The Asian American Movement and the Church

Abstract:This article considers the social and political activism of Protestant Christians in and adjacent to the Asian American Movement (AAM) of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on oral history interviews and archives, it uses Asian American Christian Theologies and Strategies (ACTS) based in Berkeley, California, and Agape Fellowship, a Christian commune in Los Angeles, to consider how Asian American Christians integrated their religious and racial identities and fused their faith with their social activism. Many saw ameliorating societal injustice as a duty of their Christian faith. Applying a religious lens to what is often seen as a strictly secular movement, this piece illuminates how Christians contributed to Asian American radical activism, community service and development, and the early formation of Asian American Studies as a field. Neither ACTS nor Agape escaped the patriarchy and sexism that plagued the larger AAM and other movements of the time, reaffirming the importance of gender analysis in these histories.