Shela Chan (she/her) is a first-year doctoral student in Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University, located in New York City. She holds a B.A. in Asian Studies from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She has done ministry work abroad in the Middle East, the Caucasus region, and Asia. During her time at seminary, she worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. She is interested in constructive moral theology that weaves together metaphysics, political theology, and psychology.
What is your research about? What led you to your research topic?
My scholastic focus resides at the nexus between an Augustinian metaphysics of love/delight, the embodied dimensions of social relationships via attachment theory and the unity of self. Across denominational lines, I noticed there is a dialogical impasse attempting to navigate the tension in sexual ethics between two bifurcations: pastoral charity and tradition, and marriage as civil function versus religious function. Conversations are trapped in a vortex that fail to engage sexuality as something that derives from dynamics of ontologically basic longings between human creatures and God. Specifically, there is a lack of complex theological reflection on love and immorality in the context of earthly embodied social relationships as grounded in a teleological future of communion with God. Discipleship and spiritual community are concepts that have largely been ignored.
With the ecclesial belonging of queer people as a primary research impetus, I am exploring how the perspectives of queer and post-/de-colonial theologies illumine the construction of minoritized subjectivities and social structures of inferiorization that hinder ecclesial communal intimacy. My goal for doctoral studies is to formulate a renewed theology of erotics that treats justice in ecclesial sexual ethics as centered around relational access to a Spirit mediated delight/gratuitous love deriving from God’s desire for creation and humans’ mirrored yearning. Rowan Williams in his treatise on sexual ethics titled “The Body’s Grace” argued insightfully that grace for the Christian believer is a transformation that depends on knowing oneself to be seen as significant, as wanted. He grounds this in a theocentric and Trinitarian theology of God’s desire for human beings as God loves God. By considering a thicker conception of desire beyond the sexual as delight and care, there is opportunity to study Williams’ insight as it broadens out to include social Christian relationships. The kind of desire to be explored is Spirit-driven delight between humans that manifests fully as love when the factor of care within secure attachment is included.
How are you identifying your calling?
I am training as a moral theologian/an ethicist, and I sense that I’ll be called to operate through interstitial spaces but reforming within a neo-Evangelical context. Theologically, my research is invested in protecting the dignity and personhood of queer people, for whom ecclesial inclusion involves diverse social goods. I would like to eventually teach theological ethics in a Christian research university, where I hope for greater opportunity to engage at the cutting-edge of research and focus more on publishing. I sense that speaking will be an important component to the dissemination of this research.
What has your experience been with PANAAWTM?
I had the privilege and honor of attending the 2023 PANAAWTM annual conference at the gracious suggestion of Dr. Kwok Pui-lan. My mentor Dr. Gina Zurlo had kindly connected us, and San Diego was an opportunity to meet. It was a transformative experience. Not only did I get to meet Dr. Kwok, a theological giant whose writings had come to shape my intellectual path, but I had the opportunity to enter a theological space unlike any other I’d entered. I was blown away by the level of support that the three generations of Asian theologians and ministers had for one another. I deeply appreciated the solidarity of the sisterhood. PANAAWTM’s mentorship program for the Ph.D. application process has been incredibly helpful for my journey. Dr. Grace Kao and Dr. Jin Young Choi gave me vitally important insights as I wrote my Statement of Purpose. Dr. Jung Choi had also been kind to make time for me. PANAAWTM has allowed me to meet other wonderful sisters such as the now Dr. Lama Htoi San Lu, with whom I’ve had insightful and constructive theological conversations.
What brings you hope and joy?
Deep spiritual community, running, and travel. Also, coffee.
The witnessing of fruitful legacies and lineages of discipleship has really brought me hope and joy for the Church. I see this in PANAAWTM. I have seen this in other ministry contexts. The beautiful bonds that exist in these spaces are what I pray to be possible for the entire body of Christ.
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