October 15, 2026, 6:00 PM
Fall Lecture by Rev. Donald Ng
Berkeley School of Theology—Center for Truth, Racial Healing, and Restorative Justice
2606 Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Asian Diaspora
When I was little, probably when I was in junior high, I used to look into the bathroom vanity mirror. I tried to squeeze my flat nose together to look skinnier. I tried opening my eyes wider to reveal that I too have a double-lid. One book I read at this time was Black Like Me published in 1961 by John Howard Griffin. Griffin, a white man who wanted to see what it would feel like to be a Black man. He darkened his skin temporarily, experienced racism, and wrote a book of his trials. But he was able to be white again.
Growing up as a Chinese in the US where the predominant group was white meant that everything that we need to know about to survive was in reference to being white. That color determined what beauty was like. That standard decided who is an American. That context framed what was included in our history books. I can wear Red Sox cap, have on an Eddie Bauer shirt, step into Nike sneakers, but I can’t whiten my skin or not have a flat nose.
However, it’s been studied that insofar as to economic and academic achievements, Asians often “out-white the whites in these categories.” Notice that we are still operating on the normative standard that white is the measurement that everything is compared to.
Soon, I realized that I was not getting taller to be able to play basketball in the gym. Soon, I believed that any white girl whom I might like would only see me as a foreigner, an alien, a coolie. Soon, I realized, contrary to my father’s plans for me to attend Northeastern to become an electrical engineer, my aptitude was more focused in the Baptist Youth Fellowship that gradually but surely, led me to answer God calling me into Christian ministry.
The Asian Diaspora is more than different groups of people from the Asian continent settled in all corners of the world. According to the US Census Bureau, there are 21 distinct groups. There are many variations among these groups defined by geography, nationality or lack of it, tribes, languages, cultures, ethnicities, citizenship or denied of it, generational differences, degrees of colors or “black like me,” immigration histories, refugee status, displaced persons, and so on. Asian Diaspora is “Asian dispersal” when too many coming together becomes an enclave or a Chinatown, Japan Town, Korean Town, Little Saigon that is often seen as a threat to the majority.
The unique persons or groups that are of the Asian Diaspora are defined by whether they claim to have a stake in the place where they happen to find themselves. My mother who immigrated to the US from China in 1947 after my father served in the US Army that earned him his citizenship, lived more than 50 years in Boston and didn’t speak a word of English. She was an Asian in America.
I was born 77 years ago in the shadows of Fenway Park and have birthright citizenship but I have been told to “go home,” denying me of my claim to be here too. Asian Diaspora is “Asian demonization” when 110,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated because they didn’t look like white America or in 1982 when Vincent Chin who was at his bachelor’s party before his wedding was killed with a baseball bat accused of taking autoworkers jobs in Detroit or as recently as in 2020 when the COVID pandemic surfaced and Asian Americans were scapegoated as the cause of the world-wide modern-day Black Plague. When Asian Americans are viewed as “perpetual foreigners” disease-tropes aliens, terrorists or sub-humans, the rise of xenophobia from the 19th century led to the Stop AAPI Hate movement of today.
One can say that Asians are exiled here. People with temporary status are unable to set down roots to belong. They don’t have the stability or the security to plant seeds for them to have enough time to harvest the fruits of their labors. If there is a theology of exile, it is that we all have temporary status on this planet to do something right before we are no longer here. What gives someone the power to decide who belongs here and who don’t? Usually, it’s the person or group who believe they came here first and squatted.
As long as I can remember sitting in a geography class in a Boston public school, there was a world map on the wall. North America and the rest of the Western Hemisphere were in the middle of this map and Asia was depicted with half on the left side and the other half on the right side. No wondered I thought that the US was at the center of the world.
In the late 20th century, a new world map was created called the, “Gall-Peters Map.” Rather than the Mercator Map created mainly for navigational purposes, the Gall-Peters Map depicted land mass sizes. Right in the middle of this map was the African continent, big and front and centered while North America was now off to the side. I wonder if I grew up looking at the Gall-Peters Map whether I would be as arrogant of an American as I am today.
Seeing oneself in the center of the world is how all humans see their significance. When we visited China in July, we walked the Great Wall, the only human-made structure that astronauts can see from outer space. The purpose of the Great Wall was built to keep barbarians out—everyone who was not Han Chinese! The Chinese name for China is literally the “Middle Kingdom”—the center of the universe! We in the US are not too different from the people in China.
My mother who died in 1996 shared her own prejudice against the Japanese when I was a little kid. During the Japanese invasion of China, the siren would go off that the Japanese soldiers were coming. She grabbed what she can and ran up a hill and hid in the thicket of the forest. Those who were probably older, disabled, slower were caught and forced to kneel on broken glass to confess where the others were hiding. The feeling of survivor guilt must have been terrible. The same people who terrorized my mother, the same people who bombed Pearl Harbor, the same people who the US government labeled as not loyal patriots and incarcerated, the same people who now make up the many members of a group we referred as Asian Americans are also in God’s eyes, our brothers and sisters and all God’s children.
Remember the tourist posters when you visit a new city that features all of the main attractions of that place in clarity while in the background are faint and appearing as insignificant places? The known world experienced a cataclysmic awakening when Copernicus in 1543 discovered that the Earth orbited around the Sun rather than the Sun orbiting around the Earth. This is where ego-centrism originally came from and after almost 500 years, we still haven’t learned.
A theology of exile for Asians in the US is that we belong as much as anyone else. We are all exiles or pilgrims trying to make it home. Home is with God. And when we do that, God might say, “You are a good and faithful person. Welcome home!”
Color
In recent years, America has been experiencing a racial reckoning. Books like How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi challenges our fundamental perceptions of how we encounter the world. We acknowledge that there are these powerful systems that perpetuate false perceptions of human value. Until we can learn how to be antiracist, a just and equitable society won’t happen.
When our country continues to be dominated by white culture and now not expecting people of color to do the work helping white people cease to be racists, Robin DiAngelo in White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism begins to put the responsibility on the backs of white people. She writes that when white people make excuses of why they can’t change, they in turn reinforce white racial power that leads to preventing any meaningful cross-racial dialogue.
Willie James Jennings at Yale Divinity School in After Whiteness: An Education in Belongingcalls Christian leaders to cross boundaries particularly in theological education to better reflect God’s connections with our fellow human beings. These writings along with others are questioning America’s apartheid that continue to deny, deprive, and destroy our sense of shalom.
I know that the people in this room, in the way we read and interpret the Bible, we say that racism is wrong and evil. Sadly, I am preaching to the choir! It’s the people who are not in the room whom we must be worried about.
Superficially, when I see you and you see me, we might look different. There are many ways to distinguish ourselves from the other so that we would know which spouse you will go home with! If we all look exactly the same, identical people, it would be quite boring. Our surface differences create in us variety and uniqueness. It’s like I can call you, in the back there with the hat, or the man or the woman, or anything else that might set you apart from every other person on this planet. That’s what makes you and me unique. I see you and you see me.
The superficial differences that we carry around with are God’s gifts of creativity. But we also know that when the coroner does an autopsy on any one of us someday in the future, what the coroner will see is exactly what he/she sees in every one of us. We are all the same inside! I don’t have something special inside of me that gives me the qualification to stand before you tonight. Neither do you have anything inside you that causes you to consider you are better than the person sitting next to you right now. It’s a haunting thought to think about the countless wars, conflicts, and acts of violence over the course of history that were rooted over the way we look outside when we are all the same in the inside.
In Jeremiah 34, the prophet calls out King Zedekiah of Judah to give liberty, set free their Hebrew slaves, male and female, so that no one should hold another Judean in slavery. Here, the people were enslaving other people who were like them. But quickly, those they set free, they brought these people into subjection as slaves again.
Jeremiah scolded the Hebrew people of their covenant to liberate people after every seven years but even when the slave owners repented of their unjust practice, they recanted their promise and in turn profaned Jeremiah’s name. It is evil to believe that anyone can own another person!
Racism is evil in the sight of God when God created each person in God’s own image. Racism is wrong when we as God’s people refuse to respect and honor one another as sisters and brothers and causing us to enslave people over and over again. Racial reconciliation that leads to the healing of our relationships can’t happen when we refuse to see others as also children of God. A person who is without a home and happens to be Black is no less valuable than a person who is white without a home.
God Sees Us
We must not see others beneath us. A caste system might exist in India, but not here. We have inalienable rights to mean that as human beings, we have rights that are guaranteed because we are human beings. God makes no trash; only when we in our fallen state wrongly see people astrash.
In Psalm 8, the Psalmist declares,
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God or angels, and crowned them with glory and honor.”
Then in Hebrews 2, the writer repeating the Psalmist but then added, “Jesus who for a little while was made lower than the angels. Now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” (2:9)
The Center for Truth points to the truth of Christ Jesus who redeemed us on the Cross individually and redeemed the world collectively. Jesus sees us so much and so thoroughly that on the Cross where he suffered, took our sins of racism, discrimination, prejudice, and who knows what and reconciled our relationship with God again. And this time, it was only necessary to do this once and forevermore.
We shared in this identity of being saved and no longer enslaved. We shared this identity of vulnerability or humanness that invites a Savior to transform our lives from racism to become the beloved community.
We See You
How can we turn this theology into practice?
When I was doing National Youth Ministry with the denomination, we worked with Steve Jones who wrote a book called, Faith Shaping. Effective youth ministry begins with having a variety of programs and activities that are sorted into two different kinds: Directness and Nearness.
There are programs that calls for the youth advisor to directly point a youth to consider making a faith decision. This might be at a worship service, around a campfire, or at a youth rally. At these settings, a direct message is made to the youth to believe.
But there are also programs that represent nearness. These may be spending many hours in a car to a youth event where conversations take place or participating in a social service activity that reveals charity or hospitality or it may simply be observing an adult praying in public. These nearness times are accumulated over time leading the youth to consider a faith decision.
Telling the truth, calling someone accountable, speaking truth to power are directness ways to correct wrongs. Racial healing takes more time like the nearness activities. It may include having coffee together and biting your tongue to build a stronger trust first and wait until a better time to call someone out. It may be participating together with a colleague at an event where you both discover new points of view that can be used in the future as a shared moment before you have the trust to address something more serious.
It may be going on a pilgrimage like the ARC Initiative just did to Manzanar, one of the relocation camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during WWII. Did you know that there were 11,070 people detained there?
Both directness and nearness are ways to become rooted in a shared identity of being people of God. And when these things happen, then you are capable to confront the systemic problems in our world toward restoring justice. Our systems like the fear we have about rogue AI running on their own are institutionalized. Systemic racism is woven tightly into the fabric of our society that to untangle these oppressive tight knots requires working together.
Honestly, we can’t do this hard work on Zoom when everyone on their tiny screens is sterile and at a distance. We can’t touch each other, smell each other, or even hear or see what might be happening in another room. How would you know if I was checking the sports scores when I am on Zoom?
An oppressive system keeps people apart from each other. Workers come together to organize into unions to strike for better pay and workplace conditions. Civil rights movements gather people to march on Washington. Anabaptists were arrested when they worship together in the face of the Church of England. The founders of my home church in Boston worship in secrecy until the Congregational church authorities found out and chain the doors to the church so that these early Baptists couldn’t meet.
The strategy to change the system is to do things the system is against. We need to do “border crossings” or at my seminary alma mater, Andover Newton at Yale Divinity calls them, “Emmaus Encounters.” Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we encounter other people who are different from ourselves. In so doing we cast down our stereotypes and inhibitions to become friends. And perhaps in doing so, we may encounter Christ.
Berkeley School of Theology comes together in your classrooms, in chapel, in study groups, in alumni gatherings, in offices, everyday to be incarnational as Jesus became human so that in the presence of one another, we are transformed.
In Genesis 21, Isaac was born to Sarah but Abraham also had relations with Hagar who also had a son, Ismael. It’s never a good idea to have two different women giving baby boys to you! But when Hagar had to leave the safety and comfort of a home, God said,
“What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” (21:17b-18)
God sees Hagar and cared for her and her son. God sees us telling the truth even when we might be afraid, healing and mending broken relationships because we own up to the reality that we are racists who are afraid of others, and willing and able to join each other’s hands to work toward restoring justice based on offering and receiving forgiveness. God is not happy when we havesmiling faces on the outside and in the inside of us, we hold hatred and prejudice.
Like God who saw Hagar and promised her that her son will become a great nation, God sees us and expects us to become a faithful people in Berkeley, in California, in the US and in the world.
Foretaste of God’s Realm
Growing up and being labeled as a “minority,” you begin to sense that you are inferior. When we are not playing baseball in the major leagues then we are playing in the minor leagues with the hope of eventually being drafted to play in the majors! But what might happen if we didn’t measure up in our significance in numbers and percentages? Being a majority based on numbers does not give this group more rights over those with fewer numbers.
When I was growing up in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I was confused even more about who I am. When the neighborhood was primarily Irish and Italian, the Boston schools categorized me as “colored or Black.” But when our neighborhood changed to almost an all-Black neighborhood, I was then labeled as “white.” I was never seen as Asian! But only as someone to satisfy federal mandates to integrate the school. By being only one student at this school does not give the system the right to use me as a token.
So, why are we here? There’s a Thursday Night Football Game to watch; why are we here? There are papers to be written, grades to send in, errands to run, people to see; why are we here, I ask? For sure, I know you didn’t come out to listen to me! People from Lakeshore do that already on Sunday morning before the kickoff. Why are we here?
Religious communities, like this seminary and local churches are not country clubs that give benefits and privileges to their members like the free refreshments we had tonight. Your donations and pledges don’t give you the privilege to eat in a private dining room. We are here because we are seeking a new reality.
Religious communities, Christian communities are unlike country clubs. We are here because we are alternatives to the world’s status quo. In fact, we are opposites to the world’s values and beliefs. In Isaiah 11, we have the image of The Peaceable Kingdom.
“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (11:6-9)
Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister, 1820-1849, painted over 60 pictures of The Peaceable Kingdom. In time, the animals looked more violent with bigger teeth and meaner faces, but he kept on painting. Against a violent world, he still believed peace can happen.
This foretaste of the not yet realized image of what is to come, is a call to live in an alternative world. We are here to be that vision. We are to live in peace with each other and do no violence on God’s creation. This means we are called to reconcile our breached relationships and to restore justice to each other. Some well overdue justice was completed when the US Congress in 1988 admitted that incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II was wrong. President Ronald Reagan apologized. After America’s original sin toward African Americans, reparations are still due.
Personally, as the surviving son of my father who served in the US Army during this same war was recognized with the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2018. About 90,000 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders served in the US armed forces during WWII. Oh, how I wish he and my mother were still alive to bathe in such recognition.
As some of you know, I am a vegetarian because of this Isaiah passage. For me, I will do what I can humanly do to not cause violence on God’s holy mountain. For me, that holy mountain is the world that God created in Genesis. And when God finished creating, God said, “Everything looks good!”
We don’t live every day without purpose. We live every day with this vision of what we can possibly become. When we keep in front of us that vision of becoming the beloved community, then we have no reason to not work toward racial healing by telling the truth.
In July, our family visited China. It was the first time for our 6 young adult grandchildren. As half Chinese and half white, I wanted them to experience first-hand the feelings of being in another culture; to see that there are many Asians who look like them. In the US, they might identify with their white identities and perhaps while in China, they might be able to identify with their Chinese identity. Rather than people without a country, our grandchildren might be members of both countries. I am hoping that their two halves might come together to become a whole; only time will tell.
There’s a new category for them: Wasians. In the San Francisco Bay Area, 17% of Asian Americans are Wasians. Maybe our grandchildren are a foretaste of who we are as Americans, as human beings who are created in God’s own image.
In the October 2026 issue of The Christian Century, Peter Choi, the executive director of the Center for Faith and Justice in San Francisco reflected on his recent visit to Korea. He found this sense of wanting to belong everywhere and refers to Cathy Park Hong’s phrase, “purgatorial status” of Asian Americans. Asian Americans are “not white enough nor black enough; distrusted by African Americans, ignored by whites.” Choi says, “This liminal positionality can make it hard for Asian Americans to feel they truly belong, even when America is the only home they have known.”
If I can be so proud to say that the Rev. Dr. Lauren Lisa Ng recently wrote a memoir, Becoming Chinese that tells a journey of an Asian American coming to terms with living in America. It’s a good read!
At the end of our family trip to China in Hong Kong, we created a Ng Family Tree with chops we purchased for our 6 grandchildren when we were in Guilin. Before our trip, they took the next character in the Ng Family Poem as their middle character and with the help of those who are proficient in naming, each of them selected their third character to make up their three-character Chinese name. We created 3 copies of these “chop family trees” on rice paper to be hung in our homes. In addition to the experiences of belonging attained on the trip, we now have related names, connected with lines, lay out like a tree to connote we belong.
At First Chinese Baptist in San Francisco where I pastored for 17 years, there are two Sunday worship services: Cantonese and English. We found that when people can hear the Good News in their own language, they get more out of the worship experience because words carry with them deep meanings. Besides, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) Saying Jesus’ Name in Cantonese and in English is to speak of God. But there’s more here.
When these two worshipping congregations come together in Joint Worship that has translations from Cantonese to English and English to Cantonese which almost doubles the time for worship,regardless of how many times we don’t really understand what is being said; it is at these times, a Pentecost time, like thin places when God presence is closer to us, is when we as a church resemble more closely the heart of God. We learn to be near the other sitting next to each other and develop patience and respect for each other. This is when we are closer to being the beloved community of Christ on earth.
We are always casting a vision of the reign of God on earth—it might be the Peaceable Kingdom of Isaiah, it might be no longer the Tower of Babel but the Day of Pentecost is here, it might be as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “I Have a Dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…”
It might be that on this Berkeley School of Theology campus that professors and seminarians believe what is happening in the academy will go out into the streets of this country that we need to tell the truth, we need racial healing, we need to restore justice in order to become whole again.
We must all have a vision to determine our daily steps so that in God’s time and in God’s plan that a new world is about to break in. And when that happens and we who are people of promise do know that when that day comes, God sees you and God sees me.
“Now that I have lived more years than the years that I still have to live,” I no longer look in the mirror dimly and wish that my nose was skinnier or my eyes have double lids. Now I see myself clearly as God sees me, with white hair, a shiny forehead, more age spots as my natural tattoos. But I still have the same nose and the same eyes. Today, I see myself as God sees me and God says ‘You are all good.”
God sees you too and God says, “You are good as well.”