(Columbia Theological
Seminary, Decatur, Georgia,
USA
7/18/2012)
The
following are the responses of the Rev. Dr. Winfred Vergara (Episcopal) to the
panel discussion sponsored by Confluence 2012 and moderated by Professor
Timothy Son of Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary. The other panelists are: Dr. Russell Moy (American Baptist
Church); Rev. Charles Ryu (United Methodist
Church); and Gerri Yoshida (Reformed Church of America. For more information on
Confluence, visit http:theconfluencenetwork.org )
Q1: Please introduce yourself and the nature of
your ministry
I am Fred Vergara, missioner for
Asiamerica Ministries in the Episcopal Church and moderator of the PAACCEM
(Pacific Asian American Canadian Christian Education Ministries) under the
National Council of Churches. Born and raised in the Philippines,
I was ordained in the Philippine Independent Church in 1978 and served as
parish priest in Dagupan City in Northern Luzon and Pasay City
in Metro Manila, respectively. In 1980, I went to Singapore to complete a Master’s
degree in Theology and served as priest at St. Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral and
was in-charge of its extension centers. It is heartwarming to note that one of
these extensions became a large parish with a school, Chapel of Christ the
Redeemer. The other extension produced good leaders, including the new bishop
of Singapore,
the Rt. Rev. Rennis Ponniah.
My wife, Angela, and I came to the United States
in 1986. I completed a Doctor of Ministry at San Francisco Theological Seminary
and later served as Canon Missioner for Asian Cultures in the Episcopal Diocese
of El Camino Real. As missioner, we planted the first Episcopal Filipino
American congregation in San Jose, California and opened up branches in Las
Vegas, Sacramento and Queens, New York. In 2004, I was
appointed Missioner for Asiamerica Ministries in the Episcopal Church.
“Asiamerica” is the word coined by my
predecessor, the late Dr. Winston Ching to refer to all Episcopalians of Asian
descent. It also refers to three areas of our contextual ministry: Asians in America; Asian Americans; and our relationships
to the churches in Asia. We have grouped our
Asian congregations into six convocations: Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese,
South Asian and Southeast Asian. Annually, we gather in a national
consultation, meet separately as convocations and gather as a pan-Asian
assembly through the Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry Council (EAMC), a 501c
organization. Through the help of the Partnership Office for Asia and the
Pacific, our EAM Consultation also serve as our link with our Anglican
partners, Concordat and Ecumenical partners in Asia whose primates we invite to
the Consultations.
Asiamerica Ministries Office, in which I
am the Missioner, engages in partnership with other ethnic groups (Black,
Latino and Indigenous) as well as Jubilee and Environmental offices into “Team
DSE” (Diversity, Social and Environmental Ministries). AMO helps the
development of diocesan Asian Commissions and how they can be effective
agencies of their respective dioceses in planting new congregations and to
strengthen existing ones. Diocesan EAMs also serves as support group for Asian
clergy and lay leaders. AMO helps fund the EAM Ethnic Convocations to meet and
develop strategies in evangelism, church growth and stewardship as well as to
advocate for Asian involvement in the total life of the national Church. The
EAM Korean Convocation for instance addresses itself in partnering with the
Anglican Diocese of Seoul in missionary exchange. The EAM Filipino Convocation
assists in providing connection to the Iglesia Filipina Independiente -US and Canada
dioceses.
Last June 2012, AMO started a pilot
project with the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts
for a “Doctor of Ministry” with emphasis on Asiamerican Ministry. The goals is
to develop a cadre of EAM clergy equipped as “working theologians” for the 21st
century, both able to navigate the mainstream American culture as well as
conversant with the cultures of Asia. The program is distributive learning with
minimal residential seminary training (January and June) and the rest is by
online and independent research and cohort work with other cultures. This
enables the students to complete an advanced pastoral study without leaving
their place of work. The curriculum is the normal D. Min. program with
additional course on Asian American History, Culture and Theology. We have
chosen EDS as the seminary to engage in this project because it is the only
Episcopal seminary in the U.S.
with four Asian faculty members who are excellent in their fields: Dr. Kwok Pui-lan,
Dr. Gale Yee, Dr. Patrick Cheng and Professor Christopher Duraisingh. EAM
scholarship is matched by EDS and we are happy that we have two EAM clergy:
Rev. Ada Wong Nagata and Rev. Thomas Eoyang as our first D. Min. scholars.
Our Asiamerica theological education
scholarship, managed by the national church, is spread out to seminarians
taking M. Div. degree in various other U.S. seminaries. Our next hope in
theological education is to develop partnership with another seminary on an
Education for Lay Ministry. We feel that instead of reinventing the wheel (such
as developing an Asian specific training institute) is to partner with existing
seminaries and stylize our training to be sensitive to Asiamerican context.
Q2: In what ways does the reality of
“marginality” influence in ways of doing your Christian ministry?
In biblical times, prophets normally
come, not from the center but from the margins of society. They come from the
boondocks, dressing the lofty sycamore trees like Amos from Tekoa; eating locusts and wild honey
like John the Baptist. They boldly barge into the mainstream announcing a new
way, a new paradigm, a new message, which God had spoken in their hearts. Now
when they do that, they get even more marginalized, rejected, stoned, and in
some cases, crucified or their heads cut off. But to those who receive the
message and the messenger, the reward is great. The promise is peace and joy in
the Spirit, abundant life on earth and eternal life in the heavens, the shalom
of God.
I believe, Asiamerican Christians are
still in the margins of the American Church
and society, and so our task is prophetic. We are standing at the edge of
mission in the 21st century but do we have enough courage to speak
about our visions and dreams? Our
immigrant historical narratives include being rebuffed by the socio-political
systems, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 directed against the Chinese
who worked the railroad and mining industries, the anti-miscegenation laws
leveled against the Filipino sacadas
(farm workers) in the 1900’s and the Japanese Internment camps during the
Second World War directed against Japanese Americans, many of them were U.S.
citizens. On July 29, 2012 we will give due recognition to one of these
internees, the late Rev. Hiram Kano, the Japanese American Episcopal priest
from Nebraska.
The Japanese Heritage celebration and his inclusion into the list of “Holy
Women, Holy Men,” will be a vindication of his legacy and the legacy of his
fellow internees.
As we move to the 21st century, we need to deal with the question of why Asiamericans tend to become invisible,
not making waves nor lifting their voices. Other ‘minorities’ have learned that
“the squeaky wheels get the grease.” In a fiercely competitive American
setting, Asians suffer in silence. “Swallow your tears,” “don’t show your pains,”
“the nail that stick out will be pounded down.” Non-assertiveness (stoicism?) is
not only an “Asianic character;” it is also product of Western (English,
European, American) colonialism and a psyche of immigrant peoples who suffered
from being rebuffed in history. We need a liberation.
The core vision of Asiamerica Ministry,
and mine too, is to see the American
Church become hospitable
to “strangers from different shores,” (Ronald Takaki’s book) and eventually become like a “rainbow denominaton” or a "diamond with many facets." The theology of inclusion of the Episcopal Church and
its avowed “no outcast in the church” speaks to this vision. I believe it will
eventually enable the Episcopal Church to repopulate its declining membership
albeit with different faces and colors.
While the struggle of Asiamericans and
other ethnic Christians is to move from the margins to the mainstream, we must also
understand that even in the context of marginality of the immigrant minorities, there is marginalization. According to Census 2010, Asians in America occupy the highest as well
as the lowest places in the economic ladder, which means to say; it is
incorrect to say that Asians are generally upwardly-mobile “model minority.”
The economically highest -ranking Asians are the Asian Indians and the lowest
are the Southeast Asians (Lao, Cambodian, Hmong and Burmese). In the
recent General Convention, we advocated for the Hmong language in one of the
daily liturgies as a way of “lifting up the lowly.” The Hmong are a nomadic
tribe in the jungles of Laos,
Vietnam and China.
They do not have a country of their own. During the Vietnam War, they were
conscripted as soldiers (used by the CIA) to work alongside the American
soldiers. After the Vietnam War, they were targeted for genocide and the
American government relocated many of them in the U.S. Today, there are around
200,000 Hmong Americans, many of them in the Twin cities:
Minnesota-St.Paul. Holy Apostles at St. Paul is the largest
and probably the only Hmong congregation in the entire Anglican Communion. We
recently have our first Hmong seminarian, Toua Vang ordained to the diaconate.
He is graduating next year and hopefully will become our first Hmong Episcopal
priest.
Q3: What would be your concrete suggestion(s) to
confluence between “marginality” (including those who are in the margins) and
“centrality” (those who are at the center of influence) in your church?
In 2006, I wrote my book Mainstreaming Asian Americans in the
Episcopal Church. It arose from a vision I saw at the retreat of the Ethnic
Congregational Development staff. I saw two rivers, one large river, flowing
steadily but as it flows, it becomes narrower and slower. The other is a small
one but as it flows it gathers water from little streams along the way and
hence it grows bigger and stronger. The two rivers were flowing separately and in
parallel patterns but at a distant horizon, I saw a meeting point like a huge
basin. They two rivers are destined to converge in the basin and probably
continue to flow down, no longer separate but together.
From that vision, I came to understand
the development of the “New Community,” which has lied dormant for many years
and now in the process of being revived. My colleague, Rev. Anthony Guillen,
the Latino Missioner aptly described the New Community as a better term than
“New Majority,” even though it points to the direction of minorities combining
together and increasing in number. The New Community is led by “people of
color” who have found nobler reasons for solidarity. In the Episcopal Church,
the Ethnic Missioners (Angela Ifill, Black; Sarah Eagle Heart, Indigenous;
Anthony Guillen, Latino; and Fred Vergara, Asian) together with various allies
in the Anglo American staff provide thinking and direction to New Community
events. The Ethnic Missioners of the Episcopal Church have been sponsoring
Discernment Conferences for young adults of color, seminarians of color
conferences and last March 2012, sponsored the first “New Community Clergy and
Lay Conference” in San Diego, California. Dr. Russell Yee from the American Baptist Church
participated and Dr. Rodger Nishioka from Columbia Theological Seminary was one
of our keynote speakers, thus being also ecumenical as multicultural.
Q4: Reflecting on your ministry experience, tell
us one thing that Asian American churches need to do in order to revitalize the
life of both Asian American churches and non-AA churches in the United States?
One lesson I learned and continue to
learn is that we can have a great and brilliant idea but without people who
believe and commit themselves to advocate for it, it simply remains an idea. We
need people both from the New Community as well as enlightened allies in the
mainstream to buy into the idea, advocate for it and be committed to help make
it a reality. From my perspective, the old river (the mainstream American Church)
is fatigued and they need help from the new river
(the New Community) and I hope that in the interaction, a greater mainstream
can emerge.
I believe that a new reformation can
happen that is ecumenical, multicultural and global. This Confluence Conference
which is widely ecumenical (Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, UCC and
Reformed Churches) is a step in this direction for the coalition of Asian
American Christians. In these times of economic and spiritual crises, the need
is not to retreat into our narrow denominational self-branding but in moving
forward to greater ecumenical sharing of resources. I believe revolutionary
change begins not from the church as an institution but from a group of
Christians committed to working together to transform unjust structures. The
amazing solidarity of the LGBT Christian Community for instance, began not from
the center of the church hierarchy but from a group of gays and lesbians
(clergy and lay) who shared common experiences of pain and common visions of
hope. In their suffering and hope, authentic leaders arose that successfully lead
to advocacy and change.
Q5: Reflecting upon the concept of “liminality,”
in what ways do you find the concept helpful and how do you apply it to your
role as a “transitional leader”?
Wikipedia defines liminality as “the quality of ambiguity,” standing at the threshold
of being in-between, never fully leaving the old and never fully adopting the new.
Sang Hyun Lee in an article “Marginality as Coerced Liminality: Towards an
Understanding of Asian American Theology” (Fumitaka & Fernandez, Realizing the America of our Hearts. St. Louis, MS: Chalice
Press, c. 2003), wrote that Asian Americans are “in-between and in-betwixt Asia
and America”
and never fully in either or. He wrote that they are in this liminal space not because
of their own choosing but that “they were pushed there and coerced to remain
there” by the racist barriers set up by the dominant culture, meaning the white
Americans. He laments the stereotype of Asian Americans as “forever foreigner”
or “honorary whites”---never fully accepted and never fully assimilated.
I do not
look at liminality in the negative sense but in a potentially positive sense. As
a child, I was a “stow away.” I ran away from home but home never ran away from
me. I carried the values, the experiences, the love and warmth of home, even
though I explored new worlds. As a pastor I have been to very conservative (charismatic) churches as well as to ultra liberal ones. As a working theologian, I see myself as a
pilgrim with one foot on earth and one foot on heaven, never fully settled in
one. We all are, both spirit and matter; we all are, tourists and pilgrims on the journey, until Kingdom come. The liminality provides a malleable,
flexible space to go back and forth. I believe we must hold on to essential Christian
values like love and hospitality but must guard against fundamentalism and the
pharisaic tendency to be closed minded and judgmental over non-essentials. The Church
often shoots itself on the foot because it spends inordinate amount of time in
non essential parts of mission.
Yes, I am
one of the leaders in transition. Like many of my colleagues in the Episcopal
Church and in PAACCEM, I belong to the “baby boomer” generation and the noble goal
for us is to begin preparing the next generation of leaders. I plan to devote
the following years of ministry to developing youth and young adults for
greater leadership roles and providing them such opportunities. Being “both and”
(both Asian and American; both foreign and domestic; both spiritual and religious)
make us better serve as transitional leaders.
One of
the qualities that Asian American Episcopalians possess is the tradition of
respect to our elders. For instance, I look to my predecessor, The Rev. Dr. Winston
Ching with great respect and feel like standing on top of his shoulders. Winston
served as the first EAM Missioner for almost 30 years, serving under four
Presiding Bishops (John Hines, John Allen, Edmond Browning and Frank Griswold).
He has laid the foundation of building networks both domestic and foreign,
meaning in the U.S. and Asia, a liminal space. It is in this space that EAM
continues to exist. At one point, he said that “I am not one to burn the
bridges” and so connection with Asia while serving in the United States
is still the ethos of the EAM. When I assumed the position as the second EAM
Missioner, I made it a point that while he was still alive, continuity and
expansion, rather than change in direction will be my goals. Now as a mentor to
younger Asian Episcopalians, the model of bridge-building, not bridge-burning is
what I would recommend to my mentees. I do not intend to stay in this position
for thirty years like my predecessor and that is why I intend to devote my time
and energy to help prepare the next generation of Asiamerican leaders. The “liminal
space” will help enable me to accomplish it.
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