Welcome to Lived Theology in Asian North America: The First Generation
Lived Theology in Asian North America: The First Generation is a digital humanities project that brings to life the voices and faith journeys of first-generation East Asian American Christians. Rooted in over sixty oral history interviews, our platform reveals the vibrant tapestry of spiritual resilience, family bonds, and cultural inheritances that shape these believers’ everyday lives. They come with stories of transpacific migration, recollections of political upheavals, and cherished family ethics informed by God’s grace and provision. In doing so, they challenge familiar categories like “evangelical” or “mainline,” and remind us that theological identity is formed at the crossroads of memory, hope, and embodied practice. By centering these testimonies, we illuminate the sacred values that sustain immigrant faith communities and invite you to encounter the surprising depths of Asian North American Christianity.
Through interactive timelines, thematic galleries, and a rich collection of audio and transcript excerpts, this site serves pastors, students, and community members alike, offering fresh perspectives on lived theology. Each narrative leads us deeper into the heart of real families wrestling with relocation, generational differences, and spiritual awakenings—revealing how personal struggles, cultural pride, and God’s grace can converge in powerful, life-giving ways. Our digital humanities approach ensures that these interviews stand as more than mere data: they become portals into shared experiences of hospitality, mental health, and political engagement—moments of sacred encounter that reshape congregations and enrich public discourse. We invite you to explore, reflect, and join a broader conversation on how faith flourishes at the edges of home, homeland, and hope.
Voices from the First Generation
From a father streaked with coal dust after a desperate train journey in China, to children humming hymns in crowded apartments turned makeshift chapels in Korea, our oral history interviews trace faith winding its way through war-torn homelands, cramped city streets, and dawn prayers in rural countrysides. We hear echoes of grandmothers praying in worn living rooms, offering coins pressed into small hands before Sunday church, and of mothers who saved a single rib after a buffet so nothing—neither food nor family—might go to waste. We glimpse battered suitcases on transpacific flights, painting lessons by modernist fathers with an abstract flair, and deep conversations sparked by candlelit letters or chance encounters on dark roads. Each memory—whether mourning at unmarked graves, standing awestruck in a new-year’s worship service, or rediscovering one’s heritage through an unexpected Bible study—brims with theological significance and cultural resonance. These are stories of ordinary believers who, in the midst of exile and arrival, found God’s gentle hand shaping every meal, every prayer, every threshold crossed. Come explore these rich narratives on our digital humanities website, where imagery, testimony, and scholarship illuminate the sacred paths forged by Asian American Christian faith.
