259: Kristin T. Lee: An Immigrant Daughter’s Reckoning with Faith and Identity

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Apr 27, 2026

Kristin T. Lee, a primary care physician and author, reflects on being a Chinese American navigating faith and identity. She recounts immigrant church life, code-switching, and questioning inherited American Christianity. Conversations touch on cultural blindspots, community care vs. scarcity, reimagining theology through diverse lenses, and the healing metaphor of kintsugi.

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ADVICE

Explore Diverse Christian Traditions To Broaden Theology

Do explore other faith traditions and Black Christian practices to break white male theological monopoly.
Lee credits Black church witness for showing faithful critique and inspiring her to integrate Chinese American identity with faith.

ANECDOTE

Family WWII Trauma Clashed With US History Lessons

As a child Lee felt dissonance learning US-centered WWII history while knowing her grandfather's suffering under Japanese occupation in Hong Kong.
That absence of her family's story produced cognitive dissonance about empathy and historical representation.

ANECDOTE

Primary Care Revealed Hidden Family Struggles

As a primary care physician Lee sees patients' hidden struggles and family secrets, which humanized common suffering for her.
Caring for multiple generations revealed how secrecy stunts relationships and drove her toward vulnerability.

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What happens when we question the faith that formed us?

Dr. Kristin T. Lee, physician and author of We Mend with Gold: An Immigrant Daughter’s Reckoning with American Christianity, reflects on her journey as a Chinese American navigating faith and identity in the immigrant church of her youth. In this conversation, she explores the beauty and complexity of immigrant communities, the unconscious bias that can undermine true belonging, and the courageous work of reconstructing a more authentic and life-giving spirituality. Together, we consider what it means to pursue faith and community in a fractured world.

Key Ideas:

Embrace Complex Identity Authentic living begins by integrating, not erasing, the contradictions that exist between one's culture, faith, and personal history.

Question Inherited Faith Honest spiritual growth often means examining what we’ve been taught and discerning for ourselves how those ideas might lead to true flourishing.

Redefine What’s “Normal” Cultural norms and unconscious bias often hide power and privilege, and naming them opens the door to deeper healing and justice.

Practice Honest Community Flourishing relationships depend on vulnerability, where hidden pain can be shared and transformed in community.

Resist the Endless Climb The pursuit of the American Dream can rob us of true meaning and purpose if we don’t also consider the people it leaves behind.

Find Beauty in Brokenness Like kintsugi, a meaningful life is not about avoiding fractures, but allowing them to be mended into something more whole and honest.

Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for abridged episode with Kristin T. Lee

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No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor

Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp

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