Encountering Christ in a Hyphen
Clive Pearson[1]

Identifying the Theological Patch

For some time now my particular theological passion has been the critical intersection of cultural diversity and Christian belief and practice. This theme is fast becoming a contemporary imperative because of the mass migrations of people from one part of the world to another and their relocation in increasingly variegated societies elsewhere. This unprecedented flow of peoples and the hybridisations of their cultures is as much an aspect of today's much vaunted globalisation as are its high profile economic, political and military markers. The implications for theology and Christian identity are far-reaching. It has been suggested that the future of the discipline lies with those who have no option but to explore the complex inter-cultural issues that go with the territory. The pedagogy for this kind of encounter is still in its infancy; the method and what happens to core Christian ideas are often not widely known.

One way into this pressing theological task is to consider how the person and work of Christ is understood in a situation of migration, diaspora, and the construction of hyphenated, hybrid identities in a new land. [2] The general tendency of such theologies is to privilege the margins, peripheral, liminal in-between spaces and redefine the role of the centre. In view of these considerations, Sydney has many advantages for the theologian committed to this task. The land 'down under' lies at the ends of the earth, far removed from traditional North Atlantic centres of theology. It also finds itself on the ambiguous edge of Asia, belonging and not belonging. [3] This particular theological geography constitutes a margin, a periphery even in this hospitable, ecumenical gathering. The site itself, then, is edgy but these movements of people have also left it well placed. It lies at the interface of the western, Oceanic and Asian. Its theological constituency is culturally very diverse. What is more, faith of a Christendom type is no longer 'on top' in a self-confessed multicultural, democratic society. It is one option, often a choice that has been tried and then discarded, in a national imaginary that aspires to practice tolerance and furnishes a supermarket range of lifestyle possibilities. In this environment faith itself is on the edge.

The task of constructing a theology that encounters this degree of cultural difference lies primarily in the hands of those whose identity is captured in the English grammatical sign of the hyphen. In this setting those new beings joined together by so seemingly innocent small dash include Korean-Australians, Tongan-Australians, Vietnamese or Sinhalese-Australians, and, in my case, New Zealand-Australians. We are part of what Robert Schreiter has called a 'global flow', the mass migrations of people from one part of the world and their relocation to another. It is a side of the globalization debate that has not often surfaced in the Asian concern for a contextual theology. Who 'we' are � that is, our personal and cultural identity � and how we answer the classical question posed by Jesus to his disciples in the gospel according to Mark � 'who do you say that I am?' � in effect, our Christian identity � and the way in which these two questions intersect have been reframed.

This work on a hyphenated theology in the context of cultural diversity is the immediate background for my response to this theme of 'Rebuilding Communities: Asians in Search of New Pedagogies of Encounter'. It is not the most well-known of streams in Asian theologies; it is still in its infancy and these diasporic encounters lie embodied in personal, communal life at the intersection of east and west, often on the margins of both. The particular task I have been given is to address this overarching theme from the perspective of culture and theology. The manner in which these two terms have been brought together presuppose the 'cultural turn' in theology and its close relative, the principle of contextuality. The Latin etymology of this principle, con-texere, means to 'weave', to 'braid'. It assumes that theology is not some set of abstract, timeless truths but is concerned with a faith seeking understanding in the midst of lived experience and particular combinations of political, social and religious realities. This principle has been regularly invoked in previous gatherings of the Congress of Asian Theologians. It is often found expressed in Asian theologies and is designed to put western theologies in their place and focus the theological task on how and where Christ is to be found in this region.

The dilemma is that every context is contestable in its naming and definition. What is to be woven? Which threads? What design? Who does the braiding and why? The dilemma is that each apparently discrete setting is subject to the possibility of being broken up into micro-contexts. That is why I am rather taken by the metaphor employed by ecological theologian Sallie McFague who likens the doing of theology to the making of a crazy patchwork quilt. No one knows the design of the finished work in advance. The exercise is communal and the most any one of us can do is sew our own patch onto this quilt and allow its colour, texture, pattern to emerge and take on a life of its own independent of the theologian�s own vested interests and habits of thought. That analogy of the patchwork quilt may be western but one of my students proposed a variation: a patchwork kimono.

For the sake of this Congress theme I am going to tell you what it is like to do theology in my patch. I am going to be specific to my micro-context in this theological region. I am going to assume that something particular can open up a horizon on that which is more general. My hope is that talk about my patch will serve as a textual foil for an encounter with your patch. This intention is in keeping with the sub-theme of my work on following the hyphenated Jesus-Christ � that is, criss-crossing cultures for Christ's sake.

Following the Hyphenated Jesus-Christ�

Living in diaspora is a complex business. The theological task is not confined to one dislocated ethnicity expressing who Christ is for them in this upside-down world. It is never merely a matter of determining the lines of continuity and discontinuity with the cultural experience back 'home' as if all that is required is an internal rearrangement. Australian writer David Tacey reckons that even at the best of times migration is a trauma. [4] There is loss of place, status, markers of identity and a basic rupture in personal narrative. There is a pressing inward need to invent a new sense of identity and construct a new sociality. The language is more inclined to be that of 'where is home?' and 'who are we?' rather than that of mission which seems to be the more common paradigm in continental Asian theologies. It is not surprising that theologians who know first hand the experience of hyphenation write of their discipline from the margins. [5] This is the preferred metaphor of location and stands in critical tension to those who lay claim to being at the centre, to that which is fashionable and normative, to that which sets the political, cultural, theological agenda.

The experience of Korean born and bred Jung Young Lee serves as a template. On his arrival in the United States he found himself no longer inside a culture whose language and way of organising itself were understood as a matter of course. Being a newcomer to this society Lee experienced the dichotomy of living inside its highly intentional language of freedom and equality and the practical reality of marginality and not fitting in. For the sake of the multicultural theology that would emerge out of his subsequent quest for identity Lee drew upon this autobiographical context. At no point did he entertain the idea that he was writing on behalf of all Koreans, all Asians now living in the United States. There was no hint of his constructing an overarching narrative that would embrace hyphenated Christians wherever they might be found in a globalized world. Lee was conscious of his personal limits and how his particular experience filtered his theology. The modesty of this claim has freed others to identify with the paradigm of being on the margins in a manner that respects their relationship to the cultures to which they themselves belong. [6]

�in Australia

One of the ever-present imperatives for those interested in exploring themes of discipleship and the hyphenated Jesus-Christ is performing a hard analysis of the receiving culture. This is part and parcel of what has been termed a more phenomenological approach to theology. In my setting migrant communities are faced with dominant culture, which is characterised in its core as of Anglo-Celtic identity and of western and colonising origins. For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century it was committed to what was effectively a 'white Australia' policy. The past thirty years has seen the emergence of striking levels of cultural diversity brought about by shifts in immigration practice. Now the shape of citizenship and who is 'one of us' is organised with reference to the highly contested language of multiculturalism. Exactly what that might mean and how it sits with the oft-invoked rhetoric of Australian values is subject to debate in its own right. For the would-be hyphenated Asian, Oceanic or Hispanic theologian it is a pivotal discussion for this is the wider social and political setting in which their imaginative work is to be done.

The talk may well be of acceptance and diversity for the sake of an evolving society, but the awkward question remains on whose terms. The present Prime Minister, John Howard, for instance, interprets multiculturalism in the light of a 'golden thread' of national values. In his 'reflections on the rule of Ayatollah Johnny' the anthropologist Ghassan Hage has drawn upon Howard's speeches in order to map out how the essence of being Australian is understood from this vantage point. [7] The desired qualities are deemed to be tolerance, persistence, mateship, voluntary effort, optimism, decency, fairness, and down-to-earth commonsense. These are seemingly non-negotiable building blocks for the local brand of civil society. They have shaped the nation's history and will continue to do so in the future. In a manner of speaking they are trans-historical and constitute an unchangeable core to be espoused and put into practice by all good citizens. Hage rightly points out that these values are not peculiarly Australian and they are designed to obscure the black armband, shadow side of Australian history. They lack a certain intellectual coherence and possess a rhetorical power that lends itself to a particular way of understanding multicultural discourse. It is assumed that the fundamentals or foundations are already in place and all 'real Australians', irrespective of their ethnicity, will simply fit in or conform. Not surprisingly Hage argues that in this kind of context multiculturalism can easily become a mask for the 'fantasy' of an Anglo-Celtic white supremacy, well-intentioned or otherwise. [8] Others might opt in practice for what is little more than a 'boutique multiculturalism' that gathers itself around the tasting of different cuisines and the celebration of seasonal festivals.

It would be a mistake, of course, to assume that there is a settled understanding of what is intended by the word multiculturalism and its variants. Nor, in fact, is there a uniform Anglo-Celtic response. It would be quite wrong for an external audience in the circumstances to jump to conclusions and assume that all white Australians think the same as a Pauline Hanson or Hage's 'Ayatollah Johnny' on matters of race. The importance of this linguistic reference point is that it has become, according to Ien Ang and Jon Stratton, a 'household term in public discourse' to describe the contemporary nature of Australian society. [9] It is the matrix in which we now do our theology and in which migrant and diasporic communities live out their lives and diverse faiths and must rebuild community.

The theological task in this kind of environment is not confined to the internal life of the specific migrant ethnic community, nor its modus vivendi, its mode of living, with the dominant culture. Of equally pressing concern is the life-question of how do those from one hyphenated culture relate to others who have likewise made their way to this particular portion of theological geography for the most varied reasons but from elsewhere. How does a migrant from Korea or Hong Kong, for instance, now relate to a migrant from Lebanon, Armenia, Chile or Fiji? What companion experiences do they share through their relocation? How do they differ and what is the significance of that difference as they negotiate the process of settlement when a range of possible options along a spectrum of resistance to assimilation lies before them? How do you construct a new community for Christ's sake in a place when sometimes migrants from one part of the globe are rubbing shoulders with those who have come from a place they had never known existed before, or, perhaps, were at war with?

The possibility of a cultural oddity intersecting with theology is well exemplified in the experience of the Auburn congregation of the Uniting Church in western Sydney. Its membership is largely comprised of devout Tongans who have come from a relatively isolated island home that is Christian in its cultural confession to a degree seldom experienced anywhere on the face of the earth. There is a small ageing Anglo-Celtic remnant. The previous minister was from Aotearoa-New Zealand, the present incumbent is a Korean woman. On his arrival in their midst Keith Rowe, now retired back to Auckland, read the sociology of the neighbourhood in the light of questions that preceded the telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The nearest neighbour was the Gallipoli Mosque. In the course of this ministry Rowe and his dislocated Auburn Tongans explored in practice, friendship, hospitality and theology what it was like to encounter the stranger who is other in culture and faith. It is doubtful whether any of the Tongans had in the past met face to face a Muslim; it is equally doubtful whether the Turks, Lebanese, Saudis, Afghans, assorted Indians and Pakistanis, Somalis, Malaysians, and Indonesians whose spiritual home was the Mosque had ever heard of Tonga, let alone knew where it was on the map.

For this encounter these hyphenated Tongans could not draw upon the long history and models of understanding which might be taken for granted in an Asian world of multiple religiosities. What you know day by day had not previously been part of their experience. Nor were they familiar with Karl Barth's distinction between Christian revelation and the genus 'religions', the legacy of Hendrik Kraemer, nor with Karl Rahner's idea of 'anonymous Christians'. John Hick's theory of a Copernican revolution in how we might understand the relationship of various religions to that which is ultimate would have been a mystery. On the other side of this encounter these Muslims had not previously encountered Christians who were not Asian, African or European, but Oceanic. For this inter-faith experience there was no map, no established protocol. [10] It just so happened that this global flow of migration had thrown together a group of peoples of different ethnicity and faiths who would not normally have had any dealings with each other. There was no history of cultural animosity or disputed land claims or political and military violation. In the impersonal manner of large cities these two neighbouring worshipping communities could easily have ignored each other. Instead, for a while, they demonstrated the possibility of a first step towards Wesley Ariarajah's idea of a 'religious community' being established in a particular geographical area.[11] Whether the relationship can be sustained or survive shifts in personnel is a moot point � but a precedent has been set: Tongan students from this part of Sydney are the most likely to ask how do we speak about the Christian character of God in a multifaith world. This question is being posed in the theological classroom I know best from the most unlikely quarter.

Following the hyphenated Jesus-Christ in my setting is concerned with exploring the praxis of the Christian faith in a culturally diverse, multifaith and yet, at the same time, a secular democracy. The situation is somewhat analogous to the 'changed circumstances' R.S. Sugirtharajah has identified facing Asian theologies.[12] The distinction is made between how much regional theology is established on the assumption of 'rooted, localized, integrated and self-contained communities' and what may now be required in postcolonial societies with an 'intermixing of cultures', 'interlacing of traditions, and we 'assume more-or-less fractured, hyphenated, double, or in some cases multiple identities.' For Sugirtharajah now is the time for the theologian to understand the world in its condition of being 'multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial'.

Sugirtharajah is writing out of a personal diasporic experience. His reading of Asian theology may or may not resonate with you at 'home' in your theological location, but for those hyphenated beings for whom I have been concerned there is much truth in his diagnosis. They know they occupy a new space. It is a liminal space in between two or more cultures: one maybe Asian in terms of its being the originating home culture, the other not. Those who inhabit this terrain are pioneers whose vocation Fumitaka Matsuoka suggests is to live out a 'holy insecurity'[13] � that is, a preparedness to explore this new cultural territory for Christ's sake and, in so doing, resist the temptation of seeking merely to replicate what has been left behind or, alternatively, letting go the received, birth culture and assimilate as far as possible to the dominant, acquired new. For them there are no theological giants who have gone before whose thoughts have prepared the way. The writings of significant ecumenical Asian theologians of the past and present are helpful insofar as they present an understanding of faith that has a cultural familiarity and resonance but their otherwise formative influence invariably breaks down because of the power of that hyphen.

This small dash is at the best of times ambiguous. It is employed because it seems to join into one the culture and place of origin with the dominant or core culture of a new place. It seems to unite, in keeping with its Latin etymology of 'under' and 'one'. The celebrated exchange between Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard and Eberhard Gruber on this sign or mark that crosses out a blank white space, in between two terms demonstrates how much more complex is the function and status of this dash. [14] It unites and binds, through a double refusal. The hyphen acts like a sign of exit, a point of departure for the first term; for the second the hyphen can act like a conduit, an arrow, pointing in a direction that will never be fully realized. For the theological pioneer wrestling with holy insecurity the hyphen will not allow the diasporic theology to rest content with the cultural familiarity of the originating home. The irony in this condition is that so many of those Asian students in diaspora that I teach are exposed for the first time to minjung, Dalit and other Asian theologies in Sydney. This kind of experience is not that uncommon and testifies to a difficulty others have discerned for an Asian theology: this is the gap between the study and the pulpit.

'Where are you from?'

This then is the immediate world I inhabit. It is a state of play that has made me even more sensitive to an editorial comment made some years ago now by the American theologian, Hugh Kerr, who observed that every theologian is confronted with the deceptively straightforward question, 'where are you from?'[15] It is part of a stock greeting where two or more gather. It is concerned with how we recognize and relate to the other. For theologians, according to Kerr, more is going on that meets the eye. This 'positioning question' is also designed to elicit where were you trained, in what tradition do you stand, what is your theological line of textual kinship? The underlying assumption is that our theological ideas are informed by our relationships and where and when we live. There is a range of hermeneutical filters at work on each one of us in what Kosuke Koyama reckoned to be the most under-researched area of theology: 'the emotive regions of our hearts'. These filters reflect where we are from and play their part in determining which parts of the Christian theological agenda we privilege and how we understand these particular beliefs and practices. And so I need to tell you what is my immediate world in order for you to position me. The practical consequence of Kerr's position is that if an Indian theologian is critiquing the work of a Filipino or Japanese theologian, then some empathetic attention must be given to cultural difference and how that might lead to a theology that is necessarily unfamiliar and not immediately fully understood � if ever.

This is the locus in which I teach. It is a much changed world for the doing of theology. One point of entry into this shift is by means of Richard Rorty's analogy of the room. Now, strictly speaking, Rorty is a pragmatic philosopher, not a theologian, and his philosophical critics would say that he is more concerned with conversation than truth and allows the emotive priority over the cognitive. Nevertheless his analogy on how we might apprehend what we believe to be true can assist us. For Rorty the search for objective truth is like a discussion going on in a particular room.[16] It matters a great deal who is in that room, who is not and why not, how the room is arranged, who speaks, who does not feel able to contribute, who follows whom, what participants bring with them in terms of immediate personal baggage before entering the conversational space, and what kind of grammar we employ. Do we open up discussion with a question or close it down with an exclamation mark that is confronting and testifies to the firmness of our convictions? Are we able to play with ideas in a more speculative manner where our line of thought is willing to incorporate asides, half thoughts, what ifs and maybes� and a sequence of dots signaling a pause, a time to gather one's thoughts? Or, is our time and purpose confined and the discourse pared back to a narrative of sentences stating their point and closing with a well-put full-stop? What would happen if we changed our grammar?

In this kind of environment there is a pivotal place for those who can take a step back from the cut and thrust of particular arguments and vested interests. The dynamics of this room require reading. Tony Russell, pakeha theologian in Aotearoa New Zealand, has suggested the importance of a method of orthoakousis. This neologism translates as 'right hearing' in contrast to orthodoxy, 'right teaching' and orthopraxis, 'right doing and reflecting'. How we hear what is being said and why becomes fundamental. How well would the one who is speaking recognize the beliefs and values we are assigning to them? The focus is now the composition of this metaphorical room, but I wonder why stop at hearing? The synoptic references to having 'ears to hear' can be supplemented with 'eyes to see' and 'hearts to understand'. This room has its silences and absences; it possesses its own shuffling body languages waiting to be seen and noticed and comprehended. We now live in the domain of the postcolonial optic.

Rorty does not go into so much detail as this but his analogy of the room is worth exploring for the sake of a contemporary theological pedagogy. The underlying assumption is what we end up deciding to be true or desirable is what is agreed to by those who happen to be in the room at any given time. Looking at the history of the Christian faith we might say that this truth has largely been shaped by western well-educated, ordained men.[17] What happens when the composition of the room changes? What happens if in teaching we take leave of the banking model of pedagogy, for instance, which relies upon the teacher depositing a fund of knowledge in the student's account? What happens if our focus is not then to select as the default position the smorgasboard/consumer approach? Here students adopt a pick'n'mix approach to particular subjects that happen to interest them but which may not really belong on the same plate or run the risk of being half-cooked? What might happen, if instead, we read the composition of those before us mindful of Rorty's analogy of the room? How might I teach � and with what effect � if I proceeded in the more maieutic manner of pedagogy which means I acted more like a midwife? The task before me is to draw upon what limited expertise I have for the sake of bringing to birth the theological beliefs of the one in front of me. The pedagogical gaze now encounters the particular, personal, implicit and is not, maybe, so concerned with which theological school or persuasion one happens to prefer.

When I first studied theology, there were 20 people in the class � 18 men, 18 training for ministry, and 18 who were western. These categories of 18 were not always identical. When I taught the comparable class ten years later, there were 60 people in the room, 6 training for ministry, half were men, half were women � half were western and half were either Asian or Pacific. I put this class to a test. How would they feel if all those who were not western, male and training for the ordained ministry now left the room and allowed those of us who constituted the rump to determine what we should all believe? This simple exercise never went beyond the hypothetical but it fulfilled its purpose. The classroom elect felt awkward: the excluded let them know that this remnant did not represent them and their interests. They may not yet have been able to identify the precise nature of their hermeneutics of suspicion but experience had warned them to be wary.

The most striking relevance of this test surfaced in an advanced course on 'Christologies in Context'. On this occasion the class comprised 27 students from 19 different nationalities. It was quickly evident that there was more than the usual diversity of formative experiences at work in the room. Some were refugees from the 'killing fields of Asia' � Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar. Others were economic migrants, usually from Korea but also the Philippines, Thailand and from Gujarat. One was originally from Lebanon and more used to thinking about 'the finality of Christ' in the complex religious and political minefields of the Middle East. A number were inclined to look back to a raft of Pacific islands as their home, though now they no longer lived in Sevati Tuwere's 'liquid continent'; they had, in effect, become what the Tahitian weaver of Christian identity, Celine Hoiore, refers to as hoto painu, 'drifting seeds'.[18]

'Another City'

 The level of diversity in this one room was a signal of the deepening pluralism in the Australian church. For those used to thinking of the church and preferring the society at large to be comprised more in categories of 'sameness', 'of people like us' this level of difference constitutes an eschatological tremor. This shockwave of a phrase is employed by Barry Harvey in his ecclesiological primer Another City.[19] It refers to those moments in the salvific history of Israel and the new community of Christ when the reign of God breaks into the present and releases seismic tremors that contradict the practical reality of a more mundane organization of human affairs. The eschaton shudders into place over and against the ways of conventional history, politics, economic efficiency and cultural self-interest. It 're-members history' and invokes 'the city that is to come' from the more poetic, imaginative perspective of the covenantal faithfulness and justice of God and its 'living recapitulation' in the autobasileia of Jesus � that is, in the presence of the kingdom in his person.

How this contemporary experience of cultural pluralism might be seen as an eschatological tremor is made evident in the work of Fumitaka Matsuoka. In his study of Asian-Americans the Berkeley-based Matsuoka observes that the most segregated hour in the public life of the United States is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. The preferred practice is for different ethnicities to worship and express their faith in their own cultural and linguistic groupings. Of course, there are good reasons why this might be so and exponents of the church growth movement would, no doubt, endorse this ecclesiastical convention. From his earlier work on the phenomenology of Asian-American churches Matsuoka knows how important is custom and language and the capacity of a faithful community to find its voice. Now Matsuoka was concerned with 'signs of peopling' across the racial divide. The focus was on building community in a multiracial society and how those who might otherwise be 'strangers' to one another construct a new community 'in Christ'. The necessary eschatological tremor is furnished through the hospitable invitation to welcome 'one another as Christ has welcomed us'.[20] Insofar as this vocation is always incomplete inside history the most a Christian society can aspire to be is that of a 'rehearsing church' that anticipates the reign of God.[21]

The risk this room of so many ethnicities and sometimes competing histories presents is the possibility that it will lose its shape and form. The lines of encounter are intricate with many threads, easily frayed, easily prone to knots. The diversity will overwhelm the task at hand unless the threading or organisational principle is sufficiently flexible and strong. In this instance the hermeneutical link lies in Christology. Its benefits [or otherwise] should not be taken for granted. The case for Christology performing this function must be teased out, for this theological field is not without its shadow side. It has played its part in closing down subaltern voices and has at times justified colonialism, racism, sexism, and classism [and no doubt other 'isms' as well]. The way in which Christology can be captured and serve other purposes was evident in the call Aloysius Pieris made some years ago now for Asian churches to take leave of 'the Euro-ecclesiastical Christ'.[22] The various expressions of liberation theologies around the world and theologies of struggle in Asia testify to the importance of releasing the person and work of Christ from a raft of political and economic constraints and self-interest. The case can also be made for saying that the focus on Christology can lend itself to forms of exclusivism that are more of a hindrance than a help in the field of inter-religious relationships. The merits of simply saying that Christology fulfils a holding function for such cultural diversity through our common responding to the call of Christ are not necessarily as obvious as they might first seem in some quarters.

'The Continuing Interrogation'

Let me then explain my hermeneutical decision. In theory I could have chosen other theological themes from the 'meditative core of Christian belief'. Why not the doctrine of God, the Spirit, what it means to be human, creation, the church or mission? Why not be satisfied instead with exploring biblical texts and themes? In the usual table of contents Christology occupies a middling kind of position in text-book theology. Why now push it to the forefront? The confessional perspective is that this discipline lies very close to the heart of Christian praxis. The common claim is that a belief is Christian insofar as it is informed at some deep level by belief in and/or about Jesus of Nazareth. In other words Christology opens up the route to considering the very nature of Christian identity.

The linking between this particular area of doctrine and our selves is embodied in the synoptic question, 'who do you say that I am?' Emphasis in this question is likely to fall most strongly on the 'who' and 'I am'. These reference points provide us with a point of encounter with the Christ who is beyond us. In his lectures on Christology Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that this question was the one true transcendent question that engages us precisely for this reason. Future theologians of context worldwide are indebted to how Bonhoeffer also drew attention to the often overlooked 'you'. In view of who the Christ is, those who seek to answer this pivotal question are effectively being searched out in return: 'who are you?' We might say that this is a question that always implicates the one to whom it is addressed. This confessional concern for 'who do you say that I am?' comes close to home for each one of us insofar as it is not confined to its original historical and textual location, but rather constitutes a continuing interrogation across time and place. Bonhoeffer would later reframe the question to become 'who is Jesus Christ for us today?' The practical consequence of this exegesis is the need for as much scrutiny to be given to this 'us'. Who are we? Which 'we' are 'we'? In what ways does this 'we' stand in need of the salvific presence of Christ? It is no accident that so many theologies of context would subsequently ask who is Jesus Christ for Asian women today, for black African-Americans, for the Pacific, for Hispanics, for the suffering peoples of Africa, for us in Australia today?

That reference to 'us' and/or 'we' is an invitation for each of us to consider our respective soteriological necessities. This piece of jargon can be translated: 'what is about the human condition as it is lived out by a specific people in a specific place and time that requires the healing, reconciling, saving presence of Christ to draw alongside?' The underlying assumption is that who Christ is for us is not wholly dependent upon our generic humanity � which would open up the door again for a theology of timeless, eternal truths. Rather we must look at who we are and subject the context we name for ourselves to critical scrutiny and allow its mix of brokenness and hope to inform our understanding of the person and work of Christ. The occasional writer will refer to our 'imaginary Christs'.

In a situation of diaspora this concern for Christian identity is a critical step. It is well known that the church can fulfill functions for migrant communities that it may not have done so in the original homeland. The particular congregation becomes a means of mediating culture, preserving language, maintaining customary patterns of authority, and being an advocate at the interface of a community that is often on the margins of how a dominant majority has organized the institutional life of the new land. The sociological study of such churches has also demonstrated how some communities can sanction a range of 'freezing points' by which is meant that ways of thinking, values and customs back in the Asian or Pacific country of origin become solidified. There is little awareness of how they themselves might change for reasons other than migration. What has attracted less attention is how the process of migration can lead to a separation of religious and cultural identity. The way in which faith has been embedded in a host culture and taken for granted in the past can become unraveled.

This unbinding is not an easy process to negotiate. For the first time members of a discrete culture may discover that Christian identity involves a previously unknown degree of critical tension with who they thought they were on the basis of race and ethnicity. It may mean a fairly basic shift in theological understanding. The common tendency for a rather exalted, heavenly Christology to be set aside for an understanding of Jesus-[hyphen]Christ, 'the divine emigrant', who is to be found in his humanity, inside a continuing history and on the margins. The radical significance of this Christological re-working is evident in what can happen to cultural symbols and proverbial sayings. From my experience the clearest example is Oceanic rather than Asian. The Samoan title assigned to the lordship of Christ is the matai, the chief. For second generation New Zealand-born Samoans, sometimes disparagingly called pakeka [meaning a potato, 'brown on the outside, white on the inside'] the traditional system in which the matai functions no longer defines who they are. Risatisone Ete has scoured the cultural reservoir and talks instead of Jesus the vale, the idiot, the fool. In a situation of diaspora this concern for Christian identity enables the migrant and subsequent generations, these 'patchwork selves', to clarify part of who they are. It enables them to encounter themselves as well as the cultures on either side of the hyphen.

There was one further reason for my hermeneutical decision. It is pedagogical in its nature. It concerns my office. The very idea of teaching Christology, of course, seems like an inversion of roles. It raises the spectre of setting oneself up in an inappropriate position. This paradox is an integral feature of the theological vocation. In the circumstances it is rather salutary for the theologian to be reminded of the gospel narratives: Jesus was the rabbi, the master, the teacher; those who followed were disciples, like us 'learners'. The present pluralism suggests that this Christ is made known, makes himself known in and through a great variety of personal and cultural experience. It can be argued that Christ comes to us in the experience of the other, and that part of the teacher's task is to be sensitive to the manner in which the Christ breaks down our pre-conceived Christology through what we ourselves seek to teach.

CATS and alter/Asians

I have striven to practice something that I preach to my students � that is, the art of theological patience. I have taken my time to explain who I am and where I do my theology. This strategy has been deliberate and self-conscious. It is an invidious task these days for a theologian of western extraction resident in Australia to speak to this theme of 'Rebuilding Communities: Asians in Search of New Pedagogies of Encounter'. At the best of times it is an awkward brief. The overwhelming tendency for theology in my part of the world is to express itself in western critical categories and address communal issues rather different from the ones in which you live and to which you rightly respond. It is not easy for me to stand in front of you and many previous speakers to this Congress in the past and say 'we in Asia' and be plausible. There is the ever present risk that I might be suggesting a fresh form of a colonizing theology, without always being sufficiently aware that this is, in fact, happening. The dilemma is enhanced through the ambiguous nature of Australian activity in Asia � e.g. East Timor, the Kyoto protocol on the environment, 'the coalition of the willing' in Iraq, the M. V. Tampa, 'fortress Australia', boat people, refugees, detention centres. The scandal of this last policy has even led the Melbourne theologian Andrew Hamilton to ask how do we do theology in this country after Woomera � Woomera being one of those camps.[23]

The matter is further compounded. Ien Ang and others have been exploring life and the rhetoric of living in Australia from the hyphenated perspective of being what they call an alter/Asian - that is, an Asian-Australian, one who is 'other' [alter] to the Anglo-Celtic Australian and 'other' [alter] to the Asian at home in the originating Asian society. How is talk of Australia sometimes being part of Asia and sometimes not interpreted from this angle of hearing? They know in their own lives what it is like to be on the receiving end of popular stereotypes, political backlashes and white-centred understandings of multiculturalism. How can someone from my background then speak? Why accept this invitation? Why stand in a potentially difficult theological spot where not enough happens for you in your settings? Let me suggest a couple of reasons.

The first has to do with these alter/Asians and other hyphenated beings living in diaspora and assorted liminal spaces in between cultures in Australia. The Korean, Filipino, Thai, Tamil, Vietnamese, Burmese, Chinese students I teach � who also happen to be Australian citizens � are symbols of how expansive Asian theology must now be. It is no longer confined to Asians living in Asia proper. There is a sense in which I am representing them. In the discussions which preceded the setting up of CATS recognition was given to those Asians in diaspora.[24] They represent one of the streams of concern alongside the minjung, Dalit, theologies of struggle, the poor, the tribal, the inter-faith. Often they inhabit the space at the end of this line of description under the heading of 'et cetera'. In my awkward way I am seeking to give them visibility because it is warranted. Far too often they are ignored or treated unfairly in the lands in which they have now settled. Quite often those back in the birth culture expect them to reproduce the inherited traditions in a very different kind of society.

Those who are doing theology in this space also have a role to play. The most frequent metaphors these would-be theologians of holy insecurity employ to describe themselves are cross-bearers and bridge-builders/makers. They often speak of being able to look in several directions in their emerging theologies and perhaps establish bridges between the cultures represented on either side of the hyphen. They are living out this encounter in themselves. It is not optional. It is core to who they are. It may well be that their hybrid theologies still bear the marks of a history of previous colonialism, but they also open up a possibility of moving beyond impasses that may at times arise between eastern and western ways of doing theology.

Closely related to this claim is the merit of making use of textual foils and models for the sake of the overarching theme of this conference. One of the most important issues facing theology these days is the intersection of the universal and the particular, the global and the local. This tension is implicit in talk of Asian theologies as well, for this is a most heterogeneous region and resists uniformity. In the circumstances the way ahead may well be in looking closely at how theology develops and functions with respect to a very particular location. The idea of a textual foil is not for this specific example to become normative for other, often quite unrelated situations. The foil provides a model that illustrates how a theology has been constructed for the sake of encountering the self and the other in a web of actual cultural and political realities. It allows the one outside the model to look for points of similarity and for dissimilarity and imagine how this experience might assist in thinking about the context closer to home. Why I have laboured this theme of following the hyphenated Jesus-Christ is because the subjects of this theology are caught up on a daily basis in the need to establish identity, build community, and play with fresh forms of pedagogy. They cannot do otherwise. The hyphenated Korean, Indian, Thai-Australian have to invent a new being in relationship to others. The lines of encounter are complex. Through the dislocation of migration they no longer sit easily inside a received or relatively static cultural identity. They embody the theme of this conference but from a seldom spoken about angle.

On the Iextual Nurture of Communities

Let me now conclude by being practical. For some critics that might seem like a contradiction in terms. It is often said that theologians are little more than 'armchair' observers inhabiting 'ivory towers and 'out of touch' with 'real life'. It is not uncommon for a western theologian in particular to be viewed as being more concerned with the Christ to be found on the detached pages of the past rather than the dusty streets of the needy today. This is the risk I run given the professional structure in which I am placed. In the language of Sallie McFague I am paid to teach theology. I am at a personal remove from the life situations of those who take my courses and whose world I move in and out of, without, it seems, any lasting sense of commitment.

To some extent the pedagogical distance between the role I play and these 'real worlds' is met by organising what I teach around an interpretation of David Ford's idea of 'the ecology of theology'. The concern here is, in effect, for the habitat of theology and its lines of responsibility. Ford argues that there are three audiences with which theology should engage: the academy, the church and the public domain. The first two have historically been well recognised and constitute what might be called a binary frame of reference for understanding the task of theology. It is a common way for theology to be ordered in terms of its institutional life in a western society, though whether it is adequate is another matter. Ford's reference to the public is less familiar. It points to the public relevance of Christian doctrines � that is, the conviction that our confessional claims are not just concerned for the life of believers but that they have significance for the whole of life. This public dimension to our believing inevitably compels us to consider the context in which our theologies are expressed. In Australian and Aotearoa-New Zealand settings I know best the public responsibility of theology is critical. We inhabit secular democracies that present us with a supermarket range of lifestyle options. The public domain is inclined to look upon matters religious as the realm of private preference. This domain should not interfere with public policy or how a civil society or community is determined. To talk of a public theology is to call into question this received wisdom and imagine an alternative relationship between faith and society. To leave out this public reference point lends itself to the risk of theology being concerned primarily with the relationship between the individual and his/her God, an introspective church, or an academic discipline that is self-sufficient. For the sake of building community in a secular, multifaith society theology must possess a public signature. The prospective hyphenated theologian must not only mediate the experience of the specific diasporic community but also situate this ethnicity inside the 'real world' of a wider social and political and order.

This pedagogical gap with concrete life is further lessened through viewing those in the theological equivalent of Richard Rorty's room as corporate personalities. They may present an individual face but personhood is essentially relational. The Vietnamese migrant is an 'I' who is also part of an 'us', a 'we', a raft of people who have shaped and shared experience. In a sense they are represented in the background and through what this 'I' has to say on behalf of his/her 'we'. The focus for this diasporic, cross-cultural theology is on taking seriously how an individual mediates aspects of a common past and aspiration. It is a strategic pedagogy. The teaching gaze falls upon those in the room but mindful of those whom they represent.

The room for which I am responsible is organised in a way that is designed to explore issues of identity and difference. It is held together by the theological theme of hospitality and making room for the other. It is designed on the assumption that Christ comes to us as guest and host, in and through the experience of the other. The structure of the conversation is furnished by conventional areas of doctrine found in a systematic theology. But these areas are played with. Like building blocks, they can be arranged and coloured in a variety of ways. The imperative in this changing room is to help students express themselves for the sake of the communities to which they belong. For this purpose the discussion is determined in a manner to release a range of textual allies and aliens. Every task or topic has readings assigned that reflect a diversity of culture, gender, and theological persuasion. The textual ally is the writer with whom it is possible to identify; the alien is 'other' and not easily understood or dismissed. The sub-text of this pedagogy is designed to assist those in the room to become more aware of the decisions they make in arriving at the positions they espouse and live out. They have made choices. The underlying hope is that this level of self-insight might lead to the re-evaluation of the alien along the lines of how and why they have come to hold the opinions they do. Those in this room are then encouraged to relate what they have found through this study of allies and aliens to a practical situation they know well from the inside.

Crossing Cultures

The theme for this conference is 'Building Communities: Asians in Search of New Pedagogies of Encounter'. In my teaching I am concerned with building and reframing societies so that migrant, diasporic, hyphenated communities know who they are and how they can create a more inclusive understanding of what it means to be Australian. The most pressing theological concerns have to do with identity and the subverting of the language of multiculturalism. The room in which I find myself in normally expresses itself in Christian categories. The theological option that has emerged in and through our encounter with one another has been the discourse of cross-culturalism. We have come to recognise that we come together from our different ethnicities through the cross of Christ. We have learned that meaning is to be found in the cross-cultural hermeneutic, negotiated in the space between us. In seeking to know the other we have come to realise that sometimes we must take up our cross and leave behind something from our culture we once thought important to who we are. And we know from experience that wherever different ethnicities come together, there are almost always imbalances of power and so we expect some to become cross, angry, at injustice.

This theme I have addressed from an angle of what often is hidden away under the heading of et cetera. It has not been explored through the usual theological streams of Asian theologies. This encounter may furnish you with either a textual ally or a textual alien. Both are helpful pedagogical tools.

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Notes:

[1] Clive Pearson <[email protected]> is lecturer in Theology and Vice-Principal at United Theological College in Sydney.  He is also Associate Director of the Research Group on Public and Contextual Theologies, School of Theology, Charles Sturt University.

[2] The term 'hyphenated Jesus-Christ' was coined by Jung Young Lee in his Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 77-99. It describes the 'divine emigrant' status of the human Jesus as well as reflecting the hybrid world that Asian-Americans like Lee find themselves in. The concept of being a hyphenated Christian has also been used in India to describe the 'interplay of the Hindu and Christian traditions in the Indian-Christian consciousness'. See C. Duraisingh, 'Indian Hyphenated Christians and Theological Reflection. Part 1. A New Expression of Identity', Religion and Society, Vol. XXVI, No. 4 (December 1979), 95-101; and K. P. Aleaz, The Gospel of Indian Culture (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1994), 130.

[3] For a description of how a range of Asian political leaders and news media view Australia's location, see A Broinowski, 'Going South to the West', in About Face: Asian Accounts of Australia (Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2003), 39-110. There are frequent references to loneliness, peripheries and falling off the map!

[4] David Tacey, The Edge of the Sacred: Transformation in Australia (North Blackburn: Harper Collins, 1995), p. 36.

[5] Cf. P. C. Phan and Lee, Jung Young, Journeys at the Margin: Toward an Autobiographical Theology in American-Asian Perspective (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999).

[6] Lee, Ibid., 7-27.

[7] G. Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society (Annandale [Sydney]: Pluto Press, 2003), 69-78.

[8] G. Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale [Sydney]: Pluto Press, 1998), 68-70.

[9] J. Stratton and Ien Ang, �Multicultural imagined communities: cultural difference and national identity in Australia and USA�, in Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1994.

[10] See K. Rowe, Living with the Neighbour who is Different: Christian Faith in a Multi Religious World (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 2000).

[11] S. W. Ariarajah, 'Asian Christian Theological Task in the Midst of Other Religions', in CTC Bulletin (April, 2002), 29-30.

[12] R. S. Sugirtharajah, 'Postcolonialism and Indian Christian Theology', Studies in World Christianity, Vol. 5 Part 2 (1999), 229-240.

[13] F. Matsuoka, F., Out of Silence: Emerging Themes in Asian-American Churches (Cleveland, United Church Press, 1995), 53-84.

[14] J-F. Lyotard and E. Gruber, The Hyphen: Between Judaism and Christianity (Amherst [New York]: Humanity Books, 1999), [translated by P-A Brault and M. Naas].

[15] Kerr, H., 'Where are you from?' Theology Today (January 1991), 391-394.

[16] R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 335.

[17] For a critical explanation on the breakdown of this interpretive hegemony, see W. Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and the Postmodern Imagination (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1993), 1-18.

[18] Hoiore, C., 'Some Polynesian Perspectives on Birth' in Pearson, C., [ed] Doing Theology in Oceania:Partners in Conversation [Hangi Mahi Karaipiture ite Moana Nui-a-Kiwa: Tutaki a Kanohi, Kia Whakawhitiwhiti Korero], (Dunedin: Centre for Contextual Theology, School of Ministry, Knox College, 2000), 58-60.

[19] B. Harvey, Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), 32-63.

[20] Matsuoka, The Color of Faith, 1998.

[21] J. Gonz�lez, Out of Every Tribe and Nation: Christian Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 109.

[22] A. Pieris, 'Does Christ Have a Place in Asia? A Panoramic View', Any Room for Christ in Asia: Concilium, 1993/2, pp. 33-48.

[23] A. Hamilton, 'Theology after Woomera', Refugees: Justice or Compassion, Interface, October 2002, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 108-121.

[24] 'A Call for a Congress of Asian Theologians', November 1997, p. 11.