In a Substack post in February, the Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers shared how Chinese restaurants played a supporting role in her 14 years of ordained ministry—but not in the way one might expect.
“I am asked a couple of times a year if I work at the Chinese restaurant,” Rengers wrote. Once, as she was breaking up a fight between two unhoused friends, one of them said, “You … you were in my dream last night! I dreamed we opened up a Chinese restaurant!”
A cradle Episcopalian who grew up in Alabama, Rengers is half-Japanese. “But at the moment, that distinction is neither here nor there.”
“I am an Asian American, female priest in a white-dominant church denomination,” Rengers wrote when she launched her Substack. “One of many that is in a steady state of decline. I believe that diversity—of people and of faith expression—[is] a key to a thriving future for the church I love. I am not always convinced we will get there.”
The former staff officer for church planting of the Episcopal Church spoke to The Living Church one late evening in April. It was the end of the first full day of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Clergy and Lay Leadership Retreat, and she was at a pub with several participants in Kansas City, Missouri.
“You probably hear the music in the background,” Rengers said, describing how “there are small groups of folks from the conference all over Kansas City right now, hanging out and telling more stories.”
The three-day event brought together 57 people of AAPI heritage from across the church. It was the seventh meeting of its kind, pioneered in 2019 by Bishops Allen Shin of New York and Diane Jardine Bruce of West Missouri. Shin and Bruce wanted to create a space where such leaders could “actually share stories without feeling they’re being judged.” In engaging them, Shin acknowledged that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are not a monolith. “It’s very diverse,” he told TLC, “but at the same time, there is a certain shared experience as AAPI people, historically.”
The Asiamerica Ministries of the Episcopal Church has nine ethnic convocations: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islanders, and Arab/Middle East, as well as the Asian American Youth and Young Adults. Most were represented at the retreat. Shin also said the participants had varying levels of experience in church ministry.
“We have some seasoned priests as well as lay leaders who are members of the Executive Council,” he said, “and also lay leaders who are just beginning to get involved in the parish or diocesan level. And then we have seminarians and the newly ordained.”
The history of Asian Americans in the Episcopal Church dates back 150 years. After a Chinese convert named Ah Foo began evangelizing Asian railroad workers in the mining district of Nevada, Bishop Ozi William Whitaker helped him establish the Chapel of the Good Shepherd in Carson City in 1874. The church didn’t last long, as it was burned down in a citywide fire and Foo returned to China as anti-Chinese sentiment rose. But Asian Episcopal churches were opened across the West Coast, like St. Peter’s Episcopal Parish in Seattle.
That church’s story began in 1908, when several Japanese Anglicans formed the Japanese Mission of the Episcopal Church in Seattle. During its early years, the members met in houses, but in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, they purchased a property on South King Street. For three years beginning in 1942, the church was closed as parishioners were forcibly incarcerated in remote camps at the start of World War II, along with 120,000 other people of Japanese ancestry.
Recognizing the depth and breadth of experiences among a group representing numerous cultures and ethnicities, Shin highlighted the centrality of storytelling in connecting AAPI leaders of the church.
“Stories define who we are as individuals and as a people,” Shin said, “and how we tell our stories, especially our history, is critically important, especially right now, as the stories of people of color are being erased.”
He spoke of the Trump administration’s anti-DEI policies, which has banned books, purged language, and canceled special events. On January 20, the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders was closed by executive order. The president made no commemorative remarks at the beginning of AAPI Heritage Month, which has been held every May for almost 50 years.
In learning to tell their stories, Rengers spoke of a breakthrough two years ago during one of the leadership retreats.
The ‘In-Between’ as a Gift
The Rev. Dr. Kyungja (KJ) Oh is the first Korean American woman to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. She is the emerita professor of practical theology at Bexley Seabury Seminary in Chicago, and in 2023 she facilitated a clergy and lay leaders’ retreat.
“I would say she midwifed the stories that many of us have held deep inside for a long time and never knew how to tell,” Rengers said, “or whether they were valuable or not, or even how to kind of reconcile our stories of identity with our faith in Christ.”
In telling her story, Rengers found a shared experience with fellow AAPI Episcopalians. “I have always felt questions about my identity, and I’ve always felt alone in the Episcopal Church,” she said. “Because the majority of Episcopalians in Alabama are white—but that’s actually true for almost everyone, even our AAPI friends in California and New York.”
As Oh taught them, their lived experiences shaped a helpful narrative.
“What does that look like—be alone in a church? How does that identity, and sometimes that dual identity of being Asian American and Episcopalian, look? How can it be a gift?”
Rengers described how one participant’s stories encapsulated the unique power of one person’s voice, which could be transformational not only for Episcopalians who share her background but for all members and leaders of the Episcopal Church, regardless of their ethnicity.
“One person today brought up the story of Moses and how he is a Hebrew, but he’s raised in Pharaoh’s court, and that gives him this unique posture—this unique place from which to deliver the people of Israel and from which to lead,” she said.
“And so we have a lot of stories of lament, grief, sorrow, racism, but also the stories of how being closer to the margin, being in an in-between space, between Black and white in the United States … that gives us a voice … about racial reconciliation and conversations about evangelism, and who is Jesus … as we tend to speak from this place that we experience, and we speak from a place in the middle.”
Many AAPI members of the Episcopal Church are in unlikely places like Kansas City, Alabama, or Tennessee, according to Shin. “Sometimes one or two in a congregation or just a handful,” he said, highlighting the significance of the events he and Bruce initiated. “When they come together, you get a larger group than they had ever experienced.”
The first Asians in continental America were Filipino indentured laborers who fled a Spanish galleon and settled in Louisiana’s marshlands in the 16th century. In the 18th century, the Manilamen (named after the capital city of the Philippines) built Saint Malo, a fishing village along the shores of Lake Borgne that is considered the first Asian American settlement. It flourished until the early 1900s.
The Rev. Jo Ann Lagman is the missioner of the Episcopal Church’s Asiamerica Ministries. She was born in the United States of Filipino ancestry and grew up Roman Catholic. “I found my way to the Episcopal Church because of its very welcoming nature and Eucharist available to all,” Lagman told TLC, “no matter where we are in our journey of faith.”
“That was a really important part of my faith and story,” she said, “as I struggled with, you know, who we exclude and who we include, when Jesus welcomes us all to the table.”
Her conversation with the participants was the final session before the closing Eucharist. “What I’m finding is there is a deep desire for ministry and there is a new energy happening, especially with our second generation-plus,” Lagman said, referring to those who are two or more generations removed from their immigrant ancestors.
She recalls a moment during the retreat when a participant of Native Hawaiian ancestry offered a prayer she couldn’t understand linguistically, but “could feel spiritually that we were all still praying together.” She hopes that various expressions of ethnicity among the group continue to flourish and be lifted up.
Lagman offered this prayer: “That the diversity of God is reflected in the appreciation of AAPI stories and lives, and that we will be able to fully express and use our gifts in the service of the Episcopal Church and of the world.”
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
