MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Michael Luo, New York Times, Feb. 11/12, 2012
[...] Some have predicted that Lin, because of his faith, will become the Taiwanese Tebow [...] From talking to people who knew him through the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Christian Fellowship, and watching his interviews, I have the sense that his is a quieter, potentially less polarizing but no less devout style of faith.
Like Lin, I’m a Harvard graduate, albeit more than a decade ahead of him, and a second-generation Chinese-American. I’m also a fellow believer, one of those every-Sunday-worshiping, try-to-read-the-Bible-and-pray types, who agreed with Lin when he said to reporters after the Jazz game, “God works in mysterious and miraculous ways.” [....]
Lin comes across as soft-spoken and winsome; he comes across as thoughtful. He comes across, actually, as a distinctly Asian-American Christian, or at least like so many that I know.
An Asian-American Christian? What’s that?
Many in this country have probably never even heard of this subcategory on the religious spectrum. But if you are a relatively recent graduate of the Ivy League or another top-tier college, you will probably recognize the species.
Harvard’s Asian American Christian Fellowship, which started in the 1990s, is one of the most active student groups on campus. You will also immediately know it if you are part of a historically orthodox church in a major metropolitan center like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or Los Angeles because your pews are probably filled with them. Like Lin, many Asian-American Christians have deep personal faith, but they are also, notably, almost never culture warriors. That is simply not what is emphasized in their churches and college Christian fellowships, including the one that played such a formative role in Lin’s life at Harvard [....]
Comments
I worked with one of these Asian-American Christians, and he fit the description here to a T. We worked in a lab where the PI was a hard-core atheist, and so were most of the other members. I had assumed my colleague from mainland China was as well. It wasn't until his funeral (he died at 50 from cancer) that I found out that not only was he a Christian, he had helped found one of the Chinese-American churches here in Charlottesville (and was active in it until his death).
by Verified Atheist on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 6:51pm
It's an interesting essay, I sense a kinda thing like "we're out of the closet now, wonder how's that going to work out?"
Also I was secretly wondering: what, if any, relation to the "Chinese Tiger Mom" thing?
Lin's performance has been a big big deal in NYC, BTW, so much so that a non-sports fan like me noticed it--until a week or so ago, there were all kinds of borderline slurs going on sports talk radio, tweets, etc, along the lines of Asian guys can't... Now the whole tri-state area has gone bat shit crazy over him, he's the greatest thing since sliced bread.....
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 8:53pm