wfn.org | American Asian Disciples told: ‘Speak truth to power'

["Cliff Willis"<wshuffit@oc.disciples.org>]

Date: August 6, 1998
Disciples News Service
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Contact: Clifford L. Willis
Email: CWillis@oc.disciples.org
on the Web: http://www.disciples.org

98b-48

by W. Evan Golder 
Editor, United Church News

	OAKLAND, Calif. (DNS) -- "Speak truth to power." In such a time as 
this, that's what Christians and the church need to do, according to 
the Rev. Wallace Ryan Kuriowa, executive director of the United 
Church of Christ's Office for Church in Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

	Ryan Kuriowa's observation came in his keynote address to the tenth 
biennial convocation of NAPAD (North American Pacific/Asian 
Disciples), July 30-Aug. 1, here at Mills College. Currently NAPAD 
numbers 43 Disciples congregations as well as five missions and three 
new church starts.

	Basing his speech on the convocation theme, "For Such a Time as 
This," Ryan Kuriowa said, "God has placed us here in this time, for 
such a time as this.  We need to work for fairer, more just 
immigration laws. We need to work against hate crimes perpetrated 
against people of color. And we need to create a more hospitable 
presence for other Asians and Pacific Islanders as they come to a 
strange and new land."

	More than 125 people from 15 different states attended the 
convocation, which also featured worship, workshops and a banquet at 
Oakland's First Korean Christian Church, the host congregation.

	Ryan Kuriowa noted that although speaking the truth to power can 
seem "pretty intimidating," opportunities abound for the church to do 
it, "whether in the halls of Congress, or to the poultry industry in 
solidarity with chicken-processing plant workers, or to the prison 
industrial complex and the states with regard to capital punishment 
and the mistreatment of prisoners."

	His keynote address and subsequent Bible study sessions were based 
on the book of Esther. This book has many characters we should pay 
attention to, he said, including Esther herself. She risked death by 
speaking the truth to the king, and the king's first wife, Vashti, 
who defied the king's order to parade herself before his drunken 
companions.   
	"How dare any of us say ‘no' to the principalities and the powers?" 
Ryan Kuriowa asked the participants. "Vashti serves us as a model of 
the faithful church. God calls us to speak that powerful two-letter 
‘no' word to those who expect us to roll over and silently accept the 
unjust thing, just because the powerful have demanded we do so."

	Ryan Kuriowa named Asian-American examples of those who refused to 
board the internment trains during World War II with a "no": Gordon 
Hirabayashi, the Quaker pacifist, who said "no" out of his religious 
conviction; and Minoru Yasui, Mitsuye Endo and Fred Korematsu.
  
	"It was because of their actions," he said, "that the sad story of 
the internment was remembered in the 1980s and eventually led to an 
official apology and redress. Because persons of conscience have said 
no, healing has begun for that injustice."

	Noting that many in the room have benefitted from the sacrifice and 
hard work of those who have gone before, he called on them to do two 
things: to keep those stories alive by telling them over and over 
again; and to speak out on their own against the injustices of our 
day.

	"Esther asked the community of faith to fast and pray," he 
concluded. "That may be what God has called you to do. But recognize 
that whether we are Vashti, or whether we are Esther, or whether we 
are in that company of prayer, God means for us to be in the midst of 
the struggle for justice and hope."

	-- end --

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