Korean American Women and the Church: Identity,Spirituality,and Gender Roles

Introduction

Asians immigrated to North America during the height of the United States’ westward expansion and the construction of its national transportation and communication infrastructure in the nineteenth century. Asian labor became a commodity to be used and traded between masters of the dominant culture. With the annexation of California in 1848, the door was opened for the Japanese (1880s), Filipinos (1900), Koreans (1903), and East Indians (1907), which became a means for migration to the United States. They first came to Hawaii; from 1850 to 1920, more than 3000 Asians arrived. ¹ Koreans were encouraged by white missionaries to go to Hawaii, as Hawaii was considered a Christian land. ² Missionaries told Koreans of a land filled with milk and honey, while Korean woman specifically were promised hope to live a life liberated from family obligations and sexism.

Hence, Korean women’s immigration to the United States was initiated by their desire for greater freedom and an escape from patriarchy. But this desire was trumped by men’s focus on profit and exploitation. ³ Korean women were misinformed. Many found themselves in the United States as captives under harsh working conditions that were founded on unequal power relations and inhumane circumstances. Some women worked in the fields as part of the plantation workforce; others were employed in the camps to cook food, sew clothes, and wash laundry. Many Korean men came alone and lived in large boarding homes. Since many were single, there was a need for women to be in the boarding homes to take care of the men so that they are fed and looked after.

On the plantation, women engaged in many of the same assignments as men, such as hoeing, stripping leaves, and harvesting, but they were unsurprisingly paid less than their male counterparts. At the camps, women cooked, washed, and cleaned not only for their families but often, for a small fee, for the bachelors and married men who had immigrated without their wives. Those who cooked for the unattached men had to get up at 3 or 4 a.m. to make breakfast for as many as 40 people and to pack an equal number of lunch boxes in primitive kitchens with no modern conveniences. ⁴ Others who worked in the fields for wages, spent the entirety of their days under the arduous heat of the sun, with babies strapped to their backs, before returning home to fix dinner for their husbands and or male workers. In the evenings, they washed, ironed, and mended. Those who bore children did all of this work even while pregnant ⁵ which was extremely hard on their bodies and due to exhaustion was dangerous during pregnancy. This was the harsh reality that was in complete opposition to the expectations that were suggested about living in the United States.

Out of such history and context have emerged important reflections, narratives, and theology from the Korean immigrant women’s lives. The distinct voices of Korean American women who have struggled and persevered through their religious and theological journeys are important to examine. Experiences of marginalization, racism, sexism, and adaptation of their bi-religious heritages mark their history. As we study their past, it will help us better understand the current context of Korean American women today, and how identity, spirituality, and gender roles have shaped and continue to shape the lives of Korean American Christian women.

Race and Its History

To understand Korean American women, it is important to study the context in which they arrived. Their lives were filled with physical and psychological hardships adapting to their new environment. After immigrating to the United States, they experienced profound prejudice against their ethnicity which was further compounded by their sex, burdening them with a culture of brutal bigotry in their daily lives.

From the seventeenth century, the history of American racism imported from the English, Spanish, French, and Dutch, has viewed race as biologically determined rather than as a social construct. Theologian Dwight Hopkins states, “Prior to this decisive historical era, race was predicated on observations of color contrasts that took on a fluid variety of gradations from the thirteenth century BCE until the modern period in Europe.” ⁶ A historical examination regarding the development of the concept of race will contextualize the way in which American society has arrived at our present understanding of racial discrimination, how it has operated and affected us in the past, and how it continues to presents itself in modern society.

Dwight Hopkins states,

After the Greek conquering of the Persians in the fifth century BCE, ethnocentrism and racial concepts emerged. For example, Euripides (circa 485-406) became one of the first to advance a Greek racial supremacist ideology when he labeled all foreigners as slaves and servile by nature and all Greeks free persons and superior by virtue of being Greek. ⁷

The understanding of foreigners and who becomes a foreigner is an important concept to decipher. For much of American history, Asian Americans and, in particular, Asian American women have been seen as foreigners. If people are understood as foreigners, it can often take two or more generations to be more widely accepted as true “Americans.” However, in the case that the foreigner is involved or associated with negative social, economic, and cultural activity, then the foreigner is generally scapegoated. The foreigner, already originating as the outsider, then becomes an easy target of racism and racist attitudes from the dominant.

Hopkins continues, “On the philosophical front, both Greek thinkers Plato (427-347 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE) laid the basis for future racial hierarchies.” ⁸ It becomes clear that Plato’s Republic moved the subject from one involved with the world to one who approaches the world and others as object. This shift consequently resulted in understanding that one needs to control that which varies from the norm. The end result of racism is to “prune” the freedoms of those who are on the receiving end of racism.

The observation that the culture which has reached the highest level of intellectual and military accomplishment (Greece, and later Rome) is (near) white reinforces the notion that white skin is superior, thus God is white. We need to be mindful of how white supremacy spreads as it goes into the global south to share a God who redeems the “savage.” Colonialism has reinforced white supremacy by sharing the gospel of a God who is white. The division created by the institution of race became reinforced upon and demanded of people in North America. This contributes to the oppression of Asian American women who are viewed as subordinate, weak, and consequently, people that exist to be dominated.

Racism is an attitude that can promote the exclusion of the vulnerable and powerless from basic social rights and opportunities by groups who believe they are the only ones fully entitled to the benefits of our economic, social, cultural, and intellectual spheres. ⁹ It is deeply embedded in our culture; from its inception, the perception of meaningful social and moral difference between races has been a regulative force for maintaining stability, growth and for maximizing other cultural values among members of the “preferred” race. The deeply entrenched use of racism as the tool of determination to be used by the dominant culture, is what upholds that culture. Only a full awareness of this disturbing reality can lead to new insights into possible attainments of a nation. ¹⁰

Racism is an attitude that promotes domination of the vulnerable by a privileged group who regard their beliefs, values, and cultural practices as the norm according to which other cultures and social practices are judged, objectified, and relegated to the margins. We live in a society in which racism has been woven and internalized into the culture; as such, it perpetuates the values of those who feel a sense of special entitlement. “Racism” is the manifestation of a deeply entrenched determination to maintain an existing culture or group. ¹¹ It favors the dominant group and keeps the subordinate groups of people in their less-entitled status. In a society rife with racism, it is difficult to see that racial, biological, or physical traits are no basis for excluding some persons from a country’s liberties and protections. It is a constructed concept, one that serves those who feel that their positions of power–real or imagined—are threatened.

In the late nineteenth century, large numbers of immigrants entered the United States. The white Europeans were treated differently than Asians and other people of color. Even the manner in which various peoples entered the United States exemplified the stronghold of racism. Europeans commonly entered through Ellis Island in New York, where someone checked their identification and documents and, if their documents were in order, they were registered to enter America legitimately. Asians on the other hand, entered the country through Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, which was run like a prison. ¹² Whereas European immigrants at Ellis Island waited only a couple of hours or overnight before they were allowed to enter the U.S., Asian immigrants at Angel Island were made to wait weeks, months, or even years. Rarely were European applicants sent back to their country of origin; Asians were sent back at an alarming rate. ¹³ These differences show how anti-Asian racism grew.

This was a systematic form of racism toward those from Asia who were not yet citizens and who were attempting to enter the country. In 1965, Asians were given some parity with European immigrants with the Immigration and Nationality Act, by which national origin was removed as a criterion for immigration into the country.

Racialization of Korean American Women

Racialization is a process by which skin color and cultural practices are made to be socially important as markers of difference. ¹⁴ Racialized identities are in part the result of how the dominant group has stereotyped minority groups. Asian Americans are often reified as foreigners. Thus, it may be clearer to speak in terms of reification rather than as a member of a racial group because the notion of race is changed from an anthropological (intellectual) distinction ¹⁵ into a distinction of value. ¹⁶ Americans live in a society in which racism has been made real and institutionalized by a large segment of our community. It is embedded in our culture as racial discrimination. This is a force for upholding stability and creating good neighborhoods, good jobs, and good clubs as the preserve of the excluding group. It has become institutionalized and internalized by those who believe there is a hierarchy in society, that they are on top of that hierarchy, and that they are right to relegate those unlike themselves to the lower classes.

Racism is intrinsic to the structures of society, ¹⁷ and is seen overtly in violent physical attacks and covertly in gradations of wages and employment opportunities based on racial criteria. Racism exists in many places in society, from government boards to manual laborer boards. Covert racism, often appearing in micro-aggressions, can be subconscious, apparently non-deliberate, and rarely recognized by the perpetrators themselves. ¹⁸ For a society to be welcoming of all cultures, it is crucial to be able to celebrate our differences and allow them to enrich us rather than being a means to oppress. Racism is not entirely an intellectual blight on our culture. In his milestone book on American conservatism, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk identifies, among other things, that the notion of real classes, is a fundamentally desirable aspect of society, stating:

Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.” With reason, conservatives often have been called “the party of order.” If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom. ¹⁹

The idea is that we don’t need to base classes on race, but however we do it, we need classes, often based on property and education and “knowing the right people.” Traces of early ethno-sexual racism against Korean women survive in subtle traces today. Besides the physical hardship for Korean American women, there was also psychological difficulty for Korean American women, as they were viewed with racial categorizations such as “perpetual foreigners,” ‘non-assimilable, “model minority,” and “honorific whites.” Such burdensome labels were and are odious for Korean American women. At times, they wanted to return to Korea, but the high cost of travel generally prevented such movement.

During the early twentieth century, various laws (e.g. the 1924 National Origins Act and the 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act) were implemented to stop the flow of Asian immigrants to the United States. Anti-Asian sentiments from the nineteenth century led to the National Origins Act of 1924, which prohibited Asians from immigrating to the United States because they were seen as a threat. This law disrupted the formation of traditional Asian families because families could not be reunited. The 1924 Immigration Act was discriminatory as Northern European countries were allowed to send immigrants of both genders into the United States. The 1924 Act also forbade women from China, Japan, Korea, and India from entering the United States, even as wives of US citizens. This law was not changed until 1945 with the passage of the War Brides Act, which allowed immigration of Asian spouses and children of US servicemen. However, Asians living in the United States were not allowed to become naturalized citizens until the McCarren-Walter Act of 1952. These discriminatory laws and acts reveal discriminatory attitudes against Asians, which clearly impacted the livelihood and psychology of Asian Americans then and now. They are a form of racism which is not merely talked about in private and seen in surreptitious discrimination like selling land or making loans, but this was discrimination based on a conservative political philosophy which claimed the need for classes in a well-ordered society.

Asian women were allowed to immigrate to Hawaii in part because it was an American colony, with only a small percentage of Caucasians, comprising mostly men, and therefore, the fear of miscegenation and the tainting of the “purity” of the white race were not a major concern.

Racializing people of color occurs because white conservative social doctrine creates a space for it. The structures of white supremacy require it in order to be meaningful. White supremacy is fed by the desire for power and privilege. It is an internal drive which operates in a cycle of desire for ever-increasing privilege, mirrored by the ever-waning desire for others to share those same privileges. The dynamics of white supremacy favor white people. Once the demoted classes realize what is happening to them and to us, the game is already set. The players have built and maintained their fences, and those barriers are too high for the rest of us to overcome since, in many cases, they are enshrined in the law of the land. To be sure, in the last 75 years, legal classism has largely disappeared (ironically, except for the case of women). Classism exists in some states, and counties make voting registration difficult for people of color or of a lesser education or the absence of property ownership.

However, white supremacy is unnatural. Unnatural things need coercion and deception to sustain them. Deception allows us to come into the game under the guise that we are all equal players. When I began teaching, I thought all the faculty were playing under the same rules and on the same field. As much as I wanted to believe this reality and truth, I couldn’t survive within it. The stakeholders in white supremacy used all their power to throw me off of their playing field, thereby sustaining the framework of white supremacy. The unspoken, and sometimes blatantly spoken, principle is that if we do not abide by their rules, there will be unpleasant consequences. In many situations, it becomes nearly impossible to fight against white supremacy, because officially, it does not exist.

As Korean American women, we recognize our racial identity. It becomes a conscious and unconscious sense of self that affects how we view ourselves, others, and the world, influencing the ways we go about living our lives. As such, Asian Americans need to live with this internalized, hidden white supremacy and see how they can quietly maneuver in it and overcome it.

Stereotyping of Asian Americans

Today Asian Americans are considered the model minority, which is a covert form of racism since it renders the suffering and oppression of Asian Americans invisible. Not only does it unjustifiably question whether Korean Americans experience racism, but it forces them to prove that their experiences are race-based. Consequently, Asian Americans have not always been granted the same level of civil rights protection accorded to other people of color, such as blacks and Hispanics. In addition, Asian Americans have been singled out as the acceptable minority for public ridicule. ²⁰ To be fair, not all Americans are racist. Part of the political philosophy of many calls for the elimination of racism. In contemporary America, it seems that Asians and Asian Americans are uniquely fair game for racist remarks by people who are not of Asian descent. This was seen at the 2016 Oscars where Chris Rock made fun of three Asian children as part of his joke, demonstrating the ways Asians still remain a public target of racist jokes, with insignificant consequence or challenge. ²¹

Korean American women are influenced by Western philosophy, culture, and religious practices. As they attend church, much of the practices within the church have been created by Western ideologies and practices. Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican/Episcopal, Reformed, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist were all born and developed to maturity in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Bohemia, Holland, and England. Only Pentecostalism, famous for its generous welcoming of both blacks and women, from the day it was founded, can show the fingerprints of minorities.

Korean American women are caught between cultures and are influenced by outside forces beyond their control. In many ways, they have become a colonized people who mimic their colonizer. This happens in society, church, and the home.

Western dominance can be oppressive, forcing subordinate, or subaltern, people to hide or diminish their cultural beliefs and uniqueness. This phenomenon is commonly observed among subaltern peoples who hide their own identity behind the mask the colonizer expects to see or imposes. ²² For example, Korean women spend thousands of dollars to fix their physical appearance to resemble westerners. The women submit to the power of hegemony through plastic surgery and aesthetic maintenance.

The Western standard of beauty is detrimental to Korean women. The dominant white culture, which upholds this white standard of beauty, causes many Korean American women to feel ashamed of the way they look. Plastic surgery then becomes a tempting option for some of these women in their quest to look more Western and be more acceptable in either their own culture or a Western culture. In other words, many Korean American women have internalized the white standard of beauty in part because they have rarely seen a person of color—specifically one that exhibits quintessential Asian features—depicted as having innate beauty. The dominant white culture, which upholds the white standard of beauty, causes many Asian women to feel distaste and shame toward the way they look.

Young Korean American girls often feel particularly pressured to look less Asian and more Western. These Young Korean American girls dream of having bigger eyes, high-bridge noses, larger breasts—all in all, to look less Asian. They try different makeup and applications to create emphasized shadows on their faces so that their noses look pointier than they actually are. Before eye-lid surgery was popularized, it was common practice for many young girls—especially in South Korea—to put tape on their eyelids to create the double eyelid, which is such a desirable Western feature among young Asian women. Many women feel compelled to do these things and attribute such measures to coalesce to Western cultural influence.

This colonial mimicry comes from the colonist’s desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. The discourse of mimicry is constructed around ambivalence. The authority of that mode of colonial discourse called mimicry is therefore stricken by an indeterminacy. Mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal. ²³

Indeed, the effect of mimicry on the authority of colonial discourse is profound and disturbing. Dissimulation is a much broader phenomenon which is not noticed by those who have had no experience with subaltern groups. But dissimulation is not a lie; it is an act of self-protection and survival while still resisting and preserving an identity, albeit hidden in the face of confronting, overwhelming supremacy.

Homi Bhabha states, “[M]imicry is like camouflage, not a harmonization of repression of difference, but a form of resemblance that differs from or defends presence by displacing it in part, metonymically.” ²⁴ The unrecognized process of mimicry is responsible for the very misreading of the supposed connection between modernization and secularization. The success of dissimulation lies in the fact that it makes the colonizers blindly believe that their project of making the colonized like them is working. They often do not realize that they are spectators of the mimicry, merely projections and expectations of their own. ²⁵

Postcolonial notions like hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence are important today because sharp power differentials continue to develop. Americans speak about racism largely in black and white binaries. In this manner, the experiences of racism of the other people of color can become diminished, minimized, or overlooked. The pain and suffering of Korean American women are often ignored in this dualism, and thus it becomes necessary to move toward a less simplified approach, especially as diversity proliferates. In modern society, however, the trend is to maintain the stark duality, but to reframe it as American versus foreign (Asian, Latin, and Arabic).

Mimetic rivalry works in the following way: Humans desire what others desire and respond not only to others’ actions, but also to what they believe their intentions are. This desire leads to suspicion, unrest, and, ultimately, conflict. Mimetic desire appears to be intrinsic in human experience, and scapegoating mechanisms are both ubiquitous and ancient in human societies. ²⁶ The colonized mimic the colonizer, and, as a result, their innate identity gets traded for something that is at times, unrecognizable.

The Hypersexualization of Korean American Women

Scholars and religious leaders must take gender seriously as an analytic category. It has been used to look at the ways identities, experiences, and relationships are built as well as a lens to examine theological notions, assumptions, and agendas that have been considered “universal.” ²⁷ We must work toward justice by examining and identifying the ways in which gender has been used by religion and culture to oppress women.

Women have been viewed as sexual objects in so many ways, and Korean American women are no exception. In fact, they are viewed even more frequently as sexual objects because of racial stereotyping. Where Korean American men have been emasculated, Korean American women have been hypersexualized. ²⁸

At the beginning of immigration into the United States, Asian American men were feminized due to their traditional long pigtails and were offered traditional feminine work such as dishwashers, cooks, and cleaners. On the other hand, Asian American women were viewed as exotic foreign objects—prostitutes and sexual workers who existed to be conquered for the sexual gratification of men. Even though a married, Asian, indentured worker desired to bring his wife with him, US immigration laws made it nearly impossible for him to do so. It was difficult for married Asian women to enter America as there was a fear of Asian people; also, if women came in, then there would be Asian babies. So American immigration laws barred Asian women. These immigration laws and societal attitudes shaped the gender composition and social class of Asian American communities in the United States. Some single women who came in were brought in as sex workers. Thus, the stereotyping of Asian women as prostitutes or geishas was reinforced by this restriction on immigration of Asian women.

We need to take a deeper look at these cases and personal histories as they reveal how the hypersexualizing of women manifested in our society through literature, stereotyping, racism, and sexism. Certainly, Korean American women are hypersexualized as mere objects of sexual gratification.

This hypersexualizing of Korean American women needs to be challenged. Other incidents, such as the cultural phenomenon of Psy’s music video, “Gangnam Style,” ²⁹ perpetuate the hypersexualization of Korean women, affirming westernized standards of beauty as superior to Asian standards. Other cultural narratives as found in movies like “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Madam Butterfly” sustain the notion of Korean and Asian women as sex workers or existing solely to fulfill and indulge male sexual desire. These stories, following themes which are often introduced to us early through fairy tales, perpetuate the sexualization of Korean American women and the notion that they are only of value due to their feminine contributions.

If we examine some of the earliest portrayals of North American women’s behaviors or actions, we can find them in children’s fairy tales. These stories, which have been some of the earliest teachings revealed to young girls, are actually reinforcements of a patriarchal society’s values. Some of the classic children’s stories create an impression of the vulnerability of women and their dependence on men. They also reveal the sexualizing of young girls and how girls must rely on men to fulfill femininity and their lives. These children’s stories are shared at an early age as harmless stories which are not meant to bring fear to young girls, but rather a sense of reliance on men for their future and fulfillment. ³⁰ As much as we want to deny the power in these stories, we must recognize their strong hold in forming girls’ identities and behavior in our society.

For example, if we examine the children’s story Sleeping Beauty, we find that the woman is very likely to be found in one position, in bed. In this story, Sleeping Beauty is lifted from her bed by a man ostensibly because women cannot or do not wake up by themselves, and man, or magic, is needed to intervene. She is lifted up by the man who will lay her in her next bed, so that she may be confined to a bed ever after, just as the fairy tale says. So Sleeping Beauty’s trajectory is from bed to bed where she can dream all the more about how the man rescues her from doomed circumstances and fulfills her life thereafter. She sleeps, and she dreams of love. In some stories, she can be found standing up, but not for long. ³¹ She is fulfilled through her introduction and acquiescence to a man. She needs to be ready to lie in bed and live in bed for the man. She becomes attached to the man and is so connected to the man that she cannot seem to leave the bed.

In one of many interpretations of the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the girl is between two houses, between two beds; ever caught in her chain of metaphors—metaphors that organize culture. Indeed, Little Red Riding Hood is caught between the violent acts of this world dominated by masculine perpetuation and penetration. There is an opposition inherent in womanhood. It’s the classic opposition: dualist and hierarchical. Man/woman automatically means great/small, superior/inferior, and transformation/inertia. ³² This dualistic understanding and separation between men and women is very dangerous for our society to embrace as it continues to reinforce patriarchy and sexism. It portrays a distinct line between men and women where there isn’t a distinct line, but rather a gray area. There is much overlap between men and women, and there should be a clear understanding that this dualism and hierarchy is detrimental on both sides and should cease to be reinforced.

Women, especially Korean American women, need to implement changes in societal discourse of how Korean American women are defined. These children’s stories in an indirect and direct way reinforce patriarchy, and thus Korean American women need to begin writing their own stories so the narrative can change. Once the narrative changes, new ideas about women in culture and society can emerge. But the narrative must change first for shifts to occur.

Furthermore, Korean American women would have to start by resisting the re-appropriation of cultural terms and artifacts. They need to create a new culture and new lexicon through which to define themselves. This shift needs to allow for Asian American women to imagine, to speak imaginatively, and to create a more just and equitable world for all women. This rhetoric that says, “She has nothing to say” must stop. We must recognize that knowledge is the accomplice of power. ³³ Thus, women need to study and acquire knowledge. If knowledge is power, then women have a long way to go to gain all the knowledge needed to balance the tables of power.

To work toward equality, religious discourse, categories and languages about God, can be studied and examined in non-gendered forms. This work must occur for women in the church to be liberated and be equal. Korean American women who are theologically more conservative than white women will find this study to be a challenge. But it needs to occur with respect to the individual, slowly and rigorously, only then will the church evolve its language and culture of male dominance. Language forms our thoughts. Therefore, we cannot achieve any level of equality if our language about God remains masculine. The liberation of God language will help to work toward Korean American women’s liberation in the church.

The interdisciplinary field of theology of Korean Americans is neither monolithic nor homogeneous. It is hybrid and complex, present in multiple categories. Moreover, theology and church are both contextual. The context for Korean American theology includes the historical immigration story and the ongoing US neocolonialism and militarism that impacts Koreans as well as Korean Americans. These are just some of the complexities to consider when we analyze Korean American women’s theology and their roles within the church.

In addition, US militarization has played a role in shaping the historical displacement and migration of Asians. Scholars have argued that a “critical transnational perspective” needs to be adopted “to recalibrate the movement [of Asian peoples] away from [their] domestic roots—and toward the legacy of U.S. involvement in the Asian Pacific.” ³⁴ The impact has been significant and continues to be so. The identity of Korean women has been frequently tied to the militarization of Korea, which has deepened the portrayal of hyper-sexualized Korean women. The US military men based in Korea have continuously associated with Korean women as sexual partners. This has created a precedent of behavior and attitudes that continues to feed the narrative of hypersexualized Korean women.

The complexity of Korean American women’s identity, shaped by history, culture, militarization, racism, and stereotyping, challenges us to discern what lies beneath the surface and understand at a deeper level. Political, societal, and religious actions need to be taken for the healing and liberation of Korean American women. Lisa Lowe writes,

“Becoming a national citizen” cannot be the exclusive narrative of emancipation for the Asian American subject. Rather, the current social formation entails a subject less narrated by the modern discourse of citizenship and more narrated by the histories of wars in Asia, immigration, and the dynamics of the current Global economy. ³⁵

We need to recover the painful stories of the past so that we can rebuild and reimagine a liberated future, especially for churched Korean American women who seek a community in which to share pain, sorrows, and joys.

Korean American Women and Their Religious Identity

Korean American women struggle to find their own identity in the Christian church, which is so patriarchal in its culture, practice, and heritage. God has been portrayed as masculine from the beginning of Christianity. As a result, men always appear to be closer to God than women and, hence, believe they better know the will of God. This type of misunderstanding has pervaded the church and legitimized patriarchy within the church to the detriment of women’s health, spirituality, and souls. This pervasive sexism must be dismantled, and the church needs to be reestablished with new paradigms and understandings. One possible way is to look into the Eastern ways of viewing the world, which do not see the world in such strict Platonic dichotomies.

Korean American sociologist Jung Ha Kim says, “To a person or community in need of recovery, a sense of subjectivity due mainly to historical erasure, invisibility, and constant misrepresentation, self-reflections and autobiographies are viable means of reclaiming wholeness rather than producing privacy.” ³⁶ We need to retrieve our stories to begin to theologically reflect and create a dynamic understanding of Korean American women whose lives are greatly challenged by systemic racism and stereotypes. As they live on the margins of society and church, it is critical that we excavate and understand their functions and contributions, in order to expand the roles they play within the progressing church and wider society.

Korean American women’s lives are pushed to the margins of society and church. Korean American theologian, Jung Young Lee, delineates the Asian American experience into three distinct stages: “in-between,” ‘in-both,’ and “in-beyond.” In these stages, the existence of being on the margins affects the individual, community, and church. Korean Americans live in American culture as well as their Korean culture and, as they straddle both cultures, they recognize the difficulties of existing in multiple cultures and the implications of this lifestyle. As they try to live in-between, and achieve a complicated balance, they become often recognized as “perpetual foreigners,” as their sense of belonging to their native community and ethnic community is distanced.

This liminal consciousness, being in-between cultures, identities, and societies is not an easy place to exist. It forces one out of the center, while disallowing one to move toward it, as there is a constant negative push away from the center. Furthermore, there is a tug or pull from the Korean culture that also pulls one away from the center. This push-and-pull existence results in the “uncomfortable” state of being in-between cultures and away from the center. Being on the margins results in an identity of marginality. It is not by choice one is living on the margins, but it is rather a forced existence that Korean Americans feel, even as second, third, or fourth generations continue to live in America.

This marginality makes Korean Americans feel that they really don’t belong in the dominant white society or the Korean culture of their heritage. Their sense of belonging is lost and, and as a result, they are forced to create new identities. A reimagined sense of belonging in a new space must emerge. This new space can be a creative force where new identities are formed and new cultural, religious, and gender identities are birthed. This can be a space of hybridity where one acknowledges the marginality and also the imagination that a new world can exist.

This new space can be a place where Korean Americans do not have to conform to the norm. Korean American women’s experiences in society and the church have been defined by racism and sexism. This racism has been heavily experienced in wider society, which placed onto them dangerous gender stereotypes and connotations of being “perpetual foreigners.” This societal attitude has had grave psychological consequences and has forced many Korean American women into an identity crisis. ³⁷ From there, many who attend Korean American churches experience the sexism embedded within Korean history, culture, and society that manifests itself in church society and teaching.

This deeply embedded patriarchy has existed a long time in Korean history. Indeed, much of the Confucian understanding of obedience has infiltrated into the churches in Korea and the United States. Women are expected to carry a pose of obedience in the Korean American churches. The gender roles are more clearly defined in churches as many congregations are still resistant to women leaders or pastors.

Thus, Korean American women have two battles to fight: racism and sexism. As they exist in the “in-between” and marginalized spaces, they recognize that this transitional state makes them feel they belong in temporary spaces. Feeling temporary does not allow them to feel rooted in one place. The longing for Korea and things Korean becomes an elusive nostalgia, just as feeling “at home” in America becomes increasingly difficult. In such a marginalized state, religious affiliation may become a stronghold for many Korean American women.

Yet, as Korean American women search for a sense of belonging, their traditional understanding of God needs to be challenged, too, as well as the heteronormative understandings of their gendered selves. In order to do this, they need to challenge the center: the center of whiteness as well as maleness.

The center of white privilege and white supremacy can be challenged by reimagining Korean American women’s understanding of the Christian God. The maleness and whiteness of the Christian God needs to be dismantled if racism and sexism are to be eliminated.

Korean American women can begin to participate in such actions by dialoguing from a perspective of feminist theology that reimagines God in feminine terms. One possible way is to understand God in wisdom language. Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom, and wisdom is often associated with God. ³⁸ The book of Proverbs has several passages which relate to wisdom such as Prov. 4.6–7, which states, “Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight.” Sophia Christology has been around since the Early Church, but it was slowly discarded and pushed away from our church history. A new retrieval of Sophia God may help us understand God in more feminine terms, which will be inclusive of all women and be more empowering for women around the globe.

Another way to challenge the maleness of God is to embrace a Spirit God. Spirit found in both the Hebrew Scriptures is ruach and it is a feminine term. A Spirit God moves away from the male-gendered God that continuously reinforces patriarchy. Furthermore, the Spirit God moves away from the whiteness of the Christian God as it moves away from an embodied understanding of God. If God is not embodied in a white male body, then it becomes easier for Korean American women to embrace a God who seeks gender and racial equality. ³⁹

As Korean American women fight against racial and gender injustice, their reimagining of historical Christian teachings about God must occur. As this occurs, they can begin to experience the wholeness that comes from a Spirit God who embraces all people regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or socio-economic status. Then, perhaps Korean American women can feel a sense of radical belonging in this world which has always contained communities that have kept them confined as “perpetual foreigners.” They can also begin to push for multiple centers rather than one dominant white center. In this way, people can coexist in multiplicity and feel welcomed and embraced. As Korean American women live in new hybrid spaces, hybridity can be a source of reimagining home, something they have long been seeking, and something that is necessary for positive forward progression.