A History of Protestantism in Korea

Dae Young Ryu

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000539028
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Sozialwissenschaften
• Sous-sujet: Ethnische Studien

This book provides a comprehensive overview of Protestant Christianity in Korea. It outlines the development of Christianity in Korea before Protestantism, considers the introduction of Protestantism in the late nineteenth century and its widening and profound impact, and goes on to discuss the situation up to the present. Throughout the book emphasises the importance of Protestantism for Korean national life, highlights the key role Protestantism has played in Korea's social, political, and cultural development, including in North Korea whose first leader Kim Il Sung was the son of devout Protestant parents, and demonstrates how Protestantism continues to be a vital force for Korean society overall.

1 Christianity before the introduction of Protestantism

DOI: 10.4324/b22784-1

Nothing in the world is outside the will of the Lord, or is not a part of the Lord’s rewards and punishment. Therefore, this persecution is also permitted by God. So you should receive it joyously, endure it, and avail yourselves only for the Lord. Please beseech the Lord to grant peace on you speedily. How can it be possible that my death does not bring problems to your human affections and the great work for your soul? However, God will soon give you a better shepherd than me. Please do not be grieved, but enlarge your love and be as one body in serving the Lord. I wholeheartedly hope to meet with all of you again after death in front of God eternally and to enjoy happiness for ages. Goodbye.

—St. Kim Dae-geon’s Farewell Letter from Prison (August 1847) [in Korean]

Church of the East

Christianity began in Roman Palestine. From the first century on, it would spread throughout the world, expanding initially along the Mediterranean coast to Asia Minor, the Greek and Italian Peninsulas, and North Africa. By the sixth century, it reached the European interior, the British Isles, the Middle East, and India, and by the middle of the seventh century, Christian missionaries had entered Tang Dynasty China. Christianity spread to the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and on to sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, Oceania, Greenland, and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East the following centuries. By the twentieth century, Christianity had become a religion with adherents on every continent and major island on the globe. Although Christians themselves understand the propagation of their faith as expansion through mission, from a broader perspective, the dissemination of Christianity is a prime historical example of profound cultural interchange.

It started by sea. The fastest and most effective means of long-distance travel for people in premodern times was the ship. For this reason, wide-ranging exchanges of various kinds, including trade, occurred along maritime rather than land routes, and each geographic area had a major port city as its hub. Most of the early Christian centers were themselves major Mediterranean ports. The Roman Empire had traded through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea with several countries on the Arabian Peninsula, Northeast Africa, and the eastern coast of India. This maritime route extended beyond India to Southeast Asia, China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. On land, there were east–west transit routes across Eurasia originating from places like Antioch and Damascus in Syria and reaching China through the Middle East and Central Asia. These multiple long-distance routes were collectively called the Silk Road, which would ultimately link the Mediterranean coast with Northeast Asia. Countries and peoples along these routes engaged in a wide range of political, economic, and cultural exchanges. Consider the Roman-style glass artifacts unearthed in Gyeongju’s Great Hwangnam Mausoleum, which show that the Roman Empire and Korea’s Kingdom of Silla (57 BCE–935 CE), occupying opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass, were so linked.

Commercial interests had been the main drivers of cultural exchange, and it was most likely traders who opened up the Silk Road. But much more than silk, glasswork, and other commercial products were carried along the trade routes. They were paths that many peoples trod, taking with them key aspects of their culture, mundane and transcendent. Religion is a cultural phenomenon unlike any other because it determines people’s social and psychological notions of the “really real.”¹ Christians from the earliest days of their first-century community undertook as their mission propagating the gospel of Jesus “to the ends of the earth,” helping forge new paths to convey the good news they themselves had embraced as a profound understanding of ultimate reality. There is little doubt that those intent on promulgating the gospel would have used major trade routes such as the Silk Road. Even seen in this light, though, Christian propagation was not the work of professional missionaries alone. Christian traders and travelers, their influence inestimable but their names lost to history, traversed the Silk Road and carried Christianity to Northeast Asia. History rarely records the unspectacular but sometimes profound features of everyday life.

According to recorded history, Christianity first came to China in 635, when missionaries from the Persian “Church of the East” entered the Tang Empire through the Silk Road. The Church of the East was a Syriac church, known also as the Nestorian Church since the fifth century. Nestorius, a native of Syria, became the patriarch of Constantinople but was excommunicated in 431 when the imperial church of the Byzantine Empire judged his Christological ideas to be heretical.

Nestorius’s condemnation by the ecumenical council of Ephesus was itself a product of political and theological conflict. He was a son of Syria and many Christians there staunchly supported him. When the Byzantine emperor Theodosius II exiled Nestorius to Egypt, many Syrian Christians fled to Sassanian Persia. The Church of the East in Persia welcomed these Nestorian followers from Syria because it, too, used the Syriac language and rituals and its theological-political positions differed from those of the Byzantine church. Followers of Nestorius settled in Persia and built the Church of the East with other Christians there. Gradually, the Persian Church of the East adopted Nestorian theology and began to be referred to as the Nestorian Church. The Nestorian Church had engaged in missions to Central Asia, India, and China, and by the fourteenth century, its geographical scope had extended far beyond that of the imperial church of the Byzantine Empire to its west.

Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty China had extended official tolerance to the first mission from the Church of the East, and many of his successors followed that amicable policy. According to the inscription on the famed Nestorian Stele of 781, the Church of the East, now admiringly referred to as Jingjiao (literally, the Luminous Religion), flourished in the Tang Dynasty in an indigenized form. During the reign of Emperor Gaozong, in particular, Jingjiao churches were built in every province, and thanks to its teachings the kingdom “became enriched and its foundation beautiful … and every house was full of Jingjiao’s blessings.”²

On the Korean Peninsula, this was the period in which Silla unified the lands south of the Daedong River and established close ties with Tang Dynasty China.³ For this reason, it is possible that Jingjiao had crossed over to Silla at this time. However, the evidence offered by those advancing such possibilities is archeologically questionable, and there is no documentary proof. The physical evidence for the presence of Jingjiao is relatively clear in the Balhae (Bohai in Chinese) region north of the Daedong River. Called the “Northern Barbarians” by its rival Silla, the majority of Balhae’s population was Malgal (or Mohe, a Tungusic people), and the problem of incorporating Balhae into “Korean” history remains problematic. Some relics found in Balhae’s historical territory, such as Buddhist Bodhisattva with cross necklaces, suggest that Jingjiao was then present in that kingdom. Still, just as with Silla itself, there is no definitive documentary evidence. Some people claim that Jingjiao had also reached Japan in the middle of the eighth century, but this, too, is hard to confirm.

After about two hundred years of prosperity, Jingjiao declined at the end of the Tang Dynasty. The devastating blow was the all-out suppression of foreign religions during the 840s. This was primarily a campaign against Buddhism, but other “foreign” religions, including Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Jingjiao, were also severely affected. The Nestorian Stele was buried. Many Jingjiao adherents, faced with persecution, fled to northern China, Mongolia, or Manchuria, or went into hiding. This all but complete disappearance was proof that Jingjiao, although popular among the ruling class, had failed to take root firmly among the masses of the people. During the Song Dynasty, which later occupied the central China area, Jingjiao would not recover its former strength and glory. After the Mongols conquered Song, however, Christianity in a form associated with the Church of the East was once again popular in China. The new Yuan Dynasty, based on the vast Mongol Empire, was a multiethnic, multireligious state, and was tolerant of most religions. In his Travels, Marco Polo, who had arrived in Shangdu, the Yuan capital, from Venice in 1273, described Church of the East communities as being scattered throughout Central Asia, India, and China. He wrote that he had encountered Nestorians in each of the Silk Road centers, and that they were some of the main players in the Silk Road trade.

During the Yuan Dynasty, adherents to the Church of the East were called Erke’ün (Yelikewen in Chinese, literally, Servants of the Gospel). As Kublai Khan, Yuan’s first emperor, considered their faith to be, in Marco Polo’s words, “the best and the truest,” Erke’ün missionaries were able to make converts among the Mongolian tribes, with some tribes embracing Christianity as their primary religion.⁴ Erke’ün could be found everywhere, from markets and provincial governments to the imperial court. There were believers among the queens and queen mothers, and Kublai Khan’s mother, for instance, was Erke’ün. As with Jingjiao, Erke’ün became considerably indigenized and adopted Buddhist rituals over time. Erke’ün priests shaved their heads, burned incense, and played wooden percussion instruments shaped as fish, in the manner of Buddhist monks.

Since the Genghis Khan period, the Mongols repeatedly invaded the Kingdom of Goryeo (918–1392) on the Korean Peninsula and subjected it.⁵ Between 1258 and 1356, a Mongol-established bureau directly governed Goryeo’s northeastern region. For nearly a century, Goryeo was called Mongolia’s “Bumaguk,” or son-in-law country. The Goryeo crown prince was required to stay in Mongolia until his coronation day, and the Goryeo royal family intermarried with the Mongolians. King Chungryeol, for instance, was Kublai Khan’s son-in-law. Giwargis, the field marshal charged with the conquest of Japan, must have been Erke’ün, as his name, the Mongolian variant of Gregorius, suggests. During his two-year stay in Goryeo’s capital, he was the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Through continuous cultural exchanges, the “Mongolian style” permeated all areas of Goryeo life, and it would be somewhat unexpected if Erke’ün did not enter Goryeo at this time. However, as with Silla and Balhae, all one has to go on is historical conjecture, without conclusive evidence. Had the Church of the East come to these countries, it would not have differed much from Buddhism or been popular enough to have had a meaningful impact on people’s lives and thinking.

Birth of the Catholic community

All the Christians that Marco Polo met as he traveled along the Silk Road were adherents of the Church of the East or other non-Catholic traditions. It would be a century later that the Catholic Church first entered Northeast Asia. The Catholic Church acquired a missionary interest in the East during the Crusades and began sending missionaries in the thirteenth century. New monastic orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans played a vital role in this endeavor. Unlike existing churches and monasteries, these mendicant orders did not own land and were free from geographic boundaries. Instead, they could undertake relief work, education, and pastoral care anywhere, and hence were suitable candidates for distant missions.

Catholic missionaries had been entering Yuan Dynasty China since the late thirteenth century. They worked mainly for the Mongolians and for Armenian merchants who had come to China along the Silk Road. Armenia had an ancient church dating from the time of the Apostles. But it had separated from the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches during the Christological debate in the fifth and sixth centuries over the relationship between Jesus’s humanity and divinity. The Arminian church was in this respect similar to the Church of the East, which had broken with the Byzantine imperial church by accepting Nestorian Christology. The Catholic missionaries who came to Yuan Dynasty China would have tried to convert Armenian Christians and Erke’ün because they considered them heretics. Catholic missionaries had met with considerable success in Yuan. They gained thousands of converts, constructed churches, and created parishes. But political turmoil and a shortage of missionaries would see them dwindle and be virtually abandoned. They would not reach the Korean Peninsula.

Catholic missions resumed in China during the late Ming Dynasty in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The first missionaries were Jesuit scholars who had received higher education in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and geography. One of their leaders was Matteo Ricci. He worked mainly among intellectuals and ruling groups and tried to adopt Chinese customs. To gain their respect, Ricci dressed as the Confucian literati did, translated Confucian classics into Latin, penned various works introducing Christianity and western learning to Confucian intellectuals, and drew world maps. Ricci’s most important book was Tianzhu Shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), first published in 1603. There Ricci insisted that Confucianism, unlike Daoism or Buddhism, did not conflict with Christianity. His praise for Confucianism and broad grasp of Chinese classic literature helped Confucian scholars see Christianity in a favorable light. Tianzhu Shiyi was the first work of comparative religion to link Confucianism and Christianity. Ricci’s erudition and logic astonished Chinese intellectuals, and Chinese intellectuals called Ricci a scholar, and treated him as such. Tianzhu Shiyi was afterward introduced to Korea, where it stimulated interest in Catholicism or Cheonju-gyo, and ultimately led to the emergence of Catholic believers.⁶

During the Qing Dynasty, Jesuit missionaries would follow Ricci by continuing to respect Chinese religion and culture. The Jesuits permitted traditional ancestor rites and participating in Confucian memorial rituals. They generally referred to the Christian God as Tianzhu (the Lord of Heaven) but also used Shangdi (Heavenly Emperor) and Tian (Heaven), terms that the Chinese had by long tradition used to refer to the transcendent Absolute. To the missionaries’ delight, the Nestorian Stele was excavated in 1625, its inscription revealing that Christianity had been introduced to China a millennium earlier and had flourished in harmony with Chinese culture. These facts encouraged the Jesuit missionaries’ accommodation policy, which would lead to their service to the imperial court by taking charge of the bureau responsible for astronomy and weather. Influenced by these and other efforts of the Jesuit missionaries, Emperor Kangxi proclaimed in 1692 that Christianity was not socially or ideologically dangerous and permitted his subjects freedom of belief.

Accommodation, however, had its opponents. Missionaries from other mendicant orders, especially the Franciscans and Dominicans, had been coming to China since the 1630s and strongly opposed the Jesuits’ respect for Chinese culture and customs. A theological controversy with distant roots, between Jesuits mainly from Italy and Portugal and other missionaries mostly from Spain, would put the Qing emperors, who accepted the Jesuit position alone, in conflict with the popes, who refused to countenance it. This would become the long and fierce religious-political conflict called the Chinese Rites Controversy. Eventually, in 1715, Pope Clement XI put an end to the controversy through a papal bull that officially prohibited the use of the terms Shangdi and Tian, ancestor rites, and the veneration of Confucius. It was after the ...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• List of illustrations
• 1 Christianity before the introduction of Protestantism
• 2 Dawn of Protestantism
• 3 Pioneer missionaries
• 4 Building early churches
• 5 Saving the people of a falling kingdom
• 6 Birth and burgeoning of Christian nationalist movement
• 7 Protestantism in the early stages of colonialism and the March First Independence Movement
• 8 Changes after the March First Independence Movement
• 9 Mounting challenges and theological conflicts
• 10 Opening new frontiers
• 11 The church under the wartime system
• 12 Amid liberation and war
• 13 Ideal and reality of a Christian nation
• 14 Light and shadow of church growth
• 15 Suffering and transformation of the North Korean Church
• 16 Korean situation, Korean church
• Epilogue
• Further Reading (English Materials Only)
• Index