A Pastor’s Second Call

If you drove down Filbert Street in Center City Philadelphia in February 2025, you might notice a few things. The street is not very wide. There’s a train station. And a large, boarded-up building, surrounded by fencing — it used to be a Greyhound Bus terminal. A sign on a pedestrian walkway says “Fashion District.”

Soon, you’d see an “All Traffic Must Turn Left” sign. And since you are traffic, you turn left — and quickly realize you’re in Chinatown. Make another left to Arch Street, and you’ll find Chinese characters on almost every storefront, even on “The Bank of Princeton.” On nearby Race Street, there’s a historical marker that reads:

Philadelphia Chinatown
Founded in the 1870s by Chinese immigrants, it is the only “Chinatown” in Pennsylvania. This unique neighborhood includes businesses and residences owned by, and serving, Chinese Americans. Here, Asian cultural traditions are preserved and ethnic identity perpetuated.

But remember Filbert Street and that boarded-up bus terminal? In summer 2022, the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia 76ers announced that they wanted to build an 18,500-seat new arena right there, taking up a third of the Fashion District (a shopping mall formerly known as The Gallery), sitting directly above the train station, connecting to the old Greyhound terminal, and removing Filbert Street from the city grid. At the time, the bus terminal was in use, not fenced off — isn’t it funny how things can sometimes work out just how billionaires want them to?

Residents, especially those from nearby Chinatown, almost immediately raised concerns. Two Pennsylvania-based organizations — the Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance and Asian Americans United — formed a coalition to oppose the building of the arena; about 50 other organizations soon joined. A 2023 survey by the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation found that 93% of business owners and 94% of residents opposed the arena, citing concerns about gentrification, parking, traffic congestion, the deterioration of Chinatown’s culture, and increasing rent and displacement.

Some faith leaders, eager for the jobs new construction might provide their congregants, supported the arena. Many others, including clergy from Black, mainline, and Catholic churches, joined the coalition to protect Chinatown — even though most of their congregations weren’t located there. They were allies. But they weren’t motivated by immediate existential threats to their community.

And then, there was Rev. Wayne Lee.

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A journey toward justice

WAYNE LEE IS pastor of the English-speaking ministry of the Chinese Christian Church and Center. He is a self-described “super introverted” pastor who, until about 2020, wasn’t thinking about the church’s civic responsibility. He believed that the church should just focus on preaching “the gospel.” He does not fit neatly into common assumptions about justice-oriented pastors. His church, despite its more progressive social positions on immigration and racial equity, is theologically conservative (for example, it does not ordain women as pastors), and he’ll tell you so, unprompted. And yet, there he was, in July 2023, at a press conference of arena opponents, telling Councilmember Mark Squilla, whose district includes Chinatown: “[T]his project does not have the support of your constituents. ... Hold true to your word. You said if the community doesn’t want it, then the arena won’t happen. ... The community does not want it.”

That’s a journey for someone who, not that long ago, was in many ways against the church’s involvement in justice issues.

After graduating from seminary in 2013, Lee interned at Chinese Christian Church and Center, whose presence in Philadelphia’s Chinatown dates to the 1940s. His parents are Taiwanese immigrants, and he specifically wanted to serve in a local church within the Chinese context. “A lot of Chinese American Christians leave the Chinese heritage church. I felt I at least understood the Chinese immigrant perspective,” Lee said. “And so I was like, I want to work in the Chinese church and hopefully do some bridge building.”

His church has a Mandarin-speaking congregation, a Cantonese-speaking congregation, and the English-speaking congregation that Lee pastors. He believes the Mandarin congregation might be 85% blue collar; as for the English congregation, on the other hand, he said, “Swing a cat and you’ll hit a master’s” — about a third have master’s degrees.

Most church members attend only one service; there is very little overlap. “We’re predominantly Chinese,” he said. “But we’re [also] one of the most multicultural churches in the city, because you have cultural differences depending on where you’re from.” Pastoring in this context uniquely prepared Lee for conflict. “A Hong Kong immigrant is different than a Beijing immigrant, which is different than a Fuzhou immigrant. There are differences in their culture and how they approach things.”

For his first few years on staff, Lee was immersed in navigating internal church life — Sunday school, youth ministry, preaching twice a month. I asked how involved he was in civic life during his first seven years, and he quickly answered, “Not at all.”

Things began to shift for him in 2020, following protests in response to the murder of George Floyd. He points to the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, during which six of the eight women killed were of Asian descent, as a key moment. The shootings were a catalyst of the Stop Asian Hate movement, but Lee noticed that as the movement developed, Black leaders would ask, “Where you guys been for the past eight years?” Lee pointed to cultural reasons behind Chinese American hesitance to publicly oppose issues like racial injustice, and he added that it’s also an understandable result of living under an authoritarian regime: “For immigrants from China, you don’t say anything. You get arrested [there] if you do that.” But then he asked himself, “Why would I think that a system created by sinful people would somehow be without sin?” He started reading about redlining, mass incarceration, and other issues that impacted Black Americans and realized that his faith required him to engage with social issues.

“I can’t love a community without engaging with the powers that be that are affecting the community.”

Roots in racism

PHILADELPHIA’S CHINATOWN HAS roots in the racism of the American West, which drove Chinese laborers east. Anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. eventually culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prevented Chinese immigrants from becoming American citizens and outlawed Chinese immigration. It wasn’t repealed until 1943. Out of necessity, Philadelphia’s Chinatown, like many other Chinatowns around the country, became self-contained.

By the 1960s, Chinatown had grown in population and in square footage but also suffered urban neglect. And yet, residents had to fight to preserve even their small section of the city. They organized against the city’s plan in the 1960s and 1970s to build an expressway that would split Chinatown and destroy Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church and School; a federal prison proposed in 1992; a 2000s plan for a new baseball stadium in Chinatown; and a 2010s plan to build a casino just outside the neighborhood. Most of those proposals were entirely nixed.

So, the proposed arena, officially referred to as 76 Place at Market East, was not the first time Chinatown has been under threat. But it was the first major fight since Lee became a pastor there. Because there were few, if any, local Chinese pastors involved in the effort to stop the arena, he felt like he had to figure things out by himself.

But while it may be true that Lee was one of the few Chinese pastors involved in efforts to stop the arena, he was certainly not the only Chinese Christian there. One of them happens to work in Lee’s church.

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More than a neighborhood

HARRY LEONG, DIRECTOR of the “Center” of the Chinese Christian Church and Center and president of the Philadelphia Suns — a volunteer basketball team he has run since 1989 — remembers all the fights to protect Chinatown. In fact, he grew up next door to the Chinese Christian Church and Center’s main building and remembers being at protests of the expressway as a young child. “The cry for us was, ‘Save our church and school!’” But then, with a smile, he added, “It wasn’t my church, and it wasn’t my school.” The larger picture was the effort to save his community, where Leong has lived his entire life.

This, he says, is largely thanks to the example set by his predecessor as center director — a white woman named Maribelle “Mitzie” Mackenzie, who spent six decades working with the church and engaging in the life of Chinatown. “If not for her,” Leong said, “I’d be in [the] suburbs. I wouldn’t even be in faith, probably. ... God has placed me here for a reason. And I’m going to care for my neighbors.”

During this latest effort to protect Chinatown, Leong attended Save Chinatown Coalition meetings every week. “The oldest grocery store in Chinatown is Tuck Hing. It’s a small grocery store right across the street from our church. Kids go there to buy candy, families buy their vegetables and products and things.” Would the people commuting to Sixers games patronize Tuck Hing? “No way,” Leong said. “They want something fast, they wanna grab their thing and go. So that’s why it hit me early on.”

This is not an unfounded fear: When a new arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals was built in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown, the Chinese population there shrank precipitiously. D.C.’s Chinatown became less Chinese. And recently the Wizards and Capitals threatened to move to Arlington, Va. — what would stop the 76ers from likewise moving out when being near Chinatown no longer served them?

One of the lead organizers of Philadelphia’s Save Chinatown Coalition, Jenny Zhang — who attends Renewal Presbyterian Church, a Korean-led church with a campus that meets in Chinatown — expressed concerns about the fact that the arena, built on top of a train station, would keep people inside and not bring business outside. “Chinatown was the only place where I felt like I could see my parents relax — or where I felt not out of place. They know how to cut my hair. They have groceries that my parents had in China, their homeland. The number of times I’ve heard my parents go to Chinatown and be like, ‘Hey, long time no see’ — the people make Chinatown special. It’s the relationships. It’s the community. It’s the culture. It’s the history. Maybe some signs will still be in Chinese, but the people will be gone.”

“Churches in general really care about their flock,” Leong said, “but they don’t really care about their neighborhood.” So, Leong was especially encouraged when Lee, his pastor, joined the effort to protect Chinatown.

As Zhang encouraged her Christian community to join the coalition against the arena, she was thankful for Harry Leong. “He still has such a deep commitment and love for the community. I feel like it’s just what we’re called to do as Christians.”

Adding his voice

ASIDE FROM LEONG, most members of the Chinese Christian Church and Center don’t live in Chinatown. This may in part be due to expense: In 2022, Debbie Law told WHYY radio that her family had to move the variety store they ran for 35 years because their landlord tripled their rent when the proposed arena was announced. But it’s also likely many more well-off members of the church have chosen the suburbs.

Still, Chinatown remains home for many Chinese people in greater Philadelphia. Lee said that even though many of his members are not Chinatown residents, they still come for tax preparation, haircuts, groceries, restaurants, dentists, and so on. “It’s still a precious place for immigrants, especially immigrants, to be like, ‘This is a place where I can live and work and play and speak my language.’”

The effort to protect the community for all it still holds is why people such as Lee showed up at city council meetings, press conferences, and interfaith clergy meetings — despite internal hesitations. “I was taught that you can’t do ministry with these people — they compromise, or they don’t preach the gospel, or they gave up on inerrancy of scripture,” Lee said. “That took some work in my head to be like, should I even stay in this environment?” But, realizing there were few Asian Christians in the space at all, he chose to stay to add his voice.

Despite years of community organizing against the arena, the project received support from Philadelphia’s new mayor, Cherelle Parker, and it was approved by the city council in December 2024.

Then, in January, plans for the arena were cancelled. Just like that. And with no apology to Chinatown.

Apparently, NBA commissioner Adam Silver met with the owners of the 76ers and convinced them — perhaps because of the NBA’s new TV deal with NBCUniversal, owned by Comcast — to remain where they were and build a new arena in partnership with Comcast Spectator, Comcast’s sports and entertainment division. Was this because Silver heard the cries of Chinatown? We may never fully know: The NBA did not respond to Sojourners’ request for comment.

For his part, Lee was initially cynical, feeling like his work was for nothing. The coalition never considered engaging with Silver, and then he swooped in. But upon reflection, Lee thought organizers at least had some impact: “My hope is that ... maybe at the back of their minds within city hall, [they’ll think] ‘If you want to do something like this, get ready for press conferences, get ready for lots of meetings, get ready to stay late and listen to testimony.’” He continued, “I feel like that does make a tangible difference. We’re going to flood your offices with calls. We’re going to stand outside your office and ask to meet with you.”

Lee sounds like a full-on activist. But still a hesitant one. He said he was even hesitant to do this interview. But he sees his work with Chinatown as evangelical — he’s doing what he now believes the church is supposed to do. He’s looking for help, too. “I want to learn from people that are already doing this,” and he especially means people in his Asian Christian context.

Center City’s Filbert Street, for its part, still is not very wide. But it remains part of Philadelphia’s city grid for the foreseeable future. Legislation and zoning for the arena is being undone. The old bus station is still boarded up, owned, evidently, by a holding company. The 76ers’ ownership and Comcast say that they are embarking on a 50-50 venture to revitalize the neighborhood that contains Fashion District (insert your skepticism here).

Lee is actively figuring out what it looks like to engage with Philadelphia’s government in the future. But he knows, citing Jeremiah 29:7, that he wants to pursue what is best for the city, hoping “that all people can flourish.” Aware of, and thankful for, how many people supported Chinatown, he says, “I want to stand in solidarity with the other neighborhoods.” And perhaps, because he showed up in this effort, next time — since there almost certainly will be a next time, whether in Chinatown or elsewhere in the city — he may not feel like he’s trying to figure things out by himself.