HR: Hybrid Methodist

Over dinner tonight, a colleague of my sister's (and shall we say it -- also a good friend) joked that we might be aptly labeled hybrid methodists in recognition of our hybridized theological backgrounds. No, we're not talking about half gasoline and half electric personalities, although we do have rather electric ones - zzzap!

Let's add it up:
1. Born into 3rd generation of Christian evangelicals - in Vietnam, a country whose history is riddled, formed in substantive part, even, by histories of colonialization by the Chinese, French, Japanese, then U.S.
2. Raised in a southern Baptist church in suburban America -- way, way down in southern Calfornia, a small city comprised of predominantly white, middle-class Ameria
3. Matured in a UMC Asian American satellite congregation -- partly consisting of immigrant Viet Americans trying to establish a new life in a foreign country, and partly of diasporic Vietnamese Americans whose families have been in the US for longer than they were alive
4. Working in Episcopal seminary, OR teaching in a UCC school of religion -- both being institutions of theological education situated along the more progressive/liberal sides of their denomations (both in the Episcopal and in the UCC churches)

There you have it... most of this is lost in the daily negotiations, but some of these crop up now and then in our conversations. We betray our hybridity in multiple ways, and gleefully claim a sort of pleasure (or at least I do, most of the time) in the mixed up, triangulated, multi-cultural, theologically diverse pluralism of my background and identity.

Then there are days where it's downright impossible to claim "I'm a complex individual" without feeling a touch defensive that many Americans (of whatever background) can't seem to "get" what it means to not change my name to something more "English."

I'm a complicated individual, folks. Complicated, indeed.