ASIAN IDENTITY, THEOLOGY, AND THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

Peter C. Phan
The Catholic University of America

This essay attempts to reflect on the theme of the seventh assembly of Conference of Catholic Theological Institutions (COCTI) from my own social location: How do identity claims affect the nature and task of theology and theological education? I came from Vietnam to the United States of America as a refugee in 1975 and am a naturalized citizen of the United States. Professionally, I am currently teaching theology in a department of a Catholic university engaged in both the academic and pastoral formation of future priests and the training of students for higher degrees in theology.

The question is whether the identity claims of Asian immigrants have any impact on the way of doing theology and on how theological education is carried out in North America. An immigrant is defined by dominant groups of the native and adopted societies as being "in-between" two worlds, fully belonging to neither. In this definition, the emphasis is on the "between" so that the immigrant is essentially a person on the margin, far removed from the center, where dominant groups are situated. Over against this negative description, the immigrant can choose to lay the stress on the "in" of the definition and understand himself or herself as being "in-both" worlds. This "in-bothness" does not deny marginality; rather being on the margin is experienced as a challenge to participate to both cultural heritages. Being "in-both", the immigrant is called to be multicultural, to be open and receptive to both cultures, to blend the old with the new, with a view to producing a tertium quid. In this sense an immigrant is a hyphenated person par excellence, called to be "in-between" and "in-both," that is, to be "in-beyond" the two cultures that shape his or her identity.

To explore the implications of the presence of Asian immigrants for theology and theological education, and in line with the understanding of the immigrant expounded above, I would like first to present briefly the situation of Asian students of theology in North America (the United States and Canada). Secondly, I will examine some of the claims made for an Asian theology as distinct from Euro-American theology. Finally, I will unfold some implications of this vision of an Asian theology for theological education.

A PERPLEXED STRANGER IN ACADEMIA

In American census, the category "Asians and Pacific Islanders" designates a racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally disparate group of persons having origin in any of the indigenous peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, or Pacific Islands. It includes peoples from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippine Islands, American Samoa, India, and Vietnam. In the 1990 census, the population of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States was counted to be about 7.3 million, or 2.9 percent of the 250 million total U.S. population. This number represents more than a doubling of 3.5 million Asian Americans in 1980. Three-quarters of the numerical increase of Asian Americans during the past decade were due to new immigrants.

In terms of size, in 1990 the Chinese ranked first with 1.6 million, followed by the Filipinos with 1.4 million, next by the Japanese, Indians, and Koreans, all of whom numbered around 0.8 million, and then by the Vietnamese who were counted at 0.6 million. The number of the remaining Asians (e.g., Laotians, Cambodians, Hawaians, Samoans, etc.) was very small, representing about three percent of the total Asian American population.

Trends of demographic growth suggest that by the middle of the twenty first century, Asian Americans will make up ten percent of the U.S. population, a whopping increase from barely three percent in 1990.

Religiously, statistics on Asian Americans are highly unreliable. On the basis of the annual General Social Survey from 1972-1991, it is estimated that among Chinese, 19 percent are Catholic, 30 percent are Protestant, and 14 percent belong to other religions. Among Japanese, eight percent are Catholic, 38 percent Protestant, and 28 percent other. Among Filipinos, Catholics are the majority, 74 percent versus 20 percent Protestant. Among Indians, nine percent are Catholic, 33 percent Protestant, and 44 percent other. Among the Vietnamese, some 35 percent are Catholic. The percentage of Christians among Asian Americans is vastly higher than the one in their native countries (except the Philippines), suggesting a high rate of "conversions" of Asians to Christianity in the United States.

As is well known, there are very few commonalities among the Asians and Pacific Islanders, except what has been described as the "Confucian culture" among the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. It is from this cultural perspective that I speak of Asians in this essay.

One of the traits of the Confucian culture is the high premium put on education. Compared with white Americans with only 18 percent to have completed college education in 1980, among the native-born Chinese aged 25-64, nearly 45 percent have completed four or more years of college education; among the Filipinos, 41 percent completed at least four years of college; among the Japanese, 29 percent; among the Indians, 19 percent; among the Koreans, 35 percent; and a high percentage of the Vietnamese who came to the United States in 1975 (but not those who arrived later) have a college degree.

For a variety of reasons, an overwelming majority of Asian students choose a career in technical and professional fields such as computer science, engineering, and medicine. Only a very small number of them would go into the humanities. This brings us to students of theology. From the Fact Book on Theological Education published by the Association of Theological School in the United States and Canada for the academic year 1994-95, we have the following statistics for Asian students (see tables in the appendix).

From these data we can infer the following (see table 1):

1) There has been a steady and significant increase of enrollment among Asian students in the last six years (from 3,559 in 1989 to 5,169 in 1994). This is in contrast to the decrease in enrollment of white students, though the decline has slowed somewhat in the last two years.

2) The number of Asian students enrolled in advanced research degrees (e.g., Ph.D. and S.T.D.) is roughly equal to that of those enrolled in professional degrees (e.g., D. Min.). In 1994, 925 were enrolled in the D.Min. program compared to 943 enrolled in advanced research degrees. This belies the common perception that Asian students tend to go into practical disciplines or undertake academically less demanding degrees.

3) The number of Asian male students is vastly higher than that of female students (2,918 male to 962 female students in 1994). This gap may be accounted for by the current lack of opportunities for pastoral and teaching employment for women, but it could also be a symptom of the patriarchalism pervasive both in the West and in the Confucian culture of the East.

Besides these Asian Americans and Asian Canadians, there is another category of students, namely, non-resident aliens, that is, persons who are not citizens or nationals of the United States or Canada and who are in the country on a visa or temporary basis and do not have the right to remain indefinitely. In 1994, there were 5,169 such students (see table 2). It is not known what percentage of these are Asian but it is not unlikely that the number of Asians among them is significant. At any rate, in 1994 the total headcount enrollment of Asian students amounted to about eight percent of the headcount enrollment of all students in member schools of ATS (see table 3).

I am not aware of any systematic studies of the lives of Asian theology students in the United States and Canada, their hopes and dreams, their successes and failures, their challenges and difficulties, and their post-graduation careers. Having been a foreign student myself for ten years, and having lived in America for over 20 years, I can only make educated guesses at these things; but even then my projections may be widely off the mark because my world was so different from that of today Asian students.

There is however one item of information that is of interest, namely, the number of Asian professors. The Fact Book on Theological Education reports that the racial and ethnic composition of faculty at ATS schools has changed little since 1989. Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics represent a slighly larger proportion of total full-time faculty, but Whites remain nearly 90% of all full-time faculty. In 1989 there were 42 Asian faculty members (of whom 39 were male); in 1994 there were 68 (of whom 60 were male). In 1994 the total faculty was 2,817, of whom 2,184 were male. This means that Asians as well as other minority students still learn theology primarily from Whites and males (see table 4).

Being immigrants, Asian students are "in-between" and "in-both," not only culturally but also academically. Many of them, particularly those who did not have a high school or college education in this country, may not be proficient in English, both spoken and written. A majority of them come from a religiously conservative background, schooled in traditional practices of piety, while the academy (even the seminary) is often liberal, at least by their standards. They tend to be passive learners and hold their professors in deepest respect, while the American system of higher education emphasises independent research and their teachers often expect them to be fellow travelers on the voyage of intellectual discovery. In most American universities, theology is often practiced as an academic craft, with its scientific methods and canons of scholarly excellence, whereas in the Asian tradition it is more a spiritual discipline with personal transformation as its goal. Very rarely do professors refer to the religious traditions of Asia with their sacred texts and rituals, their doctrines and practices, so that Asian students cannot see the connections between Christian faith and theology on the one hand and their native cultures on the other. Asian students may find these unfamiliar things exhilarating opportunities for growth, but unless they can synthesize the new acquisitions with the old treasures of their cultures, they will become perplexed strangers in the academic grove.

THEOLOGY AS CRITICAL REFLECTION ON THEOPRAXIS IN THE ASIAN STYLE

But do Asian theologians practice their craft differently from other theologians, especially their Euro-American colleagues? Do they possess another way of knowing reality and do they avail themselves of different resources for constructing their theologies? Would it make much difference if Asian students were apprenticed to Asian theological masters or at least to professors immersed in the Asian cultures? Would they read the Scripture, interpret the Christian tradition, and live out their Christian discipleship differently? Would they come to a different understanding of God, Jesus, the Spirit, the church, the sacraments, worship, ethics, and pastoral ministry? Would they come to a new appreciation of the presence of God in their cultures and the histories of their peoples? Would theological education take on another shape as a result?

In the last two decades, Asian theologians, both in the United States and in Asia, have been voicing a trenchant critique of Western theology. Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lankan Oblate of Mary Immaculate, decries Western theology as largely irrelevant to Asians, tribalistic, church-centered, clericalist, patriarchal, pro-capitalistic, devoid of socio-economic analysis, and lacking orientation toward praxis. Aloysius Pieris, a Sri Lankan Jesuit, regards Western theology as unfit for the Asian situation of crushing poverty and deep religiousness. Choan-Seng Song, a Presbyterian Taiwanese, faults Western theology for being overly rationalistic and lacking theological imagination. Jung Young Lee, a Korean Methodist, criticises Western theology for its exclusivism based on the Aristotelean logic of the excluded middle. Many Asian women theologians reject Western theology's patriarchal image of God, predominantly male interpretation of the Bible, overemphasis on the maleness of Christ, and propagation of an anti-woman Mary cult.

To some, these criticisms may sound too harsh and unjustified. But the point here is not whether they are accurate or undeserved; rather it is that there is a widespread perception that Euro-American theology is at least not meaningful or relevant to Asian peoples, and a significant group of Asian theologians, most of whom belong to the "Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians" (EATWOT), have recently attempted to construct an alternative theology based on Asian methods and resources.

Prior to these theologians, there have been others, mostly Indian, who undertook the task of formulating a Christian theology on the basis of their own cultures. For example, attempts have been made to understand the Trinity in terms of the trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Other theologians sought to present Christ in terms of Hindu theology, e.g., Jesus as Prajapati (Lord of creatures), as Cit (consciousness), as Avatara (incarnation), as Isvara (the cosmic Christ), as Guru (teacher), as Adi Purasha (the first person), as Shakti (power), as eternal Om (logos), as Bodhisattva (the buddha who postpones enlightenment in order to help others achieve nirvana).

In the last two decades, a younger generation of Asian theologians, including several women, mostly under the influence of Latin American liberation theologians, have applied new methods and brought new insights to enrich the older, more culture-based approaches. The result is a new way of doing theology not only in but also of and for Asia. Of course, no Christian theology can be entirely new, but there are undeniably novel features in this emerging Asian theology that need to be highlighted to answer the question of whether identity claims affect our way of doing theology and theological education.

1. Like Latin American colleagues, Asian theologians insist that theology is only a second act critically reflecting on the first act which is commitment to and solidarity with those who struggle for full humanity. Since this praxis is inspired by God's preferential love for the poor and the oppressed realized in and by Jesus Christ, it may be called "theopraxis". Theology is not "God-talk" based on some canonical texts in search of a practical application. Rather it originates from Christian praxis, moves to critical reflection, and returns to praxis, and the circle of praxis-critical theory-praxis repeats itself again and again in ever new contexts.

2. The Asian contexts are discerned by means of a double method: social analysis and what Aloysius calls "introspection." The former, popularized by Latin American liberation theologians, is used to identify the structural causes of the situation of poverty and oppression of the teeming millions of Asians such as colonialism, neocolonialism, economic exploitation by multinational corporations, institutionalized violence, and military dictatorship. The latter, perfected by Asian sages, must also be pressed into service because Asia is characterized not only by poverty but also by a pervasive religiousness (what Pieris calls "cosmic religion"). After all, Asia is the birthplace of all world religions, including Christianity (what Pieris calls "metacosmic order"). Without the second element, no theology can be authentically Asian. In such a theology, both the "gnosis" of non-Christian religions and the "agape" of Christianity are brought together to produce a truly liberative theology for Asians.

3. To interpret what the Christian faith means for Asians, Scripture and Tradition will of course serve as a resource for Asian theologians. But they reject the hegemony of historical criticism as the only or predominant method of interpreting the Scripture, though they recognize its usefulness to discover the original meaning of a biblical text. For them the primary task of biblical hermeneutics is to concretize the Word of God in the contemporary context for the people of today, and not simply to unfold the literal meaning of the text. In other words, the interpreter must not only discover the world behind the text but also appropriate the worlds in and in front of the text for personal and societal transformation that is the culminating moment of the hermeutical enterprise as a whole.

To achieve this goal, Asian theologians insist that all biblical interpretation must be contextual. The interpreter must be cognizant not only of the context of the text but also of his or her own context, that is, his or her social location as well as his or her gender, class, and race biases, and the socio-political and religio-cultural context in which the Bible is being proclaimed. Neither the text nor the interpretation of the text is ever objective, if by objective one means ideologically unbiased. The text is written by the "historical winners" who do not simply tell the story but their story, and the interpreter must be aware of the interplay among knowledge, power, and interests to identify the distortions and dysfunctions in the text and possibilities of transformation.

In light of God's preferential love for the poor and given the presence of teeming masses of the poor in their continent, Asian theologians take the perspective of the poor as the lens or focus in reading the Bible. The uppermost question in their mind is: How can the message of the Bible become good news for those who are poor, oppressed, and marginalized?

Because of the overwhelming presence of non-Christian soteriologies in Asia, Asian theologians also require the the practice of an interfaith or multifaith hermeneutics. They abandon the earlier apologetical approach of using the Bible as a yardstick to judge the sacred texts of other religions. Rather they read the Bible in light of the other sacred texts and vice versa for mutual cross-fertilization.

4. But Bible and Tradition are far from being the only resources for Asian theologians. An Asian theology must dig deep into the humus of Asian cultures to find therein the resources for its development. As Choan-Seng Song points out: "Resources in Asia for doing theology are unlimited. What is limited is our theological imagination. Powerful is the voice crying out of the abyss of the Asian heart, but powerless is the power of our theological imaging."

The first resource is the billions of Asian people themselves with their stories of joy and suffering, hope and despair, love and hatred, freedom and oppression, stories not recorded in history books written by victors but kept alive in the "dangerous memory" (Johann Baptist Metz) of the "underside of history" (Gustavo Gutiérrez). In recent years, "people" as doers of theology have assumed a special role in Asian theology. Korean theologians have developed a distinctive theology called "minjung theology" as a faith reflection of, by, and for the mass in their struggle against oppression.

The second resource is a subset of the first, namely, the stories of Asian women. Given the pervasive patriarchalism of Asian society, the stories of oppression and poverty of Asian women occupy a special place in Asian theology. As Chung Hyun Kyun has said, "women's truth was generated by their epistemology from the broken body." First, the women's stories (Korean minjung theologian Kim Young Bok calls them "socio-biography") are carefully listened to; a critical social analysis is then carried out to discern the complex interconnections in the evil structures that produce women's oppression; and finally, theological reflection is done on them from the relevant teachings of the Bible.

The third resource is the sacred texts and practices of Asian religions that have nourished the life of Asian peoples for thousands of years before the coming of Christianity into their lands and since: the Hindu prasthanatraya (triple canon) of the Upanishads, Brahma Sutra, and the Bhagavadgita; the Buddhist tripitaka (the three baskets) of the vinaya pitaka, the sutta pitaka, and the abhidhama; the Confucian Analects and the Five Classics; and the Taoist Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu, just to mention the most well-known Asian classics. These writings, together with their innumerable commentaries, serve as an inexhaustible fountain of wisdom for Christian theology.

Intimately connected with these religious texts is the fourth resource known as philosophy since in Asia religion and philosophy are inextricably conjoined. Philosophy is a way of life and religion is a worldview, each being both darsana (view of life) and pratipada (way of life). To explicate Christian beliefs, Asian theology makes use of, for instance, the metaphysics of yin and yang rather than Greek metaphysics or process philosophy.

The fifth resource is Asian monastic traditions with their rituals, ascetic practices, and social commitment. This last element, namely, social commitment needs emphasizing. Pieris has consistently argued that the most appropriate form of inculturation of Christianity in Asia is not the Latin model of incarnation in a non-Christian culture nor the Greek model of assimilation of a non-Christian philosophy nor the North European model of accommodation to a non-Christian religiousness. What is required of Asian Christians is the monastic model of participation in a non-Christian spirituality. However, this monastic spirituality is not to be understood as a withdrawal from the world into leisurely "prayer centers" or "ashrams." Asian monks have always been involved in socio-political struggles through their voluntary poverty and their participation in social and cultural activities. At any rate, interreligious dialogue in all its multiple forms is an essential element of an Asian theology.

The sixth resource is Asian cultures in general with their immense treasures of stories, myths, folklore, symbols, poetry, songs, visual art, and dance. The use of these cultural artifacts adds a very distinctive voice to Christian theology coming from the deepest yearnings of the peoples of Asia. For example, minjung theology has made a creative use of real-life stories and folktales. These stories are narrated and sung at Korean mask dances (talch'um), opera (pansori), or shamanistic rituals (kut).

Will an Asian theology constructed along the lines indicated above and with Asian resources be different from an Euro-American theology? a Black theology? a Hispanic/Latino theology? an African theology? a Latin American theology? The question is perhaps otiose, since de facto Asian theologians have already produced a theology that is recognizably distinctive and different. This is obvious to anyone familiar with the works of Choan-Seng Song, Jung Young Lee, Kosuke Koyama, Kazoh Kitamori, Aloysius Pieris, M. M. Thomas, Stanley Samartha, Chung Hyun Kyun, Kwok Pui Lan, numerous women theologians associated with the Christian Conference of Asia and EATWOT, and minjung theologians (to mention only those whose writings are available in English).

The issue is how Asian theology students in North America can be made aware of these writings and more importantly, how can the Asian way of and Asian resources for doing theology be made available to them.

IDENTITY CLAIMS AND THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

As far as Catholic theological institutions in North America are concerned, the presence of Asians has not yet reached a critical mass to create institutional and curricular reforms. There are no schools of theology and seminaries with programs specifically designed to meet the needs of the Asian population, comparable to those for Hispanic students of theology (e.g., St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Florida and Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio). However, the presence of Asian students (mostly Vietnamese) is significant in some seminaries such as Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, University of St. Thomas School of Theology in Houston, St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, California, and St. Patrick's Seminary in Mountain View, California. (In the U.S., there is only one school of theology specifically for Asians, i.e., Logos Evangelical Seminary in California).

I have written elsewhere of the implications of multiculturalism for theological education in seminaries and universities, with respect to students, professors, curriculum, and institutional organization. I have insisted on the necessity of recruiting a critical mass of Asian students, of adding some Asians to the faculty and staff, of offering some appropriate courses on Asian languages, history, and culture, of blending liturgical and cultural celebrations, of attending to popular devotions and religiosity, of combining inculturation with social justice, and of fostering a spirituality which cultivates appreciation for otherness, empathy, and imagination. Rather than repeating my remarks about and my concrete suggestions for a theological education that takes into account identity claims, I would like to stress the fact that, if Walbert Bültmann's prognostication is correct, in the near future there will be more Catholics in South America than in Europe and more Catholics in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. Another fact deserving our reflection is that Christians, after two thousand years of history and three hundred years of mission, still form but the tiniest part of the Asian population. These two facts should disabuse us of the notion that Euro-American churches and their theologies, with their economic and ecclesiastical power, should be regarded as the paradigms for a universal ecclesiology and theological education.

As people engaged in theological education in a privileged world, we have the duty to promote that kind of theological reflection that fosters, within the catholic unity of the church, the four selfs of the local churches: self-governing, self-support, self-propagation, and self-theologizing.

Let us not repeat for our students the experience that Chung Hyun Kyun suffered: "My Third World awareness led me to question the colonialism and neocolonialism in theology. Throughout my formal theological education in Korea, I was taught all about the European theologies of Schleiermacher, Barth, Tillich, Bultmann, Moltmann, and Pannenberg, the so-called theological giants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I was not taught anything about Korean people and their theological reflections on Korea's history and culture. My learning in the university, therefore, did not help me to discern the activity of God in my people's everyday struggle in Korea."

To Chung's list of theological giants, Catholics can add Augustine, Thomas, Congar, Rahner, Schillebeeckx, von Balthasar, and many others. But the devastating effects are the same: the loss of self-identity and much worse, the eclipse of God in the joys and sufferings of Asian peoples.

Notes: The notes are not included here.