The Church Goes Global
From its humble beginnings, the Christian church has grown to be the world’s largest religious community, the majority of whom currently reside in the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America) or as it is also called, the Majority World. Africa is now the biggest “Christian” continent, and Latin America will also soon outstrip Europe in terms of the number of Christians who reside there. Consequently, most church members in the near future—and already now—will not be adult European-North American Caucasians but people of all ages, genders, and ethnic backgrounds from across the globe.1
This is, in a nutshell, the picture of the world church in the beginning of the third millennium. That message, however, is only slowly gaining ground in theological education and literature. The reader of the typical textbooks in the doctrine of the church and, say, the student listening to a lecture in the classroom—in too many theological schools—may wonder if the author and the lecturer live in a different world from Christians in the world church. In those writings and presentations, it looks as if the surrounding world has not experienced any major changes relevant to the life and mission of the church. By and large, doctrines of the church are still written as if the Christendom model were in place, making Christianity virtually the only world religion, with established “mainline” churches as the only players on the field and well-to-do Europeans and Americans the majority of the faithful. And of course, leaders and theologians are supposedly mainly aging White men!
Yet, how radically different is the world of the third millennium in which the global church and its mission exist. Nothing less than a radical transformation—or in the words of the Cuban American historian-theologian Justo González, “macroreformation”2—is happening before our very eyes. The church of the bygone era is over and something radically new is emerging.
This radical transformation is well known and well documented. As mentioned, the great majority of the 2.4 billion adherents of Christianity can now be found in the Majority World (Africa, Asia, Latin America). The Global North (Europe, and more recently North America) used to be the epicenter. By 2050, only about one-fifth of the world’s Christians will be non-Hispanic Whites. Even now, rather than a wealthy Euro-American man, a “‘typical’ contemporary Christian . . . [is] a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela”3 or a young, often poor, person anywhere in the megacities of the Global South.
At the same time, the composition of the church worldwide with regard to denominations is changing dramatically. As of this writing, one-half of all Christians are Roman Catholics, another quarter comprises Pentecostals/charismatics, and the rest are Eastern Orthodox Christians, Anglicans, mainline Protestants, and members of free churches. This means that Roman Catholics and Pentecostal/charismatics together constitute three-fourths of the global membership. With the shift of the majority of Christians to the Global South, with societies and cultures more traditional than those in Europe and North America, conservative and traditional mindsets will be strengthened globally even when theological liberalism and pluralism reign in Western academia. The “Pentecostalization” of the Christian church in terms of Pentecostal/charismatic spirituality and worship patterns infiltrating all churches is yet another implication of the transformation.
Add to this the rapidly growing influence of diaspora and migration, and you begin to get a picture of this unprecedented global transformation. Indeed, a defining feature of current globalization is the massive movement of peoples and people groups around the globe, as migrant churches and diaspora communities shape the life of the church. Currently, of the over 200 million migrants, about one-half are Christians, the majority of them in the United States and Europe. (The next largest group is Muslims.) Particularly visible are the Pentecostal/charismatic immigrant and diaspora communities, a significant number of whom are of African descent.
That said, it is important to keep in mind that the global diversity of the church is not a phenomenon birthed in the 20th century. Diversity and plurality have existed beginning from the earliest days of the church, just differently from our times. As my colleague at Fuller Theological Seminary Vince Bantu has shown in his book A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity, from the earliest centuries the church of Christ has been composed of diverse people(s) and found itself in many locations with different languages and doctrinal formulae.4
Related to these dramatic changes with the epicenter of global Christianity moving from the Global North to the Global South, there are also unprecedented transformations, changes, and hybrid identities of various ecclesial forms. Let us take a closer look at them.
New Forms of Ecclesial Existence
With the diminishing of the number of adherents of the older traditional churches—with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church—it is widely assumed that some kind of free church congregational model might well be the major paradigm in the third millennium. (In contrast to the “episcopal,” in which the bishop is the highest authority, and the “presbyterian,” with a presbytery, in “congregational” the whole community is the highest authority.) This development stems from the Radical Reformation and early Anabaptism. Currently it represents a plethora of free churches and (later) independent churches that have emerged. A tendency toward a free-church mentality can be found even in the Roman Catholic Church with the mushrooming of the so-called “Base Communities” in Latin America and similar phenomena.
A peculiar radical challenge and inspiration to the global church has come from the rapidly growing Pentecostal/charismatic phenomenon, which divides into three subgroups:
Classical Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God, Foursquare Gospel, and Church of God in Christ (the last one, composed mostly of African Americans, being by far the biggest Pentecostal church in the US), which owe their existence to the famous Azusa Street Revival in 1906.
Charismatic movements: Pentecostal-type spiritual movements within the established churches beginning in the 1960s, the largest of which is the Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal with more than 100 million followers.
Neo-charismatic movements, including Vineyard Fellowship in the US and African Initiated Churches, as well as countless independent churches and groups all over the world; usually even China’s rapidly growing house-church movements are included here.
Another example of these global reformations can be seen in the American ecclesiastical environment, which is characterized by unprecedented denominational diversity, originally going back to the pilgrimage of European immigrants from the old continent and now fostered by immigration and diaspora. Although the Catholic Church is today the biggest ecclesiastical player, large numbers of the first generations of new settlers also came from various types of Protestant and Anglican constituencies in which particularly the nonconformists often felt marginalized and were even occasionally oppressed. As a result, what Europeans would name free-church ecclesiality forms the “mainline” American church reality. Among the Protestants, Baptists of various stripes are the largest group.
Alongside the historically unheard-of denominational plurality, the American experiment is also characterized by a deepening and widening multiculturalism. Among the several major American-based ethnic group families, none is growing as fast and proliferating as widely as the Hispanic American churches. The special challenge and asset of Hispanic communities in the US are their ecumenical background in both Catholicism and Protestantism, lately also in Pentecostal/charismatic spiritualities. Most recently, Asian-descent churches and movements have been gaining significance with the mushrooming of diverse communities. Predominantly evangelical in theological orientation, these churches reflect amazing diversity and plurality. Before the Hispanics and Asians, African American Christianity had already established its significant place in American religiosity. Black churches continue to grow, whether one speaks of Episcopal or evangelical or Pentecostal communities.
Not many decades ago, ecclesiologists in the US spoke of the baby boomer generation. It was served with the so-called seeker-friendly suburban-based churches that catered to all kinds of needs of individuals and families. Thereafter, “purpose-driven” churches and the like caught our attention. Most recently, these kinds of models, while still having an appeal with their own generation, are giving way to Gen X and other postmodern generations. Among these late/postmodern cultures, the newest and most complex of ecclesiastical developments are the “emerging churches” in the US and “fresh expressions” in the UK. Book titles such as ChurchNext (2000)5 and The Liquid Church (2002)6 characterize well this new ecclesial existence that I have named elsewhere the ecclesial “postexistence.” Highly active in virtual networks and ways of connecting, these emerging ecclesiologies are fluid. They do not always meet in sanctuaries but may instead rent comedy clubs or pubs. Deeply missional in orientation with a focus on practices and everyday Christian service, they do not typically bother to delve into theological debates about ecclesiology, although many of their leaders may have a solid academic training in religion.
The basic difference between the US-based emerging churches and UK fresh expressions is that whereas the former is usually separatist, forming their own communities, most communities of the latter are birthed by and stay within the Church of England and other mainline denominations.
Having now briefly outlined and highlighted some radical transformations and changes within the global Christian church, we will scrutinize a deeply formative feature of the “global village” in which this church finds itself—namely, religious pluralisms and secularisms.
Religious Pluralism(s) and Secularism(s) as Ecclesiological Challenges
Against all the predictions of the secular 1960s prophets—reviving the so-called secularism thesis of the great modern atheists of the 19th century, according to which religions will disappear or become marginalized as a result of the progress of modernity—secularism has not won the day. Rather, and counterintuitively, alongside the steady growth of secularism in the Global North, globally considered religions continue gaining more strongholds all over the world. Side by side with the Christian church (2.4 billion), about a quarter of the world population is comprised of Muslims (1.6 billion). The 1 billion Hindus make up about 15 percent, followed by Buddhists at half that number. Jews number fewer than 15 million, and more than 400 million people belong to various kinds of “folk religions.” By 2050, Islam will be the world’s largest religion. Whereas Hinduism and Buddhism are mainly regional (Asian) religions, Christians are by far the most evenly distributed around the globe. Over against the overwhelming majority of the world population self-identifying as the adherents of a particular religion, only about 15 percent (1 billion) label themselves religiously unaffiliated (even though the majority of them entertain some kind of religious-type beliefs and practices). Because of the overwhelming continuing presence and force of religious plurality (the existence of more than one faith side by side) and pluralisms (ideologically based responses to, and assessments of, the phenomenon of plurality), the global Christian church has to consider very carefully proper missiological responses and peaceful ways of coexistence. This is also a major challenge to theological education and ministerial training, which Fuller and other seminaries will need to tackle head-on.
The same applies to secularism(s), even if they are far smaller number-wise than the religionists; yet their voice is heard loudly in education, mass media, entertainment, and other venues. Secularism(s) come in many forms and expressions, including what is nowadays called “postsecularism.” Even though secularism enjoys overwhelming influence in the Global North, globally it is also countered by the rise of fundamentalist and ethnic projects to endorse the “religion of the land,” whether by Islamic, Hindu, and some right-wing American constituencies. Furthermore, unbeknownst to many, secularization is not limited to the Global North, although its epicenter definitely is in Europe and North America. The meaning and manifestations of secularism, however, are quite different in various contexts of the Global South. Unlike in the West, religion in Africa is not separate from the rest of life. This is not to say that secularism is unknown in Africa, but rather that its appearance and meaning differ vastly from that of European and North American contexts. As one may expect, secularism in the vast continent of Asia comes in various forms. India is a case in point. Secularism among Hindus living in the cities and among the educated is undisputed; at the same time, adherence—at least formally—to traditional religious rites is still prevalent!
Regarding diverse forms of (post)secularism in the Global North, it is counterintuitive to note the rapid rise of the use of religious symbols in a number of nonreligious domains and platforms, including literature, performing arts, and advertising. Or just think of the reappearance of angels, spirits, and demons in TV and movies! Furthermore, researchers tell us that postsecular people are not necessarily void of religious rites and rituals such as prayer; they just do and think of them differently than the Christian church from which they might have separated themselves.
Currently, Christian communities everywhere are seeking a proper way of dealing with secularism in its many forms, including postsecularism. On the one hand, there are those Christian communities which believe that (similarly to classical liberalism of the 19th century) an accommodation into either pluralism or secularism might be the best way to go—even though the price would be the need to sell Christian identity for the sake of the alleged common basis. “Secular” religion is one such tactic. On the other hand, there are those on the American scene as well as in locations in Africa and Latin America, among others, which put their trust on the “neo-Constantinian” project of the religious right with the stated goal of seeking to reestablish a “Christian nation” in alignment with political powers. In response, it suffices to mention that both strategies fail and are hardly appealing to seminaries like Fuller, nor to most Christian churches and movements.
Before these current realities, Christian communities will need to join forces in a “radical middle” to negotiate a missional calling for the world church to establish friendship and collegiality among Christians, followers of other faith traditions, and the (post)secularists of good will. Social, political, racial, and other challenges facing the fractured world of the third millennium call for nothing less. At the same time, the world church must be equipped into a holistic, diverse, and dynamic missional existence and ministry. Becoming formed, educated, and discipled to engage in this way will be a key to global Christianities’ successful mission to the nations and to their own communities.
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (MAT ’89) is professor of systematic theology at Fuller Seminary and has been a member of Fuller’s faculty since 2000. He also holds a teaching position at the University of Helsinki as Docent of Ecumenics. A prolific writer, he has authored or edited about 20 books in English (and seven in his native language, Finnish), including most recently Christian Theology in the Pluralistic World: A Global Introduction (2019) and Doing the Work of Comparative Theology: A Primer for Christians (2020). He recently completed a five-volume series covering all topics of systematic theology titled A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (2013–2017). He is ordained by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (Minister of Word and Sacrament, 2015). He has taught and lived with his family on three continents: Europe, Asia (Thailand), and North America (USA). He has also lectured and served as visiting professor in various schools around the world.
The Church Goes Global
From its humble beginnings, the Christian church has grown to be the world’s largest religious community, the majority of whom currently reside in the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America) or as it is also called, the Majority World. Africa is now the biggest “Christian” continent, and Latin America will also soon outstrip Europe in terms of the number of Christians who reside there. Consequently, most church members in the near future—and already now—will not be adult European-North American Caucasians but people of all ages, genders, and ethnic backgrounds from across the globe.1
This is, in a nutshell, the picture of the world church in the beginning of the third millennium. That message, however, is only slowly gaining ground in theological education and literature. The reader of the typical textbooks in the doctrine of the church and, say, the student listening to a lecture in the classroom—in too many theological schools—may wonder if the author and the lecturer live in a different world from Christians in the world church. In those writings and presentations, it looks as if the surrounding world has not experienced any major changes relevant to the life and mission of the church. By and large, doctrines of the church are still written as if the Christendom model were in place, making Christianity virtually the only world religion, with established “mainline” churches as the only players on the field and well-to-do Europeans and Americans the majority of the faithful. And of course, leaders and theologians are supposedly mainly aging White men!
Yet, how radically different is the world of the third millennium in which the global church and its mission exist. Nothing less than a radical transformation—or in the words of the Cuban American historian-theologian Justo González, “macroreformation”2—is happening before our very eyes. The church of the bygone era is over and something radically new is emerging.
This radical transformation is well known and well documented. As mentioned, the great majority of the 2.4 billion adherents of Christianity can now be found in the Majority World (Africa, Asia, Latin America). The Global North (Europe, and more recently North America) used to be the epicenter. By 2050, only about one-fifth of the world’s Christians will be non-Hispanic Whites. Even now, rather than a wealthy Euro-American man, a “‘typical’ contemporary Christian . . . [is] a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela”3 or a young, often poor, person anywhere in the megacities of the Global South.
At the same time, the composition of the church worldwide with regard to denominations is changing dramatically. As of this writing, one-half of all Christians are Roman Catholics, another quarter comprises Pentecostals/charismatics, and the rest are Eastern Orthodox Christians, Anglicans, mainline Protestants, and members of free churches. This means that Roman Catholics and Pentecostal/charismatics together constitute three-fourths of the global membership. With the shift of the majority of Christians to the Global South, with societies and cultures more traditional than those in Europe and North America, conservative and traditional mindsets will be strengthened globally even when theological liberalism and pluralism reign in Western academia. The “Pentecostalization” of the Christian church in terms of Pentecostal/charismatic spirituality and worship patterns infiltrating all churches is yet another implication of the transformation.
Add to this the rapidly growing influence of diaspora and migration, and you begin to get a picture of this unprecedented global transformation. Indeed, a defining feature of current globalization is the massive movement of peoples and people groups around the globe, as migrant churches and diaspora communities shape the life of the church. Currently, of the over 200 million migrants, about one-half are Christians, the majority of them in the United States and Europe. (The next largest group is Muslims.) Particularly visible are the Pentecostal/charismatic immigrant and diaspora communities, a significant number of whom are of African descent.
That said, it is important to keep in mind that the global diversity of the church is not a phenomenon birthed in the 20th century. Diversity and plurality have existed beginning from the earliest days of the church, just differently from our times. As my colleague at Fuller Theological Seminary Vince Bantu has shown in his book A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity, from the earliest centuries the church of Christ has been composed of diverse people(s) and found itself in many locations with different languages and doctrinal formulae.4
Related to these dramatic changes with the epicenter of global Christianity moving from the Global North to the Global South, there are also unprecedented transformations, changes, and hybrid identities of various ecclesial forms. Let us take a closer look at them.
New Forms of Ecclesial Existence
With the diminishing of the number of adherents of the older traditional churches—with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church—it is widely assumed that some kind of free church congregational model might well be the major paradigm in the third millennium. (In contrast to the “episcopal,” in which the bishop is the highest authority, and the “presbyterian,” with a presbytery, in “congregational” the whole community is the highest authority.) This development stems from the Radical Reformation and early Anabaptism. Currently it represents a plethora of free churches and (later) independent churches that have emerged. A tendency toward a free-church mentality can be found even in the Roman Catholic Church with the mushrooming of the so-called “Base Communities” in Latin America and similar phenomena.
A peculiar radical challenge and inspiration to the global church has come from the rapidly growing Pentecostal/charismatic phenomenon, which divides into three subgroups:
Classical Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God, Foursquare Gospel, and Church of God in Christ (the last one, composed mostly of African Americans, being by far the biggest Pentecostal church in the US), which owe their existence to the famous Azusa Street Revival in 1906.
Charismatic movements: Pentecostal-type spiritual movements within the established churches beginning in the 1960s, the largest of which is the Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal with more than 100 million followers.
Neo-charismatic movements, including Vineyard Fellowship in the US and African Initiated Churches, as well as countless independent churches and groups all over the world; usually even China’s rapidly growing house-church movements are included here.
Another example of these global reformations can be seen in the American ecclesiastical environment, which is characterized by unprecedented denominational diversity, originally going back to the pilgrimage of European immigrants from the old continent and now fostered by immigration and diaspora. Although the Catholic Church is today the biggest ecclesiastical player, large numbers of the first generations of new settlers also came from various types of Protestant and Anglican constituencies in which particularly the nonconformists often felt marginalized and were even occasionally oppressed. As a result, what Europeans would name free-church ecclesiality forms the “mainline” American church reality. Among the Protestants, Baptists of various stripes are the largest group.
Alongside the historically unheard-of denominational plurality, the American experiment is also characterized by a deepening and widening multiculturalism. Among the several major American-based ethnic group families, none is growing as fast and proliferating as widely as the Hispanic American churches. The special challenge and asset of Hispanic communities in the US are their ecumenical background in both Catholicism and Protestantism, lately also in Pentecostal/charismatic spiritualities. Most recently, Asian-descent churches and movements have been gaining significance with the mushrooming of diverse communities. Predominantly evangelical in theological orientation, these churches reflect amazing diversity and plurality. Before the Hispanics and Asians, African American Christianity had already established its significant place in American religiosity. Black churches continue to grow, whether one speaks of Episcopal or evangelical or Pentecostal communities.
Not many decades ago, ecclesiologists in the US spoke of the baby boomer generation. It was served with the so-called seeker-friendly suburban-based churches that catered to all kinds of needs of individuals and families. Thereafter, “purpose-driven” churches and the like caught our attention. Most recently, these kinds of models, while still having an appeal with their own generation, are giving way to Gen X and other postmodern generations. Among these late/postmodern cultures, the newest and most complex of ecclesiastical developments are the “emerging churches” in the US and “fresh expressions” in the UK. Book titles such as ChurchNext (2000)5 and The Liquid Church (2002)6 characterize well this new ecclesial existence that I have named elsewhere the ecclesial “postexistence.” Highly active in virtual networks and ways of connecting, these emerging ecclesiologies are fluid. They do not always meet in sanctuaries but may instead rent comedy clubs or pubs. Deeply missional in orientation with a focus on practices and everyday Christian service, they do not typically bother to delve into theological debates about ecclesiology, although many of their leaders may have a solid academic training in religion.
The basic difference between the US-based emerging churches and UK fresh expressions is that whereas the former is usually separatist, forming their own communities, most communities of the latter are birthed by and stay within the Church of England and other mainline denominations.
Having now briefly outlined and highlighted some radical transformations and changes within the global Christian church, we will scrutinize a deeply formative feature of the “global village” in which this church finds itself—namely, religious pluralisms and secularisms.
Religious Pluralism(s) and Secularism(s) as Ecclesiological Challenges
Against all the predictions of the secular 1960s prophets—reviving the so-called secularism thesis of the great modern atheists of the 19th century, according to which religions will disappear or become marginalized as a result of the progress of modernity—secularism has not won the day. Rather, and counterintuitively, alongside the steady growth of secularism in the Global North, globally considered religions continue gaining more strongholds all over the world. Side by side with the Christian church (2.4 billion), about a quarter of the world population is comprised of Muslims (1.6 billion). The 1 billion Hindus make up about 15 percent, followed by Buddhists at half that number. Jews number fewer than 15 million, and more than 400 million people belong to various kinds of “folk religions.” By 2050, Islam will be the world’s largest religion. Whereas Hinduism and Buddhism are mainly regional (Asian) religions, Christians are by far the most evenly distributed around the globe. Over against the overwhelming majority of the world population self-identifying as the adherents of a particular religion, only about 15 percent (1 billion) label themselves religiously unaffiliated (even though the majority of them entertain some kind of religious-type beliefs and practices). Because of the overwhelming continuing presence and force of religious plurality (the existence of more than one faith side by side) and pluralisms (ideologically based responses to, and assessments of, the phenomenon of plurality), the global Christian church has to consider very carefully proper missiological responses and peaceful ways of coexistence. This is also a major challenge to theological education and ministerial training, which Fuller and other seminaries will need to tackle head-on.
The same applies to secularism(s), even if they are far smaller number-wise than the religionists; yet their voice is heard loudly in education, mass media, entertainment, and other venues. Secularism(s) come in many forms and expressions, including what is nowadays called “postsecularism.” Even though secularism enjoys overwhelming influence in the Global North, globally it is also countered by the rise of fundamentalist and ethnic projects to endorse the “religion of the land,” whether by Islamic, Hindu, and some right-wing American constituencies. Furthermore, unbeknownst to many, secularization is not limited to the Global North, although its epicenter definitely is in Europe and North America. The meaning and manifestations of secularism, however, are quite different in various contexts of the Global South. Unlike in the West, religion in Africa is not separate from the rest of life. This is not to say that secularism is unknown in Africa, but rather that its appearance and meaning differ vastly from that of European and North American contexts. As one may expect, secularism in the vast continent of Asia comes in various forms. India is a case in point. Secularism among Hindus living in the cities and among the educated is undisputed; at the same time, adherence—at least formally—to traditional religious rites is still prevalent!
Regarding diverse forms of (post)secularism in the Global North, it is counterintuitive to note the rapid rise of the use of religious symbols in a number of nonreligious domains and platforms, including literature, performing arts, and advertising. Or just think of the reappearance of angels, spirits, and demons in TV and movies! Furthermore, researchers tell us that postsecular people are not necessarily void of religious rites and rituals such as prayer; they just do and think of them differently than the Christian church from which they might have separated themselves.
Currently, Christian communities everywhere are seeking a proper way of dealing with secularism in its many forms, including postsecularism. On the one hand, there are those Christian communities which believe that (similarly to classical liberalism of the 19th century) an accommodation into either pluralism or secularism might be the best way to go—even though the price would be the need to sell Christian identity for the sake of the alleged common basis. “Secular” religion is one such tactic. On the other hand, there are those on the American scene as well as in locations in Africa and Latin America, among others, which put their trust on the “neo-Constantinian” project of the religious right with the stated goal of seeking to reestablish a “Christian nation” in alignment with political powers. In response, it suffices to mention that both strategies fail and are hardly appealing to seminaries like Fuller, nor to most Christian churches and movements.
Before these current realities, Christian communities will need to join forces in a “radical middle” to negotiate a missional calling for the world church to establish friendship and collegiality among Christians, followers of other faith traditions, and the (post)secularists of good will. Social, political, racial, and other challenges facing the fractured world of the third millennium call for nothing less. At the same time, the world church must be equipped into a holistic, diverse, and dynamic missional existence and ministry. Becoming formed, educated, and discipled to engage in this way will be a key to global Christianities’ successful mission to the nations and to their own communities.
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (MAT ’89) is professor of systematic theology at Fuller Seminary and has been a member of Fuller’s faculty since 2000. He also holds a teaching position at the University of Helsinki as Docent of Ecumenics. A prolific writer, he has authored or edited about 20 books in English (and seven in his native language, Finnish), including most recently Christian Theology in the Pluralistic World: A Global Introduction (2019) and Doing the Work of Comparative Theology: A Primer for Christians (2020). He recently completed a five-volume series covering all topics of systematic theology titled A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (2013–2017). He is ordained by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (Minister of Word and Sacrament, 2015). He has taught and lived with his family on three continents: Europe, Asia (Thailand), and North America (USA). He has also lectured and served as visiting professor in various schools around the world.
Jenny Pak, associate professor of psychology, writes about her experience working in and with Asian American communities and the need for decolonized, culturally competent psychological theories and practices.
