(RNS) — Raised in Iowa, Kristin T. Lee grew up attending her parents’ Asian immigrant evangelical church while being steeped in the white evangelical Christian culture of the Midwest. She was left, however, with a disconnect between her Chinese American identity and the American version of evangelicalism. In her debut book, “We Mend with Gold: An Immigrant Daughter’s Reckoning with American Christianity,” Lee reflects on her experience, and what it means to navigate faith, culture and belonging in the United States.  

Using the Japanese art of Kintsugi — repairing broken pottery with gold — as a metaphor for a faith that acknowledges wounds rather than hiding them, Lee explores the legacy of Western-dominated theology and her own search for a more expansive Christian faith, rooted in solidarity with marginalized communities. 

“One of the themes of the book is the fractures in our lives, whether that’s feeling disconnected from the version of Christianity that we grew up with or the fractures in our family life or the fractures in our country of origins’ histories,” said Lee in a recent interview. “Both in some Asian immigrant church spaces and in American evangelicalism, there can be a tendency to want to ignore or paper over or minimize that suffering. The Japanese art of Kintsugi inspires me because it uses fractures not as things to be hidden, but as an integral part of what forms us.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RELATED: In upcoming anthology, Asian American feminists critique mainstream Buddhism

What does your faith tell you about what it means to be a neighbor?

Growing up in Iowa to a Chinese American family, both the Chinese church and Midwestern hospitality showed me how to really be a neighbor. The Chinese church community was very tight-knit, always there for one another, and in the Midwest I learned a lot about hospitality from our predominantly white neighbors. People were very generous with us, and I appreciated that growing up.

But in terms of who is our neighbor and who we have responsibilities to, my faith informs that significantly. The main parable we think of in the gospels is the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus asks, “Who is my neighbor?” It is such a profound and challenging story, because there’s this Jewish man that’s lying in the road after getting beat up by robbers and a priest comes by and ignores him. A rabbi comes by and he doesn’t help the man either. These are the people who are supposed to embody God and God’s love. But then the Samaritan, who’s from a despised group, who ministers to the person and takes him to an inn, pays for his care and is willing to mess up his whole day to help him. Jesus says that person was the neighbor to this man.

That really deeply informs my vision of what solidarity looks like. We can’t leave anyone behind, including the people we really disagree with politically, as well as the marginalized.

How do churches like the one you grew up in put forward the Asian American dream?

The Asian American dream is not necessarily explicitly preached from the pulpit, but it’s in the very nature of what gets encouraged. Let me caveat this by saying these are big generalizations, but in a lot of immigrant churches what they teach their kids to aspire to, and what gets praised, is “model minority” behavior — excelling in school, being very obedient, conforming to what is seen as the standard of good behavior — both good Asian American behavior and good Christian behavior, right? It’s like a double whammy.

But it’s so you can go to a good college and get a good job and be financially stable, because so many of our parents did not have that. Or if they did have that, that worked for them. So there’s these very understandable dynamics underlying it. But we can forget that that’s not what Jesus calls us to, that Jesus never said, “Do well in school.” As a youth group kid, I was asked to talk to the younger kids about how I did so well in school and got into Harvard. Oh my gosh, I feel so bad about that now. But that’s what gets celebrated when we’re not careful, and it can really warp our sense of who God is and what God values.

You say Asian American Christians end up buying into Western supremacy. How does that work?

It’s a weird tension, because Western Christianity is not the only ancient form of Christianity, right? There’s the Eastern Orthodox Church, there’s the Mar Thoma tradition in India since the first century, there’s the Ethiopian church and many other church traditions that have ancient roots. But because Asian Americans are often only exposed to kind of this European-centric idea of Christian tradition, we think that that’s the only way. We don’t realize that the Western tradition is just as culturally influenced and has a lot of baggage that has nothing to do with Jesus. We’re not taught how to tease those things out; we need to learn from other people who’ve done it, like the Black church.

If we just imbibe Western-centric theology as God-given rather than man-made, we unfortunately absorb Western supremacy. Obviously, there’s this core to the faith that is true, but we don’t have to adopt all the cultural trappings as well.

Why do you suggest Asian American Christians bring in Eastern philosophies?

I was taught early on to be very suspicious of anything outside of Western Christianity as potentially dangerous, as potential syncretism, that might draw me away from God. So I wasn’t really exposed to my own culture for a long time. We didn’t celebrate traditional Asian festivals. It’s only as an adult that I’ve been able to reclaim some of those things. Western evangelicalism, and especially a more fundamentalist version of it, is overly condemnatory of other cultures. It almost makes you ashamed to be Asian.

Reclaiming our traditions in a way that synergizes with the gospel of Jesus is possible and healthy and revelatory. American evangelicalism says, “This is how you connect with God”: Do your daily Bible reading, do your journaling time, do your prayer time,” and that’s the mark of a good Christian, right? That’s great, and it works for people. But there’s different seasons of faith, and if there’s no openness to other ways of connecting with God, it really stifles people — and not just Asian Americans. I have friends of all different backgrounds who say it doesn’t always work for them to connect with God in that one way.

So it’s been really helpful for me to learn from Asian American Christians and Asians still in Asia. Their different spiritual practices, whether more embodied ways of viewing faith or more contemplative traditions, have been really helpful to me. Or learning about Buddhism or Taoism. I don’t know a lot, but just reading some of the texts and understanding from some of those practitioners how they center themselves and meditate, it’s really freeing just to see other ways to nourish our souls and connect with God.

RELATED: ‘There are many worlds in me’: Asian American Christians reject conformity