One Year Later: Violence Against Asian Americans
Responding to the mass murder in Atlanta, Georgia, on Marcy 16, 2021 Church Anew invited our network of contributors to respond with biblical reflections, calls to action, and laments. We repost these words from visionaries one year later to provide witness for your proclamation and action. We join in solidarity, grief, and commitment as the families of victims and the nation mourn lives lost: Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Hyun-Jung Grant, Yong Ae Yue, Suncha Kim.
I’m a Scholar of Religion. Here’s What I See in the Atlanta Shootings.
By Rev. Mihee Kim-Kort
To move through this world as an Asian who is American is to exist under the gaze of white supremacy. In other words, we have to constantly give an accounting of ourselves to justify and explain why we are here.
So we learned early on the name of the alleged murderer. We learned that he is white. We learned that he is a Southern Baptist, but not his motivation. Was it racism? Was it deep-rooted misogyny? Was it a fetishization of Asian women in particular? Was it toxic theology — an extreme fear of God and an equally extreme self-loathing?
As a Korean-born woman, a Presbyterian minister, a scholar of religion and a child of both church culture and American culture, I have asked the same questions and can only conclude: It is all of the above. Race, gender, religion and culture are all implicated.
Evangelical Masculinity and Atlanta
By Dr. Greg Carey
Few White men, particularly those of us with deep experience in the evangelical world, have testified to this reality in our own experience. Predictably, many White evangelicals spoke out to condemn the murders and deny a link between their teachings and this tragedy. I am sure most of them believed their denials. I am sure the denials of White evangelical racism were more important to them than were the condemnations.
My own experience as a White, formerly evangelical, man reinforces my suspicion that the details of this atrocity have lots to do with White evangelical culture, especially Southern White evangelical culture and its masculinity codes.
The Creator Delights in Diversity
By Dr. John Thatamanil
We who are subjected to hatred and dehumanization face a great and horrible danger that we may come to doubt our worth, our own preciousness. My dear siblings, I pray that not a one of us will surrender to this temptation. You, I, each and every one of us, is an embodiment of the Beloved’s creative passion for diversity.
Invisibility Is No Longer an Option
By Dr. Mary Foskett
The Church needs to answer the commandment to love thy neighbor and join the effort. It needs to exorcise the theologies that fuel white supremacy, learn how to intervene when anti-Asian harassment or violence is unfolding, and take on systemic racism in all its forms. It needs to finally recognize the full humanity of all persons of Asian descent.
White Supremacy the Deadly Fantasy: Sermon on the Mount in the Shadow of the Atlanta Murders
By Rev. Dr. Sze-kar Wan
It’s pointless to debate if the Atlanta shooter was driven to mass murder by a self-professed sex addiction or by racism. Both issue from white supremacy. We don’t need legal jargons to tell us this is an anti-Asian hate crime. We just know it. From experience and from history.
When Religion, Sex, and Race Breed Violence
By Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu
In the ecclesial context, this Sunday many preachers and pastors are going to stand behind their pulpits to preach. What will they preach? Will they address the anti-Asian racism happening all around them? Any work — any sermon — that addresses and tries to combat such anti-Asian hatred simply must take on the intersectionality of race, sex, and religion. Will you?
Must Someone Die Before We’re Visible?: Myths and Hot Takes
By Dr. Sam Tsang
When Asian Americans warned our society that something terrible was happening to us, everyone including the news media dismissed our claims, rendering our suffering invisible. Why does it take a mass shooting of our people to raise any kind of awareness?
How Much Hate to Make a Hate Crime?
By Rev. Angela Denker
How could it be that this good, “church boy,” would turn into a killer? We would call him a “lone wolf.” We’d wonder about mental illness, about family trouble. We’d tell Long’s story as an individual, rather than explore his place in a pantheon of angry, white, male, conservative, Christian mass shooters.
A Lenten Lament on Violence Against Asian Americans
By Dr. Deanna Thompson
The importance for communities of faith to heed these calls has only grown more urgent since the racially motivated murders in Atlanta. As we reflect on this week’s tragedy, let us stand in solidarity with the Asian American, Pan Asian, and Pacific Islander communities and seize on this season of Lent to repent our individual and collective complicity in systems of violence.
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As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
