A guide to Asian-Americans and religion

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Asian-Americans are one of the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population, and they are stunningly diverse culturally and religiously. ReligionLink presents a guide to experts and organizations that focus on this group.

Background

Questions for reporters

  • Some of the largest evangelical campus ministries in the U.S. are populated by Asian-Americans. How are Asian-Americans influencing American evangelicalism?
  • Asian-Americans are courted by a wide variety of Christian denominations and traditions in the U.S., and many denominations are starting new churches and programs to appeal to their growing numbers. How is their presence influencing practices in these denominations?
  • Explore the diversity of congregations. Coverage tends to focus on immigrant churches rather than churches of the children of immigrants. Korean-American second-generation churches get a lot of attention, but less is paid to Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Japanese or Filipino second-generation churches. Also, a new wave of multiethnic but single-race churches includes young Asian-American congregants from a variety of backgrounds.
  • How do religious and generational differences play out in Asian-American families? What are the challenges of child-rearing in multireligious families? How are second-generation Asian-Americans adapting religious practices to American life?
  • How does the church function in diverse Asian-American communities where class divisions exist? How do Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist second-generation Asian-Americans address these issues?
  • Americans’ understanding of Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism is often shallow; how are adherents addressing that? What role are civil rights organizations playing?
  • What role does faith play when young Asian-Americans become involved in social and political issues? For example, young Korean-Americans have been working with young Latinos and African-Americans in Los Angeles since the 1992 riots to address racial and ethnic tensions.
  • How do tensions among national, cultural, religious or ethnic groups internationally play out in the U.S.? For example, what conflicts exist between Indian and Pakistani immigrants in the U.S.?
  • What types of pilgrimages are Asian-Americans making to historical places, such as internment camps?

Demographics

  • The U.S. Census report announced Asians were the nation’s fastest-growing race or ethnic group in 2012. The population rose by 530,000, or 2.9 percent.
  • “The Asian American Statistics,” from a U.S. Census brief, says 5.1 percent of the U.S. population reported as Asian – 0.86 percent Chinese, 0.66 percent Filipino, 0.60 percent Asian Indian, 0.40 percent Vietnamese, 0.38 percent Korean and 0.28 percent Japanese.
  • Working from the American Religious Identification Survey 2001, C.N. Le, estimates the religious breakdown among Asian-Americans as 21.1 percent Catholic, 20.2 percent none/agnostic, 9.6 percent Protestant, 9.1 percent Buddhist, 5.8 percent Christian, 5.2 percent Muslim, and .4 percent Jewish.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life on July 19, 2012, published an extensive survey titled “Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths.” The research provides a unique and comprehensive overview of the religious composition of the Asian-American community.

  • The study notes that Asian-Americans have gone from less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population  in 1965 to nearly 6 percent today. ”In the process,” the authors write, “they have been largely responsible for the growth of non-Abrahamic faiths in the United States, particularly Buddhism and Hinduism.” The study shows that Christians account for about 42 percent of Asian-Americans, while Buddhists account for about one-in-seven Asian-Americans (14 percent). They are followed by Hindus at 10 percent.
  • Just as significant is the finding that the second-largest group among Asian-Americans, accounting for 26 percent of the community, consists of those who give their religious identification as “unaffiliated.” Moreover, within that subset, 76 percent say religion is not too important or not at all important in their lives – a significantly higher percentage than typical for other so-called nones.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations reports these statistics:

  • 33 percent of U.S. (Sunni) mosque attendees are South Asian and 1.3 percent are Southeast Asian (from Ihsan Bagby et. al, The American Mosque: A National Portrait).
  • 23 percent of North America’s Muslim population is South Asian and 5 percent is drawn from other Asians (from Mohamed Nimer, The North American Muslim Resource Guide: Muslim Community Life in the United States and Canada).

National sources

Publications and websites

  • Journal of Asian American Studies

    The Journal of Asian American Studies is a compilation of research reports and studies on Asian American studies in the U.S.

  • Center for Educational Telecommunications

    The Center for Educational Telecommunications is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study, research and publication of information on Asian Americans in the U.S.

  • Asian-Nation

    Asian-Nation is a website is a resource and “sociological exploration” on the history, politics, demographics and culture of Asian Americans. Contact through the website.

  • Asian American Net

    Asian American Net is a website dedicated serve Asian Americans communities through the promotion of the different cultures and providing educators with the resources to build up the knowledge of the public. It provides a list of sources and organizations to contact.

  • Asia Society

    Asia Society is an online organization dedicated to the education of communities, institutions and general public on Asian Americans.

Organizations and research centers

Activism and anti-discrimination

General religion

  • David K. Yoo

    David K. Yoo is an associate professor of history at Claremont McKenna College. He edited New Spiritual Homes: Religion and Asian Americans (University of Hawaii, 1999) and wrote Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation and Culture Among Japanese Americans of California, 1924-49 (University of Illinois, 1999).

  • Fenggang Yang

    Fenggang Yang directs the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. He is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including Religion in China: Survival and Revival Under Communist Rule. He is also an expert in Asian immigration and Eastern religions.

  • Pyong Gap Min

    Pyong Gap Min is professor of sociology at Queens College, Flushing, N.Y, and his research interests include race and ethnic relations, ethnic identity, immigrants’ religions and Asian-Americans. During the 2006-07 academic year, he worked as a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. His books include, as editor, the three-volume Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States (Greenwood Press, 2005) and, as co-editor, Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communities (Altamira Press, 2002).

  • Fumitaka Matsuoka

    Fumitaka Matsuoka is Robert Gordon Sproul Professor of Theology of Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, Calif., where he is executive director of the Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion. He is an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren. He co-edited Realizing the America of Our Hearts: Theological Voices of Asian Americans (Chalice Press, 2003) and wrote The Color of Faith: Building Community in a Multiracial Society (United Church Press, 1998) and Out of Silence: Emerging Themes in Asian American Churches (United Church Press, 1995).

  • David Kyuman Kim

    David Kyuman Kim is an assistant professor of religious studies at Connecticut College in New London, Conn., and director of the college’s Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity.

  • Jane Iwamura

    Jane Iwamura is the chair of the religious studies program at the University of the West in Rosemead, Calif. She specializes in Asian-American religions, race and popular culture. She co-edited Revealing the Sacred in Asian & Pacific America.

  • Carolyn Chen

    Carolyn Chen is an associate professor in the ethnic studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, whose research interests include religion, ethnicity, immigration and sociology of work.

  • Rudy Busto

    Rudy Busto is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His specialties include race and religion in the United States, and Asian-American/Pacific Islander religions, Latino religion and evangelical Christianity.

  • C.N. Le

    C.N. Le, a senior lecturer professor of sociology and director of Asian and Asian-American studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, runs the comprehensive Web resource Asian-Nation, which he describes as “a sociological exploration of the historical, political, demographic and cultural issues that make up today’s diverse Asian-American community.” It includes a section on religion and spirituality.

  • Rita Nakashima Brock

    Rita Nakashima Brock is research professor of theology and culture and director of The Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Tex. She has written about feminist theology and Asian-American women. Her books include, as co-editor, the 2007 release Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion & Theology. She contributed one of the essays and co-wrote the “Asian American Protestant Women” entry in the Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America.

Buddhism

  • Robert Thurman

    Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University in New York, wrote “Human Rights and Responsibilities: Buddhist Views on Individualism and Altruism” in Religious Diversity and Human Rights. Thurman is also the author of The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism.

  • Jin Y. Park

    Jin Y. Park is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy and religion at American University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in Buddhist philosophy; her doctoral dissertation was on Zen Buddhism and postmodern thought.

  • Ruben Habito

    Ruben Habito is a professor of world religions and spirituality at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is co-editor of The Practice of Altruism: Caring and Religion in a Global Perspective. He specializes in Buddhism and wrote a chapter in Altruism in World Religions.

  • Janet Gyatso

    Janet Gyatso is Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity School in Boston, where she is co-chairwoman of the American Academy of Religion’s Buddhism section and president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies. Her work focuses on Tibetan Buddhism and religious culture, including issues of sex and gender. She is co-author of Women in Tibet: Past and Present.

  • Duncan Williams

    Duncan Williams, associate professor of East Asian languages and literature at the University of Southern California, specializes in Asian-American Buddhism and its relationship to the environment.

Christianity

  • Peter T. Cha

    Peter T. Cha is associate professor of pastoral theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., and co-author of Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents: Asian American Discipleship (InterVarsity Press, 1998). He also co-edited Growing Healthy Asian American Churches (IVP, 2006).

  • D. J. Chuang

    D. J. Chuang is working with Leadership Network to assist churches that are trying creative approaches to reach Asian Americans. Leadership Network, based in Dallas, works to nurture innovative leadership and church growth by connecting and equipping church leaders.

  • Timothy Tseng

    Timothy Tseng is the former president of the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity in Castro Valley, Calif., and has been researching the history of Chinese Protestantism in North America. He led a Pulpit & Pew study on Asian-American religious leadership that can be downloaded.

  • Peter C. Phan

    Peter C. Phan holds the Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. His numerous books include, as author, Christianity With an Asian Face: Asian American Theology in the Making; Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue; and Vietnamese-American Catholics.

  • Nami Kim

    Nami Kim, assistant professor of religion at Spelman College, Atlanta, can talk about Asian-American Protestant women and Asian-American Christianity.

Hinduism

  • K. R. Sundararajan

    K.R. Sundararajan is a professor of theology at St. Bonaventure University in St. Bonaventure, N.Y. He is the co-editor of Hindu Spirituality II: Post-Classical and Modern.

  • Anantanand Rambachan

    Anantanand Rambachan is a professor of religion, philosophy and Asian studies at St. Olaf College. He researches and writes about the Hindu community, including unique challenges and opportunities for Hindus in the United States.

  • Vasudha Narayanan

    Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and she helped found the university’s Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions, of which she is director. She is a noted scholar of Hinduism and the environment.

  • Sushil Mittal

    Sushil Mittal is professor of religion at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. He is an expert on Gandhian thought and a specialist in Indian studies. He is the author of several books on Hinduism.

  • Hindu American Foundation

    The Hindu American Foundation is an advocacy organization for the Hindu American community. The foundation educates the public about Hinduism, speaks out about issues affecting Hindus worldwide and builds bridges with institutions and individuals whose work aligns with HAF’s objectives. HAF focuses on human and civil rights, public policy, media, academia and interfaith relations. It is based in Washington, D.C.

  • Prema Kurien

    Prema Kurien is a professor of sociology at Syracuse University. Her books include A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism and Ethnic Church Meets Mega Church: Indian American Christianity in Motion.

  • Paramahamsa Nithyananda

    Paramahamsa Nithyananda is president of the International Vedic Hindu University in Orlando, Fla. (formerly Hindu University of America). The university provides education on yoga and Hinduism. He founded the Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam international movement for meditation.

Islam

  • Islamic Society of North America

    The Islamic Society of North America promotes unity and leadership among Muslims. The organization, based in Plainfield, Ind., has a large immigrant presence. Contact executive director Ahmed Elhattab.

  • Carl W. Ernst

    Carl W. Ernst is a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He wrote Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World and edited Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance. He is affiliated with the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

  • Council on American-Islamic Relations

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it is the largest advocacy group for Muslims in the U.S. It advocates for Muslims on issues related to civil liberties and justice. Contact communications director Ibrahim Hooper in Washington, D.C.

Mormonism

  • Jessie L. Embry

    Jessie L. Embry is associate director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Her books include, as author, Asian American Mormons: Bridging Cultures.

Sikhism

  • Dr. Gurinder Singh Mann

    Dr. Gurinder Singh Mann is a professor of global and religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is the director of the Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies. He has written widely about Sikhism and other Eastern religions in the United States.

  • United Sikhs

    United Sikhs is an international nonprofit group that works to help underprivileged and minority communities. The U.S. office is in New York.

  • Sikh Coalition

    The Sikh Coalition in New York is an advocacy group established by several Sikh groups across the United States after the 9/11 attacks to help protect Sikh civil rights. Nimarta Kaur is the media and communications director.

Unitarian Universalism

  • Kat Liu

    Kat Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, growing up with a mixture of Christian, Buddhist and Taoist/Confucian influences.  She has been a Unitarian Universalist for about seven years and is assistant director of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Washington Office for Advocacy.

  • Manish K. Mishra-Marzetti

    Manish K. Mishra-Marzetti, a Hindu and the son of Indian immigrants, is the senior minister of The First Parish in Lincoln, Mass. He is president of Diverse & Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries, which serves denominational members of color.

  • A. Hiro Nishikawa

    A. Hiro Nishikawa of Haverford, Pa., is a third-generation Japanese American and a national board member of the Japanese American Citizens League. As a child, he was incarcerated during World War II with his family in a concentration camp in Poston, Ariz. Raised Buddhist (Shin-shu), he is active in the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Politics

  • Janelle Wong

    Janelle Wong is a core faculty member in the Asian American studies program at the University of Maryland and a professor of American studies.

  • Pei-te Lien

    Pei-te Lien is a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and co-authored The Politics of Asian Americans: Diversity & Community.

Second generation

  • Jerry Park

    Jerry Park is an assistant professor of the sociology of religion at Baylor University in Waco. His specialty is in racial, ethnic and religious identity. Ask about his research into religious consumption – he delivered a paper, “What Would Jesus Buy: American Religious Consumption in the 21st Century,” to the 2006 conference on the Scientific Study of Religion – and how it pertains to the popularity of New Age media products.

  • Antony W. Alumkal

    Antony W. Alumkal is an assistant professor of sociology of religion at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver and author of Asian American Evangelical Churches: Race, Ethnicity and Assimilation in the Second Generation (LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2003).

    Contact: 303-765-3131.

  • Arar Han

    Arar Han, who is attending business school at Stanford University, edited Asian American X: An Intersection of Twenty-First Century Asian American Voices.

Women

  • Jung Ha Kim

    Jung Ha Kim is a senior lecturer in sociology at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She is author of Bridge-Makers and Cross-Bearers: Korean American Women and the Church (Scholars Press, 1997), co-author of Singing the Lord’s Song in a New Land: Korean American Practices of Faith (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005) and co-editor of Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communities (Alta Mira Press, 2002).

  • Chung Hyun Kyung

    Chung Hyun Kyung is associate professor of ecumenical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. A lay theologian of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, she was once a temporary Buddhist novice nun. Her interests include feminist and eco-feminist theologies and spiritualities from Asia, Christian-Buddhist dialogue and Zen meditation. She wrote Struggle to Be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology. She spent a sabbatical year traveling 16 Islamic countries and talking with women peacemakers, and is working on a book about it.

  • Gail M. Nomura

    Gail M. Nomura, associate professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington, co-edited Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology and Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century.

  • Kwok Pui Lan

    Kwok Pui Lan is William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass. Her books include, as co-editor, the 2007 release Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion & Theology.

  • Pacific, Asian, and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry

    Pacific, Asian, and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry is a U.S.-Canadian grass-roots network.

Regional sources

In the Northeast

  • Mark Lewis Taylor

    Mark Lewis Taylor is Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. He wrote Religion, Politics and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers and American Empire and The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America. He is a commentator on American culture and politics. He has written articles on hip-hop and religion. His expertise also includes race, U.S. prisons, the death penalty and contemporary anti-war movements.

  • Khyati Y. Joshi

    Khyati Joshi is an associate professor of education at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., and a scholar on cultural and religious pluralism in the United States. Her books include New Roots in America’s Sacred Ground: Religion, Race and Ethnicity in Indian America. She is also co-founder of the Institute for Teaching Diversity and Social Justice (IDSJ), which offers multi-day institutes, customized workshops, and one-on-one and small-group coaching for organizations and professionals seeking to build their equity and justice competencies.

  • Elaine Howard Ecklund

    Elaine Howard Ecklund directs the religion and public life program at Rice University, where she is also a professor of sociology. She is the author of Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life.

  • Diana L. Eck

    Diana L. Eck is a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University. She is also director of Harvard’s Pluralism Project, which explores the religious diversity of the U.S. 

  • Su Yon Pak

    Su Yon Pak, vice president for institutional advancement at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Asian North American Religion, Culture and Society Group.

  • David L. Eng

    David L. Eng is an associate professor of English at University of Pennsylvania, and his specialties include Asian-American literature. He wrote Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America and co-edited Q & A: Queer in Asian America.

  • Sang Hyun Lee

    Sang Hyun Lee, an ordained Presbyterian minister, is Kyung-Chik Han Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and directs the program for Asian-American theology and ministry.

  • J. Paul Rajashekar

    J. Paul Rajashekar is dean and Luther D. Reed Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.

  • Gale A. Yee

    Gale A. Yee, professor of Hebrew Bible at Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass., can talk about Asian-Americans and the Bible.

  • Thanh V. Tran

    Thanh V. Tran is a professor of social work at Boston College whose research has included Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese-Americans.

  • Lili M. Kim

    Lili M. Kim is Henry R. Luce Assistant Professor of History and Global Migrations at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Her specialties include Asian-American history.

In the South

  • Paul Chang-Ha Lim

    Paul Chang-Ha Lim is assistant professor of the history of Christianity at the Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn.

  • Amos Yong

    Amos Yong is a theology professor at Regent University’s School of Divinity in Virginia Beach, Va. He is the author of The Bible, Disability and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God and Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity.

  • Bruce Lawrence

    Bruce Lawrence is professor emeritus of  religion at Duke University in Durham, N.C. He is author of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (Verso, 2005). He is an expert on comparative fundamentalism and Muslim networks.

  • Jung Ha Kim

    Jung Ha Kim is a senior lecturer in sociology at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She is author of Bridge-Makers and Cross-Bearers: Korean American Women and the Church (Scholars Press, 1997), co-author of Singing the Lord’s Song in a New Land: Korean American Practices of Faith (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005) and co-editor of Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communities (Alta Mira Press, 2002).

  • Mary F. Foskett

    Mary F. Foskett is Wake Forest Kahle Professor of Religion and director of the Humanities Institute at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. She has written widely on representations of Mary throughout the centuries, including the book A Virgin Conceived: Mary and Classical Representations of Virginity.

  • John J. Thatamanil

    John J. Thatamanil, who emigrated from India to the United States as a child, is assistant professor of theology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville. He teaches courses on Hindu-Christian dialogue and Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and wrote The Immanent Divine: God, Creation and the Human Predicament — An East-West Conversation.

  • Sze-Kar Wan

    Sze-Kar Wan, who is an Episcopal priest, is a professor of New Testament at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. His research includes neo-Confucianism.

  • Namsoon Kang

    Namsoon Kang, associate professor of world Christianity and religions at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, researches Asian and Korean feminist theology.

  • Bobby Jindal

    Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, is the son of Indian immigrants. He grew up Hindu but converted to Catholicism. Contact via Mike Reed, director of communications.

  • Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger

    Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, who grew up in India, is a religion professor at Emory University in Atlanta whose specialties include Muslim and Hindu popular traditions.

In the Midwest

  • Eleazar S. Fernandez

    Eleazar S. Fernandez, who is ordained in the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, is professor of constructive theology at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, Minn. He co-edited Realizing the America of Our Hearts: Theological Voices of Asian Americans.

  • Andrew Sung Park

    Andrew Sung Park is professor of theology at United Theological Seminary in Trotwood, Ohio. His books include Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective; The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin; and From Hurt to Healing: A Theology of the Wounded.

  • W. Anne Joh

    W. Anne Joh, assistant professor of theology at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Okla., is co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Asian North American Religion, Culture and Society Group. Her research includes colonization and postcoloniality, race/racism and religion, gender/sexism/heterosexism and religion, and Asian-American history.

  • Frank H. Wu

    Frank H. Wu, dean and professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, wrote Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White and co-authored Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment.

  • Jonathan Y. Tan

    Jonathan Y. Tan, who was born in Malaysia, is a theology professor at Xavier University, Cincinnati. He teaches courses on Islam, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

In the West

  • Paul R. Spickard

    Paul R. Spickard is professor of 20th-century American social and cultural history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He co-edited Revealing the Sacred in Asian & Pacific America (Routledge, 2003).

  • Charles J. McClain Jr.

    Charles J. McClain Jr. is lecturer in residence and vice chairman of the jurisprudence and social policy program at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (University of California, 1996).

  • Boyung Lee

    Boyung Lee is assistant professor of educational ministries at Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

  • Russell Jeung

    Russell Jeung is assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and author of Faithful Generations: Race and New Asian American Churches (Rutgers University Press, 2004).

  • Min Zhou

    Min Zhou is a professor of sociology and Asian-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and she studies Asian immigration to the United States. Her books include, as co-editor, Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader and, as co-author, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States and Straddling Two Social Worlds: The Experience of Vietnamese Refugee Children in the United States.

  • Oliver Wang

    Oliver Wang is an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach, and writes about Asian-American cinema and about music, youth culture, popular culture and politics.

  • Mai-Anh Le Tran

    Mai-Anh Le Tran, who emigrated at age 10 from Vietnam to the United States, is assistant professor of religious education and Asian-American cultures at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, Calif.

  • Tat-siong Benny Liew

    Tat-siong Benny Liew, who is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is associate professor of New Testament at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, Calif. His interests include Asian-American history and literature.

  • James Kyung-Jin Lee

    James Kyung-Jin Lee, associate professor of Asian-American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializes in Asian-American literature. He wrote Urban Triage: Race and the Fictions of Multiculturalism.

  • Sharon Kim

    Sharon Kim is an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Fullerton, and her research includes Asian-Americans and religion, ethnicity, race and immigration.

  • Rebecca Y. Kim

    Rebecca Y. Kim is an assistant professor of sociology at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Her research includes Korean/Southeast Asian immigrant religious organizations, second-generation Asian-American religious participation and Asian-American intragroup differences. She wrote God’s New Whiz Kids?: Korean American Evangelicals on Campus.

  • Marion S. Grau

    Marion S. Grau is assistant professor of theology at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, Calif. Her interests include how Asian American religious people interact with Western ideas, and Asian American contributions to Christian theology.

  • Russell C. Leong

    Russell C. Leong, a writer and poet who teaches Asian-American studies and English at the University of California, Los Angeles, edits Amerasia Journal.

  • Kirsten Oh

    Kirsten Oh is a doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif., who can discuss Asian-American evangelicals.

  • Anselm Kyongsuk Min

    Anselm Kyongsuk Min is a professor of the philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, Calif.

  • Irene Lin

    Irene Lin is associate director of the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies, Stanford University in Stanford, Calif.

  • Rachel A.R. Bundang

    Rachel A.R. Bundang, a Bannan Fellow and lecturer in religious studies at Santa Clara University, can discuss Filipinas and Asian-American Catholics.

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