Critical Analysis ofJung Young Lee’s Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology

Hunn Choi

“Any theology that is not in touch with our life experience cannot be a living theology” (2).

Introduction and the Purpose of the Book

“All theology is contextual,”1 which means that theology never happens in a vacuum but

always within a specific context, that is to say, context-sensitive and context-specific. As

Catholic theologian Stephen B. Bevans writes, “There is no such thing as ‘theology’; there is

only contextual theology… the attempt to understand Christian faith in terms of a particular

context is really a theological imperative” and cannot be “something on the fringes of the

theological enterprise. It is at the very center of what it means to do theology in today’s world.”2

As Robert J. Schreiter has put it trenchantly, “there is now a realization that all theologies have

contexts, interests, relationships of power, special concerns—and to pretend that this is not the

case is to be blind.”3 In this book, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology, Jung Young

Lee,4 using marginality as a model for theologizing from his own particular experience in life as

an Asian American immigrant,5 develops Asian-American theology as a contextual and

autobiographical theology that aims to raise the voices of the marginalized and to seek

liberation.6 For him, the meaning of marginality is determined from the perspective of racial and

1 Angie Pears, Doing Contextual Theology (London & New York: Routledge, 2010), 168.2 Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2011), 3.3 Robert J Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985), 4.4 Dr. Jung Young Lee, professor of systematic theology in The Theological School at Drew University, passed on October 11, 1996. He was authorof more than 15 books and 40 articles. He was born in North Korea andcame to the US in 1955 where he attended Garrett Evangelical Seminary andBoston University. An ordained United Methodist pastor, he was alsofounder and first chair of the Korean Religions group of the AAR.5 Lee’s Asian-American perspective is rooted in Northeast Asian culture and his theological training in the United States. He speaks as an immigrant and as one who is a visible minority. When he refers to “Asian-American,” he is specifically designating Northeast Asian-Americans, mainly Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, and Japanese-Americans.6 For Lee, Asian-Americans are “North Asian-Americans, mainly Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, and Japanese-Americans with whom I closely identify” (3).

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cultural determinants, by using cultural contexts as “the primary source” for understanding the

marginal experience that includes “suffering, rejection, discrimination, and oppression” (9).

The puprose of the book is to basically write as an Asian-American person a multicultural

theology for people on the margin, proposing “a new model for developing contextual theologies

without their becoming deminating. Rather than moving any one class or ethnic group or gender

to the center, Lee redefines margnality as itself central and highlights what it can mean to follow

the very paradigm of creative marginality, Jesus Christ” (backcover).7

The Main Thesis of the Book

Lee’s main thesis is that we need an inclusive approach as an alternative to contextual

theology to make “a marginal theology holistic and appropriate for a multicultural society” (75).

His marginal theology is a radically new theology of marginality, autobiographically assessed

from an Asian-American multicultural experience. He critiques the classical definition of

marginality, as being “in-between” but not part of any, for being a definition of the dominant

group, one-sided, and incomplete—self-negating, moving from “in-between” to “in-both”, then,

to “in-beyond.” The classical version emphasizes only the negative aspects of alienation,

rejection, struggles, and so forth, and it is self-negating. He, aware of this risk, suggests a

creative approach to “marginality” that enhances a classical understanding of it rather than

replaces it. He moves from “in- between” (classical marginality) to “in-both” (contemporary

marginality) and later suggests “in-beyond,” which simultaneously affirms and transcends both

negative and positive experiences of marginal existence.

Lee’s first main point of the book is that theology must abandon the exclusive thinking of

7 As Steven Ybarrola points out, perhaps, no one has better articulated the “theology of marginality” than Lee, which I also agree with. See Steven Ybarrola’s “An Anthropological Approach to Diaspora Missiology” (http://ureachtoronto.com/content/anthropological-approach-diaspora-missiology).

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either-or typified by the Aristotelian logic of excluded middle and adopt the inclusive thinking of

marginal people represented by neither/nor (in-between) and both/and (in-both) exemplified. He

introduces three key concepts as different ways to think about the relationship between the

“marginal” (Asian) and the “majority” (American) dual identity of Asian-Americans: “in-

between,” “in-both,” and “in-beyond” (29–75). First, “in–between” (between two cultures, for

example) is neither/nor, belonging to none. An “in-between” person is marginalized overtly or

covertly by not being able to find a place of identity from which to relate to self and others.

Experience of “in-between” cannot determine “who I am.” Second, “in–both” means that one

can embrace both the old and the new places; for example, one can become both Korean and

American without negating either one. At this stage, the “in–both” of marginality can affirm

“who I am” wherever I live, not according to what others say I am. Third, “in-beyond” the

paradoxical experience of being both “in-between” and “in-both,” is to say that one can stay in

both places and go beyond them. One does not leave marginality, rather “one becomes a new

marginal person who overcomes marginality without ceasing to be a marginal person” (62). One

lives in both realms “without being bound by either of them.” (63) At this stage, one can identify

with a greater community of all, beyond one’s own cultural norms or comfort zone.

The second point is that people are identified in multiple ways in terms of being on the

margin or in the center. At times, they can be identified with those in the center in some areas of

their lives, while being at the margins in other areas. For example, I am identified with those in

the center in terms of my gender (male), education, and religion (Protestant), but in terms my

race and ethnicity, I am identified with those on the margins in the United States, though I am in

the center in the Korean-American community. As Jaesang Lyu writes, “Marginality and

centrality are not opposite ends of a continuum in simplistic ways. They are interwoven in a web

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of dynamic processes in which interacting aspects of social identity place people in one moment

on the margins and in the next moment in the center.”8 The dynamics of marginality and

centrality can be explained by describing multiple waves in a pond:

I observed the peaceful pond. Suddenly a huge fish jumped up at the center of the pond, creating enormous sound of water and powerful waves lapped endlessly toward the shore. When the waves finally reached the edge, however, they began to ebb back to the center from which they originated. Their backward movement was an amazing discovery for me, even though I should have expected it from my study of elementary physics. Perhaps I have seen it, but had not paid attention. Why did I not pay attention to ebbs returning to the center, but noted only the waves coming out to the edge? Why was I interested only in something happening at and from the center? Why did I neglect what happened at and from the margin? (30)

According to Lee, “marginality and centrality are so mutually inclusive and relative that it is

imbalanced to stress one more than the other.” However, he stresses marginality “because it has

been neglected. By stressing marginality over centrality, we can restore the balance between the

two poles. Such a balance, which creates harmony, finds a new center, the authentic center,

which is no longer oppressive but liberative to the people located at the center or the margin. In

this respect, stressing marginality in theology is not a mistake but the correct approach” (31).

The aim of his contextual theology is not to move one or another group from the margin to the

center, but to redefine marginality itself as central.

The third point is divine marginalization. In the person of Jesus, we see a marginalized

person, who was born as a marginalized person (incarnation), lived a marginalized life and died a

marginalized death. Lee, thinking that immigrants as marginal people can identify with this

image of Christ, proposes a marginal Christ. He states,

Jesus was a new marginal person par excellence... He was a stranger to his own people… On the cross, he was rejected not only by his own people but also by his own Father. He was certainly a man in-between two different worlds without fully

8 Jaesang Lyu, “Marginality and Coping: Communal Contextual Narrative Approach to Pastoral Care with Korean American Christians,” (Ph.D. Diss. University of Denver, 2009), 32-33.

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belonging neither… Although he was rejected, he was a reconciler who broke down walls between Jews and Gentiles, between men and women, between the law and grace. He was a Jew by birth and lineage, but also a man of wholehumanity by his act of love (71-72).

For Lee, the incarnation can be understood not only as “divine marginalization” (78) but also as

“divine immigration” (83). As Lyu rightly points out, “Even though human immigration cannot

be compared to divine immigration directly, divine marginalization can provide a paradigm of a

‘new marginality,’ which is shown in the life of Jesus Christ. In this new paradigm of the divine

marginalization, the experience of immigration is no longer understood as a passive form of

marginality.”9 Jesus chose to be at the margin by belonging neither to heaven nor to earth and yet

fully living as both divine and human. In the same way, he lived an authentic life as a new

marginal person through his death, which Lee describes as a “total negation of life” of

“neither/nor,” and resurrection, which was a “total affirmation of life,” in both/and (72). Then,

“the margin is the locus—a focal point, a new and creative core—where two (or multiple) worlds

emerge” (60). Jesus Christ became the margin of marginality yet overcame marginality, living

in-beyond and being in-between and in-both simultaneously. As servant he was in the world at

the margin of marginality and suffered for the transgression of the world. As beggar he was

despised and rejected by others but free from the world’s dominance that marginalized him.

“Jesus was in the world but not of it. He negated the world as a beggar but affirmed it as a

servant” (89).

The fourth point is that in this paradoxical reconstruction of marginality, the marginalized

can be empowered as “new marginal people” who participate in the work of transforming

negative marginality, not at “the margin defined by dominant groups, but the new margin, the

margin of marginality” (60). For Korean Americans, “marginal Christ” means experiencing the

9 Ibid., 34-5.

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authentic reality of life by being neither fully Korean nor fully American, yet being both Korean

and American to the fullest extent. The new marginalized people do not seek a center, a place of

dominance, but discover and actualize their vocation as the new marginalized people, yielding

positively, rather than reacting against opposites. “By yielding they will eventually overcome

their marginality, and the centralist perspective will give way to marginality” (89).

New marginal people are committed to follow the model of Christ, who is a new

marginal being, through the life of discipleship (101-102). Marginal way of life has a special

meaning to Christians. Christ’s way is to love one another as he loved us (72). The marginal way

of both neither/nor and both/and life is the Christian way of life. Christian “love denies all and

accepts all. Love denies our selfishness in order to accept others; love accepts other in order to

deny our selfishness. The neither/nor negates our selfishness, but the both/ad accepts all. In love

the total negation and total acceptance take place simultaneously… Love is not exclusive but

always inclusive” (72). So “the power of new marginality is love, which is willing to suffer

redemptively by accepting others unconditionally as Jesus did on the cross” (73).

Such life of radical love can be possible when the new marginal people realize that they

are “part of creative core—the very creativity of God manifest in Jesus Christ” (152). They are

now part of a not old but new marginality, which Lee calls as “in beyond.” This is “to be in the

world but not of the world” (72). A new marginal person is the one who “overcomes marginality

without ceasing to be a marginal person” and who is in “both of them without either being

blended” (62). By fully accepting the call to become a new marginal people, the marginalized

can have agential power to transform the reality of oppression not through their automated

reaction to the dominant at the center but through their participation in the transformative works

of God in Christian love.10

10 Ibid., 36.

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Also, we are called to be ‘marginal people’ in a positive sense, not only because Jesus

was marginal, but also because marginality is an intrinsic part of creation, which could not

continue without its ‘marginal’ members and components. Thus marginality is part of life and

makes its essential contribution. Jesus became the margin of marginality by giving up everything

he had. “To be a servant means to have no personal worth, no innate value.” Servants do not

belong to the dominant group. To take on the nature of servitude after having had the nature of

God means to become the precise margin of marginality (82). Jesus becomes “the pioneer of new

marginality and the exemplar of all marginal people” (99). For Christians the par excellence of

living in multiple worlds without being captured or exhausted by them. Jesus’ own consent to his

distance from the majority cultures of his day enabled him to use his marginality creatively in

service of his call.

The final point is the extention of the previous that the mission of the new marginal

people is to overcome marginality, not by becoming the center, but through marginality. Genuine

liberation comes only when the marginal people refuse to accept the norms of the center. They

must deconstruct the centralist ideology and become the “anti-structural community of

liminality” (153). They do so through the power of love and suffering. Lee concludes his book

with reflections on how marginal people can overcome feelings of rejection, humiliation,

alienation, loneliness, nothingness, and come to a vision of wholeness and new life: “Marginality

is overcome through marginality. When all of us are marginal, love becomes the norm of our

lives… we then become servants to one another in love” (170).

Analysis of the Methodological Approach of the Author

First of all, let me address about Lee’s sources for his contextual theology. One extremely

important source for his contextual theology is his personal experience of marginality including

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suffering, rejection, discrimination, and oppression. As Bevans rightly points out, doing theology

is not only a matter of identifying one’s sources; it is about how these sources are employed,

about which sources receive a certain priority, and about which source serves as its starting

point. History is personal. History happens when persons are engaged in the story of history. For

Lee, this is where theological work begins. Telling a personal story is not itself theology but a

basis of theology, indeed the primary context for doing theology. This is why one cannot do

theology for another. If theology is contextual, it must certainly be at root autobiographical (7).

Theology and personal story are inseparable. Individual stories offer an autobiographical context

of theology (7). Basically, for Lee, Asian American contexts and stories are a vital source for the

construction of Asian American theology.

Secondly, writing from an Asian (Korean) American perspective, what Lee is proposing

is “a new theology based on marginality, which serves not only as a hermeneutical paradigm but

as a key to the substance of the Christian faith” (1), because most Asian Americans, when

speaking of their own cultural and social experience and predicament in the U.S., identify with

the image of marginality. For Lee, an Asian American hermeneutics is quite different from a

hermeneutical method of Western intellectual developments. His fundamental question is: “Why

should Asian American Christians who have quite different histories and religious traditions be

governed by the Western hermeneutic method?”11 He writes,

No hermeneutic method is universally applicable. A method of interpretation is always conditioned by a particular culture and historical context: method and context are inseparable, for method is a product of context. A different context produces a different method. Because the context of Asian Americans is different from that of European Americans, Asian Americans need a different hermeneutic method to understand their Christian faith… Asian Americans must develop their own indigenous hermeneutic...12

11 Jung Young Lee, “Multicultural and Global Theological Scholarship: An Asian American Perspective,” Theological Education, 37:1 (Autumn 1995): 43-55.12 Ibid., 44.

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So Lee offers a specific Asian American perspective, an example of reading Scripture from

another perspective, perspective of marginality, perspective of himself as a marginal person, or

from his own social location. Fernando Segovia and Mary Tolbert, in addressing the importance

of social location, write,

Thus, factors traditionally left out of consideration were now becoming areas of exploration-for example, gender, race, ethnic origins, class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and sociopolitical contexts-with a focus on real, flesh-and-blood readers who were always and inescapably situated both historically and culturally and whose reading and interpretation of the texts were seen as affected by their social location.13

It is without doubt that social location matters. Lee’s social location and cultural experiences of

marginality led him to a unique approach to reading the Bible. He offers a fresh perspective,

viewing Scripture through marginality. He reinterprets the main themes of traditional (the

Western dominant) theology such as God, Jesus, creation, the fall, people of God, and the

church. All of these themes are dealt with in this book through his new marginality paradigm.

For me, what Lee employs here is a hermeneutics of marginality at best. As Wonhee Anne Joh

rightly points out, “By way of being ‘in-both,’ Lee suggests what he terms as ‘in-beyond’ to

signify a new hermeneutics of marginality.”14

Critique

First of all, in this book, Lee builds his theology out of what is called an “anthropological

model.” In the anthropological model, human experience is placed at center. Humankind is

viewed as the place of the revelation and a source of theology. Revelation occurs in the culture.

Without any doubts, Lee treats Korean American life experiences, situations, questions and

13 Fernando F. Segovia, “ ‘And They Began to Speak in Other Tongues’: Competing Modes of Discourse in Contemporary Biblical Criticism,” in Reading from This Place, Vol. 1: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States, eds. Segovia and Tolbert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) 32.14 Wonhee Anne Joh, Heart of the Cross (Louisvill: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 64.

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interests very seriously. The anthropological model would emphasize that it is within human

culture that we find God’s revelation – not as a separate supracultural message, but in the very

complexity of culture itself, in the warp and woof of human relationships, which are constitutive

of cultural existence.15 Theology is a form of cultural activity.16 As Bevans rightly points out, for

me, Lee starts “where the faith actuall lives, and that is in the midst of people’s lives. It is in the

world as it is, a world bounded by history and culture… To ignore this would be to ignore the

living source of theology.”17 However, in my view, Lee goes far beyond what the

anthropological model suggests: “But to listen only to the present and not to the past as recorded

in scripture and tradition would be like listening to a symphony in monaural when, by the flick of

a switch, it could come alive in full stereo.”18 As Bevans notes,

[I]n some way or another every effort of contextual theology is an effort of translation: not only the present—experience, culture, social location, and social change—needs to be attended to; the experience of the past—scripture and tradition—needs to be attended to as well. Simply to discover the gospel emerging from a particular situation is the ideal of the anthropological model, but that is, to my knowledge, never the real situation.

In my view, Lee’s theology of marginality is a balanced combination of “theology from

above” and “theology from below.” He uses experiences as starting points. In the past Western

systematic theologians divide theology into 1) theology “from above,” which centers in God’s

communication and 2) theology “from below,” which centers on the community’s experiences.

According to Lee, unlike contemporary liberation theology, which approaches from below or

from the praxis of the poor and the oppressed, a marginal theology “approaches from the margin

and connects above and below, and left, right, and center” (73). Though Lee criticizes traditional

Western theology as theology “from above, that is, from the Word of God as a universal truth

15 Bevans, 56.16 Kathryn Tanner, Theories of culture: a new agenda for theology (Fortress, Minneapolis, 1997), 63.17 Bevans, 61.18 Ibid.

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from all people regardless of context” (74-5), his approach is not either/or but both/and, or, I

might say, yielding positively, rather than reacting against opposites, enhancing the theology

from above rather than replacing it. For example, Lee criticizes that in the history of Christianity,

Jesus was understood from the perspective of centrality. He was regarded as the center of

centrality” (78). On earth, Jesus-Christ is the center of marginality, but later on Christ-Jesus is

also a new center, the center of centrality in a new way: “He, a new center or a creative core,

emerged among marginalized people” (96). After resurrection, Christ-Jesus appeared to many.

We must acknowledge both his Lordship and his servanthood. Lee interprets the “the Son of the

Living God” phrase differently: “To be the Son of the living God does not mean at the center of

centrality. It means to be at the margin of marginality, the servant of all servant” (96). However,

not Jesus-Christ, but Christ-Jesus, after resurrection, appeared to the marginalized people as the

Lord. The lordship of Jesus takes on a new form, this time, not through humiliation and humility,

but through resurrection and exaltation. Now, “the lordship of Christ-Jesus became the creative

core of marginalized people” (96).

What Lee attempts to do in this book is “to see and think of ourselves from the “other”

side, the side of the margin: to observe, to understand things from the perspective of marginality,

and to see what role the margin plays in our understanding of the Christian faith” (31), even

Jesus Christ. Lee’s intention in stressing marginality was to restore the balance between

marginality and centrality, because such a balance creates harmony and find a new center.

Indeed, “[Jesus] was human and divine,” fully human and fully divine.

Secondly, Lee’s marginal theology is not merely a process of “faih seeking

understanding,” but a process of “faith seeking intelligent action.”19 Lee takes praxis seriously,

rejecting as irrelevant an academic type of theology that is divorced from action, assuming a

19 Bevans, 73.

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radical break in epistemology which makes commitment the first act of theology, and enaging

in critical reflection on praxis.20 According to Schreiter, a Christian praxis of faith, emerged in

oppressive in situations, “has a theoretical and a practical moment, both of which as

considered essential to the theological process.”21 For Lee, theoretical moments came when

daily existential experiences of marginality in the form of “suffering, rejection, discrimination,

and oppression” came real for him. He criticizes the vision of America as a melting pot in his

early migrant life, by describing the ethnic minority as marginal people.

Marginal people usually belong to subordinate groups, while those at the centre usually belong to dominant groups. Marginal people are then the oppressed, the powerless, and the rejected. Those who are not part of the institutions that dominate can be regarded as marginal people. … It is impossible to discuss all types of marginality; however, all such forms and intensities of marginal experience share one thing in common: they allow the individual to know what it means to be at the edges of existence (33-4).

Taking from R. E. Park’s theory on the process of marginalisation, Lee states four stages,

evisioned in the American idea of melting pot: contact or encounter; competition,

accommodation; assimilation. He stresses that the first stage is the initial contact or encounter

between the central people who are white and the marginal people who are colored. He asserts

that this contact itself is an experience of marginality. He also correctly points out that, in theory,

in the final stage marginality due to racial and cultural distance is suppsed to disappear, but it is

not; marginality is only a temporary condition and an “in-between” stage of assimilation process,

but, because total assimilation is impossible, marginality persists (36). Also, his theological

moments are not without “reflection on how God is active in human history,”22 just that his

marginal experiences allowed him to reflect on God from a new perspective, a marginal

perspective. His analysis, view, and understanding with the perceived activity of God—for

20 Ibid.21 Schreiter, Constructing Local Theology, 91.22 Ibid.

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example, incarnation as divine marginalization and immigration, and Jesus self-marginalization

(self-emptying, a transition from divinity to humanity, but also self-giving, self-sacrificing, even

unto death on the cross)—lead to transformative action on the part of the community of

believers. Life of ‘in-beyond’ was a result of a dialectical process of reflection and action. Lee’s

theology of marginality does not “remain only with reflection” nor does it “be reduced to pratice.

Good reflection leads to action, and action is not complected until it has been reflected upon.”

Lee did not stop at “in-between” or “in-both” but went beyond and found a new horizon, “in-

beyond.”

Conclusion

Asian-American immigrants live on the hyphen between their Asian origins and the

American culture in which they live. Their hyphenated existence is one of “both-and” in which

one cannot exist “without the other, without being incomplete. As such, the hyphen signifies that

two separate entities are now joined and belong together.”23 As articulated by the author, the O.T.

patriarchs, the children of Israel, the disciples, and Jesus himself lived lives of marginality, and

therefore to be followers of Christ the church needs to see itself as being in-between and in-both,

and in-beyond. For Asian-American Christians, it is their devotion to God, their sincere faith in

the midst of various difficulties, and their desire to learn God’s word and obey Him that place

them in the center of God’s kingdom. It is human nature to move away from the margins to be

part of the center of the dominant society. However, Jesus, as a marginal person, lived a

marginalized life and died a marginalized death. Being at the margin enables the marginalized to

share the experience of Jesus’ marginalization and adds meaning to their own multiple aspects of

23 Yoka van Dyk, “Hyphenated—Living: Between Longing and Belonging: An Exposition of Displacement as Liminality in the Transnational Condition.” See http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/bitstream/10292/273/1/vanDykY.pdf.

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marginalization. Being on the margin, Asian-American Christians can exemplify and empower

other Asian-Americans as well as Americans, to live in the center of God’s Kingdom and will for

their lives. Just as those in the Bible who lived a hyphenated existence, like Joseph living in

Egypt and the prophet Daniel living in Babylon, as worshippers of Yahweh living in a foreign

land, so Asian-American Christians are also called to live lives in which they negotiate

competing sets of loyalties and responsibilities, finding “new ways to be all three: Asians,

Americans, Christians.”24

Thus Asian-Americans should see a new possibility, that the margin of a new society can

become, as Sinyil Kim rightly observed, a place of God’s calling (Genesis 28:l0-20; Exodus 3:l-

12; Judges 10:2-3), a place of God’s training (Daniel 19-17; Jonah 2:l-10; Matthew 4:l-ll), a

place for a new beginning (1 Kings 19:l-18; Acts 8:26; 1 Timothy 3:16), and a place for a new

ministry of shalom, God’s original plan for harmony, right relationship with God and others, and

the proper functions of all elements in the world.25 Suddenly, a new task arises in the new context

of bringing shalom in all aspects of life ethnically (Jonah 1:ll-13; Romans 10:12), culturally

(Daniel 1:3-21), and spiritually (John 3:16; Acts 16:30-34).

Asian-Americans must find a new way of reading and interpreting culture and scripture

that will enable them to “see themsleves as God’s people who are in the process of moving from

the margins of society to the center of God’s kingdom.”26

Bibliography

24 Kate Bowler, “Generation K: Korean American Evangelicals” (Books and Culture, May/June 2011, online: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2009/mayjun/generationk.html).25 Sinyil Kim, “Korean Immigrants and Their Mission:Exploring the Missional Identity of Korean Immigrant Churches in North America” Doctor of Missiology Dissertation (Asbury Theological Seminary, 2008) 7.

26 Steve Kang, “The Bible and the Communion of Saints: A Churchly Plural Reading of Scripture,” in This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian Faith, eds. Robert J. Priest and Alvaro L. Nieves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 234.

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Bevans, Stephen B. Models of Contextual Theology. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2011.

Bowler, Kate. “Generation K: Korean American Evangelicals.” Books and Culture, May/June

2011, online: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2009/mayjun/generationk.html.

Joh, Ann Wonhee. Heart of the Cross. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

Kang, Steve. “The Bible and the Communion of Saints: A Churchly Plural Reading of

Scripture.” In This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian Faith. Eds. Robert J.

Priest and Alvaro L. Nieves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Kim, Sinyil. “Korean Immigrants and Their Mission:Exploring the Missional Identity of Korean

Immigrant Churches in North America.” Doctor of Missiology Dissertation: Asbury

Theological Seminary, 2008.

Lee, Jung Young. “Multicultural and Global Theological Scholarship: An Asian American

Perspective,” Theological Education, 37:1 (Autumn 1995).

Lyu, Jaesang. “Marginality and Coping: Communal Contextual Narrative Approach to Pastoral

Care with Korean American Christians.” Ph.D. Diss. University of Denver, 2009.

Pears, Angie. Doing Contextual Theology. London & New York: Routledge, 2010).

Schreiter, Robert J. Constructing Local Theologies. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985.

Segovia, Fernando F. “‘And They Began to Speak in Other Tongues’: Competing Modes of

Discourse in Contemporary Biblical Criticism.” In Reading from This Place, Vol. 1:

Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States. Eds. Segovia and

Tolbert. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Tanner, Kathryn. Theories of culture: a new agenda for theology. Fortress, Minneapolis, 1997.

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van Dyk, Yoka. “Hyphenated—Living: Between Longing and Belonging: An Exposition of

Displacement as Liminality in the Transnational Condition.” See

http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/bitstream/10292/273/1/vanDykY.pdf.

Ybarrola, Steven. “An Anthropological Approach to Diaspora Missiology”

(http://ureachtoronto.com/content/anthropological-approach-diaspora-missiology).

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