What Unites Asian American Christians

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

Last week, a gunman shot up three spas in Atlanta, taking the lives of eight people, six of them Asian American. Their names were Soon Chung Park, age 74; Hyun Jung Grant, age 51; Suncha Kim, age 69; Yong Yue, age 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, age 33; Paul Andre Michels, age 54; and Xiaojie Tan, age 49.These attacks, coming just weeks after several reports were released calling attention to racial violence and harassment against Asian Americans.

One report from a group called Stop AAPI Hate listed nearly 3,8000 incidents from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021 which included verbal harassment, physical assault, shunning, civil rights violations, and online harassment.

While the community currently only makes up about six percent of the population, according to Pew Research Center, by 2055, this may be the largest minority group.It’s also a community with enormous amounts of diversity. The largest communities are ethnically Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to learn more about the influence of Christian faith of Asian American, the US’ fasting growing immigrant group and the obligations of the church at large to welcome and love them.

Our guest this week is Jane Hong, associate professor of history at Occidental College and the author of Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion. Her next book book from Oxford University Press is tentatively titled Model Christians, Model Minorities: Asian Americans, Race, and Politics in the Transformation of U.S. Evangelicalism. She is currently co-hosting Centering: The Asian American Christian Podcast.

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Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su and Bunmi Ishola

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