Boen Wang
speaker
122 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Boen Wang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
In the moment, I'm convinced that it must be something beyond what any human is capable of. It must come from God. On the receiving end of his unconditional love, I consider being the prodigal son. For the briefest flash of a moment, I consider returning. When we were on the phone, this is how Dave ended the call. I didn't feel like I could say no. I didn't want to disappoint my white grandpa.
Amen. I talk to Dave on Saturday night. Come Sunday, it's obvious where I have to go. Quick voice memo, because I'm already late, but I'm at the church. Kind of tired, woke up at 8.30, stayed up too late last night. Already late, but going to go to this Mandarin Sunday school. We'll see how it goes.
This is the church where Dave led the Chinese fellowship, the one my parents attended, and that I attended as an infant until we moved away when I was two. What did this place mean to them? These are people who had zero experience with organized religion. What did they get from going? The Chinese Fellowship is now run by seven people.
Seven Daves, in other words, three of whom are Chinese and four of whom are white. I spoke to one of the new white Daves over the phone, who told me that I could record the service. But a few days later, while I was cooking butternut squash risotto, he called again and told me he had found a podcast called Jesus Wept.
Jesus Wept is a podcast my fiancée Grace and I make, where we analyze and, to be honest, make fun of various topics related to evangelical Christianity. We process our respective religious traumas through humor. In the most recent episode, I went to a Chinese church and recorded the service. Afterwards, Grace and I critiqued the speakers and, again, to be honest, made fun of them.
I told Grace about how one of the speakers said that because Paul writes that women shouldn't have authority over men, she won't teach men in the church. So then, basically, she is like, well, in the church, I will teach women, I will teach children, but I will not teach men, except in specific circumstances. Like what? I don't know. Change a diaper? Maybe. Doesn't she have a fucking PhD?
She has a master's in divinity, yeah, from the seminary.
Yeah.
New Dave tells me over the phone that after listening to the podcast, he's changed his mind and won't allow me to record anything in Norman, which is reasonable. I recorded a church service and made fun of it, and he doesn't want me to do the same thing to his church. In the podcast, I talk about how I don't believe in God.
And as we wrap up the conversation, New Dave says he needs my word that I won't record anything. He says, Which is kind of a weird thing to say, but I'm like, sure, you have my word. See you Sunday. When I enter the church, New Dave is waiting in the lobby. I shake his hand and tell him I'm not recording.
That was a royalty-free sound effect from freesound.org, although I do have the pink notebook I bought from Target for $3. We walk past an armed guard to the gymnasium, where the Mandarin Sunday School is held. It seems notable that the Mandarin Sunday School isn't in a dedicated classroom, but an echoey gym with a basketball court.
New Dave introduces me to a group of Chinese immigrants sitting around a folding table. They ask if I can speak Chinese. I say I can understand it okay, but not speak it that well. New Dave is like, ah, there's that phrase, ABC. And I'm like, yep, that's me, American-born Chinese. As a side note, I really hate the phrase ABC. Just call me Chinese-American.
Anyway, New Dave says that since he can't speak Mandarin, he's going to leave us to it. It's nice to be away from white people, at least for a little bit, to talk among ourselves in the language I associate with family, home, love. My parents must have really craved that when they first came here. Where else could they find a Chinese community in this small town in Oklahoma?
Someone later tells me that this church is usually the first stop for new Chinese immigrants. People from church are willing to give rides to the supermarket, furniture for apartments, help with taxes, and all sorts of essential services. My mom still uses a set of bowls that Dave got for her. When the service begins, we sing hymns in Mandarin.
Again, this is not a recording from Oklahoma, it's YouTube. The speaker, an older white guy, delivers the sermon in English, and like most sermons, it's boring. I picture my parents in these same seats, praying the same prayers, singing the same songs that I would grow up singing.
When I fly home to Pittsburgh and tell Grace about going to my parents' church and meeting Dave, they point out that maybe I'm just blaming Christianity for my own problems. Maybe Christianity is just my excuse to hate myself. It gave myself loathing as shape and structure, but it isn't the root cause. Maybe I would have hated myself no matter what.
Maybe it doesn't matter what path my dad chose at that crossroads in the Oklahoma City airport. If he never met Dave and never believed, maybe I'd still have the same self-loathing. If I grew up communist, like my parents, maybe I'd be like, ugh, I'm such a bourgeois, capitalist, worthless piece of shit. I need to write another self-criticism and do another struggle session.
Thankfully, I can answer the question of whether I'd hate myself if I hadn't been raised Christian by comparing myself with my high school friend Andrew. Andrew grew up in the same suburb of Philly as me. His parents are highly educated Chinese immigrants. We attended the same school district and have the same circle of friends.
But he was raised by atheist parents who were never interested in Christianity or church.
So I sit Andrew down and tell him that I want to conduct a science experiment where you're the atheist control group and I am the ex-Christian test subject. Okay, I understand that we have a sample size of two, but just humor me. Andrew has lived the life I always imagined, a life without church or youth group or Bible study or retreats near Lancaster out in Amish country.
Showing 61–80 of 122 · page 4 of 7
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