Realizing the America of Our Hearts: Theological Voices of Asian Americans

Realizing the America of Our Hearts: Theological Voices of Asian Americans. Edited by Fumitaka Matsuoka and Eleazar S. Fernandez. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2003. 273 pages.

In this book's introduction, Matsuoka, one of the editors, states, "This project [the volume] is just as multifaceted as our own racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, and generational makeup" (8). This statement partly explains why the volume, as a whole, is not based on a set of sharply focused questions, or why the volume is rather loose and wide-ranging in its structure. That said, the volume does have compensatory merits.

One of them is the very multifaceted perspectives from which Asian American experiences are theologized: perspectives that are Indian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Anglo, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean; that stem from constructive theology, sociology, anthropology, biblical studies, and church history. Five of the contributors are women, including a Canadian. Some of the contributors are first-generation, others second-or-later-generation, North Americans. One contributor is Catholic; all the others are probably Protestant.

Another merit is a core of themes-marginality, racism, sojourning, and diaspora-that pervades the book, imparting it coherence. The book consists of four parts. Part 1 is titled "Hermeneutical Lenses in Reading Asian American Experiences." Of the four chapters in this part, one is by Sang Hyun Lee: "Marginality as Coerced Liminality: Toward an Understanding of the Context of Asian American Theology." Building on the works of Victor Turner and others, Lee argues that margin is a liminal, in-between space, fraught with both uncertainty and creativity, in which Asian Americans find themselves-not by choice but by coercion from the larger, white society. Part 2, consisting of three chapters, is titled "From Context to Context: Theological Readings of Asian American Journey." Here one finds a chapter titled "Land of Maple and Lands of Bamboo" by Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng, who espouses a "bamboo theology [which] may be seen as the North American parallel to the movement of indigenizing liturgy and theology of the young churches of East and Southeast Asia," a theology predicated on the Asians' first overcoming their internalized colonialism (103). "Vision of Hope: Realizing the America of Our Hearts" is the title of Part 3. Among the four essays here, Randi Jones Walker's contribution, titled "Lessons for a New America: An Anglo American Reflection on Korean American Christian History," proposes a theology of hospitality, noting that "[t]he images that will serve us best in building the America of our hearts are those that recognize God as the landlord, the householder, and we, all of us, the strangers and sojourners, tenants" (197). Finally, in Part 4, titled "Asian Americans and Global Connections: Challenges and Prospects," co-editor Fernandez contributes one of the last three essays, "Conclusion: America from the Hearts of a Diasporized People: A Diasporized Heart," in which he states, "The diasporized heart is a heart decentered and recentered in the marginality that incorporates those that were traditionally perceived as irreconcilable worlds" (266).

The book, aimed apparently at mainline readers, may not always be persuasive, but is so often enough, and the themes are at the heart of current conversations on Asian American theology.

Timothy S. Lee

Brite Divinity School

Copyright Christian Theological Seminary Winter 2005
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