Backpacks for the Philippines, ‘Asian American’ Misses Diversity, Disappointment by Kansas Results

Last year Old Town Community Church in San Diego, California sent 72 backpacks stuffed with school supplies to the Philippines. This year, they’re sending 500.

In the years since, the neighborhood and congregation of about 80 attending Sunday morning worship have become home to people from several lands: Africa, Brazil, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, and “even Texas,” executive pastor Don Biadog told Baptist Press.

Old Town Community’s multi-ethnic expansion could be because of the church’s active missions programs. Its food pantry operates three times a week, and gives out about a half-million pounds of food a year, Biadog said. There’s a continual emphasis on reaching children with the gospel. And earlier this year the church for two weeks housed 82 refugees from Ukraine.

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“Asian-American” is too broad a term to encompass descendants in the U.S. of more than 20 or more Asian and Indian nations, the Pew Research Center found in its largest canvas of Asian Americans to date.

When many non-Asian Americans hear or use the pan-ethnic term, they are considering only a portion of Asia such as China, Japan or North or South Korea, not considering or being cognizant of lesser known countries such as Bhutan or Nepal, Pew said Aug. 2 in releasing its findings.

The lack of knowledge in the U.S. of Asia’s diversity challenges Asian Americans to be themselves, many respondents told Pew.
Pew’s fall 2021 study included 66 focus groups organized by 18 distinct Asian ethnic origins and fielded in 18 languages with moderators from each ethnicity.

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Pro-life advocates expressed disappointment but resolve in response to the rejection by Kansas voters of an amendment to affirm the state constitution does not protect the right to abortion.

Kansans defeated the Value Them Both Amendment by 59-41 percent Tuesday in the nation’s first statewide vote on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade ruling. In its June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the high court returned abortion policy to the states by overruling the 1973 opinion that legalized abortion nationwide.

A response to a decision by the Kansas Supreme Court, the proposed amendment said the state constitution “does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion.” The state Supreme Court had ruled in 2019 that the constitution protects the right to abortion.

The defeat of the Kansas amendment came amidst frequent actions in the post-Roe era by courts that have been both favorable and unfavorable to state bans and by the Biden administration to try to protect abortion rights.