Just a single street separates Epic Church and InChrist Community Church, both in the same Fullerton neighborhood and both led by Asian-American ministers.
But when it comes to their stance on same-sex relationships, the two churches feel miles apart. One welcomes the LGBTQ community, the other views homosexuality as an affront.
The difference isn’t trivial. In a newsletter written earlier this year, the leader of InChrist Community Church urged his congregation to aggressively fight homosexuality, describing the issue as nothing less than “spiritual warfare.”
But the Rev. Kevin Doi of Epic Church sees the world differently. He says congregants who are also part of the LGBTQ community are a “gift to our church.”
“They make our church better, richer… more compassionate,” the Reverend said.
But in the world of Asian-American Christianity, Epic Church is a rarity. If you are an Asian-American LGBTQ and Christian, it’s hard to find an ethnic church in Orange County that welcomes you.
There are more than 600,000 Asian-Americans in Orange County and, as a whole, many are becoming more supportive of LGBTQ identity and same-sex relationships. Taboos are turning to tolerance in Little Saigon and other Asian-dominated communities.
But that’s not showing up at church. There are an estimated 45 Christian churches in Orange County that welcome LGBTQ members, but fewer than half a dozen of those churches are led by Asian Americans, according to The God’s Agape Love (put) Into Practice Foundation, an organization that tracks LGBTQ-friendly churches in the country.
Epic Church in Fullerton is one of those half dozen.
But, according to Doi and others in the church, the evolution wasn’t easy. And it was a journey that began with Grace Lee.
A very big thumbs up
Lee, 38, grew up in Hawaii in a Christian family, regularly attending a Korean-American church in Honolulu.
“Church was the center of my life,” she said. “My social circle was my church friends.”
Lee, who identifies as queer, said she knew she was “different” as far back as age 6. “Being that young, you don’t have a proper language,” Lee said. “You don’t know what to call it.”
For much of her life she thought she could be straight. Her church and family told her so. She devoted a dozen years to being “worthy in God’s eye,” she said, teaching Sunday school and serving in youth ministry.
“I was thinking God will change me,” Lee said. “Maybe I will just find one of the guys attractive.”
As Lee grew up she had several same-sex relationships, always hiding them from family and friends. Eventually, she said, she grew tired of living a lie.
She also came to believe that God gave her a message:
“God basically said, ‘You know what? I don’t have a problem with you,'” Lee said.
“I feel like God gave me a thumbs-up.”
More than a decade ago, after Lee had moved to Southern California, she came out in front of an entire Korean-American church in Pasadena.
The reception was mixed.
Fellow church members welcomed her and her story, Lee said. But she thought her pastor didn’t offer the same support.
The pastor encouraged Lee to continue pursuing ministry and serving in the church, she said. But Lee recalled him saying that she should remain celibate if she wanted to do so.
Lee said he offered an analogy: An active alcoholic may not serve in the church, but a recovering alcoholic can. This thinking, she said, made her uncomfortable continuing to serve in the church.
Lee left the church and, for a couple of years, she did not look back.
Growing acceptance
According to the 2015 American Values Atlas, which tracks U.S. demographic, religious and cultural changes, nearly two-thirds of Asian-Americans polled said they support same-sex marriage.
But traditionally, Asian-American churches have largely opposed same-sex marriage. Their leaders and members were prominent in their support of Prop. 8, the 2008 California law to outlaw same-sex marriage that was approved by voters but struck down by the state Suprerme Court.
Some Korean-American churches around the country left the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. after the church stopped defining marriage as strictly being between a man and a woman.
Theologically, many Asian-American churches, especially Korean and Chinese American, align with an evangelical understanding of the scripture. Those churches often refrain from discussing LGBTQ identity, said the Rev. James Kyung-Jin Lee, an associate professor of Asian-American studies at UC Irvine and an assisting priest at The Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, an LGBTQ-welcoming multicultural church.
“That’s simply not a conversation that’s allowed to happen (for many of the churches),” he said. “Part of it is the unwillingness of many church leaders to even listen to the stories of queer people in the community.”
Epic Church leader Doi said he thinks Asian-American immigrant communities, especially among the older, first generation, often view LGBTQ identities as not fitting into their understanding of gender and hierarchy. Because of this, many Asian-American LGBTQ Christians, like Grace Lee, find themselves alienated from the churches in which they grew up.
“I am not going to pit one part of me against another part of me again,” said Gary Hayashi, a gay Japanese American who grew up in an Asian-American church but now attends a non-ethnic church.
“I am not waiting for someone to tell me how to think.”
Changing a congregation
Grace Lee knew she wanted to return to church, but not to the same church.
“God wasn’t the issue,” she said. “It was the people.”
She found Epic Church through friends and decided to give it six months. She ended up staying for years, leaving in August when she moved back to Hawaii for personal reasons.
By last year, many at Epic Church knew Lee’s story. She openly discussed her sexuality in the church’s small groups and book club. But a question remained: Would she be accepted by the church as a whole?
Not everyone at the church had yet reconciled LGBTQ identity and Christianity.
“Some people were like, ‘We are not ready for this,’” said Sandra Franco, a church board member.
Grace Lee wanted to let the church and all of its members understand her experience as a queer Christian and how she can be both.
At the time, Doi was struggling with his own spiritual journey, hoping to find compatibility between the Bible, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ identity.
He supported same-sex marriage. But he thought about biblical texts, such as Genesis I and II, which seemed to define human sexuality as male and female. If that’s the case, he thought, what would that mean for LGBTQ identity?
But Doi also looked to the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament. Luke 20:35 quotes Jesus as saying “Those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage.”
That verse, Doi said, suggested that marriage is provisional, and that marriage and relationships are issues of covenant, not just procreation.
“Can gay people express covenant?” Doi asked himself. “My answer is yes.”
Doi wanted to take his church on the same spiritual journey. He did not expect everyone to come to his conclusion, but he did want people to at least see where he was coming from.
A turning point
A catalyst came from across the country.
On June 12, 2016, a gunman shot and killed 49 people and wounded dozens more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in the U.S. — and it targeted the gay community.
“When that happened, that really triggered something in me,” Grace Lee said.
She wanted to share her story with others at Epic Church.
“Timing-wise, it just worked out,” Lee said. “Kevin saw the urgency.”
Together, they prepared their church. Doi gave a series of sermons about his spiritual journey. He led a book club on “Rescuing Jesus,” a book about how LGBT Christians, women and people of color are reshaping evangelicalism.
“What the book club offered was a space for dialogue,” said Mark Redito, who attends Epic. “They were in a space where they were free to ask.”
A couple of months later, in October of last year, Lee shared her story in front of the entire church. She pleaded with church members to do more to support the LGBTQ community.
“When I got there to give my testimony, I felt really safe. I thought Kevin had my back,” Lee said. “I was at peace.”
The testimony didn’t change her experience in the church, Lee said.
“Nothing really changed (for me). Everyone treated me the way they treated me before,” Lee said.
But in many ways, Lee changed Epic Church.
Some congregants left and others continue to struggle with reconciling their theology with Lee’s story. But Epic Church began to have more dialogue on LGBTQ identity.
Susan Park, a board member of the church and Redito’s wife, said the discussions at Epic Church are why she attends. She previously attended a Korean-American church in Gardena with her parents, who tried to have her sign a petition to support Prop. 8.
Epic Church, she said, has enabled her to think and voice ideas she previously kept to herself. “Those black and white areas became more unclear and gray,” Park said.
Doi and many of the church members see the discussions — and acceptance — as necessities.
“Some (LGBTQ) people don’t have a choice,” Franco said. “They don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Uncomfortable is their normal baseline.”
Doi stresses this message to those who consider leaving the church.
“We need to have a place for those conversations,” he said. “We just want to walk with people. Our hope is to have an environment where a certain amount of vulnerability is normal.
“We are not trying to fix each other.”
