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No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp

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

No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp

Lee Camp

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.8555 Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable. 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  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Lee C. Camp and this is no small endeavor exploring what it means to live a good life.

0:07.0

I was just so fundamentally formed by Christianity in America and a lot of the work of my adult life has been disentangling what do I want to hang on to and what do I think actually does not serve me well.

0:25.7

That's Kristen T. Lee discussing her book, We Mend with Gold, an immigrant daughter's reckoning with American Christianity.

0:33.9

What does it mean that I was made as a Chinese American person?

0:38.3

And how does that relate to my faith and my spirituality and how I interact with God?

0:43.3

We explore the contemporary complex relationship between being American, being Christian, and being an immigrant.

0:50.3

Tension is where I think life happens, and it's where we find the truest multiplicity of

0:57.2

human experiences. All coming right up. With each passing day, the stakes around the tech we use

1:03.3

keep getting higher. Is lab grown meat actually better for the world? Does cell phone bands in school

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really help kids? And how comfortable should we be

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with the idea of an AI doctor? What next TBD digs into questions like these with sharp analysis,

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by Lizzie O'Leary, whom you may know from CNN or Marketplace.

1:29.8

From the tech billionaires circling the Trump administration to whatever Elon Musk is doing this week,

1:36.0

to the rise of AI and the far-right Internet, what next TBD covers the biggest business and tech stories that are shaping our future. New episodes

1:46.3

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