Shows
Pearl Dive PodcastDive Bar. Elgin Lee Quan's Passion for Chinese Christian EldersThe Dive Bar is open! We talk to folks inside AACHI and Fuller’s Asian American Center about what we're working on, what we're interested in…all kinds of stuff! So we hope you'll like these conversations, which are part of the Pro Dive podcast. So get a drink of your choice and join us!In today's episode of the Dive Bar, I chat with our very own Pearl Diver Elgin Quan. If you've been following the Pearl Dive, you'll know that Elgin has contributed a couple of stories already. “A Father and Son's Full Circle Mission From C...2025-05-1316 min
Pearl Dive PodcastDive Bar. David Moe and the Burmese American Christian ProjectToday we're starting the Dive Bar, a new series that is part of the Pearl Dive podcast. We'll talk to folks inside AACHI and the Fuller Asian American Center orbit about all kinds of things: what we're working on, what we're interested in. We hope you'll like these conversations. So get a drink of your choice and join us.Today, I'm talking to Dr. David Moe, who along with Dr. Joe Cheah, is heading up a new AACHI project about the Burmese American Christian diaspora. This project was awarded an APARRI Working Grant. We are excited to...2025-05-0617 min
Pearl Dive PodcastA Funny Thing Happened Along the Way to the Global SouthThe center of Christianity has shifted from the West to the Global South. There is more interest in World Christianity today than ever before. But have minoritized Christians in the U.S. been leap frogged (as Bishop Roy Sano once confided to me) in the process? Dr. Soojin Chung, Director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center at Princeton Theological Seminary has some thoughts about that. In this deep dive episode of the Pearl Dive podcast. I talk to Soojin about how the study of World Christianity and Ethnic Studies can actually come together and be fruitful partners for research...2025-04-0134 min
Pearl Dive PodcastUncles who demanded LiberationHow does the way you think or talk about faith help you respond to racism? How does the way you read the Bible address social injustice? Where I grew up, “uncles” with powerful faith kept raising these questions in bible studies and Sunday School. I believe these “eccentric uncles” were always in our Asian American faith communities. But during the 1960s and 1970s, they spoke up in a more public manner. Black, Latino, and indigenous church leaders were already speaking so elegantly against racial discrimination at the time. Our theological “uncles” did the same, demanding liberation for the Asian American chu...2025-03-2539 min
Pearl Dive PodcastFaith on Edge: Taiwanese Christianity in North AmericaCould Taiwan become the Ukraine of Asia? How are Taiwanese Christians in North America responding to the geo-political uncertainties of Taiwan’s relationship to China? The May 15, 2022 mass shooting at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California was, in part, a reflection of the fraught debates about the future of Taiwan. Also, how is the next generation of Taiwanese Christians experiencing the forces of assimilation in North America? In the face of possible erasure in Asian and North America, will or should Taiwanese Christian identity survive?In this deep dive episode of the Pe...2025-03-1840 min
Pearl Dive PodcastWhen Protestants had Empathy. A Conversation with Randi Walker (2/2)Can we restore the Golden Rule to the American public conscience? It will probably take a renewed grass root movement of people who are stubbornly faithful to Jesus’ command to love the neighbor.In today’s Deep Dive episode, Tim Tseng and Randi Walker continue last week’s conversation about Protestant advocacy for civil rights in Seattle, Washington in the 1940s and 1950s. Her 2012 book, Religion and the Public Conscience, Ecumenical Civil Rights Work in Seattle, 1940-1960 show how the Seattle Council of Churches and the Christians and Friends for Racial Equality fought for racial justice in the year...2025-02-2527 min
Pearl Dive PodcastWhen Protestants had Empathy: A Conversation with Randi Walker (1/2)Most American Christians voted for the current administration and Congress, despite their potentially negative impact on people of color, the poor, and other vulnerable communities (not to mention a constitutional crisis). In his book, The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors, John Compton says that American Protestants stopped loving their neighbors when they lost their cultural dominance in the 1970s. Prior to that, perceived threats to White Protestant dominance often resulted in powerful movements that scapegoated, excluded, and erased the non-Protestant and “heathen other” rather than seeking the common good. But… there were also many Christ...2025-02-1830 min
Pearl Dive PodcastLeon Siu declares Hawaiian Independence (2/2)Here is part two of the Pearl Cast with H.E. Leon Siu, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Hawaiian Kingdom. In this part of our interview we discuss the ethics of visiting Hawai’i, how Mr. Siu got involved with the Hawaiian Independence movement, and his work with other Pacific Island Nations.Watch this video, “Holy Spirit Fiya,” from Urbana 2015 for a live example of what happens when indigenous people’s gather to worship the Lord together and in their own languages. The song is by Leon Siu’s pastor, Kahu Moani Ninod-Sitch and sung in languages...2025-02-1129 min
Pearl Dive PodcastLeon Siu declares Hawaiian Independence (1/2)Welcome to the inaugural episode of Pearl Dive, a podcast from Fuller Seminary’s Asian American Church History Institute (AACHI). If you have ever wondered about how your ethnic heritage meets faith or about the history of Hawaii, this episode is for you. In the first two episodes of Pearl Dive, Fiel Sahir talks to Leon Siu, Foreign Minister for the Hawaiian Kingdom, about Christianity in Hawaii. Mr. Siu discusses the indigenous Christian spirituality in the first episode and the Independence movement in the second. The interview was recorded on October 1, 2023. This season’s po...2025-02-0428 min
Pearl Dive PodcastTrailer. Pearl Dive Podcast is coming!Hey friends! I’m Tim Tseng and I’m the director of the Asian American Christian History Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary’s Asian American Center.It’s the day before Lunar New Year 2025 and I have an exciting announcement to make. We will launch the Pearl Dive Podcast next week. The Pearl Dive substack and podcast are the digital platforms of the Asian American Christian History Institute or AACHI. AACHI was started to uncover the hidden pearls of Asian American Christian history.Though I celebrate the growth of Asian American history over the last forty ye...2025-01-2901 min