Biblical Theology in Asian America: Family, Migration, and Divine Presence

Roger Nam

Roger S. Nam, PhD is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Emory University/Candler School of Theology. His scholarship bridges Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern history, with a focus on how economic and social realities shaped biblical texts and communities. He is the author of multiple books, most recently, The Theology of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Before entering academia, he served as a pastor in Seoul, Korea and worked as a financial analyst in the Silicon Valley. This year marks his 18th year as a professor in theological education.

Chloe Sun

Chloe T. Sun is Professor of Old Testament and the Program Director of the Chinese Studies Center at Fuller Seminary. She previously taught at Logos Evangelical Seminary in Los Angeles. She publishes in both Chinese and English and conducts Bible seminars locally and internationally in Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Europe. Her recent English publications include Attempt Great Things for God: Theological Education in Diaspora (Eerdmans, 2020), Conspicuous in His Absence: Studies in the Song of Songs and Esther (IVP Academic, 2021), and Exodus, A Pastoral and Contextual Commentary (Langham, 2024).

Jessica ChenFeng

Jessica ChenFeng, PhD, LMFT is an associate professor of marriage and family therapy at Fuller Theological Seminary. She has been a practicing MFT for almost 20 years and consults with academic, healthcare and church organizations to improve the well-being of people within their relationships and communities. She is the director of Fuller’s Asian American Well-being Collaboratory. Her research, clinical and community work center around Asian American identities/relationships, generation, trauma, and Christian spirituality. She resides in the greater Los Angeles area with her spouse and two children. Whenever she gets the chance, she loves reconnecting with her love for analogue: paper planners and stationery, baking, and sewing. 

Daniel D. Lee

Dr. Daniel D. Lee is the founding academic dean of the Asian American Center and associate professor of theology and Asian American studies at Fuller Seminary. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he has served in a number of ministry contexts, including campus ministry, chaplaincy, immigrant church, pan-Asian ministry, and multi-ethnic churches. He is author of Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice (2022) and Double Particularity: Karl Barth, Contextuality, and Asian American Theology (2017), as well as the editor of The Theology of Asian Americans and Pacific Peoples: A Reader, 1976, complied by Roy Sano (2023).

David C. Chao

Dr. David C. Chao is the director of the Center for Asian American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. He teaches courses on Asian American theology and organizes academic programming in Asian American theology and ministry. His research and writing focus on Asian American theology, the uses of Christian doctrine for liberation, the convergence and divergence of Protestant and Catholic dogmatics, and the theology of Karl Barth.

His first book, titled Concursus and Concept Use in Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Providence, is under contract with Routledge. He is grant co-author and project editor for the $300,000 translation grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Karl Barth Translator’s Seminar. He is co-leader of a $250,000 Henry Luce grant project titled “Religiously-Inspired Asian American Coalitional Justice Work.” He is principal investigator of a Louisville Institute-funded project titled “Stories of Faith, Resilience, and Politics: First-Generation East Asian American Christians.”

Chao is a graduate of Yale University (BA), Regent College (MDiv), and Princeton Theological Seminary (ThM, PhD). He is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the Association for Asian American Studies. Chao has a wide range of pastoral experience with Chinese American, Korean American, and Pan-Asian churches and ministries and is an active member of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Read his article “Evangelical or Mainline? Doctrinal Similarity and Difference in Asian American Christianity: Sketching a Social-Practical Theory of Christian Doctrine” here. You can also check out “The 1517 Project and World Christianity: Migration and the Uses of Doctrine” here or download the free PDF version here. This paper was presented at the 2023 Asian American Theology Conference “Multiple Belongings in Transpacific Christianities: Christian Faith and Asian Migration to the US.”

Download David’s CV Here

Lisa Cleath

Lisa J. Cleath is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at PTS. She researches topics at the intersection of ancient Middle Eastern studies and critical theory, including the politics of textual authority in the ancient Middle East, postcolonial framing of Second Temple Jewish identity, historical trauma in biblical literature, and whiteness in North American Biblical Studies. Her current book project is entitled “Political Textuality in the Ancient Middle East: Hybridizing Treaty Practices in Biblical Literature.”