Michael Sepidoza Campos: Learning and Teaching at the Frontiers of Faith Communities

by Michael Sepidoza Campos, PSR GTU Ph.D. Student, Interdisciplinary Studies
Honolulu, Hawai’i • 12-20 June 2007

During the early summer, I had the opportunity to return to Hawai’i and minister with various church communities. The visit was prompted in part by an invitation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu to teach at the O’ahu Catechetical and Pastoral Enrichment Conference. The gathering brought together 60+ religious workers for fellowship and theological enrichment. Configured after the Pastoral Plan for Adult Formation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the conference addressed six dimensions of adult catechesis: “knowledge of faith, liturgical life, moral formation, prayer, communal life and missionary spirit.”

Given the catechetical thrust of the conference, I offered a course that fostered a “conversational pedagogy” on Christology, incorporating issues of diversity, economic justice and political self-determination that were pertinent to the life of the local church. The purpose of the class was simple: to discover the roots of our Christological assumptions and so locate the specificity of local voices within these broader faith narratives. Image and music bridged Jesus’ incarnations through shifting historical, political and theological paradigms. The interactions considered and critiqued the relevance of theological language; we affirmed contemporary efforts to discern the Christian narrative within prevailing economic, gender, and ecological inequities. My encounter with fellow ministers gently encouraged fellowship, reinvigorating our vocation, hope and vision for the islands’ Catholic community.

Beyond the conference, my trip opened conversations with church leaders who comprise the PANA Institute’s broader Network on Religion and Justice. Through the hospitality of Rev. Jonipher Kwong of the Ohana Metropolitan Community Church, we premiered and hosted a discussion of In God’s House, a documentary highlighting the lives of Asian/Pacific Island people of faith who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The event drew nearly 20 people from various Honolulu churches. Mrs. Susan Roth of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries offered an articulate observation of the tenuous spaces occupied by LGBT faithful within churches that struggle to affirm their inclusion. Several attendees further remarked how tensions surrounding gender, faith and ethnicity among API faithful in the Bay Area stood in contrast from their experience in Hawai’i. While API-LGBT people of faith have had to assert spaces of inclusion in church, these spaces were not implicitly tied to questions of ethnicity. As an attendee maintained, the mixed—or hapa—cultures of the islands saw difference not as a stumbling block but a necessary ingredient to ecclesial integration. Indeed, the evening’s gathering brought together faithful people from a diversity of perspectives and religious traditions; truly an encounter of difference that allowed for abundance and learning.

Political concerns bled onto our faith conversations towards the end of the week as I learned that efforts were underway in the U.S. Senate to pressure President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to account for the extra-judicial killings of church and labor leaders in the Philippines. Having worked closely with local Filipino activists on the issue, PANA’s Deborah Lee encouraged us to seek Senator Daniel K. Inouye’s support of the initiative. With the deft leadership of PSR alumnus, Rev. Wally Fukunaga, we brought these concerns before Ms. Barbara Sakamoto, staff representative of the senator. Ms. Sakamoto affirmed the tenuous involvement of U.S. aid in the extra-judicial killings of faith workers in the Philippines and so promised to personally express our concerns to Sen. Inouye who served in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The encounter intensified our resolve to pressure for accountability and transparency.

Though inundated with work, my brief return to Hawai’i opened forth opportunities to engage old and new friends in ministry. I traveled to teach, realizing later that learning assumed a committed engagement with denominational, gender, ethnic and political considerations. Teaching assumed a mutually transformative dynamic as I took stock of the various relationships that grounded my life. This broadened not only my understanding of “religious education,” but reconfigured the frontiers of my ministerial commitment. Rev. Fukunaga wisely observed that faith formation is never limited within the contours of church structures alone. The exigencies of the “real world” constitute the fiber of our faith. Relationships ground the loftiness of one’s ideals and so move one to action. Ministry thus enlivens a baptismal imperative to the broader faith community with whom we claim accountability. As a student, it is easy for me to forget the simplicity—and privilege—of this commitment. For thus having renewed these life-giving encounters, I am deeply grateful to the PSR community for having shared its financial resources [via a CAPSR scholarship] to open forth such spaces of conversation. Mahalo for your generosity.

Roof Raised, House Rocked, Lives Changed; R2W Summer Institute 2007

Release date: July 6, 2007
Pacific School of Religion
http://www.psr.edu/page.cfm?t=17&id=3242


Roof Raised, House Rocked, Lives Changed; PANA’s Represent 2 Witness Draws to a Close

BERKELEY, CA -- The Pacific School of Religion Chapel was filled with the sounds of rap, drumming, and Samoan harmony on the evening of Thursday, July 5, as the Represent 2 Witness Jam closed out a two-week immersion in social justice and lived faith for 20 youth from diverse ethnic, economic, and social backgrounds. Part poetry slam, part dance performance, concert, and church service, the 2007 installment of the R2W Jam gave family, friends and community members the opportunity to experience what the young participants at this groundbreaking youth leadership development program had learned.

Students performed a “drum dance skit” that looked at historical conflicts created by colonialism still rending societies today. They performed “spoken word” rap poems that attacked the roots of racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. They performed traditional Samoan dance and song, with many members of the audience joining in spontaneous harmony. They closed with a song/rap called “If I could change the world,” an original composition by R2W participants. Throughout the performance, individual students gave testimony about what they had learned and how they planned to change their communities as a result of their new knowledge.

The program, funded in part by the Lilly Endowment, is a leadership development program for primarily Asian Pacific Islander (API) youth and young adults ages 16-22. The participants, some high school and college students, some working young adults, come from across the Pacific coast states to learn about the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, religion, and culture, and how they can be leaders in their communities navigating these crossroads. Several of the participants have come back in subsequent years as resident assistants and workshop leaders in order to pass their experience on to more young people.

The program involved workshops and exercises in “critical faith,” exploring justice issues from social, political, historic, and economic, and spiritual perspectives. Students learned to tell a “social autobiography,” which mixed personal experiences with awareness of the social and historical contexts of their identities. The group went on field trips to Angel Island, the “Western Ellis Island” where many Asians arrived and were processed when they immigrated to America; the Sunnyvale Housing Project, where students learned about local community improvement and employment initiatives; San Francisco’s Chinatown, where the immigrant experience is still begin lived out every day; and the Richmond, California power plant, where they learned about environmental racism. The program is designed to empower young people to see patterns of oppression and develop justice-seeking solutions as they reflect on their own experiences and those of others.

Lindsey Quock has participated as a “Resource Teacher” for four years following her graduation from the first R2W in 2003. Since then, she has become involved in labor and tenants’ rights movements, and is a global studies major and vice president of the student government at UC Santa Barbara. “This program made me a conscious human being. It began my faith journey,” Quock told the audience during a testimony.

Victor McKamie served as an R.A. in this year’s program, and read a scorching indictment of racism as part of one of the “spoken word” sections of the program, asking questions like, “Is race a unity or a division?” “What’s in a pigment?” and “Who are you to call my people savage?” He concluded, “Me? I see color. I love it.”

McKamie, who is working his way through El Camino College in Los Angeles, said in the year since he first participated in the program, he has, “moved from just seeing things to activity–before, I was just an observer,” on issues of race, class, and social justice. McKamie says he has since been working with his church on poverty outreach programs, and on breaking down racial barriers between African American and Latino communities in L.A.

According to program co-founder Michael James, the project seeks to bring together youth from across culture, race, class, social, and religious backgrounds. Although the program initially focused on API youth, coming from ethnicities as diverse as Samoan, Tongan, Hawaiian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Filipino, James said, “this generation interprets race in a different way,” and has evolved to include African American and Hispanic students. Many of the students came to the program from church and family referrals. The program has strong ties to the United Church of Christ, but has also involved students from Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Holiness (Pentecostal), Mormon, and Catholic backgrounds. James expressed the hope that the young people leave the program with the intention of spreading awareness and action in their home communities. “We’re trying to teach people that they can educate themselves based on their own experience. This model of learning isn’t just for youth, it’s for everyone.”

For more information on Represent 2 Witness, see: http://www.represent2witness.org/

For photos from the Represent 2 Witness Jam 2007, see:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8732136@N02/sets/72157600686282798/