My Story
Love is my religion. Reconciliation is my vocation. Jesus is my King.
Anglo-American, Hispanic, and Thai cultural heritage
I’ve lived in 3 countries, 18 cities, and 45 houses, and each of these places has deeply informed who I am and how I live out what I believe. Deeply rooted in who I am and in my faith, I’m proud to have a diverse circle of friends, and to work closely with people of many different ethnic and faith backgrounds.
I love seeing bridges built and relationships fostered across the lines that so often divide us, and I’m passionate for developing the best frameworks possible for understanding violence, division, and the most pressing questions in our world. I have an M.T.S. from Duke Divinity School, and a PhD in theology from the University of Aberdeen.
Growing Up Between Worlds
I was raised in an evangelical Christian family and grew up between Bangkok, Thailand and diverse communities in the United States, making me a “Third Culture Kid” or “global nomad.” This blessed me with a rich set of experiences and ways of thinking outside of western frameworks. It’s deeply shaped how I understand God, myself, and the problems facing our world.
Justice Orientation
Growing up in diverse communities put me in direct contact with the plight of the poor in the global south, and the global refugee crisis. As a teenager in Thailand, I saw that my faith connected with their struggles. I came to see Jesus as someone in solidarity with the suffering and oppressed, and as one who came to bring liberty to captives, and good news to the poor.
I have also experienced the pain of loving diverse people who end up on opposite sides of a war, a bitter political conflict, or other lines of hatred and violence. The wounds of the world have often cut through my own heart, as I’ve also wrestled with the questions of who I am and where I belong.
Crisis of Faith
In 2009, my family was in a serious car accident in Thailand, which left my mom in a coma with a traumatic brain injury for almost three months. Thankfully, she woke up with all of her memory, but was physically disabled. In the midst of this crisis, we moved back to the U.S.
It was a rough transition. I found myself culturally alienated from people in my “passport country.” Even more troubling, I quickly discovered that many American Christians did not share my concern for justice (except perhaps for very limited issues.) What was so clear to me from scripture was even offensive to some. This was one of the things which pushed me into a crisis of faith and deconstruction.
It eventually became clear to me that the western way of attempting to “prove” through evidence that I am right and others are wrong wouldn’t work, and the mental gymnastics were destroying me. On top of everything, it seemed that if God was real, he had abandoned me in my despair, and wasn’t showing up to help.
There had to be another way.
Another Way
As I pursued this “other way,” I began to discover some anchors. First, I found that the earliest Christians saw scripture very differently from modern westerners. They were also coming from a non-western perspective, and concerned with “God’s public justice.” It was a great relief to find these ancient companions. In biblical studies, I saw concern for justice throughout the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible. Thankfully, I had professors who helped to affirm and call out my non-western points of view.
The frameworks I saw helped me to make sense of more of the Bible, and the world I live in with its violence and oppression. It was on this journey that I began early efforts at transformative action.
“Who will we be for the rest of our lives?”
My senior year of undergrad, I protested my Christian school over serious ethical issues. As we prepared to launch, I asked everyone if they were sure.
One of my friends said, “Right now, we’re deciding who we’ll be for the rest of our lives. I hope I would die for what I believe in. And if I won’t risk being expelled for what’s right, I’ll never do that.”
Through that process, I learned a lot about how power works, and how people will carry out human sacrifice to preserve their institution or position.
For me, the things I learn in my studies have always flowed into action—from being present with the unhoused and refugees, to seeking spiritually-grounded activism, or showing up to the protests of others in Jesus’ Name. I have come to believe that we will only see God working in the world to the extent that we’re willing to take action. It’s how we accept God’s invitation into our true selves.
Scholarship
All of this has led my scholarship toward developing frameworks from a three-way discussion between 1) secular violence studies, 2) spiritual and theological frameworks, and 3) diverse cultural perspectives.
Through these frameworks, we can see violence in a different light—one that makes more sense of the increase in violence we see in our world. These frameworks can help us to see these things more clearly, and to understand their spiritual significance. In the process, scripture also becomes far more connected to daily life, and the greatest questions that we and our neighbors are asking.