In this episode we are joined by theologian and author, Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim. Dr. Kim is Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion and the author or editor of 24 books, including: Surviving God, Spirit Life; Invisible; Hope in Disarray; Keeping Hope Alive and Reimagining Spirit. She is a co-editor for the Palgrave Macmillan Book Series, “Asian Christianity in the Diaspora” and she is the host of Madang podcast, which holds conversations on Christianity, religion and culture. Madang is hosted by Christian Century Magazine. Dr. Kim’s most recent book, When God Became White is already creating a stir and we’re here for it!
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thread or Insta Lisa @lisasharper or to Freedom Road @freedomroad.us. We’re also on Substack! So be sure to subscribe to freedomroad.substack.com. And, keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks and letting us know what you think!
www.threads.net/@lisasharper
www.threads.net/@freedomroad.us
freedomroad.substack.com
gracejisunkim.wordpress.com/
https://www.ivpress.com/when-god-became-white
Listen
Transcript
[00:00:00] Lisa Sharon Harper: Coming to you from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. I’m Lisa Sharon Harper, president of Freedom Road, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap. Welcome to the Freedom Road Podcast. Each episode, we speak with national and global faith leaders, advocates, scholars, artists, and activists to have the kinds of conversations we normally have on the front lines.
It’s just that this time we’ve got microphones in our faces and you are listening in. In this episode, we are joined by theologian and author Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim. Dr. Kim is professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion, and the author or editor of 24 books, including Surviving God, [00:01:00] Spirit Life, Invisible, Hope and Disarray, Keeping Hope Alive, and Reimagining Spirit.
She is a co editor for the Palgrave Macmillan book series, Asian Christianity in the Diaspora, and she is the host of Madang Podcast, which holds conversations on Christianity, religion, and culture. Madang is hosted by Christian Century Magazine. Dr. Kim’s most recent book, When God Became White, is already creating a stir, and we are here for it.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. So please tweet to me at Lisa S Harper thread me at Lisa S Harper or freedom road at freedom road. us and keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks and letting us know what you think. Okay, let’s dive in. So Dr. Grace Ji-Sun [00:02:00] Kim, I am so excited to be in conversation with you.
You are probably one of the most… like you have more books out there than most people have years on the planet. I mean, you must write five books a year. It’s kind of amazing. So, so the way that, I mean, you’re definitely a deep thinker. You are definitely, um, entering into space that, um, people don’t.
They don’t imagine when they think of an Asian American woman, right? They think you’re talking, let’s talk about the Holy Spirit. Let’s talk about whiteness, right? You’re not only talking about, which would be enough. It would be, it would be perfect and perfectly understandable for you to be talking about the Asian American woman experience, which you do, you actually do, do that.
But you’re also going broader and helping us on a theological level to grapple with, with, with other issues. Like issues that, that kind of cut across into [00:03:00] the human experience as well. So I just want you to know, I see you. I’m excited for this conversation. And especially because you are talking about something we’ve been talking about all year, which is what is this thing we call whiteness and how is it impacting our society?
And so I’m excited to talk with you particularly about how whiteness, um, how you see it impacting society, how you see it impacting our church or the church. And how does it impact you as an Asian American woman?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Well, thank you so much, Lisa, for having me on. It’s anything you asked me to do. I want to do always, because everything you do is so fascinating and so exciting.
And I just want to do more and more work with you. So thank you so much for all the work that you do. And thank you for the wonderful compliment of me. I’m just I am just excited to be here with you to talk about my new book. I [00:04:00] think this concept and then, you know, your, actually your book Fortune and your previous, you know, you, you do, you know, you’re on all these spectrums, scholarship, activism, and speaking and doing all these things. So your work has really impacted me and your book fortune actually impacted me when I was writing my book too. I was so glad to have you. Oh yeah. And I, you know, in all my speaking. It’s not a tour, but when I speak, I quote you so many times. So, yeah. And because your book Fortune was so important for me because you included the enslaved, but then, then you also included the indentured workers, just a wide spectrum.
So I’m always quoting you in my talks and I’m sure I quoted you many times in. So much of my other writing and work, so I’m just so appreciative of what you’re doing. So thank you so much.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You’re [00:05:00] very welcome.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. And you’ve been doing a lot on whiteness. So I think you know, many Asian Americans aren’t talking about it that much.
And it was interesting because I wrote the book with the title whiteness that was in my head the whole time and my book Invisible, like, I have a hard time remembering things and especially book titles. So I said, after Invisible, I’m only going to do one or two word book titles, because I can’t remember those.
So it was always whiteness. And I thought this is good because it’s going to follow Invisible and it’s just a one word title. But then InterVarsity changed it on me and I was really upset and I was arguing with them, I said, Oh, you, you know. And then they changed it and I said, well, to get rid of when and just do God Became White.
And they said, no, and now I really love it. It’s something I [00:06:00] can remember. There’s certain book titles like on my podcast. I can’t remember their titles after, but this one, that’s what I thought it was going to be. But now it’s in my head so much.
So originally it was called whiteness, but then they changed it to when God became white because they said, no one’s gonna know what you’re talking about.
’cause everybody’s now talking about whiteness. So, you know, whiteness and you know, you and I, you invited me to do that recording in somewhere in Texas?
Lisa Sharon Harper: No, in Albuquerque. Yeah. When we, we are, yeah, girl. Okay. So wait, wait, wait for our listeners, we just got to kind of fill people in. We did, um, Freedom Road did a curriculum for the Episcopal church dealing with internalized depression.
And so I asked Dr. Ji-Sun, sorry, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, not Ji-Sun Kim, Ji-Sun, Kim to come and, um, and to participate in a panel discussion with other scholars about [00:07:00] this question of internalized depression and colonization and she did it, but girlfriend was hopped up on drugs because she was really not well that day, but she still did it, which was kind of amazing.
Actually, I have to say thank you for that. Thank you.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Well, thank you so much for inviting me to do that. I was really happy and I just want, I’m not going to let that go. You know, get in the way. So I just did it and I’m really glad I did. I hope I can watch it one day because I’m the discussion was so fascinating.
Everybody on the panel. And I think we touched a little bit on whiteness at that time.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, absolutely.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. And I had already submitted my book at that point, but you know, I, I think this is an important topic because If we’re going to kind of, uh, fight racism and dismantle this, you know, systemic racism that has been so oppressive [00:08:00] to people of color…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: And to African Americans, Asian Americans, uh, Latinx, uh, native Americans, and, um, you know. Different people, then we’d have to deal with this construct of whiteness and I African, African Americans may have been dealing with it a bit earlier than, um, the rest of us. So we are always grateful for your contributions in your work and just moving us forward to fight this, uh, systemic racism together.
You know, we can’t just have one group doing it. We have to do it together. We all have to do it. Yeah, and what racism does is it, you know, divide and conquer. That’s what this model minority myth did. You know, it pit Asian Americans against all the other people of color saying to the rest, You know, the people of color, if only you work [00:09:00] just as hard or study just as hard, you will be rich or go to the top schools.
And that’s just a false narrative. But, you know, this construct that was created by sociologists in the 1960s was fed to everybody and fed to us. And we were like, told to share it. And so these We have to remember there’s so many constructs that have been created.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So the construct, going back, the construct you’re talking about is the construct of the minor, the model minority.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, that’s really interesting. Create. I didn’t know that was created in the sixties. Before you, before you go there, can I ask you to take a step back? Because we usually start with our own stories on this, on this pilgrimage.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I’m just so excited. I’m just like,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. No, no, no. It’s okay.
But I want us to go forward there too. But, but first I’d love for us to take one step back and to ask the question. Maybe, maybe I’ll ask the question in terms of the model minority. When did you discover that [00:10:00] you were operating in this world according, within a construct of the model minority?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I don’t know if there was like this aha moment.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, like a moment
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I realized. Okay. I don’t think there was, I think it was fed to me. I think during college and during like university years that Mm-Hmm. , um, it was used and you know, some Asian Americans kind of embrace it and say, Hey, we’re so much better. But you see, I think as a whole, people just forgot it was a construct. It’s not like a biological fact that we are the model. We’re not, you know, so if you look at, you know, cause the false narrative is Asian Americans are all rich. We’re not. If you go into places like Flushing and, you know, where a lot of Asian Americans live and, and parts in LA where, you know, there’s [00:11:00]
Lisa Sharon Harper: Alhambra in LA. Yeah. I used to live there. It’s like Taiwanese American.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of poor people like in Flushing, you know, people are living together, like shared bathrooms and shared kitchens. That’s the living situation in these apartments and these complexes that many Asian Americans live. So. We forget that, you know, there are people who are struggling economically, you know, not all of us, um, get into the top school, not all of us are succeeding, but when you see few people doing it, then we say, oh, they’re all. So don’t worry about it. It’s like, the example would be like Oprah, like she’s one of the richest people on earth, so that means all African Americans are okay. That’s not true. Yes, there are pockets of people that are doing well, but you have to look at all the people. And so, yeah, Oprah’s doing well. And, you know, you can name a few other African Americans singers like Beyonce.
But if you [00:12:00] look at, you know, still the oppression is there. And just because one person is doing well, doesn’t mean that racism is now gone. You know, there’s no racism. Look, Oprah’s doing well, Beyonce’s doing well. So why would there be racism?
Lisa Sharon Harper: So what was your first encounter then with whiteness?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: So I think it was kind of much later on when I was kind of teaching and I was trying to figure out how am I going to fight this because it is so embedded in our churches, in our schools, universities, colleges, uh, just in society and culture.
So I realized that in order to fight this, you have to deal with whiteness. You have to deal with these constructs that are there to minoritize us and oppress us and marginalize us. And, you know, some of these constructs [00:13:00] that are made, uh, like, race, you know, this, like, we forget that some, these things are all socially constructed concepts, and we think it’s some biological thing, and, but those people in power, they continue to share that narrative.
And for me, as an Asian American woman, you know, we are always a narrative was, you know, stay beautiful and stay silent. You’re not supposed to speak up. You’re just supposed to look pretty and just sit there. And so if you start speaking out, then people start criticizing you and you are this bad Asian woman, you know, and you get that from your own ethnic kind of community and you get it from the white community.
But, you know, when there is social evil. And there’s plenty today. That’s why I’m so thankful for you that [00:14:00] you speak up and so boldly, um, it is time for us, um, particularly Asian American woman who are, you know, oppressed because of our ethnicity and our gender and other ways too, uh, we, we can’t sit there and be quiet.
So I think it was through my teaching and trying to make sense of my own experiences, um, Yeah, that, that’s how I kind of came through it. So there wasn’t just one aha moment. It was a gradual thing.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And you, you are, you’re a Korean American woman. And so were you born in Korea or born here?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: So, I was born in Korea and our family, so, um, early, um, and to mid 70s, um, it was after the Korean War, so many young families, so it would be like recently [00:15:00] married couples with children that were aged from four to about nine.
That was the majority of the groups that immigrated in the mid 1970s.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah, so it was right after the war and, um, those young couples felt, um, Korea was doing economically so bad that they felt that immigration was an answer for their young kids, that they will have a brighter future. If you had kids in their teens or university, it’s harder to kind of move at that age, but with younger kids.
And so we immigrated actually to Canada. So I did kindergarten. All the way up to my PhD in Canada. So all of them.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: All of education know that. Yeah. So, so now I’m a dual citizen. So after my PhD, then I moved to the US to teach here. So I’m a dual citizen, Canadian and American. So living in [00:16:00] three different countries have helped me, um, kind of get a different perspective.
Like Canada, we don’t use the term people of color.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, no, that’s a, that’s an American thing that started among African Americans to include everybody else, but it turned out not everybody wanted to be included in that.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. So it’s interesting because, so I immigrated in 2004, so that was, I think 20 years ago.
I think, yeah, that’s 20 years ago and overnight I became a woman of color. So I think people need to recognize this, the labels that you’re given, you’re not born with, you are given these labels. So I think we need to remember that, that I wasn’t born a woman of color. Yeah. Like. If I think about Asians globally, we make up 60 percent of the world population.
I’m actually the majority here.
Lisa Sharon Harper: What’s now? What? Yeah. Wow. Okay. First of all, I love that you just [00:17:00] claimed that. What? She’s like, look, I’m the majority.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I am the majority.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You are.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: And, and I’m sure there’s more. Well, there was a lot of, Uh, young girls who were murdered in China, so I don’t know what the gender, but anyway, we are the majority.
We are 60 percent of the world population because we have China, we have India, we like the two biggest, the biggest populated, so we are the majority, but here in the U.S., you know, that’s why I’m, I’m, minoritized and we have to keep telling ourselves, I’m not a minority. I’ve been minoritized and you know, I’m not this oppressed person.
I have been made oppressive and made subordinate. So being made a woman of color overnight was a big shock for me because I, those weren’t a term that we used in Canada. We had our other strange terms, but to really wow, overnight, because it. All of a sudden, people kept telling me I’m a [00:18:00] person of color.
I’m a woman of color. And it took a long time for me to use that term to describe myself. Now, 20 years later, I’m a little comfortable. Well, not comfortable. I just have to use it. It’s not, you know, I think we have to kind of remember this.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s deep. Okay. I have another one last question for you before we go to our first break. When did you realize God had become white?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Okay. So it was, I think much so much later in my life, you see missionaries came to Korea and they brought the white male God and it’s still there. White male God is there. And so Asians in Asia have embraced it and immigrants ourselves have embraced it because that’s what the white missionaries told us.
And they kept telling us that we’re subordinate. We’re [00:19:00] so lazy. We’re so uneducated. We just don’t get it. No, enough. We’re not, you know, we’re backwards people. So you keep internalizing that if they’ve been there for a long time telling you this. So if you’re going to succeed, if you’re going to be a better human being, you better embrace this white male God.
So it’s been internalized for generations. And so, you know what? Immigrants, we embrace it too, because we think that white philosophers, white theology, white science, whatever it is, it’s all better than whatever Asians are going to produce. So I was taught this and I embraced this white male God. I think majority of immigrants do.
And I, you know, for me, I understood that that can’t be true when I was writing my books and doing research and struggling with [00:20:00] racism because it all intersects.
Lisa Sharon Harper: These are our stories. You’re listening to the Freedom Road Podcast, where we bring you stories from the front lines of the struggle for justice
Grace, in your book, one of the things that I’m actually, really, I love about your book is you… really like the way that it’s the way that it’s structured is that you’re not going to get away from this, this theme of whiteness. It’s literally every single chapter is named something to do with whiteness.
While you are writing from the perspective of an Asian American woman, a Korean American woman, you are very clear that what we are actually gazing upon here, what we are examining and trying to understand is whiteness and how it works and specifically this God thing. [00:21:00] So you have… can you tell us a little bit about what it looks like or what it feels like, or your experience of encountering this thing called whiteness.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. So I, because when white missionaries came to Asia, they really told us how we are inferior beings and we internalized it. And so for me growing up with that mentality and being taught that over and over and over again, even in a seminary setting in you know, in Canada, it really… It does damage you in many ways.
So then, you know, when I’m on, when I’m on my own researching and try to make sense of my experiences, I realized that to fight racism, you have to deal with whiteness, which is [00:22:00] this big concept, socially constructed to kind of say that it. We people of color are not good enough. We are subordinate. We are the oppressed group, and we fail to recognize this, that race and this racial identity is fluid.
But whiteness wants to make it look like it’s not, and that it’s set, that it’s broken. Biological and you know that we are always going to be the lesser human being because white people are going to be at the top and they’re going to continue to keep that hierarchy and maintain the status quo through whiteness and
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, I’m sorry.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Oh, go ahead.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So Denise da Silva, um, Denise Ferreira da Silva, she says in her book, Toward a Global Idea of Race, she talks about whiteness [00:23:00] as the transparent. So it’s, it’s the, it’s the centered group and they exist in transparent form. So they don’t have a race, you know, they do not have a social identity.
As far as they’re concerned, they are just the norm, but they get right. They get to, according to Denise, you know, Ferreira da Silva, they, this, this, this transparent centered set or group gets to define everything and everyone else. Yeah. So would you agree with that as, as you agree with that conception of whiteness?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Um, yes.
And I, you know, I, I’ve been doing several podcasts before yours on my book and it was interesting. One of the hosts said he never has to think about his race.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh yeah.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Cause he’s white. That’s right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Cause he’s invisible. It’s invisible. Yes. The rest of us, you know, you and I, we have to [00:24:00] talk, we have to think about it all the time.
Lisa Sharon Harper: We are very visible. Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: And I want to now tell you what the term is in Canada. We don’t use, uh, people of color. We use in Canada, they use the term visible minority.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Whoa!
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: The title that I was always a visible minority. So that’s very interesting because we’re, you know, when we’re talking about, Uh, because white people think they’re the norm. And so they are this invisible, like, because they are, they never have to think about it, but I have to think about it 24/7 when I’m walking down the street during the pandemic, how many Asian Americans were attacked just for walking down the street or the subway and murdered.
You know, we’re Asian Americans and this happens to other groups just because they’re African Americans or Latinx or native American, [00:25:00] nothing else.
Lisa Sharon Harper: All of those hashtag lives that we had in 2014 to present, um, People whose names are now associated with a hashtag because they were killed because they were walking while black, while black or jogging while black or playing while black or sleeping while black or, you know, so it’s the black driving, right?
It’s, it’s the black part that is the, is the constant and that’s the racialization of a human group of people. But the people doing that not always actually are of European descent, but are always either subscribed to or protectors of the white established governance structure. So either police or vigilantes.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. So this is a big problem, and it’s a learned [00:26:00] behavior. And we forget that sometimes. So it’s a learned behavior that is multi dimensional, complex, extensive, and systemic. And it becomes this really powerful tool for white people to use. To oppress people of color. So we have to understand how this works.
And so, and then when you tie that in with God, it becomes even more powerful.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You. Oh, I’m just so excited. So you have, one of your chapters is actually named becoming a white Christianity. So can you talk to us about how Christianity became white?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. So when you think about who Jesus is, okay, let’s do that.
Okay. Yeah. So let’s start with Jesus. Okay. He was this Palestinian Jew, dark skin, olive skinned, and he lived under the Roman empire. He was crucified under the Roman empire. [00:27:00] So, you know, this dark, um, skinned man now, um, under, you know, Christianity, under the Roman Empire, under Constantine and, you know, it’s spreading into Europe.
Yeah, then just gets transformed into this beautiful white emperor-looking being like he’s all now clean cut. You know, you and I have been to Palestine. Yeah. You know, and it, You know, if 2000 years, I’m sure 2000 years ago, I’m sure it was all dusty road. He’s walking around, you know, they don’t have shower systems that we do today.
I’m sure he was dirty, filthy, you know, hair all messed up, you know, probably smelled a lot because he didn’t have a home. He was just roaming and going from place to place, traveling on foot or wherever. But then now he’s this beautiful, sanitized white European man with beautiful [00:28:00] blonde or brown hair and clean face…
Lisa Sharon Harper: blue eyes
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: …blue eyes sanitized to be, and he’s stained glass windows, stained glass all over and in paintings.
So, and people keep talking about him like that. So, and if he is God’s son, then we project. God as a white male God. So, you know, none of us have viewed God. It’s very clear. None of us have seen God, old Testament, new Testament keeps telling us no one has seen God. Mm. So no one has seen God.
But then we project this whiteness and this maleness upon God. Because it maintains the status quo. It keeps white people powerful. And the rest of us, you can colonize us, enslave us. You can do whatever you want. And it serves a great purpose. And for the last 2000 years, it [00:29:00] has served that in the name of God, enslavement was done in the name of God, all these wars, colonization, even today, all wars happening, all done in the name of God.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah, so it becomes really, really dangerous when you marry it and tie it in with God, because how we view God will impact everything. All that we do, even our laws that we create, whatever we’re going to do about abortion, immigration law, climate change, whatever these laws, if we keep believing in a white male God, and even if you don’t believe in Christianity, still this notion flying around culture.
And if you go to any museum or go travel to Europe, go to the Sistine Chapel, you see Michelangelo, and God is a white, old, white-haired man.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Sitting up there touching Adam, who’s also white. Mm-Hmm. . Um, then. Even if you don’t, [00:30:00] even non Christians, it’s, it’s built into our system, into our culture.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: And it really affects everything.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Can you tell us how this affects even the very heart of the Christian message, which is the mission to go and make disciples, you know, of all nations. What does it look like if the one saying that is a white man, a white male God?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: You know what, Lisa, you’re asking me so many excellent questions and I’m like, people need to still read the book.
Like I don’t wanna give everything away .
Lisa Sharon Harper: No, we’re not gonna go through the whole book. I know. But that is, that’s what that is actually Chapter four. Okay. So missiology of whiteness. Yeah. They’re gonna have to, yes, they will read the book. Don’t worry.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I’m hoping that people read the book, but that’s such a good question.
Yeah. So when the white man goes, if you, if they’re taking a white male, God with them, right, right, right. They are. Already reinforcing whiteness and [00:31:00] telling African, African, South Americans, Asians, you’re not good enough to become better. You better embrace. my culture, this whiteness and a white male God to become better because you’re so barbaric, you’re backwards.
So that missionary information is instilled. So this missionary whiteness has been very dangerous.
Lisa Sharon Harper: How did Korea experience that? You taught, you said they did, but I, I wonder if you know any stories of like, What did it look like for that to happen in Korea? I just came from off of a pilgrimage in Los Angeles where Robert Chao Romero actually led us through the first part of our pilgrimage.
He took us to San Gabriel mission. That was the first point, the point of first encounter with the Tongva people, the first nation of LA. And so the friars and on the door of the mission, they actually [00:32:00] have these two frescoes and one of them has the Tongva people upon first contact and, you know, one of them is kneeling and other, they’re both like a little hunched down and, um, they have like their headdresses on and they’re both they’re both barefoot and the friar is standing there over them, right?
And then there’s another fresco on the other side of the door. And this is a, this is actually a working church. This is a church that’s still. Comes together every Sunday today on the other side of the door, they have a picture of after acculturation and after acculturation, you see these two Tongva people that are both dressed in European garb.
They have on like white men’s wear. They both have on boots. Not even just shoes or sandals, they now have on boots, right? And their hair is like cut and all the things. So we know how it looked, what it looked like on American soil. What did it look like for Korean people?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: So it’s interesting when the missionaries [00:33:00] came, In our image, we think, oh, these missionaries are giving up so much to go to live in these poor countries.
Oh, look at all the sacrifices they made. I don’t know all the countries, but in Korea, I know the mainline Protestant missionaries were paid very well. Like they were paid like they were being paid in the US, but you must understand that the living conditions were much poorer. They built homes like the American homes in Korea.
And, you know, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 20 years ago, Korea was very poor. And, you know, we’ve been colonized, you know, people have come in, wars happened. So we were very poor. So they had this high income, like so much higher than the regular Korean. So they boasted all their, you know, they brought… they took lumber from the U. S. to build their homes. They [00:34:00] took and then, you know, like 100 years ago, then they started taking appliances. Can you imagine these missionaries? They were living lavish lives in Korea. So the Koreans viewed this and they said, okay, the land of milk and honey, because that’s what the missionaries kept telling us Koreans.
They thought, okay, now I have to be a Christian to get all this stuff.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So that was the incentive. It was the money.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Oh yeah. You weren’t going to get all this because they were living lavish lives. And then they hired many of the Koreans to help them do whatever. And they were paid minuscule. So these are all documented stuff that I found when I was writing the book.
And it was heartbreaking for me because always you think, oh, they sacrificed everything. No, they were paid so well. They lived phenomenally. Well, they had homes just like the U. S. So they didn’t give up anything. They just took whatever they had here and there. And then, so the income was really high, so they lived really well.[00:35:00]
So it was incentive. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. So I want to. I want to know like from you, um, where did you start to realize that in the Korean consciousness that God had become white, you know, cause it’s, it’s one thing to understand that there’s white supremacy here, but when was it that you started to realize it’s not only in the stained glass windows, it’s in our minds.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Well, I think, see, you know, the other book I co wrote with Susan Shaw is Intersectional Theology.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: They, you know, one’s identity is multidimensional, you know, our ethnicity, our gender, our sexuality, education, ableism, all of that. And when we’re looking at forms of injustice, they are all intersecting.
So racism, and sexism, and climate injustice, they all intersect. So when you are preaching this whiteness, it already gets filtered [00:36:00] into their heads, into our minds and our psyches, because they brought a white God. This was a white man’s religion, and so it was already embedded in the message. And it was interesting because our, you know, the terminology for God is Hananim.
And when the missionaries came, we started using Hananim abonji, which means Father God. So rather than just saying God, this term of one God, that’s what Hananim means. Now we started using father one God kind of, it was kind of linked together. So it already became masculine right away.
Lisa Sharon Harper: With the missionaries.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah, so with even today now in Korea and here, we always most times when we pray, we’re talking about God and many liturgies. It’s always father God. So it’s already a masculine. It’s been made masculine and, [00:37:00] made white because of this whiteness that was instilled that, you know, you are less-than people, you are barbaric.
You must become like us. So I think all of this like Westernization of beauty, westernization of science and all that happened. But I would add this, you know, whiteness was imported there and many of us kind of wanted to become like white people.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So is this what you mean when you talk about a white gendered God?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: What is a white… I’ve never heard that term before, white gendered. What does that mean?
Lisa Sharon Harper: I think I might’ve made it up.
Well, I love that. I love, I love that when we create language and now just explain it for us. So we get it.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: But I’m thinking of gender, you know, some, some thinkers will say, I’m not born a woman, I become a woman.
So, [00:38:00] and you know, so this is a gender and you become a woman. A woman, you’d become gendered, so either society teaches or however you come. And so for me, God is gendered male, you know, is God really a man like, yeah,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Come on. I mean, there’s God wearing briefs up there. Like, you know what I mean?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Christianity for the last 2000 years kept preaching that because every Pope was man.
Every priest was a man. Every Bishop was a man. Everybody was a man. Theologians were a man. The church fathers were all men. The, the, the reformers were all men. There were like pockets of women, people, but nobody wanted to listen to them. There were a few mystics here and there, but nobody listened to them.
And it’s. Only if you think of the whole church that like 2000 year history, [00:39:00] it’s only like last 50 to 60 years that we have women’s voices, your voice and my voice.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And let me just say there have been women voices, but most of the time when they have been, they’ve been martyred. Yeah. I mean, Yeah. Declared witches and burned at the stake or martyred, you know, um, in the, in
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: They were called the crazy people.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Well, women are being martyred or called witches, but I’m sure behind our backs, you know, we’re, we’re called different names for various reasons. So God became masculine and I want to say, you know, in the Bible, there’s so many different images of God. So many, but for some reason we picked the masculine ones and we run, and the church embraced it because it served the leaders.
It’s married with whiteness, it’s all together. It intersects [00:40:00] together to keep white men in power, white heterosexual men in power. So this white male God plays into this whiteness and all of this to keep people of color marginalized and oppressed and on the sidelines.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And, you know, honestly, I don’t, I think that most white people are not even thinking about people of color.
Some of them are, some of them, you know, like, like you’re white supremacists who wear the hoods and, you know, the swastika, all that stuff. Yeah. They’re, they’re consciously trying to keep black and brown and, and yellow people down, and I say yellow referencing the book yellow, right? So like, um, but I’m, but I’m, I don’t think most people do.
They mostly just want to protect. their status, their white status, right? So, but in order to do that, they have to make sure because white status only works if you still have status. People can’t rise and become equal because equality, it actually threatens status, the ability to have status. [00:41:00] So I think you’re, I think you’re like way onto something.
And so what do you think of this? Again, going back, I’m, I’m thinking a lot about Denise da Silva. Can you tell like… Denise Ferreira da Silva. So going back to her definition of whiteness being the transparent ones. And I just, I just love how you are using this. You’re playing with this idea of gender saying white gendered God.
Are you then saying that the male gender is in some ways, well, it is white because it has also taken the transparent place.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yes, I guess. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Centered transparency.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: They are the centered within Christianity, within theology, the white men are the center.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right. That’s right. Okay.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: And they continue to be today.
Like, uh, every time there’s a white male panel. No woman or no people of color invited. I’m like, [00:42:00] still today we’re doing this. Like we’ve thought about this because they want to still maintain the center. So they’re not gonna allow women’s voices or people of color’s voices. Because what we do and what we say is all wrong.
It’s syncretism. It’s not true. It’s, you guys are like doing something strange. So, and I’m like. You’ve been syncretistic the whole time yourself.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Walking Freedom Road from coast to coast and around the globe. This is the Freedom Road Podcast.
Okay. So coming back. I love that. I love that you ended that last segment with syncretism that, okay. So in, in this, in this, this, this particular time, I want to start off. by asking [00:43:00] this question of what does it look like to liberate whiteness? Because you, you actually go into that in one of your final chapters and not asking you to give the whole chapter away.
But, but I think it’s an interesting choice of words. So I would normally say renounce your whiteness, renounce this white status, right? Um, uh, subvert the white status, but you use another term and I’ve never used it, seen it. You, so what do you mean when you say liberate whiteness?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah, so I want… because I don’t know if denouncing will work, I’m not sure if that would work and much of my work has been about liberation theology, whatever it is with feminist theology, with climate change work, it’s all about liberation.
So that’s why that’s the choice of word, to liberate this whiteness, because that would mean [00:44:00] freedom for also the white people, however, way you’re going to categorize it, because that’s a very fluid topic to this category. So, you know, when we’re talking about eliminating patriarchy or dismantling patriarchy, that’s to liberate the women.
It’s also to liberate the men because they don’t understand how they’re also bound by this too. So this liberating whiteness is in that same way.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So it’s not, I mean, honestly, as I’m, as I’m, as I’m trying to get a picture of the concept, it’s not like, cause I could actually see somebody running with that, the opposite direction of liberate whiteness, let whiteness have its way everywhere.
You know what I mean? Like, Oh yeah, whiteness is free to do whatever it wants. That’s what Trump wants, right? He wants to liberate some whiteness. That’s not what you’re talking about. What you’re talking about, what I hear you saying actually is liberate people of European descent from whiteness.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that’s exactly it. Because it [00:45:00] is, it is also bounding. It’s binding. It’s, they don’t understand how restrictive that is too. And let me get an example. If we’re only going to use the English language or the Western way of understanding who God is. You’re going to get this very narrow perspective of God.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: If you start embracing African ways of spirituality and African terminology like Ubuntu and Asian terminology like chi and, you know, in my other books, I talk about Uri. You get. Wow. A deeper and a richer way of understanding who God is. So you have to kind of break away from your own kind of way of being and, and, and liberate yourself and start opening up and embracing these traditions.
I’ve learned so much from African traditions and then when you study it, there’s so much similarity between Africans and Asians. [00:46:00] It’s quite interesting and, and look… and you learn so much. You know, I’m, I’m doing another research right now. And so when you think, and this didn’t go into my, When God Became White, but it’ll probably go into my another book.
But when you look at Egyptians and Egyptians viewed Pharaoh as God, right? I think that part we kind of knew there were some divine being, right? The thing that I didn’t realize until now was they viewed the Pharaoh as male/female, he/she,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I didn’t know that it was a he/she thing. So they thought the divine was he/she now when the Israelites And they are an oral tradition.
We have Yahweh, the YHWH Before it was actually a three letter Y-H-W and that YHW [00:47:00] was translated as, uh, who, who he, who he, it’s, um, uh, I don’t, I may not be pronouncing it right, but that term means he/she,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Whoa.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Just like the Egyptians .
Lisa Sharon Harper: Whoa.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: They borrowed, he/she, so Yahweh was he/she. And then we kind of have forgotten about this, but this is all, but isn’t, this is in the first page of the Bible, actually, even in English, in the image of God, male and female, yes, they are made.
But men have translated and men have interpreted Bible. So in our minds, we just think, okay, he just, he, God created a man and a woman. And the man is in the image of God. Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And then, and then the man gets to be generous by kind of saying, And she is too.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Right. But it’s, it’s all a matter of interpretation.
That’s why we need more [00:48:00] people to interpret and to share the good news.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. So what are the implications? What are the implications? If God is God is he/she. And now, so remember if, if, um, whiteness is also gendered, right? So if my whiteness itself is also male as a, as a concept, it is male. Because both of those are made to be the centered set that, that like rule over all, what if God is not male?
What if God is he/she, and then you would also have to say that God is not white. What if God is not… what have you? Because I mean, really when I think about the implications that
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: God is not white,
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s a big deal.
I know. What if, so what if in your mind
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: In the book I say God is not white?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, obviously , but I mean like, what have you [00:49:00] thought about?
Like how does that strike you when, when you really let that thought sink in? What, what came out for you? What if God isn’t white?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Oh. It turned my world upside down because I grew up with a white God, and I always felt I was inferior, you know, I wasn’t good enough. My theology is not good enough. My teaching is not good enough.
My books aren’t good enough. It’s always the white man’s book that is good enough. Theology and I’m just doing something else. So it made a world of a difference because if God is not white and God is not male, then Lisa, you and I are really important people. We’re not, we’re, we’re not less-than we are so important because we are in the image of God, who could be he/she, who can be spirit, wisdom, mother hen, this dove, [00:50:00] you know, these are all biblical images that are in the Bible, Sophia, Chokmah. So it really changes everything. And I think that should be the good news. Yeah, if we’re gonna share the good news, that’s the good news that, you know, we can share with people here.
And that should be good news to white people too, because it goes all around. It is to decenter, this whiteness is going to help. You know, I… This whiteness has been so destructive and so to kind of deconstruct it and to eliminate that from our image of God is such a liberating aspect.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Can I ask you, can I ask you, what would be the [00:51:00] implications within the Asian church?
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. So it’s gonna be hard.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. So talk to us about that.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: So, you know, I’m not presently attending an Asian church, but I do have lots of, you know, work with the Asian-American community and the people that I work with are okay. I think they will be okay. It’s the regular people on the pews that will have a hard time.
Oh, but I think it’s going to take a while, but I hope they don’t, but I hope they start embracing and be liberated by this understanding.
Lisa Sharon Harper: What would it look like? What, what kind of things, how would it be different? How would the Asian American church or how could the American Asian American church shift, change, transform?If they understood that God was not white.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I think we can come out of our shell and [00:52:00] become leaders nationally and globally. We have a lot to offer.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: If we can break away from this whiteness because of this inferiority complex all the time, it really does. Marginalize the church community. It’s hard for us to speak up about issues.
I think the African American churches are doing a better job at this, but Asian Americans, you know, we feel oppressed. We experience it. We experience racism, but it’s really hard for the church to vocalize it and share it, but if they can reimagine God. Away from a white male God. I think that would be so liberating.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: I know it will be liberating and I hope it’ll be transformative, but I know it won’t happen right away. I don’t know if it’ll happen like in my generation, but I hope in the next generation, I’m hoping it’ll be helpful. [00:53:00]
Lisa Sharon Harper: I think one of the things that I’ve actually been really encouraged by, I was literally just thinking of this this morning, Because I was, you know, scrolling through my Instagram because I do that kind of every morning.
And one of the pieces that I came across was this dance piece. There was an Asian-American woman and you know, you know, like dancers will set up their, their camera, like their phone there to, to, to videotape them. And I don’t, she didn’t set, somebody videotaped her in this dance class. Cause they followed her all the way across the thing.
And there was a whole class full of people, but we were following her. She was, I mean, like literally like… she just, she just, she took up all the space in a beautiful, powerful way. And her body was powerful. And I mean, and her movements were sharp and she had intention with every move. And it was so powerful.
And the thing that came across my mind as I was, as I was, you know, watching this was like in this next generation. [00:54:00] Not next… the rising generation has chosen to be fully human. As in, they are going deep into the arts. They are not only being boxed into a few different possible career paths that, you know, their immigrant parents usually kind of made them go down because they want them to be successful, be a doctor, be a piano player.
If you’re a woman, you know, be a, like the folks are just doing everything. And, and that’s what humans do. That really, it really hit me. I was like, wow.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. And you know, our, in some, in some ways we think our life is long, but in other ways it’s so short and so the gifts that God has given us, what are we going to do with it?
If it’s a gift of dance, then give it all that you have your whole body, your whole being, and if [00:55:00] it’s the, you know, singing, then give it all to. So I think if we can think that way, then we can live and, and love one another. You know, I just, there’s our life is so short and we spend so much time hating and engaging in war, like what’s happening in Gaza is so heartbreaking.
Like, I just, I, yeah, so this white male God has so much implications on our life. And, you know, when I think about what’s happening in Gaza,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, let’s talk about that for a minute.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah, I think this white male God, that’s right. Is allowing this to happen because they are darker people, so we think they’re not equal to white people.
So their lives don’t equate the same way. So over 30,000 people can be murdered. But it’s not, it’s, it’s okay because [00:56:00] we believe in a white male God and the white life is one life is weighed way more than 30,000 Palestinians.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. And we saw that we saw that on clear display when the humanitarian workers car.
Was targeted and and was it 6 of them that were killed in that car attack? I mean, and felt like the whole world came to a halt because white people died.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Oh, and then the 1 in the background.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right. And the 1 driver who was also a humanitarian worker who usually got described as the driver, right? Yeah, he died, but he was like an extra. Um, yeah, it’s meanwhile in the background, you have 33, 000 people who have actually passed who have been murdered.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Yeah. So I, you know, I know you had Dr. Mitri Raheb on, you know, we’ll be meeting soon and I, My book, [00:57:00] I wrote it before it happened, but I’m seeing it being played out for the whole world to see.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, that’s right.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim: Certain lives aren’t as important. And, you know, it’s easy. You know, you can just, even if they’re in a refugee camp, it’s okay. We can shoot them and kill them. Like, this is unbelievable behavior. Because of whiteness being played out and this white male God being reinforced. So it is really painful for me.
And I’m so grateful for all the work that you’re doing with the pilgrimage and everything else is speaking out. And I’m just so thankful for you and many others who are speaking out and you know, this has got to stop, you know, and this dismantling this whiteness and this white male God needs to happen.
And I remember when the October 7th strike happened. Um, the, the Palestinian [00:58:00] British ambassador, I can’t remember in, in England, he kept saying, we’re not children of a lesser God. So don’t treat us like we are children of a lesser God. He kept saying that over and over again, it was October 8th. He was saying that, and I just, I know it’s happening because we think they’re not created in God’s image.
Lisa Sharon Harper: The conversations leaders have on the road to justice. This is the freedom road podcast.
Thank you for joining us today. Freedom Road Podcast is recorded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and wherever our guests lay their head that night. This episode was engineered and produced by Corey Nathan of Scan Media.
Freedom Road Podcast is executive produced by Freedom Road, LLC. We consult, coach, train, and design experiences that bring [00:59:00] common understanding, common commitment, and lead to common action. You can find out more about our work at our website, freedom road dot us. Stay in the know by signing up for updates on Substack.
Somebody say Substack. We’re so excited to be there. And we have a really great company of people who are writing for us on Substack now, but you can also always get our Freedom Road Podcast there. We promise we will not flood your inbox. We have a very special treat for our paid Substack subscribers and Patreon patrons.
I’m going to have a special backstage conversation with our producer, Corey Nathan, about this episode’s conversation over on those channels. So hey, join us over there and join the conversation on Freedom [01:00:00] Road.
