This panel explores the various ways in which Korean Protestantism engages with the international context. The first paper, presenting a historical perspective, looks at the phenomenon of public confession that developed as a form of nationalist discourse during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). The second paper draws a comparison of worship styles between a South Korean and North American megachurch. The third paper is a study of Korean missionary activities in India and the intersection of Western, Korean, and Indian expressions of Christianity. The final paper offers a visual analysis of Korean Protestant global discourse, focusing on the world maps that adorn the interior walls of some large churches.
The paper examines the dynamics of public confession [t’onghoe chabok] and the rise of nationalistic discourse during the P’yŏngyang Revival in 1907. I assess how early Protestant nationalism was formed in religious spaces where mass gatherings for public prayers called for national renewal. In particular, I show how the Korean Protestants publicly expressed their patriotic sentiments through public confession and how such verbal acknowledgment of unruly emotions became the subject of spiritual discipline. Public demonstration of emotions at mass gatherings created a bifurcated discourse on emotion: one that affirms patriotic sentiments as a mark of Christian sincerity and the other that simultaneously regulates unruly feelings through repentance.
This presentation aims to compare two worship services of evangelical megachurches in North America and South Korea to identify the distinctive feature of the Korean megachurch, while also discovering some parallels between the two as evangelical megachurches. Evangelical megachurches are commonly regarded as “non-liturgical churches,” as the antithesis of “high church” that emphasizes ritual and priestly authority. This notion comes from the evangelical characteristics of avoiding being constrained by old traditions while focusing on biblical verses and increasing the number of converts. However, this presentation challenges this view on evangelical worship with the case of a Korean evangelical megachurch. Whereas a North American megachurch sees worship as an “enjoyable festival” that is not distant from mundane life, the Korean megachurch exhibits “liturgical” aspects to a certain degree in its worship, which explicates its theological position and understanding: a heavy emphasis on “holy and sanctified life.”
Religion has been a major transnational actor. This presentation examines context in which Koreanized Protestantism is transplanted into South Asia. The cultural and historical conditions of globalized East Asia since the late 19th century have acted as a positive factor for the growth of Protestantism in Korea. As Korean Protestantism has actively spread across borders amid the trend of intensified globalization since the 1990s, South Korea currently sends more Protestant missionaries than any other country except for the United States. Factors that formulate Korean Protestant missions in South Asia include contemporary transnational interdependence, missionaries' ethnic nationalism, multicultural evangelicalism, the postcolonial religious politics of India, international faith-based NGOs, and the use of digital media. The transregionalization of Korean Protestantism in Global South shows how Christianity is reformulated in the 21st century global society and also how East Asians and South Asians are connected by appropriating the once Western tradition of Christianity.
In addition to a café and bookstore, now common features of large-scale megachurches, Korean megachurches often present those who enter their facilities with a world map. Stylishly designed in abstract form, the map cum wall-art visualizes the globe two dimensionally. The visual image of the oversized world map also notates the locations of church plants, ministry partnerships and/or aid projects both domestic to Korea and abroad. This presentation provides preliminary qualitative research of these spaces with accompanying visual content analysis of the maps. I suggest that tracing gospel progress inadvertently also renders visible the fault lines of development and underdevelopment as structured by the processes of racial capitalism. The presentation brings into explicit conversation the growing literature on Korean megachurches and interpretive frameworks that center the ongoing evolutions of racial capitalism and its material forms.