To kick off our 10th anniversary micro-series celebrating the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, we sit down with Dr. Tim Tseng, Asian American church historian and director of the Asian American Christian History Institute (AACHI). Tim takes us back to 1972 and the founding of PACTS (the Pacific and Asian American Center for Theology and Strategies), tracing a lineage of Asian American Christian leadership that runs decades deeper than any single institution’s anniversary can capture.
The origins of PACTS: a 1972 gathering of Bay Area pastors trained in mainline Protestant seminaries who began questioning assimilation and erasure within their denominations
The newly republished PACTS Reader, edited by Roy Sano and now available through Claremont Press—the story behind bringing this out-of-print, historically significant text back into circulation
AACHI’s mission and the “pearl divers” metaphor for surfacing hard-to-find Asian American Christian stories
The Third World Liberation Front strikes at San Francisco State (1968) and the birth of ethnic studies as a backdrop to the Asian American Christian movement
How the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power shaped Asian American Christian consciousness, and PACTS’ relationship to (and distinction from) liberation theology
The story of Mabel Lee, a pioneering unordained church leader and suffrage advocate in New York’s Chinatown at the turn of the century
The danger of “Columbusing”—claiming to discover ideas and movements that our elders were already engaging with over fifty years ago
Tim’s reflection on being forced out of theological academia in 2005, and what nearly 20 years in local church ministry taught him about listening to God’s people at the grassroots
We hope you enjoy this series!
Additional Resources
Tim Tseng: [linked]
The PACTS Reader (Claremont Press): [linked]
PACTS Archive: [linked]
Asian American Christian History Institute: [linked]
About Centering
Centering: The Asian American Christian Substack and Centering: The Asian American Christian Podcast are publications of the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary (AAC). At the AAC, we train and support Asian American Christian leaders of East, Southeast, and South Asian descent, including multiracial individuals and adoptees – grounding their life and work in over 170 years of Asian American history, and addressing their spiritual and psychological concerns.
We do this work through our cohorts, seminary courses, and the programs of our initiatives. The AAC is home to the Asian American Pastoral Formation Initiative, the Asian American Well-Being Collaboratory, the Asian American Christian History Institute, the Filipino American Ministry Initiative, and the Korean American Ministry Initiative.
To learn more, support our work, and subscribe to our newsletter, visit aac.fuller.edu.
For information about Fuller Seminary’s degree programs and continuing education resources, visit fuller.edu.
