Semeia articles from March 2002

Semeia archives from March 2002

Introduction: whose Bible? Which (Asian) America?
March 22, 2002... Chicago Theological Seminary My Chinese husband... told me one day that he thought the stories in the Bible were more like Chinese than American stories, and added: "If you had not told me what you have about it, I should say that it...

From Babel to Pentecost: finding a home in the belly of the Empire.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT As the title suggests, this essay interprets Babel and Pentecost in relation to the U.S. context, especially as seen through the struggle and dreams of Asian North Americans for a colorful and just society. Through a...

Resident aliens of the diaspora: 1 Peter and Chinese Protestants in San Francisco.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT The book of 1 Peter was written to resident aliens in Asia Minor whose social location and experiences of marginalization were shared by Chinese Protestants in San Francisco in the nineteenth century. Like the Jews in 1 Peter's...

Uriah the Hittite: a (con)text of struggle for identity.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Uriah the Hittite is not the first person one remembers when one thinks about the story of 2 Samuel 11, popularly known as the story of "David and Bathsheba." However, if the readers, especially from minority groups, pay closer...

Home as memory, metaphor, and promise in Asian/Pacific American religious experience.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Whether forced or voluntary, exile is an uprooting, a displacement that is physical, metaphorical, or sometimes even both. Especially key to the preservation and reconstruction of our identity, culture, and community as...

Shifts in reading the Bible: hermeneutical moves among Asian Americans.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Asian American Protestant Christians changed their reading of the Bible as they became aware of changes in their contexts. The article focuses on changes in race relations covering the last half of the twentieth century....

Multiplicity and Judges 19: constructing a queer Asian Pacific American biblical hermeneutic.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT This essay suggests that the theme of "multiplicity" can be used in constructing a queer Asian Pacific American biblical hermeneutic. In particular, it focuses upon the narrative of the unnamed concubine in Judges 19, who, like...

The accidents of being and the politics of identity: biblical images of adoption and Asian adoptees in America.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT In his well-known 1998 memoir, Eric Liu reflects upon his identity as an "accidental Asian." Among the many issues of identity that Asian Americans negotiate, particular concerns emerge within and around the rapidly growing...

My father has no children: reflections on a hapa identity toward a hermeneutic of particularity.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT I do not have the privilege of speaking from a generally recognized social location. My mixed, or hapa, pa, heritage precludes me from claiming any one identity with integrity. I am both Asian American and Euro-American, and yet...

The "hidden manna" that sustains: reading Revelation 2:17 in Joy Kogawa's Obasan.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Joy Kogawa opens her seminal work, Obasan, with Revelation 2:17. Despite the insightful nature of the literary criticism that has accompanied the book, these accounts have not adequately addressed this biblical reference, which,...

America seen through a different lens: the Bible in the works of Yoshiko Uchida.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT In the literary works of Yoshiko Uchida, the Bible plays an illustrative but not necessarily a normative role in shaping the distinct cosmology for the Japanese American nisei (the second-generation) Christian community. This...

Writing new and joyful songs: con-versing with Joy Kogawa.(Interview)
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Joy Kogawa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel, Obasan, and thus a "canonical" figure within Asian American literature. In this interview, Kogawa talks about how she understands, reads, and uses the Bible. After...

Evangelical and mainline teachings on Asian American identity.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Asian American pan-ethnic congregations are emergent phenomena in the San Francisco Bay area. Yet ministers do not agree on their teachings on Asian American identity. Their institutional locations, as either mainline Christian...

The scandal of the "model minority" mind? The Bible and second-generation Asian American evangelicals.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Mark Noll argues in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind that the American evangelical subculture suffers from a lack of intellectual rigor, detailing evangelicals' problematic thinking concerning the Bible, science, and other...

Second-generation Chinese evangelical use of the Bible in identity discourse in North America.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Evangelicals dominate the landscape of Chinese Christianity in North America today. Their rapid growth parallels the influx of Chinese immigrants from Asia over the past three decades. As the children of these immigrants (who...

Hermeneutics and Asian American preaching.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Contemporary hermeneutical theories challenge Asian American preachers to examine, theologically as well as methodologically, the use of the Bible in their preaching. According to my analysis of recently published Korean...

Biblical Themes for Pastoral Care revisited: an Asian American rereading of a classic pastoral care text.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT Twenty years after its initial publication, William B. Oglesby Jr.'s book Biblical Themes for Pastoral Care still is consulted and used by seminarians and ministers who are interested in honing their caregiving skills by...

"The Bible tells me to hate myself": the crisis in Asian American spiritual leadership.
March 22, 2002... ABSTRACT In this short essay, I will share stories from my years ministering in Asian and Asian American contexts to explore when the Bible is useful in spiritual growth and when it is not. I will pose the metaquestion of why the Bible...

At the tables of an Asian American banquet.(Bible in Asian North America )
March 22, 2002... Being invited to celebrate the banquet table full of multivoiced (re)readings of the Bible in Asian North America is to acknowledge the privilege and the risk it enlists simultaneously. This banquet gathers and uplifts Asian North Americans...