Navigating the Wilderness of Faith and Vocation: My Journey as a Chinese-American Psychologist and Pastor

Abstract

This article traces my journey into the field of psychology, which came after a few decades of wandering in the wilderness of career and vocational ambiguity, experimenting with roles as a social worker, clergy member, seminary student, software engineer, product manager, and consultant along the way. Seeds planted in my early faith and human development continue to anchor my professional work as a psychologist—in particular, in the area of the emotional well-being and resilience of religious leaders and in the pursuit of a global, ecumenical, and culturally decentered vision of spiritual formation and human flourishing. Speaking from my standpoint as a Chinese-American, I also share about my historical and ongoing struggles with my Evangelical identity, the deconstruction and decoupling of just world beliefs from my religious worldview, and how these processes helped shape my engagement in social justice and advocacy within the context of the manifold financial, social, political, and racial challenges that have gripped communities throughout the United States and the world in recent history.

Full text

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NAVIGATING THE WILDERNESS OF FAITH AND VOCATION
Navigating the wilderness of faith and vocation: My journey as a Chinese-American
psychologist and pastor
David C. Wang
Fuller Theological Seminary
Author Note
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David C. Wang,
Fuller Theological Seminary, 180 N. Oakland Ave. Pasadena, CA 91101.
Email: davidcwang@fuller.edu

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NAVIGATING THE WILDERNESS OF FAITH AND VOCATION
Abstract
This article traces my journey into the field of psychology, which came after a few decades of
wandering in the wilderness of career and vocational ambiguity, experimenting with roles as a
social worker, clergy member, seminary student, software engineer, product manager, and
consultant along the way. Seeds planted in my early faith and human development continue to
anchor my professional work as a psychologist—in particular, in the area of the emotional well-
being and resilience of religious leaders and in the pursuit of a global, ecumenical, and
culturally-decentered vision of spiritual formation and human flourishing. Speaking from my
standpoint as a Chinese-American, I also share about my historical and ongoing struggles with
my Evangelical identity, the deconstruction and decoupling of just world beliefs from my
religious worldview, and how these processes helped shape my engagement in social justice and
advocacy within the context of the manifold financial, social, political, and racial challenges that
have gripped communities throughout the United States and the world in recent history.

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NAVIGATING THE WILDERNESS OF FAITH AND VOCATION
My religious/spiritual journey and journey in psychology
This article traces my journey into the field of psychology, which came after a few
decades of wandering in the wilderness of career and vocational ambiguity. I am grateful to find
this vocational home, after stints as a social worker, software engineer, product manager, and
human-computer interaction consultant along the way. My identity as a psychologist today,
however, can be traced directly to my prior experiences as a pastor, which I continue to be
(though only in a part-time capacity presently). It’s fair to say that I am a psychologist today
because of what I experienced as a pastor and because of what I have experienced in the
religious communities I belonged to—both positive and negative. In fact, much of my work as a
psychologist—whether it concerns research, teaching, clinical practice, and/or speaking
engagements—continues to be grounded in the life of religious communities (e.g., Wang,
McMinn, Wood, & Lee, 2022).
From birth to college, I attended Evangelical Protestant non-denominational Chinese-
American immigrant churches. Although I was not fully aware or appreciative of it at the time,
these immigrant churches provided a safe haven for me to be formed in not just my spiritual or
religious identity, but in my cultural identity as well. Church was a context during the week
where I didn’t need to constantly adapt myself to white normativity or predominantly white
institutions and culture. It was a place of belonging where my experience as an Asian-American
was normalized and where I could be myself as a bi-cultural, spiritual, and communal being.
After religious service, we ate Chinese and American food, spoke Mandarin and English,
celebrated Christmas and Chinese New Year, played ping pong and basketball, all while
developing multi-generational friendships with peers as well as uncles and aunties—many of
whom still address me using my childhood Chinese nickname today (something that uniquely

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grounds me in a psychological space where I feel at ‘home’). I did not need to navigate model
minority stereotypes nor was I seen as a perpetual foreigner (Lee, Wong, & Alvarez, 2009)—
something that was unfortunately commonplace in educational and work contexts later in life.
Much of my public speaking and early leadership formation occurred at church because it was a
context where I wasn’t pigeonholed into roles where my contributions were relegated to the
background lending technical expertise or doing support work while others who looked different
than me led openly in the foreground.
For a time in my early young adulthood, I was a bi-vocational software engineer (during
the day) and pastor (during the evenings and weekends) and in my latter role, was deeply
engaged in pastoral counseling and inner healing ministry among college students and young
adults. It is common for people of faith to view religious leaders as their first or second option in
seeking support or treatment for mental health problems (Ellison et al., 2006) and as such, this
was my first exposure into the vast mental health needs of religious communities. Though I was
encouraged to see progress and growth among many whom I walked alongside with, I also grew
increasingly frustrated at my lack of training and capacity to offer constructive help. I knew
more could be done but I didn’t know how and this lingering frustration became one of the initial
seeds that eventually led me to pursue graduate training in counseling psychology after seminary.
Another key formative experience came when one of the young women in my congregation
confided with me about a case of sexual misconduct involving one of the senior religious leaders
in the community—an occurrence that unfortunately is all too common among religious
congregations in the United States (Chaves & Garland, 2010). The resulting process of seeing
that situation through as a young clergy member in my mid-20’s was both emotionally painful
and religiously disorienting as I witnessed and navigated various forms of institutional resistance

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alongside religiously-themed justifications and rationalizations, as religious leaders and
community members effectively chose to protect the religious institution even though such a
course of action betrayed the values and teachings of the religion they professed and left this
young woman to sort through her woundedness alone.
Religious Deconstruction and Questing
This negative experience initiated a process of religious questioning, deconstruction and
differentiation in me that persisted over a decade, shaping my scholarship and research interests
both in seminary (where I wrote and published my thesis on St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of
the Soul, c.f. Wang, 2011) and later on in my early career as a psychologist (e.g., Porter, Hall &
Wang, 2017). My religious questing at that time revolved around a central question that remains
salient in my current professional endeavors in research, teaching, and clinical practice: How can
people of faith be capable of such dissonance between their professed beliefs and embodied
values? In more recent history, much has been written related to this question as it pertains to
problematic trends within segments of American Evangelicalism and its growing associations
with both nationalism and politics (e.g., Butler & Sharkey, 2021). Unfortunately, these trends
can infiltrate faith-based academic institutions, leading to systemic and implicit bias that stifle
non-majority voices and perspectives (Fort & Watson, 2021). My sincere hope is for there to be
a means by which people of faith can meaningfully work towards equity and inclusion without
foreclosing on their religious/spiritual identity or practice. Even more, I wonder if it might it be
possible for people of faith to engage in resistance as a means or indicator of their spiritual
renewal? And so, my continued interest and work in this area (e.g., Wang, 2021), which I will
detail more later in this paper, has shifted towards a corresponding concern of vital importance:

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What can be done to address this dissonance among people of faith in support of both spiritual
renewal and the betterment of society?
What brought me back initially from my season of religious questing and differentiation
was a particular transformative spiritual experience. While I was traveling for predoctoral
internship interviews, I had visited a Pentecostal spiritual community (c.f. Porter et al., 2021) for
a few hours of prayer prior to my flight back home and experienced a supernatural encounter
with God in which the pain and loss associated with my religious deconstruction were validated
and relationally held. Up until that point, my religious questing was for the most part only
cognitive and theoretical in nature and in that moment, it became relationally embodied in the
form of a spiritually and emotionally corrective experience. Perhaps somewhat akin to the book
of Job in the Bible, I had never attained a definitive ‘answer’ to the question of pain and
suffering; instead, I received the experience of having my pain witnessed and held by the God
who suffered alongside and before me. And on this side of heaven/the afterlife, that was enough
for me to reengage and proceed on my spiritual journey.
Trauma, Spirituality, and the Just World Hypothesis
Another influence that has shaped my spirituality was my clinical and research training in
trauma and PTSD. There is something about experiencing trauma firsthand or bearing witness to
the trauma of others that can be uniquely disorienting towards one’s religious beliefs or
worldview (Wang, Strosky, & Fletes, 2014). While administering evidence-based trauma
therapies such as Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT; Resick & Schnicke, 1992) as a
psychology trainee and predoctoral intern in hospital settings, I remember experiencing several
moments when I found myself in need of receiving insights from treatment as much as my
clients did. This was especially true when I engaged in cognitive restructuring interventions

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targeting the just world hypothesis (i.e., that the world is orderly, predictable, and just and
therefore, people receive what they deserve—with good things happening to good people and
bad things happening to bad people) among trauma survivors. Although origins of the just world
hypothesis are varied depending on the individual, moral and religious teachings seem to be a
common source, especially among highly religious individuals such as myself (Hafer & Sutton,
2016). My own endorsement of just world beliefs needed to be unpacked both psychologically
as well as theologically—something I was able to do with the accompaniment of a Roman
Catholic nun who I met with for spiritual direction throughout graduate school. Our
conversations (which deeply engaged not only my experiences, but also my theology) helped me
reconstruct a Christian spirituality that was sufficiently robust and nuanced to contain my own
experiences as well as the experiences of others I bore witness to as a therapist—one that took
seriously the reality that while one should continue to do good, work hard, and live in integrity,
life is often tragic and chaotic, where good things often times don’t happen to good people and
where bad things often reflect little to nothing on the character or the choices of an individual.
This decoupling of the just world hypothesis from Christian spirituality opened the door
for a different kind of engagement with social justice and advocacy. My implicit God image of
an emotionally-detached Being who merely offered moralistic platitudes or rational explanations
to justify pain and injustice gave way to an incarnate God who struggles against and suffers
injustice alongside humanity as Wounded Healer (Nouwen, 1979). This incarnate God lived in a
world where much of humanity’s pain and tragedy had less to do with the isolated/individual
moral choices we made and more to do with the unpredictability of life, the circumstances and
privileges we were born into, and the consequences of choices made by institutions and social
groups to perpetuate their self-interest. And this continues to be the world we live in today. And

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this is the world that holds the narratives of those I live and work with, my own narrative, as well
as the narrative of the historical Christian faith—starting with the life of Jesus. According to
Christian tradition, Jesus was born in a manger as a child of refugees who fled race-based
persecution and genocide in their homeland, which was instigated by the oppressive leadership
of a foreign power. In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus’ first request is for God’s kingdom to come and
for His will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (New International Version, 1978, Matthew
6:10). Such a request presupposes that God’s kingdom has not come (at least not in its fullness)
and God’s will is not being done on earth as it is in heaven. This presupposition is crucial as it
validates the injustice in the world around us and invites us to participate in its liberation as one
who suffers alongside both God and fellow humankind. I believe this presupposition also helps
differentiate the Christian faith that has inspired selfless sacrifice for the good of others (e.g.,
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) from the theologies that have “glorified and provided sacred
validation for the perpetuation of oppressive systems for persons and communities on the
margins (Rambo, 2010, p.5).” Walter Brueggemann (2014) adds:
“We (Christians) live in a bourgeois cocoon of niceness and anything that breaks out of that
is very threatening and disruptive to people. We have to work towards having honest speech
with each other. When we have honest speech we have to speak out about the things that are
unjust and unfair. We need a more honest and abrasive speech to bring our talk into
connection with our social reality. Any intent to curb that kind of speech is a desire to not
have reality pointed out to us.”
Implications on Early Career Scholarship
Together, these religious/spiritual experiences and values have shaped the content as well
as the process of my scholarship over my early career as a psychologist. For example, drawing

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on the sentiments above from Brueggemann, I have begun to explore the impact of experiential
avoidance (i.e., that desire to not have reality pointed out) on religious practice. In one study, we
identified longitudinal associations between religious exploration, experiential avoidance, and
virtue (Jankowski et al., 2022) while another longitudinal study highlighted the mediation effect
of experiential avoidance on the relationship between prayer and mental health (Lowe, Wang, &
Chin, 2022). These findings bring about an emerging empirical backdrop to my belief that
authentic Christian spirituality (as modeled so well by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) is one
that ultimately moves us closer to the reality of ourselves, of others, and of the world—even if
that reality is uncomfortable or difficult to accept. In contrast, when the Christian religion is
instrumentalized as a means to avoid individual and social reality, not only are there spiritual
implications but also implications on both personal (e.g., Ano & Vasconcelles, 2004) and social
(e.g., Jankowski et al., 2022) well-being.
One particular area of emerging research interest concerns the interrelatedness of spiritual
flourishing and intercultural dispositions and the implications of this interrelatedness on the
development and training of future religious leaders. Arguably, at least within the Christian
tradition, one’s relationship with God can be rightly understood as fundamentally an intercultural
relationship. God is not an American. It follows, then, that maturity or growth in one’s
relationship with God involves not only the cultivation of certain relational virtue or character
dispositions (e.g., humility), but also the development of relational postures or capacities with
others who are different than oneself (e.g., cultural humility). Accordingly, some of our recent
work investigated the longitudinal associations of compassion, social justice and
authoritarianism among future religious leaders (Jankowski et al., 2022) as well as the virtues

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(i.e., compassion and humility) predictive of social justice and diversity commitments among
seminary faculty (Hydinger et al., in press).
My religious/spiritual values have also shaped the process of my scholarship as well.
Like many other friends and colleagues (religious or not), I have been troubled by the increasing
social and political polarization in the United States, which has shaped American Christian
religious communities (and by extension, American Christian spirituality) as well. Racial
segregation among American churches is prominent, with 85% of Christian congregations in the
US being comprised of at least 90% of one racial group; such segregation facilitates in-group
bias, negative stereotyping and dehumanization of out-group members, as well as a dismissal of
contradictory evidence of out-group stereotypes (Emerson, 2020). In response to this, I have
approached research and scholarship as a context for bridgebuilding. Over the past seven years,
I have led a series of research grants funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the
Templeton Religious Trust where we are conducting empirical as well as theological research
into spiritual maturity and flourishing. What excites me about this work is that is creates
contexts for bridge building across religious traditions—to date, we have assembled a team of 18
North American seminaries representing Eastern Orthodox, Episcopal, Evangelical, Mainline
Protestant, Historically Black, and Roman Catholic traditions for this collaborative work. And in
future phases of the project, we are expanding the scope of this work globally, to cultivate a
culturally-decentered global vision of Christian virtue and spiritual flourishing. We are also
aiming to explore collaboration across other global faith traditions (e.g., Islam, Buddhism, etc.
…) to foster interfaith dialogue, collaboration, and peacebuilding. In this way, the process
through which this research is conducted (and not just the outcomes of the research) can
facilitate the very same outcomes (e.g., spiritual maturity and flourishing) that are being studied.

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Applications to Psychology: Leadership & Clinical Practice
As the Cliff and Joyce Penner Chair for the formation of emotionally healthy leaders at
Fuller Theological Seminary, my academic and applied work focuses on the holistic formation of
religious leaders, inclusive of the formation of emotional health and resilience alongside the
leader’s intellectual and spiritual formation. In addition to the typical teaching and advising
duties associated with clinical psychology faculty, I also help the seminary explore curricular and
co-curricular interventions (particularly those that engage in psychoeducation and impart
practical emotional coping skills) to support the current and long-term emotional well-being and
resilience of students, faculty, and staff. I also work alongside colleagues to re-examine faculty,
staff and student policies and resources so that the organization as a whole can be more trauma-
informed. I am grateful to be employed by a religious institution that views this kind of work as
integral to its mission—a sentiment that is supported by the research literature, which speaks of
the problem of clergy attrition due to burnout and other forms of emotional challenges
(Proeschold-Bell et al., 2015). My current position represents the convergence of many of my
personal and professional vocational roles and interests and provides a platform to help address
some of the systematic challenges that hinder the flourishing of religious/spiritual leaders and
communities both here in the United States as well as abroad.
I also continue to maintain a small private clinical practice, where a good proportion of
my clinical work is with religious leaders, many of which are navigating trauma and emotional
wounds (within the context of their religious communities) along with grief and questions of
meaning and existence. I tend to hold my multiple vocational identities (as professor, clinical
psychologist, clergy) openly and fluidly in my clinical work and for many, it is the fact that I
continue to participate in religious leadership that brings them to my clinical practice. Though I

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am careful to respect and relationally hold the varied religious beliefs of the religious leaders that
I work with, I also readily engage them in theological questions and topics. These questions are
almost always initiated by the client and very often are directly (or indirectly) related to their
presenting concern. Among many of highly religious clients, I find that more often than not,
engaging their faith and theological beliefs is a necessary step towards a robust assessment and
engagement of their mental health struggles. However, doing so is also potentially fraught with
challenges, particularly as it applies to transference and/or countertransference dynamics. Case
(1997) outlines several potential sources of countertransference among religious therapists and I
am particularly mindful of two potential forms of countertransference in my clinical work with
fellow religious leaders: 1) the sibling complex dynamic, which engenders excessive agreement
with the client or loose interpretations because of commonalities in religious background, and 2)
the ‘my way is Yahweh’ dynamic in which the therapist poses as the expert in spiritual matters
instead of recognizing the full spectrum of diverse opinions and interpretations about specific
religious issues.
Applications to Psychology: Training
I attended a R1 public university for my doctorate in counseling psychology and though I
am both grateful and satisfied with my training experience overall, I don’t remember receiving
much (if any) explicit guidance on the role of religion and spirituality in psychological research
or in clinical practice. Furthermore, because there were no faculty in my department that had
research interests or background in the psychology of religion, I didn’t have access to mentorship
or coursework to pursue my strong interests in this area. The closest that I came to this kind of
training was some limited instruction in mindfulness-based clinical interventions, but the practice
of mindfulness (as it was imparted to me) was almost entirely disconnected from its original

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religious context. All of this notwithstanding, I also want to note that I felt that my religious
background was acknowledged and respected by my mentors and supervisors throughout
graduate school. In fact, what was most helpful for me was to engage in informal conversation
with supervisors and mentors about spirituality and our religious backgrounds (over the course of
our work together, outside of formal supervision) and to observe how these mentors carried these
conversations with respect and care even though our religious beliefs were different and, in some
cases, even though my own religious tradition had a history of marginalizing members within the
groups they identified with. This kind of modeling of character and professionalism made an
indelible mark on me; it is something that I strive to emulate both personally and professionally.
I believe there are several areas where graduate training and education in psychology can
help students more thoughtfully integrate their religious/spiritual identities into their research and
clinical work. A natural starting point could be diversity/multicultural psychology classes, where
religion and spirituality can be integrated into the curriculum as one (of many) salient
dimensions of identity that can potentially shape transference and countertransference dynamics,
barriers to seeking help, the language and articulation of symptoms and presenting concerns,
and/or the larger meaning-making frameworks from which clients make sense of their own
experiences. Moreover, there is a robust empirical literature on R/S constructs such as religious
coping (both positive and negative), prayer, forgiveness, as well as spiritual struggles and their
implications on mental health and well-being. Evidence-based psychotherapies have also been
adapted and contextualized to become both culturally as well as spiritually-integrated, such as
Culturally Adapted Spiritually Oriented Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (Wang
et al., 2016); such work can enhance and expand the reach of well-established evidence-based
therapies for even more diverse clients from both western and non-western cultural contexts.

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Finally, when religion is addressed in training curriculum, special attention should be
placed on highlighting diverse global religious traditions, especially those that are often-
misunderstood and marginalized within the United States. And when the Christian religion is
addressed, it should be done with a global and ecumenical perspective in mind, recognizing that
the vast majority of self-identified Christians in the world live outside of the United States and
such individuals may understand and embody the Christian religion differently than it is here.
Indeed, even within the United States, Christianity is embodied through diverse means as well
but the implications of this reality tends to be underdeveloped within the literature (Jones et al.,
in press). This latter point is especially crucial for Christian faith-based psychology training
programs (which I sincerely believe have an important place in the psychological training
ecosystem), so as to avoid advancing an understanding or embodiment of Christianity that
reinforces white normativity and contributes to the very inequalities that neither our field nor our
historical faith condones.

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