I Found My People! Faith, Race, and the Road to Libertarianism

My path to libertarianism started with questions about faith and racial identity, with formal politics far from my mind. The answers to my questions were found in the concepts of freedom and responsibility and still, I stayed away from the world of politics. I firmly believed that politics and politicians were part of the problem and were not part of the solution. In other words, it was not until after I worked out the relationship between faith and race did I even hear the word “libertarian.”

My father came to study theology and philosophy in America in 1959. My mother, his fiancé followed him to this country in 1963 and I was born in ’65 preceded by my older brother. My father’s plan was to eventually return to Korea to start a university, so, my brothers and I were required to learn the Korean language, and besides, we were Koreans. Since Korean language lessons took up every moment we were not doing something for school or church, we came to hate the language. In the TV series “Fresh off the Boat,” there is a scene where the young protagonist looks out the window from his after-school-learning center to see kids having fun playing with a stick. I was that kid except I was looking out from my bedroom window.

Every night we had family devotions. We read scripture and sang hymns in Korean. We would also often get a story of how my father resisted religious persecution during the Japanese occupation of Korea which ended in 1945. In addition to being given a Japanese name and having the Korean language banned at school, my father was required to bow every morning to a Shinto shrine, something he never did. He was, of course, regularly beaten for his disobedience as he declared that God in heaven is greater than Kami, the god of Shinto. For us, we understood why the Korean language was important to my father, but nothing was more important than living by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. My father was a testimony of faith for us. I thought that losing one’s life to keep one’s faith was a great way to meet the Lord, though if it could be avoided, that would be good, too.

Racial differences were signified daily in my Italian, Irish, and African American neighborhood; except for a couple of families, no one was friendly to us. Moving out to the suburbs, racial significance still happened but instead people told me how I was an American, not a Korean. At the same time, I bought into the public school teachings of assimilation and the American way of life. So, although people at school called me “chink” and kids at church called me “twinkie” or “banana,” I was always moved and inspired by the U.S. national anthem. Later, I would often tell my students in college that I bleed red, white, and blue. I guess thinking I was an American was the way I could fit in America.

In the fall of 1987, I entered Westminster Theological Seminary. I was one of the first two American born Korean students at the school and there were many Koreans enrolled at that school. I had not seen so many Koreans in one place in Philly before and negotiating identity was again at the forefront of my mind. The legitimacy of an ethnic church in the USA was a hot topic especially because the number of American born Koreans (second generation) in the Korean church was ever increasing. The old assimilationist view of migration theory was brought back from the dead and was favored by many which gave a green light to a variety of so-called English ministries; these were congregations of mostly ethnic Koreans worshipping in English.

I decided to spend time in Korea after graduation because I had reservations about the projected extinction of the Korean church in America. Everyone seemed to say that culture did not matter as they advocated a distinctly North American understanding of scripture and faithful living.  Academically, the future of the ethnic church was already written but this expected future did nothing to help me understand myself, my place in the world, the ethnic church, and my relationship with my parents. The dysfunction in many Korean families was deemed normal and part of the process of assimilation; this was unacceptable for me. I needed something more than a weak theory of migration to move forward.

After three interesting years in Korea I returned to enroll in a PhD program at Temple University. Before I went to Korea, I would have two hour “discussions” with my father nearly every night. When I came back, I was surprised that I was able to have conversations with my parents without anyone having the need to raise one’s voice. It was significant enough that I decided to focus on race theory and its influence on the Korean church in America. I was able to complete my degree but none of the race theories I learned was able to fully answer my questions on faith and race.

It was a couple of years later, in 2005, that I was installed as senior pastor of my church and I got a full time teaching contract from Temple University. I was still in a theoretical limbo until the reading list for a class I taught was changed. One of the texts I chose was Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose. I chose it because the word “free” was in the title. In the first chapter, Friedman goes into the story of the graphite pencil which opened my eyes to answers for nearly all of my questions about the intersection of faith and race. In other words, I now had a framework through which I could understand the myriad of ethnic congregations in America. Everything I had learned in grad school and then taught in school and church was revealed to be exercises in subjectivity. That is, each race theory proceeds and prescribes choices on what each believes is true or right. But at the end of the day, each theory was trying to impose its own desires on everyone else through the force of law.

The Friedman quote which changed the direction of where to go to find answers to my questions about race and faith was, “Literally thousands of people co-operated to make this pencil. People who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met!” That was it; the desire to prosper is greater than hatred of others. It is not by the proper control of others which will lead to the peace and prosperity everyone claims to want. Rather it is allowing people the freedom of choice with the responsibility of the outcomes of those choices which incentivizes people to find the best solutions to their current problem. Government causes problems where there might have been none through legislation and regulation. Government often criminalizes the best choices people need to make for the benefit of the government. This leaves the government to be the only entity which can legally help people.

In contrast to government control, freedom breeds competition, innovation, creativity, productivity, and more choices for everyone. Freedom is the key, not the authoritarian impulses enabled by an overreaching government. Legislation of morality legalizes hypocrisy and reduces choices. This phenomenon later became the root of various injustices recognized and protested much later. Governments are everywhere from nations to the individual; governmental structures are even in religions. Once I taught a Religion in the World class and decided to incorporate a look at the role of that religion’s governmental structure to explain controversies and splits. Some of the connections were surprising and interesting.

Embracing the ideas of freedom, I think, made me a much better instructor in the college classroom. Then I realized that I was also a petite authoritarian in church and at home and thus guilty of hypocrisy. I repented and re-evaluated everything from the perspective of freedom. I had to let go of my attempts to micro-manage nearly everything in my life from the activities of my children to the choices of the people I taught in church. Instead of prescribing and enforcing behavior, I laid out choices and their consequences. I gave people as much freedom as possible with the understanding that they had responsibility for the outcomes. If they did not like the choices discussed, then they could brainstorm to come up with a better one. Just as in life, we should use our dissatisfaction in the obvious choices to seek something better, and in the church, something more Christ-like. For me freedom is the foundation of innovation and creativity in life. I have come to interpret Galatians 5:13 to include this, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” We use our freedom to solve problems we encounter in life not only for our personal benefit, but for the benefit of others in word and deed. The benefit of the ethnic church is the understanding of situations which arise because of the ethnic and cultural history of its people, e.g. meaningful relationships with one’s parents.

My interpretation of scripture for sermons and bible studies now had to consider economic principles of human behavior. The consideration of economic principles in addition to traditional hermeneutical methods enabled me to move seamlessly from university classroom to church pulpit. All I had to do was spell out the “Jesus” component in church settings. The various submissions I have made to LCI are a good sampling of how I do this.

Until 2011, I disconnected myself from politics as I had come to the conclusion early in my voting eligible life that politicians were all liars. Then in 2011, I ran across a 2007 video of an interview between John Stossel and Ron Paul. I could not believe that there was a politician who was saying things similar to what I say in class and church every day and this politician meant and practiced what he said. I came home and told my wife that I thought we were libertarians. She asked me what that was, and I replied that I didn’t know exactly, but I was going to do more research.

Eventually, it hit me, Ron Paul is a Christian, there must be others who are followers of Christ and who understand the importance of freedom. In 2016 I did an internet search for “Christian” and “libertarian” and found the Libertarian Christian Institute. As I started corresponding with LCI, I excitedly told my wife that I think I “found my people.” One would think that living in the land of the free and home of the brave, the ideas of freedom would be welcome everywhere especially in the church and public university. Instead, being pro-freedom in the university made one a target; I had my fair share of confrontations with left leaning faculty. In the Korean church, broadly speaking, teaching freedom made one unacceptably different. This is why I really appreciate my congregation staying with me through this narrow spiritual journey. Finding LCI was an unexpected grace from the Lord.

As a race-theorist, labels are flexible and rise and fall in importance depending on context. These days because of all of the drama and infighting in the Libertarian Party, I often self-identify as pro-freedom with responsibility (which in my mind is articulated by the label “libertarianism”). I have my beliefs and preferences but I am always open for discussion and the possibility to have my opinions improved. As long as we continue to strive to be more Christ-like in our lives, we will continue to grow in faith and maintain our walk in the Way. We know the truth through Christ, and that knowledge gives us freedom. Our freedom is the freedom to continue to grow in knowledge, to be ever better in our faithfulness and devotion to our Father in Heaven through Jesus Christ. Peace.

Source: https://libertarianchristians.com/2025/02/12/i-found-my-people-faith-race-and-the-road-to-libertarianism/