the old paths!" I agree with a lot of the critiques of business-like megachurches but then it becomes a section about needing the right theological lens to "resist biopolitical powers" ???
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