Innovating Church, Accidentally: (Digital) Presence and Processes toward Formation for Progressive Asian American Christians

I offer a textual analysis of the digital presence of Progressive Asian American Christians (PAAC)—their Facebook group, website, online magazine, podcasts, and news media, and supplement this with ethnographic research from IRB-approved interviews with key participants including leadership and “lay” members in the community. I argue the relationship between race and religion for Asians in the U.S. diaspora materializes as a particular mode of resistance rooted in notions of citizenship and freedom, indeed, for participants of PAAC. Here, I theorize the ways in which this group of Asian American Christians as specifically “progressive” is an example of formation and transformation through their adversarial position in relationship to Asian American religious identities that are conservative and evangelical Protestant.  In this analysis I highlight the following themes: a spiritual homelessness, the theo-political language of affirmation, the inverted identity of religious-but-not-spiritual, and the significance of the formation of a (digital) sanctuary movement.