Native Korean, Eujoo Mary Kim, invites readers into a greater depth of understanding the Asian American church tradition in her book Preaching the Presence of God. There she expresses a rich history of the Asian community, largely focusing on the histories of China, Korea, and Japan. One aspect of the Asian American tradition arising from the text which offers understanding for readers from other traditions is the corporate personality. While Asian American have vastly diverse journeys to America, there is shared history and sentiments as ethnic minorities. From these shared experiences, the community as a whole can hope for a shared and united future full of God's promises. Preaching within this context poses opportunities to describe God's grace throughout the shared faith journey while proclaiming the Word of God. The second aspect of about the Asian American tradition derived from the text is the influence of ancient religions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and shamanism. These religions are evident in the cultural ethos and religious practices among Asian Americans. Being aware of the impact these religions have made in the formation of the …show more content…
Both the Asian American and the African American traditions regard the Bible as a spiritual manual. The two tradition find the Bible to be authoritative for the spiritual life of the congregations. Though similar at this point, there is discord in arriving at this result. The Asian American tradition views the Bible in the manner of which they had guides that offered a direction while participating in other tradition. Whereas in the African American tradition, the Bible was largely read to them as a story of hope when they were illiterate and in bondage. Because many African American had no understanding an alternative religion or option of faith, the Bible became their way to a better
Allen Dwight Callahan’s The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible connects biblical stories and images to the politics, music and, religion, the book shows how important the Bible is to black culture. African Americans first came to know the Bible because of slavery and at that time the religious groups would read it to them instead of teaching them by letting them encounter it for themselves. Later the Bibles stories became the source of spirituals and songs, and after the Civil War motivation for learning to read. Allen Callahan traces the Bible culture that developed during and following enslavement. He identifies the most important biblical images for African Americans, Exile, Exodus, Ethiopia, and Emmanuel and discusses their recurrence and the relationship they have with African Americans and African American culture.
In the first section of Chapter 1 of Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, the author Diana Eck discusses her personal experience from exploring the encounter of Bozeman and Banaras. The author raises many interesting questions in this section about religious differences, what it means to be of a certain religion, if the label of being a certain religion matters or defines oneself, what another culture or religion means to an individual of another religion, and how members of different religions view one another. Eck explains how she was raised as a Christian in Bozeman under an influence of the church, and during her college years, she travelled to Banaras in India and she experienced a challenge in her faith by observing
Introduction The book I am going to critique is “Cross-Cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christlike Humility. The author is Duane H. Elmer (Ph.D., Michigan State U.) who is director of the Ph.D. program in educational studies and is the G. W. Aldeen Chair of International Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Elmer starts the book by saying that Servanthood can be a burden and challenging. It is so true because just encountering people anytime can be overwhelming, but to tackle them in another culture is even more stressful to many.
Slavery: Effective on Slaves and Slaveholders In Frederick Douglass’s autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Douglass recounts his life in slavery to reveal to his readers the horrors of the American slave system. To effectively inform his readers of the corrupt system, he publicizes the slaveholders’ hypocritical practice of Christianity. Although he himself is a Christian, Douglass’s narrative is a scathing commentary on the ironic role of Christian religion in the Southern slaveholding culture. Throughout his book, the author expresses and exemplifies his perspective on religion by illustrating the falseness and hypocrisy of the Southern people. To start off, Frederick Douglass suggests that the Southern people’s religion is false and insincere.
Part of the appeal of Evangelical Christianity was the degree of personalization the Native Americans were allowed, in contrast to the strictly controlled dogma of other Christian sects. While before conversion had seemed “cultural
The documentary The Split Horn: The Life of a Hmong Shaman in America details the lives, rituals, and beliefs of the Hmong (Meo) shaman and the Hmong communities after relocating to the United States. While watching Split Horn, the contrasting ways in which the elders and the children adapt their religion and their lives to a new environment seem particularly relevant and especially memorable. Through the passage of time, Hmong elders and shamans struggle to maintain their significance in a vastly different world than the hills of Laos while their children convert to Christianity, get married, and have children. For the Hmong shamans, religious gift and magic bonds families and communities together, a dynamic that becomes increasingly strained
Africans who were already enslaved saw conversion to Christianity as a road to freedom, and many others who were not already enslaved believed conversion would protect them from becoming
During the time when Douglass wrote this book, there were several myths which were used to justify slavery. The slaveholder during his time justified this inhuman practice using different arguments. The first argument they used was the religion. From the narrative, Douglass says that slaveholders called themselves Christians which was the dominant religion by then.
Cultural Immersion: Muslim Americans Part 2 Many Muslim families are labelled, judged, and in some cases feared by the American people. Many major cities have mosques, and it is important to acknowledge the presence and value this individuals have in our society. In effort to achieve a better understanding of the faith itself and the lifestyle of those that follow the faith, I visited a worship service and a community event held at one of the mosques in Iowa. In some ways this experience felt very foreign, yet in many ways it felt very comfortable.
This week’s assignment is to answer questions, in essay format, on “The Religious Dimension and Black Baptists.” In order to explore the topic and try to answer the assigned questions, reading chapters one and two of the textbook, “The Black Church in the African American Experience,” by C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, provided answers. Below are responses to the five questions. 1. What is the "Black Sacred Cosmos" (Chapter 1)?
B. Definition of Problems/Issues The title of the document Welcoming the Stranger among Us: Unity in Diversity, word by word, tells us four elements: the action, the subject, the reality, and the purpose (goal) in order to approach the issue of receiving immigrants in the Church. The document defines, “Unity in diversity is the vision that we bishops, as pastors of the Church in the United States, offer to our people as they welcome the new immigrants and refugees who come to our shores”. The document contextualizes the call to “conversion, communion, and solidarity” in Ecclesia in America as the way to pursue the vision of “unity in diversity” with a “new evangelization.”
For centuries, Christianity has been used by white supremacists as a tool of oppression against people of color. More recently, Christianity has been used to justify the subjugation of black people through their enslavement and later segregation. Despite this, the black community has often been attracted to Christianity, “the religion of their oppressors,” for numerous reasons, including the hope for liberation (Brown Douglas xii). Black people raised in the Christian tradition have also rejected the religion in recognition of its unjust qualities. The challenge facing black Christians and those who deny white supremacy is whether to have faith in the liberating and positive aspects of Christianity, or to doubt the religious institution in light of its history of oppression.
The preservation of food is one of the most important methods/techniques used by mankind to date. History has shown that these techniques were utilized by multiple cultures from all over the world at various stages in time.1 The process itself is applied to prevent the spoilage of food items, ultimately extending shelf life and increasing man’s survivability. With limited technology, traditional techniques used by different cultures consisted of curing meat by smoking and salting, fermenting wine and freezing food if the environment permitted. With the advancement of science, new innovations have been discovered that have greatly increased the shelf life and quality of food products. The discovery of the retort canning process invented by
Interpretations of the Bible by minorities is a way of better relating the holy book to a larger audience. This is especially true when reading “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn”: Ruth the Perpetual Foreigner and Model Minority by Gale A. Yee and Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth by Yolanda Norton. By exercising their right of interpreting the Bible in regard to their own personal experiences, both Norton and Yee successfully portray their own racial struggles in modern America and the injustices thrust upon them because of the color of their skin. “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn”:
For my verbal observation I choose to evaluate the Pastor which had just arrived from his trip. He was talking about how he visited and seen most of his relatives. When the pastor talks he tends to portrait much excitement and talk rapidly. The person he was talking to was the co-pastor of the church. The co-pastor was puzzled during the conversation when the pastor from one detail to another completely different idea.