"Asian" hermeneutics

Recently, I've been toying around with the idea of an "Asian" interpretive method. Of course, the term "Asian" is necessarily reductive, but the question remains; How would we go about even looking at such a topic? It would have at its advantages already Western thought at its disposable, of which particular importance would be ethnic boundaries, feminist critique, political theory. However, these critiques are all bound up in the larger, perhaps Western, idea that "what-actually-happened-is-actually-true." What if, as Asian religions traditionally tend to do anyways, dispense with historical reality as the end-all-be-all of truth, since they may naturally be more akin and sensitive to the power of myth and narrative than a Western audience?

The question then is, where do we begin to discover what is authentically Asian? Are we looking for an "authentically" Asian, or is it something that is simply "obvious?" (I question this, because authenticity is often tied to historical verification, of which I assert, is not so pressing an issue in Asian religion) Would it be trying to mine through ancient Asian texts and apply categories found in those texts unto Western texts? (But then, "mining" the text for theological datum might also be fundamentally a "western" understanding of what texts ought to be!). Or perhaps something more like a tabula rasa approach; ask an old Chinese farmer (who already embodies the authentic Asian?) to read a text and tell him to read it back to you in his own words, and see what is most stressed and what is elided.

More so, this large question ought to be a rising question in an Asia that is embracing Christianity, particularly in China and Korea, and no doubt, North Korea when it opens up. If we do not have something ready before China is Christianized, then perhaps Asia is doomed to make the mistakes of Western Christianity all over again.

Denominational Thinking

Lately, I have been really thinking about joining a certain "denomination." I have said I have "grown up in the Church" without realizing, at least at the human level, what the "Church" is or was. I'm tired of this groundlessness. Maybe, I am just tired of wandering. I want certainty and authority.

I have been growing more and more attracted to the High Churches, yet perhaps for the wrong reasons. I find the rituals, the incense, the "religion" that Protestantism has long branded as "dead" or "irreligious" to be beautiful in its austerity and somberness to God. The awesome and holy God is sometimes forgotten in our (youth Protestantism) expression of worship.

I have entertained Catholicism, but I do not think I can force myself to believe in the theological "baggage" that it entails. Of course, there are the schismatic priests, the defiers of Tradition and Pope, but I wouldn't want to be that kind of Catholic, much preferring this quasi- nondenominationalism to war. But, I cannot deny the beauty of Mass, the communal songs (though not many sing along!) the haunting simple songs (Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!) and the procession of the crucified God. Again, though, I detect in myself an affinity towards a certain type of romantic religion, a constructed emotional religion, that I ought to expel at its root.

There is no true anchor but Christ! No other head!

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I have finished reading Meier's book, and have started Alter's, The Art of Biblical Narrative. I will try to review, or at least summarize the former, but Alter's book is really really good. :)