“I do not eat cats and dogs,” I told my class after the presidential debate last September. A couple of students giggled. The rest of them remained silent. They knew I wasn’t joking. While I wasn’t born in Haiti, I can identify with other American immigrants who face hateful rhetoric and harassment, day after day. This happens especially when we have a noticeable accent or do not speak English fluently. We are oftentimes tempted to trade off certain parts of our identity to thrive. We even anglicize our names.
I still remember how, when I checked in for a mission conference, the registration staff mistakenly assumed I was male, based solely on my name. For lodging, they had even assigned me to a room with other male participants. As they worked to reassign me to another room, there was no explanation or apology. The staff’s puzzled, jawdropped expressions made clear their surprise at discovering I was a woman.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, I benefited from policies that prioritize the majority population. Oftentimes, however, these policies result in discriminatory outcomes for minority groups such as immigrants and migrant workers. These communities of people are the backbone of Hong Kong’s economy, yet their basic rights remain unprotected.
I joined the faculty of Wartburg Theological Seminary in 2020. This call came in the middle of massive suffering where millions of people lost their jobs, and many were grieving the loss of loved ones due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Coinciding with these tragic events was a dramatic rise in anti-Asian hate incidents across the country.
I am called to work with seminary students and faculty so that together, we can help humanity to embrace the vision of God’s beloved community through life-giving relationships with one another. As we pray the Lord’s Prayer and ask God to “Give us this day…,” as we enjoy this day as a gift from God, let us also remember immigrants who are fighting for their survival and dignity. Let us resist political words that would render them an It, and instead see Christ, who tells us to welcome the stranger (Matthew 25:31-46).
We are called to take seriously our vocation of caring for our neighbors, affirming that they are just as human as we are. This call further inspires us to cultivate new ways of seeing. There is no them. There is only us. All of us. Walls built to separate us from them do not hold; we are united in our shared identity as beloved children of God.
Just as we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread,” we also receive blessed assurance that God embraces, and calls us to also embrace, the excluded and rejected as one in Christ Jesus.
Man-Hei Yip is assistant professor of Systematic Theology at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. Using a postcolonial perspective, she has written extensively about issues of religion, language, immigration and diaspora.
This article appears in the March/April/May 2025 issue of Gather. To read more like it, subscribe to Gather.