Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 34:3 (Summer 2020)
Article: Yin-Yang And The Spirit Poured Out On All Flesh: An Evangelical Egalitarian East-West Dialogue On Gender And Race
Author: Amos Yong

PP 34:3 (Summer 2020) p. 21

Yin-Yang And The Spirit Poured Out On All Flesh: An Evangelical Egalitarian East-West Dialogue On Gender And Race

Amos Yong1

When we think about male-female roles in relationship to Asian American churches, especially those from evangelical and East Asian contexts, there is a sense of a general correlation between the complementarianism in evangelical Christianity and that of the Confucian tradition.2 But what about evangelical egalitarians who are of East Asian descent or those more dialogical (white and other) evangelicals who might think that theological construction in the twenty-first century ought to engage cross-culturally and transnationally with non-Western traditions in general, including Asian and especially East Asian sources? Is there a way forward beyond the dominant complementarian discourse at this nexus where a predominantly white North American evangelical Christianity has met racial and ethnic others, especially East Asians in the contemporary milieu?

The following develops the egalitarian thesis (sketched in the first section below) that the Day of Pentecost’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit on sons and daughters transforms male-female and East-West relations in anticipation of the coming divine reign.3 A parallel argument (in the next section) is then discerned when considered in global context, albeit one conducted protologically rather than teleologically—i.e., seeking to retrieve ancient sources rather than aimed eschatologically—focused in particular on how ancient Daoist understandings of yin-yang complementarity (which differs from how the term is used in North American evangelical discourse and will be clarified later) have the potential to check and balance traditionally received Confucian notions of female subordination. Such an East Asian approach is then brought into conversation with the Pentecost argument (in the final section) to suggest how the eschatological transformation of the divine breath can be understood also as fulfilling the potential of ha adam (Hebrew, “the human,” “Adam”), promised from the creation narratives and do so across the racial-ethnic lines compromised by the fall. Readers should be warned that the argument remains quite abstract, operating mainly at a rather dense theoretical level, in order to clear the space for an evangelical egalitarian dialogue on gender and race that is transcultural and comparatively theological.

One important set of caveats needs to be registered. My scholarship has focused thus far much less on race and even less on gender,4 and more in the comparative theologica...