The Melancholic Christ: Asian American Theology and Responses to Mental Health Stigma and Racialization Among Chinese American Christian Communities
Jennifer Tu, MSIV, Duke University SOM
As the supposed “model minority,” Asian American Christians face unique racialized pressures, which intersect with their faith in multiple ways. Asian American Christians navigate complex racial dynamics in a society plagued with white supremacy, wittingly or not, while also developing their personal faith, building religious communities, and providing spiritual and emotional support for one another. At the same time, many members of multi-generational immigrant families find themselves ill-equipped to address an often-life-threatening challenge: destigmatizing mental health issues.
Part of the problem lies in a Christology that is culturally dislocated from key issues for Asian Americans. Christ is often depicted in a triumphalist way: as a divine instrument of grace, as a bridge between humanity and God, and arguably, as the euthymic White Masculine Christ. Instead, Asian American and broader Christian communities would benefit from re-centering Jesus’ identity as a Palestinian Jew under the Roman Empire, one in continuous lament of and in close affinity with his people’s dislocation and subjugation. We must reimagine his actions as the “Melancholic Christ.”
Generations of Asian American Christians cast as “perpetual foreigners” face challenges that resonate with the Melancholic Christ. In this paper, data from conversations in one specific ethnic group among Asian Americans, the Chinese American Christian community, are analyzed together with broader work by Asian American, Black, womanist, and other theologians, in order to illustrate specific challenges associated with being racialized as “perpetual foreigners.” A Melancholic Christology, introduced through both psychoanalytic and theological terms, provides a response to each of these three challenges: first, American evangelical culture reinforces the racialization of Asian American Christians as a “model minority.” Second, notions of “face,” frameworks of collective social responsibility that characterize Asian culture, have been ignored or even blamed for mental health shame/stigma. And third, personal histories of migration from China, a predominantly atheist and “colorblind” country, have made it difficult for people to integrate ideas regarding faith, race, and mental health. Conceptualizing Jesus as the euthymic White Masculine Christ marginalizes those who face these challenges, while the Melancholic Christ attends to them, provides them with spiritual nourishment, and calls them into action.
Through a Melancholic Christology, individuals, particularly people of color and immigrants, are called to acknowledge the trauma so often internalized from being labeled “perpetual foreigners.” Communities are called to name the psychological costs of assimilation and survival. And all members of the body of Christ, of every racial identity, are called to act, to work long-term towards critical self-love and solidarity.
Part of the problem lies in a Christology that is culturally dislocated from key issues for Asian Americans. Christ is often depicted in a triumphalist way: as a divine instrument of grace, as a bridge between humanity and God, and arguably, as the euthymic White Masculine Christ. Instead, Asian American and broader Christian communities would benefit from re-centering Jesus’ identity as a Palestinian Jew under the Roman Empire, one in continuous lament of and in close affinity with his people’s dislocation and subjugation. We must reimagine his actions as the “Melancholic Christ.”
Generations of Asian American Christians cast as “perpetual foreigners” face challenges that resonate with the Melancholic Christ. In this paper, data from conversations in one specific ethnic group among Asian Americans, the Chinese American Christian community, are analyzed together with broader work by Asian American, Black, womanist, and other theologians, in order to illustrate specific challenges associated with being racialized as “perpetual foreigners.” A Melancholic Christology, introduced through both psychoanalytic and theological terms, provides a response to each of these three challenges: first, American evangelical culture reinforces the racialization of Asian American Christians as a “model minority.” Second, notions of “face,” frameworks of collective social responsibility that characterize Asian culture, have been ignored or even blamed for mental health shame/stigma. And third, personal histories of migration from China, a predominantly atheist and “colorblind” country, have made it difficult for people to integrate ideas regarding faith, race, and mental health. Conceptualizing Jesus as the euthymic White Masculine Christ marginalizes those who face these challenges, while the Melancholic Christ attends to them, provides them with spiritual nourishment, and calls them into action.
Through a Melancholic Christology, individuals, particularly people of color and immigrants, are called to acknowledge the trauma so often internalized from being labeled “perpetual foreigners.” Communities are called to name the psychological costs of assimilation and survival. And all members of the body of Christ, of every racial identity, are called to act, to work long-term towards critical self-love and solidarity.