AAPI Month Spotlight: Kenji Adachi

1. How has your experience as someone of Asian/Pacific Islander (API) origin shaped your relationship with God?

Being Japanese/Asian echoes the values of an honor and shame culture found in the Bible and  magnifies the gospel of Jesus and how: sin must be atoned to save face and restore peace (Simeon & Levi in the rape of Dinah), the righteousness of Jesus covers my shame, Christ’s crucifixion restores his honor, my union/status/relationship with Jesus grants me honor, and concepts of the importance of the firstborn and the double inheritance bestowed on the firstborn are concepts within the Japanese culture.

2. Have there been moments in your faith journey where your culture has conflicted with your beliefs?

Committing my life to follow Jesus and to obey his call to be his disciple and then His call for full-time ministry was costly cross bearing as Jesus said - in relation to my unbelieving parents

3. Have you ever struggled with feelings of shame or guilt related to your racial identity or cultural background? If so, how have you processed those feelings? How does your faith speak to that?

I’ve felt both pride and shame of being different - a foreigner who was born in one of the most homogenous countries in the world in Japan and moving to a white-black civil rights city in the South in Greensboro. We stood out with our culture - our language, food, and customs with my parents Japanese accents (southern btw), egg salad sando and katsu sando instead of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, taking off shoes and eating with chopsticks and on and on. Even if I was born in NC, I would’ve most likely felt like a perpetual foreigner and faced the sting of racism. The Bible comforts me in that Ephesians 2:19 informs me of my true home, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” My home is the kingdom of God. I am a citizen of heaven - thanks be to Jesus Christ.