The Korean Church Under Japanese Colonialism

The Korean Church Under Japanese Colonialism PDF Author: Jai-Keun Choi
Publisher: 지문당
ISBN:
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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The Korean Church Under Japanese Colonialism

The Korean Church Under Japanese Colonialism PDF Author: Jai-Keun Choi
Publisher: 지문당
ISBN:
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description


Korean Christianity and the Shinto Shrine Issue in the War Period, 1931-1945

Korean Christianity and the Shinto Shrine Issue in the War Period, 1931-1945 PDF Author: Sung-Gun Kim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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The main theme is the differences in response among the churches to the Shinto Shrine Issue in Korea under Japanese colonialism. The central focus is an inquiry into the possible reasons why some religious groups, including the Catholic and Methodist Churches, should choose the way of compromise, while others, such as the Presbyterian Church, represented by individual missionaries and the Non-Shrine Worship Movement and the Mount Zion Sect, chose the way of radical challenge and withdrawal. It is proposed in this study to concentrate on three major churches - the Roman Catholic, the Methodist and the Presbyterian. This study offers, firstly, a detailed analysis of the content of the debate, the attitudes and actions of the three churches towards the shrine problem in their historical evolution since 1931; secondly, an attempt is made to explain the different positions of the three churches in terms of the sociology of religion and the sociology of missions. The sociological consequences of religious experience provide a general framework. The main assumption is that the difference in ideological elements is more important in religious institutions than has been usually thought. In explaining the differences of position in the three churches, the following eight factors are proposed: (1) Theological emphasis; (2) Church structure; (3) World view; (4) Mission policy; (5) Relationship to nationalism; (6) Relationship to non-Christian religions; (7) Early historical experience; and (8) Nationalities of missionaries. The thesis is divided into two parts: (1) Part I (Chapters One to Three) reviews the theoretical and methodological literature relevant to the study of the Shinto Shrine Issue. It also surveys the introduction of the two principal forms of Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Protestantism) in Korea, and examines modern Japan, State Shinto and Christianity. (2) Part II (Chapters Four and Five) comprises a detailed analysis of the positions of the three Christian churches towards the shrine problem, and a systematic comparison of the different responses of the three churches by employing the above-mentioned eight factors. Three key factors are proposed in respect of the denominational division in the matter of the Shinto shrine question: theological emphasis, mission policy and church structure. Attention is also drawn to the historical discontinuity in motivation between the Non-Shrine Worship Movement by the fundamentalists and the recent political struggle for justice by the liberals. The legacy of the ordeal of the Shinto shrine controversy in the 1930s remains as an obstacle to the reconciliation between ultra-conservative theology and liberal 'minjung' theology. It is therefore demonstrated in this thesis that the particular form of religious outlook is a relevant factor in its own right, which is not to be reduced to other variables. Thus for the purpose of this study, the tools of Weber seem to prove more effective than do those of Marx.

Born Again

Born Again PDF Author: Timothy S. Lee
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824833759
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Known as Asia’s "evangelical superpower," South Korea today has some of the largest and most dynamic churches in the world and is second only to the United States in the number of missionaries it dispatches abroad. Understanding its evangelicalism is crucial to grasping the course of its modernization, the rise of nationalism and anticommunism, and the relationship between Christians and other religionists within the country. Born Again is the first book in a Western language to consider the introduction, development, and character of evangelicalism in Korea—from its humble beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century to claiming one out of every five South Koreans as an adherent at the end of the twentieth. In this thoughtful and thorough study, Timothy S. Lee argues that the phenomenal rise of this particular species of Christianity can be attributed to several factors. As a religion of salvation, evangelicalism appealed powerfully to multitudes of Koreans, arriving at a time when the country was engulfed in unprecedented crises that discredited established social structures and traditional attitudes. Evangelicalism attracted and empowered Koreans by offering them a more compelling worldview and a more meaningful basis for association. Another factor is evangelicalisms positive connection to Korean nationalism and South Korean anticommunism. It shared in the aspirations and hardships of Koreans during the Japanese occupation and was legitimated again during and after the Korean conflict as South Koreans experienced the trauma of the war. Equally important was evangelicals’ relentless proselytization efforts throughout the twentieth century. Lee explores the beliefs and practices that have become the hallmarks of Korean evangelicalism: kibok (this-worldly blessing), saebyok kido (daybreak prayer), and kumsik kido (fasting prayer). He concludes that Korean evangelicalism is distinguishable from other forms of evangelicalism by its intensely practical and devotional bent. He reveals how, after a long period of impressive expansion, including the mammoth campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s that drew millions to its revivals, the 1990s was a decade of ambiguity for the faith. On the one hand, it had become South Korea’s most influential religion, affecting politics, the economy, and civil society. On the other, it found itself beleaguered by a stalemate in growth, the shortcomings of its leaders, and conflicts with other religions. Evangelicalism had not only risen in South Korean society; it had also, for better or worse, become part of the establishment. Despite this significance, Korean evangelicalism has not received adequate treatment from scholars outside Korea. Born Again will therefore find an eager audience among English-speaking historians of modern Korea, scholars of comparative religion and world Christianity, and practitioners of the faith.

Building a Heaven on Earth

Building a Heaven on Earth PDF Author: Albert L. Park
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082485327X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945)? Questions about religion's relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth, Albert L. Park studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world. Building a Heaven on Earth, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch'ŏndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social, and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.

Christianity and Modernity in Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule

Christianity and Modernity in Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule PDF Author: Byongsung Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"This study critically examines the complex relationship between Christianity and modernity in Korea under Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). Unlike Western colonies in Africa and Asia, Korea was colonized by Imperial Japan (1868-1947)--a non-white, non-Christian, non-Western imperial power. This unique Korean experience complicated the interactions of modernity, coloniality, and Christianity. Challenging the colonial modernity position, this study argues that a proper understanding of the formation of the modern in Korea requires an examination of the tripartite relationship among Japanese colonialism, the missionary enterprise, and the Korean pursuit of modernity. This trilateral relationship made both Korean Christianity and Korean modernity distinctively Korean, and made the colonial era the critical and transformative period in the formation of Korean modernity.This study argues that modernity is an epistemological category characterized by Enlightenment, industrialization, democracy, "a secular age," and the interaction between imperialism and colonial resistance, and that four conceptual distinctions are crucial for understanding the formation of modernity in colonial Korea: 1) the modern as a condition and as a normative frame, 2) the Western and the modern, 3) modernization and modernity, and 4) the colonial and the modern. This dissertation examines the impact of Christian modernity on the formation of Korean modernity, noting that Protestant missionaries in colonial Korea were a product of what Charles Taylor calls "a secular age" and that they embodied Christian modernity. Special attention is paid to the Federal Council of Evangelical Missions in Korea (the Federal Council), a union organization of Western missionaries in colonial Korea that embodied characteristics of Anglo-American modernity, representing a microcosm of Anglo-Protestant civil society.This study discusses the socio-political meanings and impacts of Christian modernity by focusing on three topics. First, it analyzes a controversial definition of "religion"--a Western modern concept--in the Korean context, and its relationship with "civilization" in colonial Korea, examining how civilization-oriented Protestant missions and the "civilized" rule of colonialists interacted with Koreans' pursuit of a modern civilization and how this interaction contributed to the formation of Korean modernity in colonial Korea. Second, this study examines how social and moral teachings delivered by Protestant missionaries of the Federal Council interacted with the colonial moral order imposed by Japanese colonialists, and how this interaction influenced the formation of modern morality in colonial Korea. It also analyzes the socio-political impact of the hostile relationship between Christian modernity and Marxist modernity on the Korean peninsula. Finally, this study explores how the mode of organization of Protestant institutions inspired by mission institutions like the Federal Council embodied Anglo-American organizational modernity, colliding with the organizing principles of Japanese colonialists, who held a primarily hierarchical and authoritarian view of society and state." --

Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan

Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan PDF Author: Garrett L. Washington
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824891724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Christians have never constituted one percent of Japan’s population, yet Christianity had a disproportionately large influence on Japan’s social, intellectual, and political development. This happened despite the Tokugawa shogunate’s successful efforts to criminalize Christianity and even after the Meiji government took measures to limit its influence. From journalism and literature, to medicine, education, and politics, the mark of Protestant Japanese is indelible. Herein lies the conundrum that has interested scholars for decades. How did Christianity overcome the ideological legacies of its past in Japan? How did Protestantism distinguish itself from the other options in the religious landscape like Buddhism and New Religions? And how did the religious movement’s social relevance and activism persist despite the government’s measures to weaken the relationship between private religion and secular social life in Japan? In Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan, Garrett L. Washington responds to these questions with a spatially explicit study on the influence of the Protestant church in imperial Japan. He examines the physical and social spaces that Tokyo’s largest Japanese-led congregations cultivated between 1879 and 1923 and their broader social ties. These churches developed alongside, and competed with, the locational, architectural, and social spaces of Buddhism, Shinto, and New Religions. Their success depended on their pastors’ decisions about location and relocation, those men’s conceptualizations of the new imperial capital and aspirations for Japan, and the Western-style buildings they commissioned. Japanese pastors and laypersons grappled with Christianity’s relationships to national identity, political ideology, women’s rights, Japanese imperialism, and modernity; church-based group activities aimed to raise social awareness and improve society. Further, it was largely through attendees’ externalized ideals and networks developed at church but expressed in their public lives outside the church that Protestant Christianity exerted such a visible influence on modern Japanese society. Church Space offers answers to longstanding questions about Protestant Christianity’s reputation and influence by using a new space-centered perspective to focus on Japanese agency in the religion’s metamorphosis and social impact, adding a fresh narrative of cultural imperialism.

Christianity in Modern Korea

Christianity in Modern Korea PDF Author: Donald N. Clark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
Clark's sharp-eyed update on Korean Christianity is the best-balanced, best-informed and most lucid contemporary analysis of an astonishing phenomenon) the emergence in non-Christian Asia of the church in Korea from persecuted sect to national recognition and power in less than a hundred years. The book is short but convincing.-CHOICE

Protestantism and Politics in Korea

Protestantism and Politics in Korea PDF Author: Chung-shin Park
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295802081
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Following its introduction to Korea in the late nineteenth century, Protestantism grew rapidly both in numbers of followers and in influence, and remained a dominating social and political force throughout the twentieth century. In Protestantism and Politics in Korea, Chung-shin Park charts this stunning growth and examines the shifting political associations of Korean Protestantism. Elsewhere in Asia, evangelical Protestant missionaries failed to have much social and political impact, being perceived as little more than agents of Western imperialism. But in Korea the church became a locus of national resistance to Japanese colonization in the fifty years preceding 1945. Missionaries and local adherents steadily gained popular support as they became identified with progressive political reforms. After World War II and the division of the Korean peninsula, however, most Protestant institutions in South Korea were conscripted into the fight against communism. In addition, they became involved in the postwar push for rapid economic development. These alliances led to increasing political conservatism, so that mainstream Korean Protestantism eventually became a stalwart defender of the authoritarian status quo. A small liberal minority remained politically active, supporting social and human rights causes throughout the 1960s and 1970s, laying the foundation for mass protests and gradual democratic liberalization in the 1980s. Park documents the theological evolution of Korean Protestantism from early fundamentalism to more liberal doctrines and shows how this evolution was reflected in the political landscape.

Religion and Politics in Korea Under the Japanese Rule

Religion and Politics in Korea Under the Japanese Rule PDF Author: Wi Jo Kang
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
A documented study of major religions and their relationship to politics in Korea, from 1910-1945.

Building a Heaven on Earth

Building a Heaven on Earth PDF Author: Albert L. Park
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082485327X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945)? Questions about religion's relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth, Albert L. Park studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world. Building a Heaven on Earth, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch'ŏndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social, and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.