RE-CLAIMING CHRISTIANITY AS ASIAN

Jose Mario C. Francisco

The immense Asian region, linked by land or maritime bridges and shaped by

movements of peoples and their artifacts, has never been characterized by essentialized

qualities but by a network of family resemblances between many diverse contexts. From

its beginnings, Christianity emerged in and has journeyed across this region, entering

contexts that changed and were changed by it; hence some speak of “Christianities.”

Though Christianity in Asia attracts popular and scholarly interest, it is often seen

through distorting perspectives. This essay critiques such perspectives and discusses the

fundamental epistemic shift toward re-claiming Christianity as Asian.

I. Liberation from Distorting Perspectives

a. Christianity as Minority

Though Christianity is “one of the largest and fastest-growing religions in Asia”1

and is projected to increase from 287 to 381 million between 2010 and 2050,2 many focus

on its minority status (7% of total population in 2010), often identified as its defining

feature.

However, this account presumes a view of religion defined by a social institution

with articulated belief-systems, uniform moral codes and differentiated structures, and

thus with clear borders for membership. This view arose from the “specific Christian

history” of modern Europe,3 characterized by violent intra-Christian conflicts between

Catholicism and Protestantism during the Long Reformation (1400-1700 CE).4 Religion

thus becomes “essentially a matter of symbolic meanings linked to ideas of general order

(expressed through either or both rite and doctrine), that it had generic functions/features,

1
and that it must not be confused with any of its particular historical or cultural forms.”5

This view even underpins the concept of world religion/s, which was intended to

turn from 19th century Eurocentric obsession with exoticism toward “a more egalitarian

and lateral delineation.”6 But what emerged is the incorporation of the prevailing

discourse on religion into “the new outlook of the pluralist ideology—or supposed

democracy—of world religions.”7

In contrast, Asian religious traditions—ancient and new, “great” and “little”—

have taken multiple diverse forms born out of their interaction with one another and with

traditional local practices. One finds varying forms of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity

that interact with traditions such as Confucianism and Daoism or with local practices like

shamanism and indigenous traditions.8 Although conflicts have occurred, their causes are

often rooted in social, economic and political interests coopting these traditions.

Thus Christianity in Asia cannot be defined by its demographic minority status as

this assumes religions, including Christianity, to be clearly bounded institutions isolated

from other entities and forces. Asian religious identities are complex and fluid, though

distinctly different from has been called “multiple religious belonging” or “cafeteria

Christianity” in other contexts.9

b. Christianity as Colonial

Christianity in Asia is also labeled “colonial” due to European intrusion 16th

century onward. This claim implies institutional links between Christianity and

colonization, and coercion behind all instances of Christian incorporation.

“Colonial” cannot be universally applied, because Christianity’s colonial links

varied and produced differing consequences across Asia. Only in certain coastal parts of

2
India and the Spanish Philippines were these links under the 1493 Patronato initiated.

Moreover, their implementation and impact were not uniform. Geographical diffusion of

islands and insufficient Spanish forces mitigated colonial force in the Philippines.10

Subsequent competition with Dutch and British trading companies affected Catholic and

Protestant missions.

Thus there were “significant differences between the early Portuguese and

Spanish empires in which the church and state worked in unison, and the Anglo-

American imperial expansion in which there was greater separation between the

economic imperatives of empire and the missionary churches.”11 These shaped

Christianity’s status and local reactions: “The history of the Christian churches has been

checkered, in so far as different states either sought to exclude Christianity, or to embrace

it as a necessary precondition of modernization.”12 Thus, in the 16th century, Christianity

was received in parts “where there was relatively little competition and where local states

were either weak or non-existent”; but in the 19th and 20th centuries, it “was opposed by

nationalist or communist movements.”13

Labeling Christianity as colonial is partially true: “the success of Christianity in

Asia cannot be separated from economic and imperial power, and that its spread in Asia

has also been a function of the strength or weakness of other religions, especially

Islam.”14 But it cannot be a comprehensive perspective because of Christianity’s varying

relations with these powers and traditions across Asia.

c. Christianity As Foreign

The construal of Christianity as foreign to Asia, closely linked to its colonial

label, also needs to be interrogated, especially since describing Christianity in Asia as

3
primarily the product of imperialism still serves important political functions; for

instance, “in contemporary Malaysia and Indonesia, where it can be important,

ideologically, to define Christianity as being a foreign intruder.”15

Notwithstanding its origins and spread in Western Asia and its early arrival,

according to tradition, in South Asia, one must acknowledge the centuries-old presence of

Christianity, albeit intermittent and geographically confined. Behind this enduring

presence lies the historic experience of Asian Christians, not just in terms of individual

lives but also of the shared identities of Asian Christians.

Many, whether officially declared or popularly revered, present exemplary lives

as Christians and as Asians marked with their personal identifications. Asian Catholic

saints and blessed are very diverse: of the total 486 from 8 countries, 384 were lay of

which 108 were women.16 Though all except four died of martyrdom from imperial or

local authorities, their “dying for the Faith” did not involve renouncing their native

identities.

Moreover, Asian Christians often contributed to “nativist” or nationalist

sentiments. Many lay Catholics in the 1896 Philippine Revolution saw their struggle for

freedom and wellbeing as participating in Christ’s passion.17 Filipino diocesan priests like

Jose Burgos and Pedro Pelaez promoted the nationalist agenda within and beyond the

Church; others even took active and supportive roles in the Revolution and the

subsequent Philippine-American War.18

Similar examples are found in other Asian countries. When Catholicism in

Vietnam was known as Đạo Hoa Lang [religion or the way of Portuguese], Hàn Mặc Tử

(1912-1942), arguably the most prominent and first Vietnamese Catholic modern poet,

4
created works where “Christian faith and Vietnamese culture encountered each other at a

deeper, more intimate level that enabled each to enrich the other”: “on one hand, the

newly claimed self-awareness in Vietnamese cultures enabled Catholics like Hàn to

articulate their faith in their authentic cultural expression. On the other hand, the post-

persecution Catholic church opened Vietnamese cultures to a new world perspective at

the beginning of the twentieth century. Hence, Catholicism remains neither as a ‘guest’

nor a ‘stranger’ to Vietnamese cultures and religions.”19

Another example is Jesuit Albertus Soegijapranata (1896–1963), ordained the first

Indonesian bishop and officially declared a national hero.20 Despite his “Orientalist”

formation from Dutch missionaries, he promoted Javanese self-esteem and played

significant roles during critical events like the Japanese Occupation (1942), Indonesian

Independence (August 1945) and its aftermath in the fight against returning Dutch troops.

The witness of myriad Asian Christians does not only undermine distorting claims

about the foreign and imposed nature of Christianity, but also provide grounds for a

profoundly postcolonial perspective on and of Asian Christianity.

II. Toward Re-claiming Christianity as Asian

a. Emergence of the Christian Asian Subject

Intertwined with liberation from distorting views is the process of re-claiming

Christianity as Asian. Central to this project is the historic emergence of the Christian

Asian subject viewed from a multifaceted postcolonial perspective. This stance

acknowledges colonial experience and its aftermath: it “encapsulates the social, political

and cultural conditions of the world order, bringing to the fore the cultural, political and

economic facts of colonialism, and aiding recognition of the ambiguities of

5
decolonization and the ongoing neocolonization.”21

But despite totalizing colonial and religious aims, encounter with Asian contexts

has not been unidirectional and monolithic. Often the native and the local have asserted

themselves, at times through open resistance but more insidiously with what has been

called “the weapons of the weak.”22 Thus the postcolonial perspective also “provides

openings for oppositional readings, uncovers suppressed voices, and more pertinently,

has as its foremost concern victims and their plight.”23

Given this dynamic between colonial intent and local resistance, postcolonial

feminist theologian Nansoon Kang contends that “today the question of marginalization

and oppression is becoming more complex and disputatious” and that “the complex and

elusive nature of the two poles (the centre/colonizer/oppressor and the

margin/colonized/oppressed) calls for deconstruction of the problematic binary of centre

and margin, colonizer and colonized, inclusion and exclusion, powerful and powerless,

which is based on rigid lines of gender, race, class, sexuality, and so on.”24 The

significant product of this deconstruction is the “transformation not only of the objective

condition but of the subjectivity of the colonized/marginalized themselves through a

theological ‘pedagogy of the oppressed.’”25 Thus emerges the Asian Christian subject

with an “authentic identity, not in a unified, fixed, essentialized space but in a space of

multiple, contradictory, paradoxical, hybrid positions, possibilities, and potentialities.”26

This epistemological decolonization begins “in a new space, from whose

viewpoint—an original locus enunciationis and hermeneutic—it will necessary to redo all

theology.”27 Accordingly the fundamental epistemological locus for articulating Asian

Christianity lies in the “lived religion” of Asian Christians—“how religion and

6
spirituality are practiced, experienced, and expressed” in their everyday lives.28

b. Valorization of Asian Lived Christianity

This valorization critiques “postcolonial theologians [who] have followed the

roadmaps of their postcolonial theorist predecessors too closely” and thus “have not

sufficiently decolonized the Western origins and dominant practices of the academic

discourse of their disciplines.”29

In contrast, the lived Christian experience of Asians—primarily that of the poor,

the native, the previously colonized and women—expresses the inviolable subjectivity

and agency of Asian Christians, and must not be construed in terms of the idealized

native “who has remained through the centuries impervious to the cultures of the

conquerors”30 and who is construed to still be tied to “rooted, localized, and integrated

communities, who lead settled lives.”31

Felix Wilfred explains that, in this lived Christianity, “powerlessness shared by

millions of Asians living in poverty and misery opens up ever closer understanding of the

world, the humans and the divine mystery,” and proves to be sites of creativity and

liminality, rich “with wealth that has not been explored.”32

In these sites in traditional and contemporary media, one finds symbolic

expressions and narrative reflections of Asian Christian faith. Moreover, these

expressions often draw from other religious and local traditions—Buddhist iconography

for Christ, local folk tales,33 shrines shared with other faiths,34 and festivals influenced by

local traditions.35

These Asian Christian expressions influenced by social ethos and contextual

structures “give rise to thought” and invite critical thinking and action.36 The resulting

7
theological articulation then comes from listening to these expressions of lived faith,

formulating the thought within, and critically reflecting on them in the light of other

religious articulations from and beyond Asia.

Many Asian theologians engage in this process and share its fruits in recent

anthologies.37 They contribute to discerning the sensus fidei, the sense of the faith, both

as orientation and content. Korean theologians illustrate this through their use of the

notion of han. This Korean word’s nuances include “frustrated hope, the collapsed

feeling of pain, letting go, resentful bitterness, and the wounded heart.”38 Used in

ordinary and literary discourse for personal and social woundedness, it became central to

minjung theology’s concern for all the marginalized, and has since been related to the

theology of sin and of psychosocial woundedness.

c. Translation and Conversation in the Name of Catholicity

These primary expressions of lived Christianity and their theological articulations

both employ languages of Asian Christians, thus promoting fidelity to faith experience.

However, they cannot be hermetically sealed from those of other Christians in and

beyond Asia, but are inherently related to them in terms of Christianity’s catholicity.

Thus global theological conversations take place, but often in languages different from

the local. Translation occurs out of necessity, but the fundamental consequences of this

practice calls for critical reflection..

Without professing “untranslatability” between languages or determinism of

thought by language, one must examine underlying views of translation. Some focus on

the transfer of a definite message or the search for “dynamic equivalence” between

languages39 and hence fidelity is seen as reproduction of the message. This is analogous

8
to the misleading understanding of inculturation or contextualization as bringing an

ahistorical Gospel to new languages and contexts.40

These views rooted in the Latin translatio as the transfer of relics have been

questioned in contemporary translation studies, because meaning is not an object to be

relocated.41 Moreover, other contexts, Asian among them, see translation differently. For

instance, the Malay root salin used for translation means “pouring liquid or grain” and

“giving birth,” thus emphasizing fluidity in translation.42

In contrast, contemporary views “incorporate within its remit various types of

non-verbal material as well as the different agents who produce translated texts and

mediate oral interaction, and the cultural, historical, and social environments that

influence and are influenced by cultural agents and their production.”43 These views

recognize that translation “involves the interface of languages, semiotic systems, cultural

products, and systems of cultural organization, and it makes manifest the differences and

similarities of systems across cultures.”44

With this more comprehensive perspective, translating Asian Christian faith

expressions and theological articulations into other languages in Asia and beyond

becomes a process of mediation, not imprisoned by words but engaging wider socio-

religious worlds.

This admittedly complex task requires profound respect for these expressions and

articulations. Nuances of discourse and emotive associations must be listened to.

Otherwise, our account of Christianity in Asia runs the risk of sounding banal or being

distorted and therefore impotent to enter into authentic mutual exchange with Christians

from other contexts.

9
 This ongoing exchange among Christians across contexts throughout history

constitutes the singular witness of Christianity’s catholicity, not measured by

geographical extension or institutional uniformity but “marked by a wholeness of

inclusion and fullness of faith in a pattern of intercultural exchange and

communication.”45 Asian Christians will be empowered to fully participate in and truly

contribute to this exchange only if they liberate themselves from distorting perspectives

and re-claim their Christianity as Asian

1
Julius Bautista and Francis Ghek Kee Lim (eds), Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and
Conflict, London, 2009, p. 1.
2
pewforum.org
3
Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion, Baltimore, 1993, p. 42.
4
Meredith B. McGuire, Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life, Oxford, 2008, pp. 22-43.
5
Asad, op. cit., p. 42.
6
Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, how European Universalism was Preserved in
the Language of Pluralism, Chicago and London, 2005, p. 13
7
Ibid., p. 33.
8
Felix Wilfrid (ed),The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, Oxford, 2014, pp. 1-11.
9
Albertus Bagus Laksana, ‘Multiple Religious Belonging or Complex Identity?: An Asian Way of Being
Religious’, in Wilfred, op. cit., pp. 493-509.
10
Linda A. Newson, ‘Old World Diseases in Early Colonial
Philippines and Spanish America’, in Daniel F.
Doeppers and Peter Xenos (eds), Population and History: The
Demographic Origins of the Modern Philippines, Quezon City, 1998, pp.17-36.
11
Bryan S.Turner, ‘Globalization, Religion and Empire in Asia”, in Peter Berger and Lori G. Beaman (eds),
Religion, Globalization and Culture, London and Boston, 2007, pp. 146-47.
12
Ibid., p. 160
13
Ibid., p. 160.
14
Ibid., p. 160
15
Ibid., p. 156
16
Francis X. Clark, Asian Saints: The 486 Catholic Canonized Saints and Blessed of Asia, Quezon City,
2000, pp. 7-19.
17
Reynaldo Clemeña Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-
1910, Quezon City, 1979, pp. 75-113.
18
John N. Schumacher, Revolutionary Clergy: The Filipino Clergy and the Nationalist Movement,
1850-1903, Quezon City, 1981.
19
Hưng Trung Pha ̣m, “Hàn Mặc Tử (1912–1940): A New Moon for the Season of the New Evangelization
in Vietnamese Catholicism,” Kritika Kultura 25 (2014), 113-33 <http://kritikakultura.ateneo.net>
20
Albertus Bagus Laksana, “Love of religion, love of nation: Catholic mission and the idea of Indonesian
nationalism,” Kritika Kultura 25, 91-112 <http://kritikakultura.ateneo.net>
21
R. S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing
Theology. St. Louis MI, 2003, p. 4.
22
James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, 1985.
23
Sugirtharajah, op. cit., p. 4.

10
24
Namsoon Kang, ‘Theology from a space where postcolonialism and theology intersect’, Concilium
2013:2, p. 61.
25
Ibid., p. 64.
26
Ibid., p. 66.
27
Enrique Dussel, ‘The Epistemological Decolonization of Theology’, Concilium 2013:2, p 29.
28
McGuire, op.cit., p. 12.
29
Joseph Duggan, “Epistemoligical dissonance: Decolonizing the postcolonial theological canon,”
Concilium 2013/2, p. 18.
30
Sugirtharjah, op. cit., p. 127.
31
Ibid., p. 123.
32
Felix Wilfred, Margins: Sites of Asian theologies, Delhi, 2005, p. xix.
33
C. S. Song, In the Beginning were Stories, not Texts: Story Theology, Eugene, Oregon, 2011.
34
Laksana, ‘Multiple Religious Belonging,’ in Wilfred, Handbook of Christianity in Asia.
35
Patrick Alcedo et al. (eds), Religious Festivals in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Quezon City, 2016.
36
Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of evil, Boston, 1969, pp. 347-57.
37
R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed), Frontiers in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging Trends. Maryknoll, 1994;
Vimal Tirmanna (ed), Harvesting from the Asian Soil, Bangalore, 2011.
38
Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of
Sin, Nashville, 1993, p. 31.
39
Eugene Nida, Toward a Science of Translating with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures
involved in Bible Translating, Leiden, 1964, p. 24.
40
Jose Mario C. Francisco, ‘Un trittico sull’inculturazione in Asia’ in Antonio Spadaro and Carlos Mariá
Galli (eds), La Riforma e Le Riforme nella Chiesa, Brescia, 2016, pp. 552-68.
41
Maria Tymoczko, Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators, Manchester, 2010, p. 126.
42
Ibid., p. 75
43
Mona Baker, ‘The Changing Landscape of Translation and Interpreting Studies’, in Sandra Hermann and
Catherine Porter (eds), A Companion to Translation Studies, Oxford, 2014, p, 15.
44
Tymoczko, op. cit., p. 43
45
Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local, Maryknoll, 1997,
p. 132.

JOSE MARIO C. FRANCISCO is a Filipino Jesuit professor of theology at Loyola

School of Theology (LST), Ateneo de Manila University and the Pontificia Università
Gregoriana. After postgraduate studies at the Jesuit School of Theology and Graduate
Theological Union in Berkeley, California, he held leadership positions in academic and
religious institutions such as LST and East Asian Pastoral Institute, and is founding
member and Southeast Asian representative of the Academy of Asian Christian Studies.
His teaching, research and publications focus on the interphase between theology and
cultural studies especially in Asian contexts.
He has taught and lectured in the U.S. at Boston College as Gasson Professor and the
Jesuit School of Theology as well as in Asia and Europe. He has published 17th century
Philippine manuscripts and anthologies on Asian Christianity as well as essays in The
Oxford Handbook on Christianity in Asia, The Cambridge History of Christianity,
Christianities in Asia, and in international journals.

Address: Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, P.O. Box 240, U.P.
Post Office, 1144 Quezon City, Philippines
Email: mariofrancisco49@gmail.com

11