In recognition of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, I share the journey of my achievements and struggles as a person of Asian descent in our church, and in our nation.

I immigrated to this country when I was seven years old, and the kids teased me by telling me to go home.

I learned to speak, dress, publicly act like the dominant culture, and people still told me to go home.

I graduated from college and became a productive citizen in our society, and people still told me to go home.

I graduated from seminary and served in a predominantly white denomination and church, and people still asked me, “When do you plan on going home?”

I considered serving in an Asian church but the immigrant Asian pastors and community elders felt I wasn’t Asian enough because my voice and language wasn’t theirs; I felt they were telling me to find a new home.

I served this country as a military chaplain for 21 years and held the hands of brave warriors as they entered life triumphant, and people still tell me to go home.

I supported and defended the Constitution while rocket-propelled grenades exploded around me, and people in this country still tell me to go home.

I moved up in the ranks of the military chaplaincy, higher than but for one other Asian in its history. Yet when I see that among the 37 senior ranking chaplains, there are only three chaplains of color, I hear them saying to me, it’s time for you to go home.

When I disagree with siblings in our church who tell me that the historical western theology, ecclesiology, vestment, and style of worshiping is normative, I feel like they are telling me to go home.

But America and this church is my home…the home I love, the home I’ve suffered in, and am willing to die for, the only home I really know.

When can I be home without people telling me to go home?

My story is one of many in the landscape of AAPI experiences in the ELCA, and in our nation.  Covid times have simply confirmed how so many do not view us as fully American. In fact, the surge in anti-Asian harassments and assaults solidified how this destructive view is still deeply embedded in the American psyche. Yet, with deep roots in the history and culture of our nation, our voice and contributions are very much a part of the American experience.

Together we can build toward a world where people of every background can be safe and can thrive. May God’s people show what church together means, in our actions for justice, and for peace.

bio  The Rev. Herbert Shao is a Director of Evangelical Mission for the Northwest Washington Synod.  He is also a member of the Association of Asians and Pacific Islanders-ELCA, one of the six ethnic associations of the ELCA.

In his Daily Meditation of February 6 on 1 Corinthians 12, Rev. Richard Rohr writes “Humanity consistently has to face the problem of unity and diversity. We’re not very good at understanding it. We habitually choose our smaller groups, because we don’t know how to belong to a larger group. That demands too much letting go.”

He notes that Paul’s doctrine of the Body of Christ “isn’t easy for Westerners to understand, because we are deeply trained in cultural individualism. So much so, we don’t even recognize our lack.” It seems impossible that anyone with eyes and ears open could fail to recognize the pervasive individualism in our country. For many, the synonym of “it’s a free country” is “you can’t tell me what to do.”

One advantage of belonging to a large group with internal diversity like the ELCA is that we can see varied cultures within a group whose defining culture we share. During Arab American Heritage Month, I would like to discuss an element of Arab-Middle Eastern culture that might help elucidate a different way of being in a group, a way of “letting go.”

For most of my life, the common translation of the Transfiguration story in Mark included a voice saying, “This is my beloved Son.” In more recent translations, we hear, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” These two versions may sound pretty much the same, but they are not. In the first, “beloved” is an adjective describing the son; in the second “beloved” is a name for the Son, an identification by relationship.

Almost anyone who has grown up in an Arabic-speaking family – even a person who didn’t master Arabic – knows the Arabic (and Aramaic) word for “beloved.”  It is a word we have heard dozens of times a day as parents and grandparents call to us and our siblings: habibi/ habibti. “Ya habibi, tha,” they might say. “Oh, my Beloved, come here.” While it sounds stilted in translation, it sounds quite appropriate in context. Importantly, it constitutes the replacement of a name by a relationship.

For many of us represented by the groups of color in the Church, our personal cultures insist that one’s identity is, at least in part, other-oriented. We shape identities based on our family and our community. In the case of those of Arab and Middle Eastern heritage, there is a sense that we are nothing without a family and community to help define us.

The internal relationships of Arab families reflect this cultural reality. Imagine, for example, a young Arab man named Ibrahim and his wife Mariam who have their first child, a son, whom they name Yusuf. From Yusuf’s birth he will be called Ibn Ibrahim, “the son of Ibrahim,” but his parents will also take on new names. They will be from that point on called Abu Yusuf, “father of Yusuf,” Um Yusuf, mother of Yusuf” by friends and family.

I have heard non-Arabs denigrate this custom: “Why should I give up my identity just because I became a parent?” But that is really the crux. This approach is not giving up one’s identity but expanding it in terms of relationships. In Arab culture, one is not defined in isolation but in connection, in relations. And that is a lesson those of Arab-American heritage can share with the Church: we cannot be fully who we are meant to be if we remain isolated individuals.

In his prayer at the Last Supper in John 17, Jesus describes how he views the ideal relationship with us: “that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us … that they may be one even as we are one.” Here, I believe, is the core of Jesus’ prayer and its most complex and mysterious part. When Jesus suggests that his followers can be one as he and his Father are one, he takes us directly to the mystery of the Trinity. In distinction from the other Western monotheistic religions, Christianity alone posits the person of God as built on relationship, a unity without uniformity. In praying that we be one as Jesus and his Father are one, he is envisioning a future in which his followers will take their identity in part from their relationships with others, unified but not uniform.

Dr. Ryan A. LaHurd is a spouse, father of two, and grandfather of five. He served as president of Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory, N.C., an ELCA higher education institution, from 1994-2022. Dr. LaHurd, an Arab-American of Lebanese ancestry, has served as a teacher, administrator, author, and leader in many capacities, including with the ELCA Association of Lutherans of Arab and Middle Eastern Heritage. He and his spouse Dr. Carol Schersten LaHurd are members of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chicago.

Last Wednesday afternoon, after a day of virtually meeting and planning with Metro Chicago Synod (MCS) pastoral staff, I closed the Zoom window on my computer. Satisfied with our collective work, I took a deep breath, grateful for a wonderfully dedicated and highly competent team.

After a few moments, I glanced at my phone. Immediately, I realized that the notifications and text messages that I had received throughout the day were more than I could count. Friends, family, and colleagues, many of whom are of African descent, had reached out to me, shocked. Many texted me similar words. “They would have shot us,” they said, again and again.

“If it was us, we would’ve been shot.”

I opened the office door, shouting into the empty space, “What’s going on?” Two others were in the office. Neither of them had yet heard the news.

For me, Epiphany, January, the New Year, is a time of vision boards and new beginnings. Hope for something new greets us as we gaze at the child cradled in Mary’s arms. And yet, I saw no hope as I looked at this news.

As the headlines “The Capitol Under Attack,” “Far-Right Mob Attacks the Capitol,” “Mayhem in the Capitol,” and so on appeared on my screen, something happened in me psychologically. For a moment, time seemed to collapse. As I watched white supremacists carrying Confederate flags into the US Capitol, I recalled images of the same flag flown by plane over sporting events in 2020 and carried into Charlottesville in 2018.

Seeing white supremacists walking freely in a place that symbolizes our democracy, I saw, at the same time, the white supremacists who’ve been encouraged at rallies and marches across our nation, year after year, as leadership at our highest levels has refused to call out bigotry, acknowledge systemic racism, or condemn racist violence against people who look like me.

Seeing this crowd in DC receive a pep rally and praise from the president, I recalled images of tear gas released on peaceful protestors on those same DC streets, and I recalled the president posing with our sacred scriptures, blessing violence against the peaceful crowds.

Lastly, as I saw images of men and women, known neo-Nazis, and holocaust deniers holding banners, threatening violence, and carrying weapons, met with very little police presence, I could not help but also see images of Anjanette Young, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, and countless others, flashing through my mind—one scene, one death, one trauma after another, after another, after another. I could not help but see officers acquitted of the excessive use of force and officers acquitted of murder based on assertions of fear—acquitted because they claimed to be afraid.

“They would have shot us,” I heard again the words of my siblings.

“If it was us, we would’ve been shot.”

Yes, in seeing the events in Washington DC last week, I saw the events not only of the past four years but of much of my life. And this was not my experience, alone. It was also the experience of countless Black people and people of color all across this country, those who reached out to me, and those whom I have yet to meet.

Indeed, Wednesday was more than Wednesday. It was trauma, reopened, flooding back in, and forcing us to relive those moments of pain and oppression, again and again.

For me, Epiphany, January, the New Year, is a time of vision boards and new beginnings. Hope for something new greets us as we gaze at the child cradled in Mary’s arms. But the events of this past Wednesday were nothing to look forward to. Indeed, these events once again highlighted the disparities that exist in our nation, reminding us again that the pursuit of peace, justice, and equity must never cease.

As we search for an alternative future, the future of God envisioned in Jesus’ teachings about God’s Reign of Love, I’d ask that you recommit with me to the work of dismantling white supremacy in our hearts and in the world. Will you do this?

I ask also that you’d pray with me for all those who are currently living with renewed fear and resurfaced trauma and pain.

Of our leaders, I ask that you take this moment as an opportunity to have courageous conversations with your family, neighbors, and community. We trust that when we gather in Christ, God might instigate change in even the most hardened of hearts and that God, indeed, is with us as we work toward a church and a world where nobody has to say, “If it was us, we would have been shot.”

Bio: The Rev. Yehiel Curry is the bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, ELCA. He was born and raised on the south side of Chicago, where he still resides with Lashonda, his wife of 25 years, and their three daughters, Shemiah, Ashirah and Shekinah. Rev. Curry received his Master of Divinity from LSTC. He served as pastor to Shekinah Chapel Lutheran Church until he became the bishop, and office to which he was elected on June 8, 2019.

You remember the story of Jonah and the whale, right? God commands Jonah to preach repentance to his foes in the city of Nineveh. But Jonah wasn’t down with being God’s little messenger. Not about that. Not to them. So, he booked passage on the first ship heading anywhere but there. The Bible tells us plainly that Jonah “ran away from the Lord.”

That worked out about as well as you would expect and after many storms and tribulations Jonah found himself in the belly of a whale; saved from certain drowning by a God with a plan. In the belly of the whale, the reality of the task being asked of him became clear to Jonah. In the belly of the whale, the enormity of the force sending him to Nineveh became clear.

When I announced my intention to go to law school my mother’s family became suspiciously excited. As I went through the application process I talked with them about this school or that. A couple of days would pass, then worked casually into the next conversation somehow would be the stats for that law school’s Criminal Law department. They weren’t subtle. But I of course they thought criminal law. My grandfather was the first Black Genesee County (MI) deputy in the 1950’s. He studied law then finished his career as a magistrate. His only daughter (my mother) was a probation officer briefly. 3 of his 4 sons are, to this day, sworn law enforcement officers. One of them even married a state trooper! Adding a prosecutor to the family would complete the set.

But my distaste for criminal advocacy was years old by then. I was a precocious (read: nosey) kid. I would listen to adult conversations and easily decipher their unimaginative codes. I heard the stories of unnecessarily brutal arrests, cases that went up on scant evidence, hanging judges, and “facilities” (jails and prisons) unfit for humanity. My relatives believed, and still believe, that change can come from within the system and at the very least the system was a little less antiblack during their shifts. But I had no interest in being in the criminal law space. And honestly, I had passively accepted the culture’s prevailing attitudes about crime and criminals. Some neighborhoods simply do require a stronger police presence. I too looked over my shoulder at ATMs for “super-predators.” I took Criminal Law and Evidence because they were required then filled my schedule with Federal Labor and Employment Law, and Alternative Dispute Resolution. I was going to work a standard 9-5 resolving employment contract disputes via forced arbitration clauses (and get filthy rich doing it!) I kept maps of all the exciting places my jet-set lifestyle was going to afford me. Nineveh was not on the itinerary.

After many storms and trials I learned that my skills and talents lay with legislative and executive advocacy. I learned the basics then studied and honed it as the science and the art that it is. I advocated for domestic violence survivors and employees unfairly paid. I advocated for the fair treatment of our immigrant siblings. I advocated for the poor, the unhoused, the mentally ill. I’ve traveled abroad waving the banner for ecological justice and climate change abatement. And then the children. Always the children. I even found time to advocate for more green space in my own neighborhood. Everything and anything except anything that touched on crime or policing. Sure #BlackLivesMatter. But I don’t have to be the spokeswoman for it.

Then I spent I my three days in the belly of the whale. To be more precise the month of October 2019 broke me. It excised whatever small trace of “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear from the police” remaining in my spirit. Early that month my favorite human, my nephew Xavier, turned 8 years old. He got a new video game that he just loved. He wanted to play it with me. All. The. Time. Sometimes late into the night. We did that. He’s unreasonably scared of spiders. It’s one of those truly annoying things I love about him. I’m constantly called on to go 2 or 3 rooms away and kill the spider that he defiantly heard and is certainly on its way to come and get us. Sometimes he hears them outside. When I’m in a particularly generous mood I go and hunt for his imaginary spiders outside our front door.

Stop right now and Google the name Atatiana Jefferson.

When the news of her death reached the nation something in me broke wide open. It wasn’t just the fact of her death. It’s that her death made headlines for less than one news cycle. I was angry and heartbroken and incensed and grieved and irate and perplexed and exhausted and dying inside. I’m not certain when I was swallowed by the whale. But I was for sure in the belly of the beast; driving along the beautiful California coast from Sacramento to Monterey to offer a keynote address at the synod professional leaders conference– blind through tears. I don’t remember, and it doesn’t really matter what I actually said to the Lord in my car that afternoon. “In my distress I called to the Lord, and the Lord answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and the Lord listened to my cry.”

Through the sacrifice of one beautiful black life, I fortified a voice that advocates for Black bodies.

I’m not yet in Nineveh. I am only now beginning to understand the reality of the task set before me. Through my television screen filled with visions of cities all over the world rallying and rising and rioting I am just now learning the enormity of the source sending me. I am stumbling and fumbling and walking slowly and being led by the Spirit and those who have been on the road longer. I’ve been practicing what I will say when I arrive. I’ve begun saying small snippets in places I would have never dared before. I’ve rallied more. I’ve organized more. Staff meetings are different with me around now (thank you for making space for this, Amy Reumann.) I’ve begun saying in larger and larger spaces that the system we’ve built around crime and punishment requires repentance. I’ve been inviting others into the conversation. But we have not yet arrived in Ninevah. There’s still room for you on the road.

Bio:

Regina Q. Banks lives in Sacramento, CA where she proudly serves as the Director of the Lutheran Office of Public Policy- California. She is very active in her community, dedicating most of her free time to organizing public advocacy to support a host of social and political causes. She is a lifetime member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (a public service organization) and, when permitted, shares her life with an ill-tempered chihuahua named Ender Jay.

On June 17, 2015, a white man named Dylann Roof entered a historic Black church in Charleston during a prayer meeting and opened fire, killing 9 people and wounding 3 more. Roof did not leave his motive in this shooting to our imaginations. He overtly and explictly espoused white supremacist beliefs and targeted the people of Mother Emanuel Church because of their race and commitment to civil rights.

He drew pictures of a white Jesus in his journal in prison.

I felt my stomach sink when I found out that Roof was raised in an ELCA church. 

I imagine that the church Roof grew up in was full of good and faithful people. From what I know, many people there are horrified about what Roof did. Our church may not have taught him white supremacy directly, but like many of our churches and beloved institutions, it did not do enough to teach him to resist it. His formation within the ELCA was not enough to teach him to recognize the image of God in the people who would become his victims. As a board member for the Euro Descent Lutheran Association for Racial Justice(EDLARJ), I have had the opportunity to witness the stories of our siblings of color in the ELCA through our partnerships with the many ethnic specific and multi-cultural ministries within our church. Many of the stories of people of color within the ELCA include painful interactions with white church members. As much as we want to hope that racism is something relegated to the past, the truth is that it is widespread and ongoing.

Many of us who are white grew up with the idea that talking about race is impolite or “too political.” We prefer to focus on things we consider “spiritual” in church and ignore the daily lived realities of our siblings of color. Talking about racism is uncomfortable. It is easy to feel defensive as a white person when we are asked to examine our own biases or be honest about the racism our country was built on. But our lack of courage in confronting these issues and our refusal to dismantle racism has real consequences. White supremacy has a body count. Even though we did not pull the trigger on June 17, our complacency as white people has made us complicit, and we have blood on our hands. The Emmanuel Nine is a part of that.

The ELCA has called for June 17 to be a day of Commemoration for the Mother Emanuel Nine, recognizing Clementa C. Pinckney, Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel L. Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson as martyrs. This commemoration is one step in a process of unlearning our own biases and tearing down corrupt, racist systems. On June 17 we are to remember these victims and to be in prayer, as the Emmanuel 9 were when they were slaughtered.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel who organized alongside Dr. MLK during the Civil Rights Movement has been quoted as saying that when he marched, he felt like his legs and feet were praying. Prayer begins with reflection but true prayerfulness leads to action. Our prayers should lead us into accountability, reparations, and reconciliation. This might look like attending an anti-racism training, getting involved in an issue campaign affecting people of color, or giving financial support to the memorial set up to be built in remembrance of the Emanuel 9.

God asks that we love our neighbor, and love requires justice. Because white supremacy was created for and benefits white people, it is the responsibility of white people to take on the work of unlearning the racism we have internalized as part of our socialization in a racist society. We must actively pursue racial justice, and as white people we have a particular role; to remember, to repair, to right wrongs. Let June 17 be a day we recommit ourselves to this struggle and to loving our Black siblings and in word and deed.

God of All, it is your will for people to be whole and free. We give you thanks for the life and witness of the Emmanuel 9. Grant that their faithfulness may be an example for all of us as we work towards an end to racism in our churches and communities. Remove the barriers that stand in the way of our collective liberation. Put an end to white supremacy and other systems of oppression. Connect us with one another and empower us to build a world where all people are safe and loved. In the name of your Child, Jesus Christ, who lives and liberates with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Bio:
Elle Dowd (she/her/hers) is a bi-furious recent graduate of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, an intern at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Logan Square, and a candidate for ordained ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Elle has pieces of her heart in Sierra Leone, where her two children were born, and in St. Louis where she learned from the radical, queer, Black leadership during the Ferguson Uprising.

She was formerly a co-conspirator with the movement to #decolonizeLutheranism and currently works as a community organizer with the Faith and Justice Collective and SOUL, writes regularly for the Disrupt Worship Project, and facilitates workshops on gender and sexuality and the Church in both secular conferences and Christian spaces. Elle is a board member of the Euro Descent Lutheran Association for Racial Justice, an organization that partners with ethnic-specific and multi-cultural ministries in the ELCA.