We partnered with the Asian American Christian Collaborative to host a Latin@ and Asian American Christians United Against Racism panel. Two of our own represented on the panel: Reichert Zalameda, host of Questions from the Pew, and Emanuel Padilla, our president. We also had some regular contributors and friends join us from across Chicago-land. You can watch the event below. After watching, read the “What’s next?” response from Colton Bernasol.
A Response by Colton Bernasol
I am honored that I’ve been invited to give closing remarks on today’s event around Asian-American and Latinx solidarity. Filipino-American on one side of my family, and Mexican American on the other, my daily life has revolved around the many themes we’ve discussed. I am familiar with the insecurities and joys of coming from many languages and peoples, I am familiar with the challenges and gifts of immigrant contexts, I am familiar with the sounds of Spanish, Tagalog, and Cebuano, and I familiar with the limits I have with those languages – as close I was to them, they were and are, languages I cannot speak and cannot understand. Said differently, the themes we have discussed are deeply personal, indeed, intimately familial. So, I welcome and celebrate this dialogue.
I would like to close by proposing a set of practical suggestions. And to do so, as well as model the kind of companionship and solidarity which we have discussed, I want to draw on a helpful framework from Latin American theologians Clodovis and Leonardo Boff. Speaking about the need to engage in God’s call for liberation and justice on many fronts, the Boff’s distinguish between the popular (that is, the laity), the pastoral (the clergy), and the professional (academic theologians) to highlight the specific roles each member of the community has in advocating for justice.[1] Now, the boundaries between these dimensions are not strict. Often the laity act in pastoral and professional ways, and the professional theologian can often be a lay member or a pastor. But I find these categories helpful, as they will allow me to make concrete suggestions as to how our Churches and communities may participate in God’s collaborative and liberating Spirit, who is at work in the Asian-American and Latinx communities today. Because I need to be brief, I will focus on popular and pastor suggestions.
Reichert sharing about colonization history in the Philippines.
First, suggestions at the popular level. Companionship and solidarity are possible only where there is genuine community. And by genuine community, I mean regular and consistent dialogue, listening, conversation, and time lived together. Thus, it is important that Latinx and Asian-American churches at the popular level continue to create spaces where community is made possible. Bible studies, small groups, walks, conversations, and panels with small group discussions – these are the kinds of everyday venues through which Latinx and Asian-Americans may begin to learn about one another’s stories, lives, and histories. For instance, it is one thing for us to look objectively and consider in the realm of history the fact that colonialism and imperialism devastated both of our communities. It is one thing to read about the history of US colonization of the Philippines in textbooks. But it is entirely another thing to listen to the subjective experience of this devastation, to hear from those among us surviving the fall-out of such material, social, cultural, and economic destruction brought by the US. It is one thing to learn about deportation through listening to a NewYorkTimes Podcast, but it is another to share life with those experiencing the psychological and physical toll of the threat of deportation, a pain which is felt and shared by many in both the Asian-American and Latinx communities. Thus, what is required at the popular level are spaces where genuine community can take place. We must remember that God’s Spirit is moving among us, so it is in directly coming together that we participate in that Spirit.
Second, the suggestions at the pastoral. Pastors — and I’ll add those who have formal leadership role within institutional churches — have the resources, spaces, and authority to establish events and spaces where community and collaboration can be made possible. Practically speaking, it is much easier for small groups to form when they have the institutional resources behind them. Thus, leaders of the church need to facilitate these conversations so that our communities are not abandoned by the wayside and forced to figure out dialogue on our own. If the Spirit is moving Latinx and Asian-Americans into dialogue and community, then pastors — as proclaimers and witnesses of God — can embody their vocation by helping to create the spaces where this dialogue takes place and is sustained.
Pastor Paco Amador sharing about intergenerational dynamics in his church.
Let me add as well, that it is important that pastors take up these themes of racism, imperialism, colonialism, and Asian and Latinx community in their sermons. It is not enough to simply preach that God is loving or that God is just, though these claims are in fact true. But we must go further in elaborating what God’s justice means within the context of imperialism, colonialism, and racism as they have affected our communities today. If we do not name these realities, we risk preaching a word that is Abstract, to use the language of Theologian from El Salvador, Jon Sobrino.[2] And an Abstract Word is not the same as the Word who Dwells among us, the Word who takes up body and flesh in specific contexts, the Word who took up residence in Israel, the Word who fled into Egypt as Herod murdered children, the Word who lived a life preaching good news to the poor, downtrodden, and outcasts, and the Word present in the everyday life and world we share together.
These are brief and cursory remarks which require further elaboration. Nonetheless, I take it that these suggestions at least gesture as to how we can concretely move forward after today. Indeed, we must remember that panels like this are only beginnings, prologues at best. Genuine friendship will take time, intentional effort, and a commitment to one another’s flourishing. But I hope that with these suggestions, we may as communities and individuals move forward into that liberating Spirit which rose Jesus from the dead, and I believe, calls us together as we name our communal ties, build genuine solidarity, and fight against the injustice within and outside our communities.
