Following Jesus Christ involves being located at the periphery or the liminal place and not at the center of society. One cannot be open to the values of the reign of God if one is caught up in the structure of the dominant center. One cannot relate to the alienated of the society if one is not ready to meet them at a liminal place. One cannot be a prophetic voice against the dominant center if one is a part of the structure of that center. And if to be located at the periphery instead of the dominant center is an essential requirement for following Christ, to be so located is then the requirement for all Christians and not only for Asian American Christians.
It is, however, not an easy thing for a white person to detach herself or himself from the culture of the center. White persons experience the pain of dislocation as they try to think of themselves no longer as the norm but as simply one of many people who live in a diverse and multicultural society. White persons who locate themselves at the periphery also risk being rejected by their own people who are at the dominant center. Since white persons live in a society where they make up the dominant center, it is so easy for them to return to that center. White Christians must constantly resist the temptation to turn away from the periphery. To follow Christ is definitely a way of the cross.
Asian American Christians have the calling to be located at the periphery. But in two important ways their task is different from that of white American Christians. First, Asian Americans are already at the periphery. As Christians, they are called not just to remain at the periphery, but also to choose to remain there with a new purpose and a new perspective. In choosing to remain at the periphery, there is the danger of romanticizing the periphery as an inherently good location. The periphery in itself is not a more desirable place over other places. Christians are called to be at the periphery because it is a strategic location. It is strategic place for open-mindedness, communitas, and prophetic voice vis-à-vis the center.
Asian American Christians’ calling to be at the periphery is also different from the white Christians’ vocation to be so located in that Asian Americans are marginalized and thus pushed to be the periphery. Asian Americans, with a few exceptions, are denied complete social acceptance by the people at the center and are excluded from the privilege to pursue their happiness at the cultural, political, and social center of American society. To be pushed to the periphery, for Asian Americans, means to be demoralized, humiliated, and dehumanized.
What does it mean to demand that Asian American Christians remain at the place to which their marginalization has pushed them?
Periphery is both the place to which marginalization pushes Asian American Christians, and also a liminal place with its creative potentials. Christians are those who have the moral strength to exercise the creative potentials of liminality in spite of marginalization. Asian American Christians are called to claim the periphery as a liminal space and resist the marginalization that would push them to the periphery.
What Asian American Christians resist cannot be their location at the periphery as such but, rather, the racist exclusion by the white dominant center that forces them to the periphery. Further, the goal of Asian American Christians’ resistance cannot be to overthrow white people’s dominance and to establish Asian American dominance. Asian American Christians then would become just the same as what they are resisting.
For Asian American Christians, their peripheral location is also a liminal space. And the marginalization of Asian Americans constantly threatens to turn periphery into a place of demoralization. But Asian American Christians now have the moral strength to exercise the creative potentials of liminality in spite of marginalization. Communitas will emerge from their liminality and help them withstand the demoralizing consequences of marginalization. In this struggle for communitas and against marginalization, Asian American Christians can be pioneers. The exercise of liminal creativity for the values of the reign of God is a special vocation of Asian American Christians because their very life in America is de facto in a liminal and marginalized context. One may hope that many Asian American Christians will become selfconsciously liminal, will exercise their liminal creativity to promote God’s end in creation, and will encourage white Americans to enter their own liminal spaces and experience the communitas of Christ. When all peoples face up to their liminal spaces, the communitas of Christ, and not the dominant centers, will prevail. Asian American Christians can encourage others to enter their own liminal spaces at the periphery and live in the communitas of Christ.
In line with God’s end in creating the world, Asian Americans’ purpose in resisting the dominant center can only be communitas, the loving community with white people and with all other peoples. Communitas, along with reconciliation with those who marginalize us, is the only legitimate Christian purpose for resisting the dominant center. The goal is to meet all others in liminal spaces and establish communitas.