This first entry is a letter to say, first and foremost, you are not alone. If you’ve found your way to a page called Asian Exvangelical, I’m guessing you might hold one or both of those identities. Or, perhaps the exvangelical part is in flux or in process. Wherever you may be on your journey, hello!
I’m Val, I’m a psychologist, and most of my practice is geared around creating spaces for Asian Americans. The longer I’ve done this work, the more I started to see a thread. I have spent countless hours in my office listening to people give voice for the first time to hurtful and harmful experiences with faith and religion. And over and over again, I listen to so many people talk about how alone they feel. The experience of being Asian/Asian American, and enduring religious trauma, is such a very specific intersection. In my personal experience with existing religious trauma spaces, I tend to feel partially but never fully seen because of this. So, I’m creating this platform for you: every person who has ever sat across from me, whether in my capacity as a psychologist or a friend, and told me about the time that a cis-male pastor blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault. Or about the blatantly racist comments from other church congregants who couldn’t be bothered to learn the correct pronunciation of your name. Or about every time you had to shed your ancestral selves to be a better Christian. For every time you have been told not to sow seeds of discord, and to pack away your feelings and put a smile on your face for the sake of the kingdom. You are not alone.
I originally started Asian Exvangelical as an Instagram page in 2022: https://www.instagram.com/asianexvangelical. Feel free to check out the whopping five posts that I made there in the span of the first two months before I completely gave into my avoidance of making more posts. I found that every time I sat down to create more “content” for the page, I somehow always found something else I would rather be doing than trying to trick the algorithm. However, I think there are still things to say about religious trauma within the Asian experience. And hence, we are pivoting to this space.
A little about my own experience… My journey in and out of church spaces was circuitous. I didn’t grow up in a Christian family, instead raised inside a religious smorgasbord that included Buddhism, Taoism, with a smattering of Catholicism and agnosticism. Through a meandering series of events, I ended up in a Chinese church youth group during my junior year of high school. After that, I attended an evangelical Christian college in one of the middle states. I remember that my high school youth group leaders lavished me with praise for choosing this college, which was well-regarded in Christian circles, and for being a young person who chose to attend church devoutly despite being raised in a childhood environment fraught with the more “heathen” religions. I received so much praise, so much positive feedback, and so much love, for my decision. This, along with the fact that I was at a place in my life at 18 where I was seeking love and praise at any cost, cemented my drive to follow Jesus. And so, I entered that Christian college with the noblest intentions, however misguided. I used to look back at that time in my life and cringe, but now I have love for that 18-year-old trying to find their way. I spent over a decade after that trying to be a good Christian. I tried so hard that I started to give parts of my self away, little by little. I gave away so many parts of myself that I eventually became a ghost. By the time I was nearing the end of my graduate training to become a psychologist, there was nearly nothing left of me, and I knew that if I didn’t make the decision to leave the church, I would eventually lose my soul. Through that vine of pain, I chose myself, and in the decade that has followed, I have reclaimed so many parts of myself. They are not exactly the same as they were before, but are instead a new creation. And I have sat with so many other beloveds who have walked along this very journey. Wherever you may be on your own journey of reclamation, know it is possible.
This is going to be a platform about religious wounding within the experience of being Asian. Hence, this will also be a platform about wounding that happens at larger, more systemic levels. I set out to write this because whenever I would teach workshops about religious trauma, there would be scarce literature about religious trauma specifically as it impacts QTBIPOC folks, and virtually nothing about Asian folks specifically. This platform is one attempt to create that space. If this resonates with you, feel free to follow along. I hope we can walk together.