Julia Zhao was born in China, grew up in Toronto and completed a PhD at the University of Notre Dame before following God’s call into ministry. She completed an MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary and a certificate in spiritual direction with Oasis Ministries for Spiritual Development in May of 2023. An ordained minister in the PCUSA, she is the Associate Pastor in Residence at First Presbyterian Church in Valparaiso, Indiana. A childhood convert to Christianity, Julia is fascinated by the Holy Spirit’s movement in the lives of individuals and communities, especially through the ministries of preaching, pastoral care and spiritual direction. She is also passionate about serving the Asian American community through the ministry of spiritual direction. When not engaged in ministry, she enjoys long walks, cooking, audiobooks, spending time with friends and family and exploring new places.
When I first arrived in the United States as an international student, my status was “non-resident alien.” Five years later, this was changed to “resident alien” for tax purposes. It did not matter that I came from Toronto to the midwestern university where I was a graduate student and had a shorter commute home than peers from states in the south or west coast. I was an unmistakable stranger in this country where I was neither citizen nor permanent resident. In addition to dealing with many restrictions and the stress of border crossings is the constant sense that the community in which I was setting down roots and building life-long relationships, was not really my home. I did not really belong there or have a right to be there. My being present, in a place that had become home, is contingent upon forces that were often beyond my control.
This sense of displacement, of uncertainty and vulnerability is familiar to those who have experienced migration of any kind, but especially to immigrants and refugees who have no safe “homeland” to which to return. As a childhood immigrant to Canada, my sense of displacement was different from that of being an international student in the US. My family’s plan was to stay permanently in Canada. Over the years, I would receive the majority of my education in Toronto and become a Canadian citizen. My first years in China would fade into my earliest memories as the pressures of survival and assimilation became dominant.
And yet, there was always a vague sense that I was not quite home and yet did not have a home to return to. The frequent moves my family experienced during my first years in Canada exacerbated this sense of impermanence. But at the root was the loss of the first home and homeland. Author Suki Kim spoke of her experience of childhood immigration when she reflected that “when you lose your home at a young age, you spend the rest of your life looking for its replacement.”1 In every place that I have lived since leaving China as a child, there is a sense of not quite being in “my own place” even as I long to find a new home to replace the one I had lost.
A common theme in the Asian American experience is that of being the “perpetual foreigner.” Even for those born in the US, or other western countries, the perception that Asians are always foreign, never quite belonging to the places where they or their families have migrated results in assumptions that even those who were born in the US or immigrated in childhood cannot speak English, or are not “really American”. In less subtle ways, racism can escalate to violent levels as they did during the Covid-19 pandemic as Asians came to be blamed for the “foreign” pathogen in ways reminiscent of historical perceptions of Asians as “the yellow peril.” There is this foreignness even in “positive” stereotypes of Asians as “the model minority.” Theologian Grace Ji-Sun Kim states that “the Asian American remains meek in the dominant American imagination-taking place in the quiet homogenous, resigned, productive and advancing enclaves of society.”2 It is perhaps not so much the cultural tendencies of Asians to be compliant as it is a necessity forced upon those always perceived as foreign. After all, one must constantly be on one’s best behavior when one is in someone else’s home, whether as a barely tolerated outsider or as a honored guest.
The experiences of displacement and foreignness have a complex history in the Bible. Israel’s history is marked by wandering and exile. Again and again, the people of God resided in lands ruled by others. God’s covenantal faithfulness was not so much about always guaranteeing them a home as it was the promise to always be with them and to hear their prayers when they cry out. In their own land, God commanded them not to mistreat the stranger because they were themselves strangers in Egypt (Exodus 22:21). However, Israel would practice their own exclusion when it came to conquering the lands of others and, in the time of Ezra, excluding the foreign wives of Israelites and their children (Ezra 9-10, Nehemiah 13).
In the New Testament, Jesus’ life was one of continuous exile. He was born to a conquered and oppressed people. His birth in Bethlehem was the result of a decree of Caesar to count the people he had conquered in order to further tax and oppress them (Luke 2:1-5). Not long after his birth, his parents were forced to flee with him to Egypt as they desperately tried to keep him safe from a king willing to slaughter infants and family members alike in order to maintain his own power (Matthew 2:1-8).3 Throughout his ministry, he and his disciples wandered throughout Galilee, accepting the hospitality of others while having no home of their own. When a potential disciple said that he would follow Jesus wherever he went, Jesus replied that “foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). His death, by crucifixion, was through a method of execution specifically reserved for those who were not Roman citizens.
For the first centuries of their history, Christians understood well the reality of being strangers and foreigners. Much of this was due to persecution and not having an established public identity and power.4 Early Christian writing expresses the uncertainty and sometimes desperation of their situation in the places where they lived and its associated understanding that Christians do not really belong in this world. Complete belonging and safety will not come until the full realization of the Kingdom of God. In the meantime, Christians must bear the cross of their suffering in the present while they work to anticipate and bring about the coming Kingdom and to bring others into it. 5
As Christians became more established and their faith became the official religion of the Roman empire, they too came to oppress and persecute others. In the Middle Ages, Jews in Christian lands often fared worse than those in Muslim lands.6 In the history of the United States, Canada as well as other western nations, Christianity has not stopped and has sometimes exacerbated racism and xenophobia. The fact that their own siblings have sometimes faced persecution for their faith or ethnicity have not stopped Christians from the oppression of others.
What can this checkered and complex history offer to those who experience displacement today? Does being Christian make a difference in the lives of Asian Americans and others experiencing displacement? What kind of a home does make a difference, or what can the church offer to those searching for such a belonging place? What role does, or has predominantly Asian or Asian American churches play?
The answers to these questions are as complex and individual as the experiences of Asian Americans themselves. In my own life, coming to know Christ and receiving baptism within two years of arriving in Canada helped to assuage the sense of alienation and loneliness I felt in a new land but did not entirely remove it. I stayed away from predominantly Chinese churches as a teenager and emerging adult, even as I begin to discern a call to ministry, both because of my desire to assimilate into “mainstream” Canadian culture and because I feared, rightly or wrongly, that predominantly Chinese churches would be too “traditional” and replicate the dynamics of power and patriarchy that I had experienced as a girl and young woman in Chinese culture.
Thus my relationship with the church created another layer of alienation with my Chinese heritage as I subconsciously equated becoming Christian with becoming Canadian. The support and love that came my way from the Christian communities to which I belonged was unmistakable and I was fortunate to have experienced limited explicit racism in those contexts in a multicultural setting like Toronto. However, a sense of alienation remained as I had no space to integrate my ethnic heritage into my faith and vocation or to allow the loss and trauma of immigration and displacement to come to the surface. I still longed for home even as I was told, and believed, that I was already home.
Other Asian immigrants and Asian Americans have experienced variety and complexity in their relationship with the Church. In Kenneth J. Guest’s book God in Chinatown, he describes the experience of immigrants from Fuzhou to New York, who found that not only has their faith in God been a place of safety and refuge in their difficult and dangerous journeys to the United States but that after they arrived, Fuzhounese churches offered emotional and spiritual solace as well as connections and practical help for survival. Just as poignantly, the community of Christians offered them another form of identity. Whereas outside the doors of the church they were illegal immigrants in danger of prosecution and deportation, inside they were children of God and citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.7
On the other hand, Grace Ji-Sun Kim recalls that when she immigrated with her family to the predominately white suburb of London, Ontario at the age of five, she experienced racism and xenophobia at school where she was continuously asked “What are you?” and was told that Koreans were not real and did not exist. In the Korean Presbyterian Church that she and her family attended, on the other hand, she experienced sexism as a woman in a patriarchal context.
Such complexity reflects, in some ways, the complexity in the history of the Church’s identity as and treatment of the marginalized. Returning to the question of what can the Church and especially Asian American churches offer to those searching for home or experiencing displacement, perhaps the answer(s) are in the complexity itself.
The answer is perhaps not what I received as a child and teenager in the church, that I was already home, that I belonged to Jesus and was a child of God and that was enough, anything more would need to wait for heaven. The answer is perhaps also not, or at least not exclusively binary in the church being simply a place of practical aid and refuge or a place of oppression. The answer, at least tentatively, is perhaps that the church is a place to begin the journey home together.
This journey involves acknowledging the complex and checkered history that the church has in relation to being marginalized and marginalizing others. This does not take away from the many ways in which faith in Christ and the community of the church have offered hope, safety and refuge for those who need it the most. This journey also involves acknowledging the ways in which the church has both been a source of belonging and a source of alienation, home and also the place that has felt most like “someone else’s house.” All of these complexities are a part of the reality of the church’s history and present.
For predominantly Asian or Asian American churches, the challenge is also to acknowledge the complexity of their people’s relationship with them. While many Asian and Asian American Christians have found belonging, opportunities and connection to their heritage in their churches, many, like Grace Ji-Sun Kim, have also found marginalization and alienation. Research has found that Asian American clergywomen often serve predominantly white congregations because predominantly Asian congregations will not support their ministry as women. Acknowledging the experiences of these and others allows for journey towards more inclusion and acceptance while being honest about the pain that the community has caused.
Acknowledging these complex realities can offer a place to begin accessing Christianity’s rich spiritual, intellectual and emotional resources for healing and belonging as well as justice and advocacy. Scripture and Christian tradition depicts a God who not only cares for the displaced and vulnerable, but who came to be one of them. Scripture and Christian tradition also recounts conquering the lands of others, enslaving and slaughter of people and persecution and exile of “outsiders” and religious authorities who use God’s authority to justify and encourage this. Honest wrestling with the latter is prerequisite to sustainable access to the former, not only for the purposes of personal healing but also for advocacy on behalf of others.
It is also in acknowledging this complexity that allows for the journey toward hope of redemption. When not used to excuse present or historical injustices, the recognition that perfect belonging and perfect justice are impossible in the present life and in communities consisting of human beings can be healing and empowering. Christian hope remains hope for resurrection and redemption of all creation. Even as we work to realize the justice and mercy that God calls for, the recognition that God is the One who will ultimately bring it forth in the coming of the Kingdom can tamper unrealistic expectations while providing energy and hope for the presence and sovereignty of a God who promised to always be present and to go ahead of God’s people.
Ultimately the declaration that “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household” (Ephesians 2:19) is a promise of the salvific work of Christ and a challenge for the people of God, to work towards communities in which this is true for all. Embracing the promise and taking up the challenge involve a communal journey that includes repentance, honesty and complexity as well as healing, hope and redemption.
Suki Kim, Without You, There is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite, a Memoir (New York: Crown Publishing, 2014), 10.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Invisible: Theology and the Experience of Asian American Women (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021), 1.
Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1993).
Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies and Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).
For example, Cyprian of Carthage reflected that “We should reflect constantly that we have renounced the world and as strangers and foreigners we sojourn here for a time” (On Morality ch. 3).
Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael’s House: a History of Jews in Muslim Lands (Toronto: McClelland & Steward, 2010).
Kenneth J. Guest, God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York’s Evolving Immigrant Community (New York: New York University Press, 2003).
Wow. This quote, “The answer, at least tentatively, is perhaps that the church is a place to begin the journey home together” hit home.
I’ve struggled with this idea of heaven being home. If that’s the case, do we just forsake this world?
No. “Church is a place to begin the journey of home together.” And a step in that journey towards home is embracing our ethnic heritage and identities that shape our faith and communities.
I’ve skipped over my Koreanness as either irrelevant or have even been ashamed of it.
But now, more than ever, it is time to embrace the Koreanness of my faith.