Hope Podcast: Featuring Joyce Cheng, MTS Candidate

In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Joyce Cheng, a first year MTS student. This in episode we discuss Joyce's idea of hope, her faith, and what brings her to HDS.

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: Welcome to the Hope Podcast, a podcast hosted by the Harvard Divinity School Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, where we talk to HDS students about their spiritual lives, what hope means to them, and how they work to cultivate it daily. My name is Michael Fuhrman, one of the chaplain interns at the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. Today, I sat down and had a conversation with first-year masters of Theological Studies student Joyce Cheng. Thanks for being on. We love to start just by giving you the chance to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your spiritual autobiography. 

JOYCE CHENG: Of course. So I am currently a first-year MTS student. I graduated from NYU in May of 2024. So not that long ago. Spiritual autobiography. So I grew up mostly in a small upstate New York town in Saratoga County. So I was very much around evangelical communities, whether that be with my white peers. So that would have been the majority of the population in the smaller town where I lived. 

And also, around Asian-American communities that were very heavily evangelical. I wouldn't say I was particularly churchy as a kid. I think the evangelical style of worship with the louder music and the pastor talking at you for a very long time never quite resonated with me. I feel like I did cultivate a good habit of prayer and reading scripture on my own as a kid nonetheless. But I definitely was not somebody who was in church every Sunday. 

And then when I moved to New York City for my undergrad, that's when I started exploring different Christian denominations that I felt might be more suitable to me. It honestly just started as a mid toward the end of the pandemic if that's really a thing that we're going to call it, where I walked around where I lived a lot because we couldn't really interact with other people at the time. So, I loved taking long walks around my neighborhood. 

And there were quite a few Episcopal churches by my freshman dorm at the time. So, at some point, there was just one Sunday morning where I decided, oh, that looks like a nice church. Why I go to a service there? And so, yeah, that's how I actually wound up in an Episcopal Church for the first time. Throughout my freshman year and early sophomore year of college, I was still very involved with an Asian American-like evangelical campus ministry at the time. So, I eventually, by the end of my sophomore year, made that transition into being an Episcopalian full-time, if you would. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: Absolutely. And I find that so many people here have that journey type of story as well, too. And it's always so interesting to hear then after people find themselves in a more specific spiritual home, what leads them to continue to study religion as it's both a very personal and academic affair for many of us here. So, my next question would be what brought you to HDS? And maybe why HOD'S as well? 

JOYCE CHENG: Of course. So, as I had mentioned, I was familiar with the Bible as a kid. Definitely read it like cover to cover at some point. But it was during my, I believe, freshman year of undergrad where part of the core curriculum at NYU had us in these, I guess, humanities-based classes that had history, philosophy, some theology even, and art history and all of those different things combined. 

And it was then that I was first introduced to reading scripture from a historical-critical perspective or a literary perspective as well. So, for the first time, looking at the text outside of a religious space actually allowed me to broaden my horizons a bit and remove the limits of what I imagined that the Bible had to be and what it could be. So it was that different way of looking at biblical texts that really interested me in the first place. 

Because I think, especially for those who grew up in an evangelical space, there is a lot of talk around like, oh, this is like our biblical worldview, or this is what scripture really says, and these other people are getting it wrong. So I think even from that background, I've always had a curiosity of, oh, what does the Bible actually say? And so I think that's what initially drew me to want to dig deeper. And then I wound up in the area of New Testament and early Christianity for a lot of my undergrad. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: And maybe what about that specifically is driving you to continue to do studies? Maybe what aspects of New Testament studies excite you? 

JOYCE CHENG: Of course. So, I did a lot of work in my undergrad on some of the Pauline epistles. I focused particularly on ritual and gender and how those things interact with marking social boundaries and more specifically like ethnic differences in not just the Pauline epistles, but also looking at other writings of his contemporaries in the Hellenistic, Jewish, and Greco-Roman context that he was in. 

And those texts initially interested me, because those writings are the ones that in my evangelical upbringing had been used to exclude women from leadership, to exclude LGBTQ people, not just from leadership, but I think just existing in certain church spaces. And so, I feel like hearing a lot of arguments around those passages made me want to dig more into the context of where they came from and why people use them in these particular ways to exclude or to uphold hierarchies. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: It's so fascinating and so real. I always enjoy hearing more from our peers here, how they can look back at something that feels so ancient, but point out so specifically the contemporary social ramifications of those texts, which I think we need to thank you for the work that you do and for engaging them in that way, and then also having such a people-centric view of how we now use the information we have about those texts as well too. 

So, I think it's just inspiring to hear more about you and your experiences here. The container of this podcast, more specifically as I call it, is this idea of hope and what it means, especially in a multi-religious context here at the Divinity School. And so I think we would be curious to hear in the context of your work, but also just in your own personal spiritual life, what hope means to you or how you may define it? 

JOYCE CHENG: Sure. I'd be happy to speak a little bit to the multi-religious context of HDS. This was definitely one of the aspects of this school that drew me to be here, instead of any other Divinity School or religion department. I remember when I was deciding which school to go to, I would tell my friends that I definitely am very comfortable in the Episcopal Church. I am happy with my practice. The way that religious community has formed me during undergrad was very valuable and continues to stay with me. 

However, I didn't want to be at a school that was denominationally affiliated because I always-- I think I look to be in an environment where I am challenged and pushed to constantly reevaluate my own thinking, my own beliefs, and also what the consequences of my beliefs and practices are in terms of relating to other people. So, during my undergrad at NYU, I was on the multi-faith advisory council there for two years. And I think that work helped me realize how important it is to be engaging in interfaith environments. And I think that was definitely formative to my choice of coming to HDS. 

And in terms of hope, this is obviously a very big question. I've been thinking a little bit about this. And I think if I were to say what hope is to me, hope is a habit. So, it's something that needs to be cultivated over time. I almost think of it as almost like an orientation to the world, to your daily life. And it's not-- I don't know, I feel like the way that I grew up, hope was kind of thrown around a very easy thing, along with the word faith. 

If you just believe hard enough, everything will turn out OK. And obviously, that's not exactly how the world works. And so I think the word hope has changed for me over time in the sense where I really see it as a choice that I make in my daily life, and how I decide to treat the other people around me. And I remember early on in my formation, my Anglican formation, if you will, a priest was explaining, I think both in the context of the sacraments, something like marriage or just the concept of salvation more broadly in our theology of. 

We don't really view it as the evangelical-like singular moment where, I don't know, Paul on his road to Damascus, sees the risen Christ and suddenly, changes his mind about everything. That's also not super historically accurate. But we can save that for another time. But it's like a daily practice. So, whether you implement that through prayer, or meditation, or writing, and I think just in your day-to-day interactions with other people, it's a choice that you have to wake up every day and make and choose to strive toward. 

So, it's not something that I think is intended to be easy. And I think especially given our political climate right now, hope can be particularly daunting, I think. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: And I appreciate the way you explained to that it is not always something that can be easy to have or to find or to hold. And I think a lot sometimes about the labors of hope and joy and how it takes emotional investment and often social and even as you're pointing towards political investment, to feel that sense of orientation or habit that you say hope embodies in so many ways. 

I'd be curious to ask you, when you talk about striving, what sounds like towards others in this orientation or attention you have towards hope? I'm curious how you think your days are different when you feel more connected to that orientation than not. 

JOYCE CHENG: That's a good question. I think this is where community comes in for me. So, when I'm isolating myself and not really showing up to my regular community commitments, if you will, which for me definitely is like church on Sundays. And I think now at HDS, starting to build my connections with different students in different organizational contexts as well. I really think there's this tendency to turn inward. 

Whereas I think when I'm rooted in community, I'm reminded that I'm here to serve my neighbor. I'm here to serve God. Those two things being very importantly linked together for me. I think being able to just talk to other people about their experiences reminds me that, oh, I'm just a very small part of this much bigger ecosystem, this much bigger world. And that's not to say that I don't matter or like I matter less than anybody else. 

But it's just I think that different view of seeing yourself as inherently interconnected to other people. That has definitely been a shift for me. So, this author that I really like, that's not the right way to describe her. She was a phenomenal philosopher, theologian, mystic from the 20th century. She talks about the concept of attention in a lot of her works. And I think in one of her shorter essays, if I'm remembering correctly, describes attention to the other as the greatest form of devotion that you can give. 

So that's definitely something that I've tried to cultivate as well in terms of when I'm sitting and interacting with another person, to be giving them my full presence and attention. And I think that can be particularly difficult, especially in a world with so many distractions. And we're getting news notifications every 30 seconds, and checking our emails, and all that jazz. 

So yeah, that's definitely been, I think, a bigger challenge for me that I want to continue to work on. And I think that interaction with others and presence with others definitely helps to foster a sense of hope. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: Totally. And I and I to steal Simone, words in your own to define hope as a devotion to interconnectedness, that orientation towards the other, not to take away from the self, but to recognize how embedded the self is in the other, I think is such a beautiful way to think about hope. And as you point towards the difficulty as well to recognizing that even in that hardness, how easy it can be to turn to community as a source, to revitalize that sense of hope or that sense of interconnectedness.

I think is really beautiful because it says that sometimes that labor of hope isn't necessarily one that stems from the self as much as it does from those communities that we allow ourselves to be members of in many ways, as you point towards, like the trouble of isolation and how-- sometimes that is a choice as well, too. And I always find it interesting to think through community as a space where we can lay ourselves to rest in some way and to revitalize that orientation towards hope. 

And you've shared so much, Joyce, already with us today about practices and even words that help you maintain a connection to that orientation as you describe it. But we'd be curious to know if there are any other practices, habits that you have in your day-to-day that you feel help you stay connected to that orientation or sense of hope in community as well, too. 

JOYCE CHENG: Of course. I think daily prayer is a really important thing for me. I don't do it as, I think, frequently throughout the day as ideally I would like to be. But I definitely am praying every morning and every night as well. I think, well, in addition to that, I think just going to church on Sundays, I know it might sound incredibly lame, but it is something that has anchored me for definitely, at least throughout the past four years of my life. 

I think especially when you're an undergraduate student, you're trying to figure out what your path is in life, what you're interested in doing, really trying to form a cohesive sense of identity. And I think in the midst of all of that, just being in community to worship God with my neighbors every Sunday has been, I don't know, a tremendous help of some sort. But it's also more than that. 

I think particularly from an Episcopal or Anglican perspective, the sense of Christian community is really very much present in the celebration of the mass, where it's not something that can be done on one's own. A priest is like, you can't actually consecrate the mass without laypeople present. And at the same time, I think what really drew me to Anglican liturgy was the repetition. And I think the unity that you feel in that moment where everybody is reciting the same thing, performing the same gestures. 

I think that heightens the sense of, oh, we're in this together and we're here in this moment, even though we come from all different walks of life together with the same goal. And yeah, I think there's definitely aspects of sacramental theology there where we are the body of Christ in the world. And in that moment in the mass, we are joined with Christ, with God. 

And I think being very present for that every week is definitely the main thing that roots me in hope. And I remember during undergrad, I would get asked a question a lot of, well, why are you Christian at all? Which is a difficult question, I think, particularly, for someone who's always grown up around that tradition. And I never had the evangelical coming to God experience, if you will, where there was one moment where it, all made sense to me. 

But I feel especially when it's somebody, who was talking to me because they were considering, being baptized, joining the church, or just had questions in general. I always go back to actually the importance of hope in, I think, the Christian faith, where the reason that I think I stay is because I feel connected to that ancient Christian hope that our world, no matter how fallen, how broken, can be radically transformed. And that radical transformation is not just a spiritual escape. 

And I am not reducing people who believe that theology very strongly, which was, I think, definitely what I grew up around in my evangelical circles. But the very idea, I think of bodily Resurrection that we affirm in the Creeds that we recite really emphasizes the idea that the material world is an integral part of the spiritual that can't be taken, I think, or separated from it. 

Where that idea of bodily Resurrection particularly strikes me because it then becomes, for me at least, this idea that we are now co-creators with God in this world. And we do have obligations to God and to our neighbor to alleviate suffering in this world. And I think, for me, that is part of the academic work I do, but definitely also at the root of any social causes or political causes that I find myself advocating for. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: I really appreciate the way you can maybe the word I'm looking for is braid all those together. Something that you have a deep academic relationship with, but also just if not more deep personal spiritual relationship with, and to look at the bodily Resurrection as a moment of relationship and co-conspirator almost with God, and as a way of signaling that devotion to interconnectedness. As a form of hope, I think, is just a stunning way to have all those characters that make Joyce breathe together and really help to cultivate that daily. I think is just stunning is the word that's coming to mind. 

JOYCE CHENG: Thank you. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: Well, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation with me today. I just really appreciate it/ and wish you the best throughout the rest of your-- 

JOYCE CHENG: Of course. Thank you for having me here. 

MICHAEL CURTIS FUHRMAN: Awesome. That's a wrap.