By Dr. Ashish Varma, Indian American theologian based in Chicago, IL.
Being a Christian is complex, as we see in the entire New Testament, where the overwhelming recurring question is whether Gentiles have to become Jewish to follow Jesus. The answer is an unequivocal No. The same remains true today: Asian American Christians do not have to become generically American (conservative or liberal) to follow Jesus, never mind to participate in the adopted rights of citizenship, including the ones tied to Election Day.
This means that Asian Americans should not be easy to categorize as “red” or “blue,” and Asian American Christians should be able to imagine an Election Day without merely falling in line with a generic statistic about political parties and religious communities. Perhaps, if we brought our distinctiveness to the arena, we might be able to look at Election Day as a different kind of choice to present different kinds of candidates that reflect more than a certain cultural binary. Rather than be shaped by political parties, Asian Americans could resist assimilation and, instead, pressure the parties to morph.
