Enough Is Enough: Asian American Pastors on Speaking Truth and Confronting Hate

A discussion on preaching hope, confronting anti-Asian hatred, and serving their diverse communities.

Has the American church remained too silent about anti-Asian racism and violence? How can we respond with a biblical and unified voice?

Join us for this free webinar featuring a dynamic panel of seasoned Asian American ministers in conversation about preaching hope, confronting anti-Asian hatred, and serving their diverse communities.

Our Panelists

Mary Chung March

Mary Chung March serves as co-lead pastor of New City Covenant Church in Edina, Minnesota. She also is president of the Evangelical Covenant Church’s denominational Asian Pastors Association and president of the Mosaic (Ethnic) Commission.

She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and her MDiv and a master’s in counseling form Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She is married to John (co-pastor at NCCC) and is a mom of four.

Juliet Liu

Juliet Liu serves as pastor of Life on the Vine Church, a small missional congregation in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Juliet is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (MDiv, 2005) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2001).

Prior to coming to Life on the Vine in 2010, she ministered as a college campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and as the director of worship at both North Shore Chinese Christian Church and Trinity International University. Juliet also serves as chair of the board and writing team member for Missio Alliance, where she formerly served as editorial director.

Peter Lim

Peter Lim is founder and lead pastor at 4Pointes Church in Atlanta. Peter is an ordained minister who is a graduate of UCLA (1995) with a BA in political science, and of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with a master of divinity (1999) and a master of theology (2000), ...

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The Unearthed Conscience of Black Fundamentalism

A hard racial line divided conservative white and Black Protestants 100 years ago. It didn’t have to be that way.

Seventy-four years ago, Carl F. H. Henry, the first editor of Christianity Today, produced his watershed volume The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. This work represented Henry’s clarion call for evangelicals to engage with the social ills facing the world, to apply the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith to address the needs of society without being trapped into preaching a mere “social gospel.” Fundamentalists of the prior generation, he argued, showed a troubling “reluctance to come to grips with social evils” as they isolated themselves from the surrounding world.

Listed with “aggressive warfare,” “the liquor traffic,” “exploitation of labor or management,” and other social sins that Henry identified as too removed from fundamentalist rhetoric and conscience was, notably, “racial hatred and intolerance.” And this was, by and large, an accurate assessment, at least among those whom Henry here envisioned as “fundamentalists”—a category essentially white in its composition.

This assumption was not only shared by Henry and his contemporaries but by historians looking back on the era. Yet while the conscience of Henry’s fundamentalists might have been uneasy under the weight of social isolation, there is another fundamentalist conscience of this era that has long been obscured. The self-conscious presence of Black fundamentalists on the early-20th century American religious landscape both interrupts the common historical narrative and, perhaps, might prompt today’s evangelical heirs of the fundamentalist movement to reflect on their theological heritage.

The theological thrust behind fundamentalism ...

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‘Faithful’ Project Offers Sacred Space for Christian Women to Create

A new collaboration from Integrity Music brings together musicians and Bible teachers to celebrate God’s faithfulness to women in a way that transcends evangelical silos.

The essence of Faithful, as both a product and a model of creative collaboration, is a meditation on authority and vulnerability and how they coexist in the stories and experiences of women.

Through a thoughtfully designed book, album, and broadcast event, Faithful tells stories of women in the Bible—Rahab, Ruth, Eve, Mary Magdalene, and more—whose lives were marked by conflict, disappointment, and oppression.

Organized by Integrity Music and Compassion International, the project supports Compassion’s efforts to serve girls living in poverty around the world. The collaborators—including Amy Grant, Ann Voskamp, Ellie Holcomb, Christy Nockels, Ginny Owens, and Rachael Lampa—have framed their participation as an opportunity to speak and create with authority, hoping that other women will be moved to do the same.

As singer and writer Sarah Macintosh told me, “My hope, my greater hope, is that women would speak, because they are emboldened to speak whether or not they are respected as having authority.”

Both in my personal experience in the church and my research around women’s roles in worship, I’ve seen why this is a struggle. There’s a pattern of female creators, writers, and leaders approaching their ministry with some degree of precarity. It’s not that they doubt what God has called them to do, but that they anticipate being challenged, questioned, or forced to defend their position at some point along the way.

“There’s such a debate about women and roles and women and calling,” said writer Trillia Newbell, who was involved with both the album and the accompanying book. “We’re just always trying to figure out our place.”

To be ...

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Study: Black Christians See Limits to Multiracial Churches

About a third experience racism and obstacles to leadership in congregations that value diversity.

Most practicing Christians believe the church can enhance race relations in this country by welcoming people of all races and ethnicities, new research finds.

But 29 percent of Black practicing Christians say they have experienced racial prejudice in multiracial congregations, compared to about a tenth who report such an experience in monoracial Black churches. And a third of Black Christians say it is hard to gain leadership positions in a multiracial congregation.

The new report, released Wednesday, April 28, by Barna Group and the Racial Justice and Unity Center, examines the views of what researchers call “practicing Christians”—people who self-identify as Christians, say their faith is very important to them, and say they attended worship in the past month.

The research included 2,889 US adults, with 1,364 of them meeting the definition of “practicing Christians.”

Even as the percentage of multiracial churches has dramatically grown, particularly in Protestant churches, there remain divisions on how to address racial justice among Christians as well as a willingness to do so, says the report, titled “Beyond Diversity: What the Future of Racial Justice Will Require of US Churches.”

“Racial injustice is like a disease,” writes Michael Emerson, co-principal investigator, in the report’s welcome. “Our research has found that the disease has not gone away even as the supposed antibodies of multiracial churches have multiplied. Racial injustice has mutated into new forms, and it has proven highly resistant to the antibodies of multiracial church.”

Emerson, a sociologist and co-author of the 2000 book Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of ...

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Is It Too Early to Get Excited About a Malaria Vaccine?

The war on the mosquito-spread disease has taken millions of lives. Could this be coming to an end?

In 2019, 400,000 people around the world died of malaria. But it may never reach that high a number again.

Early trials of a new vaccine have been shown to be 77 percent effective. This is not the first vaccine that has attempted to fight the deadly mosquito-transmitted disease. But it is the only one that has had this level of efficacy.

This news comes when COVID-19 vaccines dominate the international discussion. Some wealthier nations, most notably the United States, have prioritized vaccinating their own people first. This week, however, the Biden administration did announce it would be sharing its enormous stockpile of Astrazenca doses. Other countries, like China and Russia, have been shipping their vaccines around the world, though some have questioned their efficacy.

Many poorer countries have worried that they might wait years for their people to be vaccinated and be left with other countries’ lower-quality leftovers.

It also comes as scientists have begun thinking through the ways MRNA technology, which was used to develop the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, might be used to combat other diseases.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to discuss the good news about the malaria vaccine, how this will affect Christian humanitarian work around the world, and what it looks like to be a good neighbor when it comes to vaccine distribution.

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Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su and Bunmi Ishola

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Makoto Fujimura Sings with God, Carries His Cross, and Awaits the New Creation

In a new book, the renowned Christian artist gathers a lifetime of insights on faith and creativity.

One of the most formative moments early in my artistic journey was hearing Andrew Peterson’s song “Let There Be Light.” I was in my late teens at the time, just beginning to grapple with the musical gifts that would eventually lead me to a career in composition. But as Peterson crooned the lyrics, “When your spirit is hovering over the deep / In the image of God just look into that darkness and speak,” I remember the lightbulb illuminating in my mind: My creativity is an act of faith.

That singular notion has stayed with me throughout my life, fueling my creative work and giving me a sense of purpose. And I can think of numerous musicians, authors, poets, artists, and theologians who have similarly encouraged me along the way.

Fine artist Makoto Fujimura is undoubtedly such a figure. While his stunning work has captivated countless people around the world, the way he has lived out his vocation far exceeds the bounds of his artistry. Throughout his public life, he has promoted the interaction of art, culture, and faith through founding the International Arts Movement, establishing his own Fujimura Institute, and, more recently, serving as the director of the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has also come alongside many other artists, advocating for them and supporting their efforts, as he did for me in writing the foreword to my first book.

In each of these pursuits, Fujimura has sought to promote a vision of what it means to create and how acts of creativity relate to our faith. Now, in his engaging book Art and Faith, Fujimura gathers the many themes from each corner of his vibrant career into a single volume that persuasively articulates a “theology ...

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Racial Reconciliation Requires a Painful Level of Self-Awareness

To participate in the work of justice, we pastors need to grow and change.

One month after our church’s annual Gospel and Race conference two years ago, a small group of black congregants asked for a private meeting with me. I thought the conference was a success, so I wondered what the meeting could be about. For the conference, we brought in top-notch thinkers and leaders from the outside, but it was evident to some in our church that we still had lots of work to do on the inside.

For three decades, our multiethnic congregation has worked extremely hard to bridge racial barriers. We address racial injustice, encourage relationships across ethnic differences, and seek to model something of the kingdom of God. But even with this history, there remain blind spots.

In the days preceding the meeting, I heard words of frustration from some of the people who were planning on attending, so I was already on guard. When the time came, I walked in and greeted the ten congregants who were patiently waiting for our meeting to begin. I did my pastoral thing, greeting everyone around the table. There were genuine smiles, hugs, and handshakes exchanged, yet I sensed some tension in the room. I had a piece of paper handy so I could take notes and a cup of water to hide behind in the event that things got too tense.

It didn’t take long for the points of tension to be expressed. Each person took a turn first affirming the work we’ve done over the years and then proceeding to share frustrations. The things I heard made my heart sink: “Pastor, I feel invisible.” “I don’t know if I belong here.” “I wonder when things will change.” “When will we get equal treatment here?” “We’ve made progress, Pastor Rich, but we have a long way to go.” ...

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