Church & State

Religious beliefs have a huge role in how voters decide their stances on candidates and issues. With that in mind, should a church be playing more or less of a role in civic engagement- and what is civic engagement, really? What does that look like in practice within the Asian American church? 

We sit down with Kathy Khang, a writer, speaker, and activist, to try to lay down some answers and definitions to these questions, and examine how differing understandings of civic engagement-- and a church’s role in it-- might lead to friction within Asian American Evangelical communities.

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Transcript

Kathy

Asian Americans, we were the people who were actually banned from entering the United States. There were laws against that. And so our entry point into the US and then our relationship to the church and to the Protestant faith is complicated. And so in light of that, I like to kind of shift conversations and help Asian Americans broadly to say, what can we learn from other churches whether rather than how do we compare? 

[Intro Tag]

Angela

Hey! I’m Angela

Amy 

Hey! I’m Amy

Angela

Thanks for listening to Fresh Off The Vote!/ We’re a grassroots podcast with a mission/ to make politics exciting and accessible./ Our team is 100% / self-identified Asian American Pacific Islander youth /ready to make waves for the November 2020 election./ We created the podcast as a home for conversations/ on the different key issues of the U.S. election and to discuss/ voter and civic engagement strategies for AAPIs /by AAPIs.

[Intro Music]

Angela

Welcome back! Today you’re going to be hearing from me and Amy. We actually don’t usually produce episodes, but both of us wanted to go out of our comfort zones and make an episode about a topic that is very near and dear to our hearts: Religion! Specifically, Christianity. 

Amy 

Angela and I both grew up in a chinese immigrant christian church, and that part of our identity has always been super integral when it comes to shaping how we view ourselves, others, and politics.

Angela

Grappling with the question of how our personal faith fits in with how we view different social and political issues has been an arduous, ongoing, sometimes deeply painful journey. That’s why we wanted to make this episode to speak on the  intersection of civic engagement and religion, specifically within our experience as asian american christians. 

Amy

should a church be playing more or less of a role in civic engagement- and what is civic engagement, really? What does that look like in practice within the Asian American Evangelical church? 

Angela

We had the honor of bringing in Kathy Khang, a korean american christian author and speaker, to help guide us in answering these questions. 

[Transition Music 1]

Angela

Whether we like it or not, pretty much 100% of us are familiar with the concept of Christianity in our lives, whether it’s because we know someone who is Christian, we’ve had run-ins with it ourselves, or we hear about it on the news. 

Amy

One reason for that is because Christianity is so much more practiced among the american population compared to any other religion: 75% of americans identify as christian. By comparison, only 42% of aapi identify as christian.

Angela

When you break down the numbers by different asian ethnic groups, however, we see a much larger variation in ratios: 

Amy

Indian Americans have the lowest percentage at 18%, while Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese americans are relatively the same at around 35%. 

Angela

Korean americans and Filipinos though? A whopping 71 and 89 percent. 

Okay Amy, so I think we need to clarify our words before we go too far into the   episode- what do we mean by christianity?

Amy

That’s a good question! Some of us might already have a preconceived image of what a Christian looks like

Amy

The truth is- just like how when we say “asian american” we obviously aren’t referring to just chinese or just japanese people- there are a TON of different groups of christians out there.

Angela

Within Christianity, there are various denominations- that’s just a fancy word for “groups”, or “branches” of Christianity. There’s the Mainline Protestants, the historically black protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, etcetera etcetera…

Amy

But majority of US christians are either Catholic or Evangelical Protestant at 20% and 25% respectively. 

Angela

Oh, and get this: there are denominations within denominations. So if you’re an evangelical protestant, you might be baptist. Or lutheran. Or presbytarian. And we haven’t even touched upon what Christianity looks like outside the US. 

Amy

Ok ok, we get it- basically, we wanted to focus on a subgroup of religion that’s specific enough to allow us to discuss unique trends and experiences we’ve observed, but general enough to avoid getting lost in the details. With that being said, throughout our episode we’ll mainly be referring to religion as American evangelical christianity, which is not only the area where we’ve had personal experience in, but also makes up a large percent of the general US population. 

Angela

And just as another side note: our experiences within asian american christianity is primarily limited to east asian culture because that’s the community we grew up in. we want our listeners to keep in mind that there is a large diaspora of asian americans, christians, and asian american christians that we simply can’t cover in one go.  If you are interested in learning more, there are a bunch of additional resources that we would be happy to connect you with.

[Transition Music 2]

Amy

Religion and politics are two huge topics to tackle, much less tackle together. 

Angela

But we thought we should touch upon the interaction of the two before we dive into our interview. To save us all from information overload, we’re gonna try to break down their relationship in two ways: religion in politics, and politics in religion. 

So first off, religious beliefs drive voting decisions for evangelical christians - there is a correlation that we can definitely establish.  

Amy

According to a survey by barna research in 2016, 75% of evangelicals claim that their religious beliefs have a lot of influence over their voting decisions. Compare that to 30% of non evangelicals, and 15% of other faiths. 

Angela

And to what extent should churches also be considered a political institution? No matter how much we try to separate church and state, there is an undeniable direct influence of religion within our politics

Amy

Take Joe Biden’s campaign in South Carolina, for example, where African-American voters comprise up to 60% of South Carolina's Democratic electorate. His team hired a South Carolina faith outreach director in August and announced the endorsement of 100 local faith leaders in December.

Angela

Biden ended up sweeping the South Carolina primaries, stealing nearly half the votes from the seven other Democratic candidates. 

Amy

Let’s take a look at politics in religion. Another pew research survey conducted this year shows that Most religious service attenders think that there is “just the right amount of political discussion in sermons”. A quick note that this isn’t specific to evangelicals, just christians as a whole.

Angela

That then begs the question: do millennials feel the same way- are they satisfied with the amount of political discussion in sermons? 

Amy

Well, even though that survey doesn't break down the data by age group, other studies show that millennials are hesitant to admit that they are christians bc they feel ill equipped to handle questions abt christian beliefs pertaining to human sexuality, female reproductive rights, and more

Angela

I’m personally reminded of the story of DeShawn Tatem, who was raised in the hoods and participated in gang life until one day he was approached by a woman who shared with him her Christian faith. After that, he set out to evangelize or preach to others about his newfound faith, determined to “go where the church would not go”- in jails, clubs, and rough neighborhoods. However, after a while he realized that his intellectual curiosity, his passion to take his faith to the streets, and a frustration at systemic injustice in his hometown, were incompatible with traditional christianity,  and left the church to found Yashua The Movement. Quick shoutout to the book Is Christianity the white man’s religion, where I pulled this story from.

Amy 

Also, what other things are happening beyond just “political discussion in sermons” that might influence how an attender interacts with politics?  Do any of those things fall under the category of civic engagement?

Angela

Alright, so that was a ton of questions and contextual information we just threw at you. Amy, do you think we’re ready to see if Kathy has any answers or insights to everything we’ve talked about?

Amy

Yeah let’s see what she has to say.

[Transition Music 3]

Angela

All right. So we're here with Kathy right now, Kathy, it's really good to have you here. We're super excited to hear your thoughts for the episode today. But before we ask anything else, why don't you start out with a quick introduction to our audience members.

Kathy

So my name is Kathy Khang, and I'm a writer, speaker and yoga teacher based in the north suburbs of Chicago. And my most recent book was from two years ago, I believe, raise your voice why we stay Silent and how to speak up. 

Angela

as Amy and I were outlining this episode, we kept on running into the issue of trying to tackle the difference between the church's definition of civic engagement and maybe how we understand it more broadly as society. So traditionally, churches have been involved in things such as donating clothes or money or helping out with food banks and food pantries. And we're wondering what exactly is the difference between participating in your community and partaking in civic engagement?

Kathy 

So I suspect that there are some generational differences here too, as well. And then a particular group, an ethnic or racial groups connection to the community itself. So when I think of civic engagement, it is fairly broad. So things like an ongoing soup kitchen or an ongoing food bank would fall under that category of addressing and dealing with issues impacting that community and meeting certain needs. Civic Engagement can also run the gamut of a church building serving as a voting precinct, or having guest speakers who are going to come in not necessarily on a Sunday, but maybe during the week to talk about the needs of the community and ways in which individuals and the church community as a whole could be involved. So I think that there are different levels to that because traditionally, immigrants, ethnic church communities are not necessarily in a church building, where the entire church community lives. So there's suburban sprawl, as well as churches that may have started in urban centers, and then moved out into the suburbs as people have moved as well. So I think there is a little bit of understanding and kind of looking at particularly for a American Christians? Are our churches rooted in the communities in which the congregation lives in? That gets a little tricky, because that's not always the case. 

Angela

Yeah, so within civic engagement and politics, it almost entirely centers around how we deal with our community. At the same time, the church also talks about how to be a good neighbor to others and how we serve those around us. And so therefore, that line between civic engagement and community participation is often very blurred

Amy

When it comes to our understanding of civic engagement, there's 2 parts. One deals with the way we interact with the community around us, the other, focuses on where we stand in said community - which begins with really engaging with our identities. So growing up, me and Angela didn't really experience conversations about our identities in our church. But then once we got into college, we became involved with parachurch ministries such as Asian American InterVarsity or AAIV for short, who DID focus more on those types of conversations. We asked Kathy how do groups like AAIV and their work fit in with civic engagement?

Kathy

parachurch ministries are technically outside, but work within and partner with the church, for those who are part of a religious community. So where AAIV fits with civic engagement is kind of that, you know that big gray space around helping college students wrestle with and understand the many layers of what it means to be a Christian, an Asian American, college educated and what that means when you return not only to your family but to your church community, and to eventually the community you will be working in and being involved with so parachurch ministries are not the church work alongside of the church tend to be

very contextual to the campus that they are working with and the students they are working with. And so because of that, I think the the level of civic engagement also really depends on the staff workers comfort level. as well as how engaged students are going to be on how those conversations are happening on their campus. 

Angela

Yeah, I like the point you brought up about it also depends on the individual's ability to engage in t hose kinds of conversations. Because I know when I first came on campus, like I was very overwhelmed with the style of AAIV on my campus because I wasn't very used to like merging hardcore conversations about Asian American identity with my faith and I was like, honestly kind of turned off at first I was like, Well sure doesn't fit what I thought was how a Christian community could look like. That's not what I grew up with. But as I like, who, along my Asian American identity within college, I more and more appreciated that take on Christianity. unfortunately, I couldn't be super involved in AAIV throughout my college years because I had a conflict with another club. I did, but I have very close friends within the group and I saw the value of the work that they brought. And yeah, it's definitely something that I had to grow into. And I'm sure a lot of people who weren't used to that style of church community like they probably right way too, right, right.

So what about beyond para ministry touches beyond AAIV? How do different churches take action in their communities in ways constitutes as civic engagement? 

Kathy

Well, again, I think It depends on how that how individual churches and church congregations identify with the community that they are physically occupying. There are historic Asian American churches that have been in this particular space most often in the Chinatown space or what once used to be a Japan town or, you know, a Korea Town. Little Saigon, those types of communities. If those churches one we're able to actually get a physical space and then maintain it through gentrification and changes in the community. How engage that church is in identifying

With this, the zip code, and the neighborhood and maybe even the block that they are on. And so I do think that for Asian American churches that that can be a challenge because there is the, the driving into church and then going back to your home. And so what that could look like, still is around those kind of traditional, you know, is there a soup kitchen or especially because of COVID and all of the economic downturns? Is there a food bank? Do you have

food distribution or as school su i pplies? You know, the school year kicks off? What kind of ways can a church meet the needs of a community, whether or not that is backed by a political party or political policy.

I think that one of the ways that Asian American churches have engaged the Asian American community around civic engagement is to also provide a space for cultural engagement. Right? So those cultural needs are not going to be met by the broader white population and the services that are provided. And so I think one of the unique roles for Asian American churches that are still connected to the first generation is that they can meet some of those cultural needs and provide some very tangible resources for language development, cultural lessons, things like that, that are not going to be bridged by social services.

Amy

Yeah, that there is an there is a need for a cultural bridge, especially that language barrier. It's almost as if we are equipping. We're doing the work equipping these people who might not otherwise have the resources to then go And be a more active member of the community. I personally, I have been a part of like, teaching English or teaching citizenship classes and I think, hmm, turn in the traditional sense, I never would have considered that to be related to civic engagement. But now it's like, pretty clear that there is that connection there. Even though it's not as obvious as running to the polls

Angela

Right. And at the same time, I think we need to recognize that this kind of action could have really only taken place in church, because in certain communities like ours, our churches are the only place where a lot of members of the older generation can congregate in one place and have the building space to be able to like have that kind of resource.

Amy

So now, kind of getting a little bit more spotlight on your personal experience. I want to I was wondering how your faith has informed your own civic engagement and what ways do they have you seen them intersect?

Kathy

 Hmm. So I will say that, you know, I grew up in a first generation immigrant church and was introduced to Jesus by a white male Moody Bible Institute intern who needed to have some sort of practicum and was placed in our immigrant church to do Sunday School for the English speaking kids who got tired of listening to their Korean speaking parents. And so I like to tell people I have a very complex relationship with the white Evangelical Church.

But I will say that I tell people that my activism is shaped and informed and fueled by my faith, that I have a belief that when I pray that God's kingdom become God's will be done on earth, as it is in heaven, actually means that as Christians, we are to be people working towards bringing hope and love and light and God's kingdom. Here on Earth, not in the sense of this should be a Christian country, but that we should be acting out of the values of Jesus. And because of that, I raised my voice, I became a US citizen, I decided that I was going to get involved in local and national elections. I was going to learn about politics and public policy, in part because I think that is one avenue of change. And I would love to see the church be a greater avenue of change. 

Angela

I think you bring up a really good point. One thing that I've heard a lot is criticism on the Evangelical Church about how they're good at preaching about, they will be done in heaven, but they can't exactly make that bridge between heaven and earth. Like there's not as much emphasis on Earth. Because Earth is where all the dirty work happens. It's where all like the pain and like the frustration and the effort has to happen. And so you kind of gloss over that and focus more on like, oh, and heaven, everything will be great. So like, prepare yourself, your individual, your individual life for that ultimate goal, while not realizing that, that kind of skips over your life here in your communities and how that looks like in day to day life. Yeah, totally, totally.

Amy

we've noticed that Christians of other races have been pretty bold about letting their religious convictions lead into civic engagement. For example, the black church was at the forefront of the Civil Rights move. MIT in the 1960s, and oftentimes that's used as a gold standard of how churches should practice civic engagement. On the whole other end of the spectrum. You got Westboro Baptist Church and churches involved in abortion protests, which we often want to forget about, but they also use their religious beliefs as basis for their protest. I wanted to know if you had any thoughts about where Asian American churches and Asian American Christians might stand in comparison

Kathy

So, you know, again, I think it's, it's hard because the even the label of Asian American is a socio political term. And it is so challenging because as Asian Americans we write even our connection is not necessarily our birthplace or a single narrative, but that we share some sort of biological tie to a continent. We don't share language. We don't share a history of how our ethnic group arrived here in the US. But what we do share is that that term is a way of encompassing and trying to harness socio political power. And that's something that I think churches as a whole are reluctant to talk about, despite the fact that they hold that kind of socio political power.

Amy

The socio-political power that Kathy mentions was actually the driving factor in the creation of what we know as “Asian America” and “Asian American”. Coined in the 1960s as a direct product of the Asian American Movement, this term was used to unite and push for social and racial justice as a unified group. Kathy is absolutely right in the fact that before that, we were isolated in our ethnic bubbles. For that reason, the concept of an Asian American Church did not develop until much later. 

Kathy  

So I think where do Asian American Christians stand? I think it's hard and and i would say, not necessarily. A, there is no way to compare that. You know, Asian Americans, we were the people We're actually banned from entering the United States. There were laws against that. And so our entry point into the US and then our relationship to the church and to the Protestant faith is complicated. And so in light of that, I like to kind of shift conversations and help Asian Americans broadly to say, what can we learn fr om other churches whether rather than how do we compare? Because I feel like our stories and our histories are so different. And then the, the, the place in which these churches and how they emerged, really are so varied, and what they've experienced are is so varied right when I think about Japanese Americans and the internment. That's not something thing that I as a Korean American have in my church history. And so how can we learn from one another? And then how can we learn from say, the black church in the civil rights movement? And what are some practices to avoid or even learn from Westboro Baptist Church? You know, not as a I affirm what they stand for and what they do, but what what are the things that they have done that are effective? Or what are some of the things that we don't want to mimic and practice ourselves? So I think there's actually a huge opportunity in which Asian American Christians can learn from history, and also to do some of our own homework in understanding how did our churches come to be? What is their relationship with, you know, white missionaries who went to our motherland's and what was that relationship? What did that look like? And how can we change that as we try to shape Asian American Christianity?

And the challenge is that like, even when I was an undergrad at Northwestern, I saw plenty of Asian Americans who are activists and engaged, they just weren't the Asian American Christians, by and large, there were a few but I saw a lot of activism and a lot of engagement, but it wasn't from the place of the church.

[Tense Transition Music 4]

Angela

When asian american churches do step up and try their hand at more “well recognized” methods of activism, it’s usually not completely integrated into other activist groups, and even sometimes doesn’t land well with others. One recent example of this is a prayer march held earlier this month by the Chinese Christian Union Church in Chicago. CCUC is a historic church in Chicago’s Chinatown, so when they coordinated with Asian American Christian Collaborative and Bronzeville’s Progressive Baptist Church to stage a prayer march to call for unity among black and asian communities, I along with other Christians saw this as a pretty favorable move forward in an effort to get Chinese churches to talk about race relations. On the other hand, some progressive critics found issue with the reluctance to directly communicate and collaborate with activist groups such as black lives matter, as well as a lack of effort to center black and black-asian voices. I asked Kathy what are some reasons that Asian American churches and communities choose to refrain from involving themselves in the activist portion of civic engagement. And when they do engage, it seems like they still have to hold back the reins and apply a lot of scrutiny.

Kathy

Sure. Well, in a lot of ways, I think that the reluctance to collaborate or associate directly with BLM is no different for the Asian American church than it is for white church. I don't really see a whole lot of white churches jumping on the BLM train. And I think it is around the language of Oh, all of the they are not a Christian organization. And so there is a lot of that churches whether they are Asian American or white. Or even black, the reluctance to affiliate with a specific organization or action that isn't specifically quote Christian. So in that respect, I want to, I want to kind of encourage Asian American Christian To say, like, stop beating up on ourselves. But let's ask questions about, well, what can we do? What kind of collaboration is possible? What kind of work? Could we do? And I think I you know, there there's that separation of church and state conversation that always comes up as well.

I mean, so even that it was called a prayer March. Right. So for those of us who are used to going to protests that felt significantly different, and it felt not like a protest. Right. But if that if that is the place, you're coming from them that prayer March would have felt very strange, right. And so there wasn't the chanting. There wasn't a there were lots of signs, right. So I think that that is part of the, I think, appropriate critique, and the conversation that organizers of that prayer March should be having with folks who are considered maybe more progressive, but also should be given some opportunity to say, hey, people are coming in seeing and experiencing a protest. This was different. You know, so how do we how do we welcome people who are expecting one thing but get another?

Angela

Hmm. That reminds me of a conversation me and Amy had about how we noticed that within like churches, it seems like they really like to separate themselves from secular movements that are going on because if it's secular like, we're not going to associate with it, like we have to create, like, a biblically sound version of it. And I agree that like we should be critical and things are going on in this world. But also, it there comes a time when you can't like separate everything into black and white. Like maybe there are movements going on in the world that are worth backing, but we are restraining ourselves in participating because we're limiting ourselves and every action needs to be founded in biblical truths. 

Kathy

and I think that there is something around you know, again, and a completely separate and long conversation on what is understood As biblical truth, And what I'd love to see are some more robust conversation. Around political and civic engagement from a Christian perspective.

Amy

Yeah. I think we what you were talking about is a really perfect segue into the next question. What is the role of a church then in engaging and creating safe space? And even facilitating conversations about politics that and civic engagement? I know growing up me and Angela, never felt that environment created in our church. But is it the church's role to bear this kind of responsibility?

Kathy  

I think churches, particularly churches that have a building, have wonderful opportunities to host a variety of conversations that do not have to center themselves to bring other community

leaders to talk about what may be going on in the schools on the village board at the library. I mean, like really, like, day to day conversations that can happen and could be hosted just even physically in the church. I think that, again, that conversations should also then lead to actions. and it doesn't have to be along party lines.

This November is going to be a very interesting, general election and communities are going to need poll workers and they are going to need younger poll workers who are healthy, who are multi or bilingual, and can provide a friendly face that is masked and socially distanced to voters. Right? So that that's not even you're not promoting a party, you're actually just going to be a physical presence at the polls for those who are able to go and vote. 

And that's, again, not something that I grew up hearing about at church. But I feel like my role when I signed up to be a poll worker was in part, to be a part of my neighborhood, and to be a part of my community, and I do that, as a Christian, I do that as a believer that I feel like it is important to be a presence in my community that gets involved in spaces that are not necessarily comfortable for me, I'm in a predominantly white suburb. I'm usually the only poll worker of color.  So outside of like a particular issue or two, right, what does it mean when we say that we are voting as Christians, like even that discussion, I think is an important one to have. Yeah, I was just gonna say I got ahead of myself cuz I was just so 

Angela

Kathy, I love this answer because bringing in what we discussed earlier in this interview, that aspect of die will be done in heaven as it is on Earth, like, What does Earth look like? And I think this answer provides a really good response to that. 

Angela

So I mentioned this earlier, I think before interview, the book that I was reading is Christianity. The white man's religion has a passage that calls for more pressure on encouraging people of color to pursue theological research and Bible Commentary so that we have more diverse voices from biblical scholars to help interpret different verses. So how do you envision if this were to hypothetically happen, hopefully, in the future? How do you envision the impact of these new diverse voices on how we view civic engagement in the church? 

Kathy

I hope it messes it up and makes it complicated and forces and invites people to have really hard conversations about what is it that we mean when we say we are Christians who are going to vote with our Christian values? Because a lot of times when I look at that, or when I have a conversation with someone who says that they're really talking about one or two issues, maybe just one, to be honest, right. And the issue is often around abortion and maybe sometimes around same sex marriage. And, and I, I want to see people going broader, then two issues because there is very limited space in the Bible that talks about those two issues, especially framed in a current modern society. Right. So what does that look like to have conversations, not only from white theologians, but lack theologians, women of color theologians, from the past and current ones. I hope that that I hope it makes our faith deeper and complicated and open to saying, I don't know. And so how do I approach things like civic engagement with more of an openness to saying, I'm not looking for a right result on this one issue? I am looking for a result that is much broader, that communicates the love and expanse love of Jesus.

Angela

I know Amy, and I can relate very, very much what you just said. Like there's a lot of liberation and admitting that you don't know things. like growing up, I don't think we felt comfortable to, to admit that out loud. Because it felt like we could be stronger like knowing the black and white answers to right seemingly black and white issues.

Amy

Yeah, and approach just approach things with a more open mind. I think that's really important in having these kind of conversations.

Kathy  

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's the and it's funny because right faith is it It the cornerstone of it is this kind of like, I don't know, I believe I have faith in something without no guarantee of the outcome. Because that is what faith is. And so I think that that is part of what I find connects With civic engagement and and then maybe getting more involved in politics is that I'm not always sure that the end result is going to turn out the  way I thought, But in that I can't let the result shift my faith so completely to say this system will never work. What can I do to maybe change the system so that it works better? And what are the small steps I can take to be a part of making that better? I think that that is part of that.

Amy

So I just want to end on a more forward looking note…

Kathy

Y'all need to register and vote. Register and vote you need to find out if you can register in the state in which if you are a college student, if you can register to vote in the state you are attending school, and if not registered to vote, where home base is and then vote, whether it's by mail and absentee voting or you know that you're going to be home and can vote in person. You need to vote and you need to get your friends involved. 

I would love to see engagements and conversations. I love what I'm seeing from Asian American youth. I feel so old social media, right? So we all know that Facebook is for old people, and even Instagram is kind of for older people. So, where are your tic? Tocs? And what are you learning and putting that up and sharing with people? What are some of the topics of conversation that you want to have? And look at from a Christian worldview? What are those things that you are working out? the conversations that you're having, and how can us older folk learn from you? Because I feel like that's where I am doing a lot of learning is that it's not just podcasts. I love podcasts. But what are the other ways in which we can learn from one another and push each other?

[Transition Music 5]

Angela

Just as how there’s a lot of diversity among ASAM’s, there is also just as much complexity within asian american christians, and more specifically evangelicals. This can be the source of a lot of frustration and friction when it feels like you want the church to be doing things differently than what you envision, especially when it comes to something like civic engagement. 

Amy

There’s a lot of reasons for this difference in perspective: intergenerational dynamics, divisions  of evangelical christianity, regional differences, man, I wish we could dedicate a whole series to talking about all of these factors! 

Angela

Yeah, it’d be awesome if we could continue to do episodes about AAPI Christian trends. Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot of empirical data out there- Amy and I struggled a lot when trying to find AAPI Christian specific data for even just this episode. That’s why we want to give a quick shoutout to the instagram account venndiagramforum. Apart from just providing a platform to discuss nuanced takes on Christianity and policy, Venndiagram forum is also collecting data on aapi christians and voting patterns right now so please, if you have a few minutes go fill it out!

Amy

Hopefully you were able to learn something today, but if you’re going to leave with anything, we  want to emphasize this: community participation, which is what we’re traditionally comfortable with the church doing, is part of the broader umbrella of civic engagement. But we have to be willing to push out of our comfort zone because in this day and age, community participation is almost like an easy way out.  there’s still so many opportunities for the asian american church and young asian american christians to serve the wider community and facilitate much needed change through other avenues of civic engagement 

Angela

And because of that, it’s an uncomfortable conversation worth having. 

[Outro Tag]

Amy

Thank you for tuning into this week’s episode of...Follow us on Instagram also at Fresh Off the Vote. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and Stitcher. We upload every single Monday! So stay tuned. There’s so much to cover during and up until, November. But is there something you think we should talk about? hit us up, we want to know.    Our team can’t thank you enough for your contribution and support. Thanks again everybody. This is Amy.

Angela 

This is Angela.

Amy

And we’re signing off.