Dr. Julius-Kei Kato

Associate Professor

Phone: 4535
Email: jkato@uwo.ca
Website: https://jkato.kingsfaculty.ca/

Julius-Kei Kato is associate professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at King’s College-Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, where he teaches courses on the New Testament, Religious Pluralism, and Spirituality, among others. He has done graduate studies in Jerusalem (Hebrew University); Rome, where he obtained a Licentiate in Sacred Scriptures (S.S.L.) from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in 1998; and Berkeley-California where he received a Ph.D. in Systematic & Philosophical Theology (with a focus in hermeneutics) from the Graduate Theological Union in 2006. He did his undergraduate studies and later taught as Assistant Professor at the Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. Among his published works are How Immigrant Christians Living in Mixed Cultures Interpret Their Religion (2012) and Religious Language and Asian [North] American Hybridity (2016). Both works deal with how hybridity in a globalized world can serve as a hermeneutical lens to understand religion-spirituality.

Facebook: JK Kato-Studying the Human Quest for Depth and Transcendence. I occasionally post things relevant to the study of religion and spirituality. https://www.facebook.com/jkkato11

Twitter: @jkkato11

Instagram: jkkato11

Blog: JKK’s Pensieve: Spiritual but not-and yet Religious. http://spiritual-notandyet-religious-jkk.blogspot.com/ 

Education

• Ph.D. (2006) - Systematic & Philosophical Theology (focus on Hermeneutics) - Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, USA
• S.S.L. (1998) - Licentiate in Sacred Scriptures (focus on Synoptic Gospels and Acts) - Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome, Italy. Also studied at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
• B.A., B.Ed. (1993) - Theology/English/Education - Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan / Don Bosco College, Canlubang, Philippines

Teaching

• RS2202 The New Testament
• RS2211 Paul the Apostle: Follower or Founder?
• RS2212 One Jesus Many Gospels
• RS2218 Introduction to Christianity
• RS2180 Spiritual Quests and Popular Culture
• RS2267 Spiritual but not Religious?
• RS3180 Censored Scriptures
• RS3452 Globalization, Spirituality and Justice
• RS4400 Religious Pluralism

Research

My major academic interests are (1) Christianity’s founder, Jesus: What’s the history behind this figure? How has he been understood in history?; (2) the early Christian movement – its history and literature; (3) the study of our contemporary context of globalization in which different cultural and religious worlds encounter and mix (I refer to this as “hybridity”) and what that situation may mean for the future; (4) new trends in religion-spirituality among young adults such as “Spiritual but not Religious” (SBNR), Religious “Dones” (people who are “done” with religion), Religious “Nones” (people who have no religious affiliation), Multiple Religious Belonging, among others.

In my 2012 book How Immigrant Christians Living in Mixed Cultures Interpret Their Religion: Asian-American Diasporic Hybridity and Its Implications for Hermeneutics, I described how the experience of being simultaneously situated in different worlds (hybridity) influences how one interprets one’s religious-spiritual traditions. There, I also expressed the conviction that such hybridity, which is becoming increasingly common in a globalized world, is actually an important key in making religions less toxic and exclusionary and more inclusive and committed to peace.

I have also applied these insights more specifically to the New Testament and to other theological themes. These efforts have resulted in my second monograph entitled Religious Language and Asian American Hybridity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

• "Looking for God in the complexities of Filipino migration and diaspora: Theology and Filipino cultural identities in a globalized world." In G.T. Cruz (Ed.) Catholicism in migration and diaspora: Cross-border Filipino perspectives (pp. 19-31). Routledge, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003282310

• "What has hybridity got to do with ecology? What Christian-Buddhist hybridity-as-hermeneutical-lens can suggest to the theological conversation on ecology." Buddhist-Christian Studies, 42, 105–117 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1353/bcs.2022.0005

• “Luke-Acts as Scripture Speaking From and To Migration.” In The Church and Migration: Global (In)Difference, edited by Michael Attridge, Darren Dias, Jaroslav Skira, Gerard Mannion, chapter 3. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2021.

• “Why Read the Bible in a Secular Age? An Unapologetic Apologia for the Importance of Biblical Studies Today.” The Fourth R: A Journal for Religious Literacy, Volume 33, No. 4 (July-August 2020): 17-20.

• “How do We Interpret the Beatitudes?” The Bart Ehrman Blog: The History and Literature of Early Christianity, June 24, 2020. https://ehrmanblog.org/how-do-we-interpret-the-beatitudes-guest-post-by-julius-kei-kato/.

• “The Necessary Inner Liberative Dimension: An Asian North American Perspective on How Paul Might Speak to Migrant Workers’ Adversities.” Critical Theology, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Fall 2019): 9-16.

• “What Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter Can Teach Us about the Relevance of Biblical Studies.” Published Nov. 16, 2019 in Asian American Theological Forum (AATF) (VOL. 6 NO. 2), ISSN 2374-8133.

• “The Pathos of Mark’s Jesus and the Pathos of Migrant Life: Migration as a Source for Theology and Biblical Interpretation.” In Migration and Religion: Negotiating Sites of Hospitality, Resistance, and Vulnerability, edited by Andrea Bieler, Isolde Karle, HyeRan Kim-Cragg, and Ilona Nord, 201-16. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2019.

• “Toward an Asian North American Liberationist Hermeneutics.” In The T&T Clark Handbook to Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics, edited by Uriah Kim and Seung Ai Yang. London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2019.

• Religious Language and Asian American Hybridity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

• “Epistemic Confidence, Humility and Kenosis in Interfaith Dialogue.” In Interfaith Dialogue: Global Perspectives, edited by Edmund Chia, chapter twenty. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016.

• “Interpretation.” In Asian American Religious Cultures [2 Volumes], edited by Jonathan H.X. Lee, Jane Naomi Iwamura, Fumitaka Matsuoka, Edmond Yee and Ronald Nakasone, 63-74. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2015.

• “The Prophetic Call of Narrative Forms of Theology: Narrative Theology, Asian Tendencies and Roman Emphases.” East Asian Pastoral Review 51 (2014) 1, pp. 1-24.

• How Immigrant Christians Living in Mixed Cultures Interpret Their Religion: Asian-American Diasporic Hybridity and Its Implications for Hermeneutics. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2012.