APA Religions 101 (Axis Mundi Media + APARRI)

Many wonder how and why religious minorities in the USA adopt conservative – and even fascist – political identities when it seems that the American Right is anti-immigrant and in many cases explicitly racist. Scholars Dr. Jane Hong (Occidental) and Dr. Adrian de Leon (USC/NYU) argue that Asian American (religious) conservatism should be understood not just as an imported phenomenon from outside these communities, but as something structural within the formation of Asian America itself.

Special Issue of Amerasia: 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00447471.2023.2167934

Dr. Jane Hong is the author of Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of American History, the Gilder-Lehrman Scholarly Advisory Board, the managing board of the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI), and the Board of Directors of the Public Religion Research Institute(PRRI). Hong appears in two episodes of the Peabody Award-winning PBS docuseries, Asian Americans (2020). An active public speaker, Hong has shared her expertise with the Brookings Institution, Uber, and NPR’s The Takeaway, in addition to academic and faith-based venues. 

Dr. Adrian De Leon is an award-winning public historian and writer. Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America, his first academic book, uses archival research in the Philippines, Hawai‘i, North America, and Spain in order to follow the co-constitution of Philippine indigeneity and Filipino migrant labor through the racial archives of 19th-century plantation capitalism in Luzon’s northern hinterlands.

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Brad speaks with Dr. Gabriel Catanus, Affiliate Assistant Professor of Theology at Fuller Seminary and Director of the Filipino American Ministry Initiative, about the challenges and joys of doing Filipino American theology and ministry and how they fit - and stand out - from other Asian American theological and ministry paradigms.

Beyond his current project with Cascade Books, Dr. Catanus' publications include “Colonial Spirituality: The Pain and Politics of Doing Filipino American Theology,” ChristianityNext 6 (Winter 2022), “Statement on Anti-Asian Racism in the Time of COVID-19″ (coauthored with the Asian American Christian Collaborative, March 31, 2020), and “Is Filipino American Theology Asian American Theology?” Inheritance Magazine 65 (October 2019).

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Brad speaks with Dr. Simran Jeet Singh , Executive Director for the Aspen Institute’s Religion & Society Program and author of The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life.

As a boy growing up in South Texas, Simran Jeet Singh and his brothers confronted racism daily: at school, in their neighborhood, playing sports, and later in college and beyond. Despite the prejudice and hate he faced, this self-described “turban-wearing, brown-skinned, beard-loving Sikh” refused to give in to negativity. Instead, Singh delved deep into the Sikh teachings that he grew up with and embraced the lessons to seek the good in every person and situation and to find positive ways to direct his energy. These Sikh tenets of love and service to others have empowered him to forge a life of connection and a commitment to justice that have made him a national figure in the areas of equity, inclusion, and social justice.

The Light We Give: https://simranjeetsingh.org/the-light-we-give/

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

In June 2023, the SCOTUS ruled that race cannot be used in the college admissions process. Many in and outside of the Asian American community see the ruling as positive for Asian American students who are supposedly disadvantaged by affirmative action policies. Brad talks with Dr. Janelle Wong of the University of Maryland about what the data tells us concerning Asian American acceptance rates, how this ruling will affect BIPOC Americans on the whole, and the ways the model minority myth is used to divide and conquer people of color and Black Americans in the United States.

Dr. Janelle Wong is Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining the University of Maryland in 2012, she was at the University of Southern California in the Departments of Political Science and American Studies and Ethnicity. Wong is author of Immigrants, Evangelicals and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change (2018, Russell Sage Foundation Press), Democracy’s Promise: Immigrants and American Civic Institutions (2006, University of Michigan Press) and co-author of two books on Asian American politics. The most recent is Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and their Political Identities (2011, Russell Sage Foundation), based on the first nationally representative survey of Asian Americans’ political attitudes and behavior. 

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

An introduction to Asian and Pacific American religions through interviews with experts and practitioners. Host Dr. Bradley Onishi speaks with APA scholars about:

• Asian American Catholicism
• Asian American Buddhism before and beyond Whiteness
• Fighting racism with the wisdom of Sikh teachings
• Doing Muslim theology as a Vietnamese American
• Asian American evangelicals in the MAGA Age
• The challenges of creating Filipino religious communities
• Race, Jim Crow, and the origins of modern yoga
• Caste privilege in the United States and India
• Asian Americans and Affirmative Action
• Racialized Capitalism
• Being Jewish, Japanese, queer and clergy

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Brad speaks with Dr. Himanee Gupta, Professor in the Department of Historical Studies at SUNY Empire State and the author of "Muncie, India(na): Middletown and Asian America," about howt South Asians in the United States who grew up in the Hindu faith are caste-privileged or savarna (which means having varna, a term often equated to having spiritual purity). By contrast, Dalits like Soundararajan are avarna (without varna) and thereby deemed within this system as impure. These categorizations have found legitimacy through the promulgation of a Brahmanical form of Hinduism that shares affinities with the conservative pro-Hindu politics of India’s current leadership. 

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Japanese, Jewish, Queer, and Clergy with Rev. Laura Cheifetz 

Bradley Onishi interviews Reverend Laura Mariko Chaffetz, discussing her experiences as a multiracial queer Asian American Christian minister with Jewish heritage. They examine how APA religious communities navigate the black-white binary in the U.S., the impact of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, and the dynamics of Christian identity in various contexts. The conversation highlights the importance of recognizing and valuing the diverse and rich religious practices among Asian Pacific Americans.

Laura Cheifetz is the co-author and editor of "Church on Purpose: Reinventing Discipleship, Community, & Justice" (Judson Press) and contributor to "Race in a Post Obama America: The Church Responds" (Westminster John Knox Press), "Leading Wisdom: Asian and Asian North American Women Leaders" (WJK), "Here I Am: Faith Stories of Korean American Clergywomen" (Judson), and "Streams Run Uphill: Conversations with Young Clergywomen of Color" (Judson). She is co-author of the "Forming Asian Leaders for North American Churches" entry in the "Religious Leadership" reference handbook (SAGE Publishing).

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Brad speaks with Dr. Funie Hsu and Chenxing Han about race, heritage, and Asian American Buddhisms. They discuss the ways Asian American Buddhists are often misunderstood in the United States due to the incomplete representation of Buddhism in American culture and the contemporary predominance of Whiteness in Buddhist spaces.

Dr. Funie Hsu is currently Associate Professor of American Studies at San José State University and was a former University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Davis. Her first book, Instructions for (Erasing) Empire: English, Domestication, and the US Colonization of the Philippines (under contract), demonstrates how English language instruction served to erase the violent reality of US occupation.

Chenxing Han (she/her) is the author of Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (2021); one long listening: a memoir of grief, friendship, and spiritual care (2023); and numerous articles and book chapters for both academic and mainstream audiences. A frequent speaker and workshop leader at schools, universities, and Buddhist communities across the nation, she has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Hemera Foundation, the Lenz Foundation, and the University of Michigan. 

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Brad speaks with journalist and scholar Philip Deslippe about the origins of yoga in the United States as a response to the precarity of South Asian lives in the 20th century America. "A century ago, students of yoga in the United States, like many practitioners today, believed that they were engaging in something pure, ancient, and Indian. In reality, the yoga they were doing was a bricolage of the metaphysical and mundane presented to them in an exotic, Orientalized package by largely educated and worldly immigrants from India. These teachers were themselves responding and adapting to a nativist and racist climate. Yoga in the United States during the interwar decades is one of many examples of how Asian religions in the United States cannot be fully understood outside the context of Asian American history."

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Brad speaks with Dr. Martin Nguyen, who explains how his personal story impacts his understanding race, theology, culture, and heritage.

As he explains, "t is difficult for me to imagine doing theology, then, without also considering who I am—my being Vietnamese, Asian, American, once Catholic, and now Muslim. Race and religion are entangled in the narrative of my life. They even shape my childhood memories as a son of Vietnamese Catholic refugees, born and raised in Virginia."

Dr. Nguyen is a scholar of Muslim theology and Islamic studies. His scholarship revolves around ethics, constructive theology, Qur’anic studies, and the intersection of race and religion. His most recent book Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination presents a contemporary theology rooted in the practice of the religious imagination. A professor of religious studies, he is presently chair of the department at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Learn more about APARRI. 

APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. 

Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi

Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto

For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us

Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.