Home » Archives » KoreanStudies » most Christian city in Asia
| most Christian city in Asia [message #6964] |
Thu, 04 December 2003 04:20  |
Ruediger Frank
Messages: 102
Registered: October 2000
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Senior Member |
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Dear colleagues,
there is a quote I can't find anymore. I am sure that I read something like
"before 1945, Pyeongyang was the most Christian city in Asia", referring to
the percentage of Christians (protestants, I suppose?) among the city's
population. Who wrote this, and where?
Thanks for your help,
Ruediger
***********
Dr. Ruediger Frank
Visiting Professor
University of Vienna
East Asian Institute, Japan/Korea
Spitalgasse 2-4
A-1090 Vienna, Austria
phone: +43-1-4277 43822
fax: +43-1-4277 9438
email: rfrank@koreanstudies.de
************
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6966 is a reply to message #6964] |
Thu, 04 December 2003 11:23  |
Wayne Patterson
Messages: 7
Registered: December 2003
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Junior Member |
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Dear Ruediger --
I too have seen this quote somewhere but, like you, cannot
remember where I saw it. But, the fact of the matter is that
the statement is not true. Manila would qualify as the most
Christian (Catholic) city in Asia.
Best,
Wayne Patterson
Date sent: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 10:20:15 +0100
To: koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws
From: Ruediger Frank
Copies to: Subject: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
Send reply to: Korean Studies Discussion List
[ Double-click this line for list subscription options ]
Dear colleagues,
there is a quote I can't find anymore. I am sure that I read
something
like "before 1945, Pyeongyang was the most Christian city in
Asia",
referring to the percentage of Christians (protestants, I
suppose?) among
the city's population. Who wrote this, and where?
Thanks for your help,
Ruediger
***********
Dr. Ruediger Frank
Visiting Professor
University of Vienna
East Asian Institute, Japan/Korea
Spitalgasse 2-4
A-1090 Vienna, Austria
phone: +43-1-4277 43822
fax: +43-1-4277 9438
email: rfrank@koreanstudies.de
************
Dr. Wayne Patterson
Department of History Office: 920-403-3096
St. Norbert College FAX: 920-403-4086
100 Grant Street Department: 920-403-3133
DePere, Wisconsin 54115-2099 E-Mail: wayne.patterson@snc.edu
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6967 is a reply to message #6966] |
Thu, 04 December 2003 14:08 |
Dr. Eckart Dege
Messages: 25
Registered: October 2001
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Junior Member |
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Dear Ruediger,
Chris Spinger writes in his new book 'Pyongyang, The Hidden History of the North
Korean Capital', Budapest 2003: "Western missionaries turned Pyongyang into Korea's
most Christianized city, the "Jerusalem of the East", where one-sixth of residents
professed to the faith". (page 48) - But I have the feeling I read that somewhere else
before (not necessarily the most Christianized city of Asia), but can't remember
where.
Tschuess,
Eckart
Wayne Patterson schrieb:
> Dear Ruediger --
>
> I too have seen this quote somewhere but, like you, cannot
> remember where I saw it. But, the fact of the matter is that
> the statement is not true. Manila would qualify as the most
> Christian (Catholic) city in Asia.
>
> Best,
>
> Wayne Patterson
>
> Date sent: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 10:20:15 +0100
> To: koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws
> From: Ruediger Frank
> Copies to: Subject: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
> Send reply to: Korean Studies Discussion List
>
>
>
>
> [ Double-click this line for list subscription options ]
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> there is a quote I can't find anymore. I am sure that I read
> something
> like "before 1945, Pyeongyang was the most Christian city in
> Asia",
> referring to the percentage of Christians (protestants, I
> suppose?) among
> the city's population. Who wrote this, and where?
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> Ruediger
>
> ***********
> Dr. Ruediger Frank
> Visiting Professor
> University of Vienna
> East Asian Institute, Japan/Korea
> Spitalgasse 2-4
> A-1090 Vienna, Austria
> phone: +43-1-4277 43822
> fax: +43-1-4277 9438
> email: rfrank@koreanstudies.de
> ************
>
> Dr. Wayne Patterson
> Department of History Office: 920-403-3096
> St. Norbert College FAX: 920-403-4086
> 100 Grant Street Department: 920-403-3133
> DePere, Wisconsin 54115-2099 E-Mail: wayne.patterson@snc.edu
--
Prof. Dr. Eckart Dege
Geographisches Institut
Universitaet Kiel
D-24098 Kiel
Germany
Tel. (office) +49 431 880-2941
Tel. (home) +49 4342 889695
Fax (office) +49 431 880-4658
Fax (home) +49 4342 889694
Mobile +49 171 7110654
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6969 is a reply to message #6964] |
Fri, 05 December 2003 20:08 |
T.N. Park
Messages: 159
Registered: March 2001
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Senior Member |
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Wayne Patterson wrote:
>Dear Ruediger --
>
> I too have seen this quote somewhere but, like you, cannot
>remember where I saw it. But, the fact of the matter is that
>the statement is not true. Manila would qualify as the most
>Christian (Catholic) city in Asia.
You have touched upon a key problem one encounters when studying religion in Korea: 'kidokkyo,' the word for Protestant, is probably more often than not translated as 'Christian.' This, in turn, leads to a reverse translation of 'Christian' being translated, often inappropriately, as 'kidokkyo.'
This is often self-reinforced, even by Korean Catholics, who might say in English, "I'm not Christian, I'm Catholic."
Certainly it is sometimes useful to differentiate between Catholics on the one hand and Protestants on the other, but not to the point of labeling Catholics and Orthodox, both of whom have a notable historic presence in Korea, as non-Christian. Catholics make up a fairly significant minority in this country (former President Kim Daejung is Catholic), and the combined numbers of Catholics and Protestants make South Korea one of the most Christian countries in all of Asia, not just East Asia.
I'm not sure when/where the kidokkyo="Christian" label came into being in Korea, or how it ended up sticking so well, but I speculate it may have come from Protestant missionaries themselves, though I have nothing to back that up with. Does anybody know for sure?
A few years ago when I was a master's candidate at Yonsei, I took a class called "History of Christianity in Korea," and the professor was baffled when I and another student expressed interest in also knowing about the history of Catholicism in Korea, not just Protestantism. He had prepared nothing on Catholics, telling us they weren't "Christian." I think they have since renamed the course or changed the curriculum, though I'm not sure.
T'NP
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6970 is a reply to message #6969] |
Fri, 05 December 2003 22:20 |
joshua john van lieu
Messages: 18
Registered: August 2000
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Junior Member |
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I do not believe this is only a Korean phenomenon. While teaching World Regional Geography courses at the University of Kentucky in the early 1990's, I often read undergraduate essays with sentences like, "Ireland is primarily Catholic but there are some Christians too." At first I thought this was an amusing error until I found out that some of the churches these students were attending did not consider Catholics to be Christians. They may have called them something akin to papists, idolators, or Mother Mary cultists, but they were not willing to acknowledge them as Christians. I saw some tracts that went so far as to equate the pope with Satan.
I do not know what the official doctrinal stances are of the various protestant churches are in Korea in relation to this issue but I would guess there might be more to this question than a simple mistranslation.
Joshua Van Lieu
On Sat, 6 Dec 2003, T.N. Park wrote:
> Wayne Patterson wrote:
>
> >Dear Ruediger --
> >
> > I too have seen this quote somewhere but, like you, cannot
> >remember where I saw it. But, the fact of the matter is that
> >the statement is not true. Manila would qualify as the most
> >Christian (Catholic) city in Asia.
>
> You have touched upon a key problem one encounters when studying religion in Korea: 'kidokkyo,' the word for Protestant, is probably more often than not translated as 'Christian.' This, in turn, leads to a reverse translation of 'Christian' being translated, often inappropriately, as 'kidokkyo.'
>
> This is often self-reinforced, even by Korean Catholics, who might say in English, "I'm not Christian, I'm Catholic."
>
> Certainly it is sometimes useful to differentiate between Catholics on the one hand and Protestants on the other, but not to the point of labeling Catholics and Orthodox, both of whom have a notable historic presence in Korea, as non-Christian. Catholics make up a fairly significant minority in this country (former President Kim Daejung is Catholic), and the combined numbers of Catholics and Protestants make South Korea one of the most Christian countries in all of Asia, not just East Asia.
>
> I'm not sure when/where the kidokkyo="Christian" label came into being in Korea, or how it ended up sticking so well, but I speculate it may have come from Protestant missionaries themselves, though I have nothing to back that up with. Does anybody know for sure?
>
> A few years ago when I was a master's candidate at Yonsei, I took a class called "History of Christianity in Korea," and the professor was baffled when I and another student expressed interest in also knowing about the history of Catholicism in Korea, not just Protestantism. He had prepared nothing on Catholics, telling us they weren't "Christian." I think they have since renamed the course or changed the curriculum, though I'm not sure.
>
> T'NP
>
>
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| RE: most Christian city in Asia [message #6971 is a reply to message #6970] |
Fri, 05 December 2003 23:34 |
Richard Miller
Messages: 16
Registered: September 2003
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Junior Member |
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It absolutely is not a Korean-only phenomenon. Indonesia, for example,
officially recognizes "five religions:" Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu,
and Buddhist. I believe that this usage (Christian vs. Catholic) comes from
Dutch practice during the colonial period. It's not really a
"mistranslation," I don't think, although it certainly doesn't line up with
mainstream US practice.
Richard
Richard Miller
UW-Madison School of Music
http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~rcmiller/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws
> [mailto:Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws]On Behalf Of
> sumnom@u.washington.edu
> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 9:21 PM
> To: Korean Studies Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
>
>
> I do not believe this is only a Korean phenomenon. While teaching
> World Regional Geography courses at the University of Kentucky in
> the early 1990's, I often read undergraduate essays with
> sentences like, "Ireland is primarily Catholic but there are some
> Christians too." At first I thought this was an amusing error
> until I found out that some of the churches these students were
> attending did not consider Catholics to be Christians. They may
> have called them something akin to papists, idolators, or Mother
> Mary cultists, but they were not willing to acknowledge them as
> Christians. I saw some tracts that went so far as to equate the
> pope with Satan.
>
> I do not know what the official doctrinal stances are of the
> various protestant churches are in Korea in relation to this
> issue but I would guess there might be more to this question than
> a simple mistranslation.
>
> Joshua Van Lieu
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6972 is a reply to message #6969] |
Fri, 05 December 2003 23:43 |
John Holstein
Messages: 18
Registered: September 1999
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Junior Member |
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In regards to the popularity of Christianity in Korea, a Protestant
missionary recently told me that he has noticed a decline in the
number of Christians, beginning around the '88 Olympics. He says that
Korea is slowly becoming a more secular society, and that the
Christian churches aren't adapting to this change.
--- "T.N. Park" wrote:
> Wayne Patterson wrote:
>
> >Dear Ruediger --
> >
> > I too have seen this quote somewhere but, like you, cannot
> >remember where I saw it. But, the fact of the matter is that
> >the statement is not true. Manila would qualify as the most
> >Christian (Catholic) city in Asia.
>
> You have touched upon a key problem one encounters when studying
> religion in Korea: 'kidokkyo,' the word for Protestant, is probably
> more often than not translated as 'Christian.' This, in turn, leads
> to a reverse translation of 'Christian' being translated, often
> inappropriately, as 'kidokkyo.'
>
> This is often self-reinforced, even by Korean Catholics, who might
> say in English, "I'm not Christian, I'm Catholic."
>
> Certainly it is sometimes useful to differentiate between Catholics
> on the one hand and Protestants on the other, but not to the point
> of labeling Catholics and Orthodox, both of whom have a notable
> historic presence in Korea, as non-Christian. Catholics make up a
> fairly significant minority in this country (former President Kim
> Daejung is Catholic), and the combined numbers of Catholics and
> Protestants make South Korea one of the most Christian countries in
> all of Asia, not just East Asia.
>
> I'm not sure when/where the kidokkyo="Christian" label came into
> being in Korea, or how it ended up sticking so well, but I
> speculate it may have come from Protestant missionaries themselves,
> though I have nothing to back that up with. Does anybody know for
> sure?
>
> A few years ago when I was a master's candidate at Yonsei, I took a
> class called "History of Christianity in Korea," and the professor
> was baffled when I and another student expressed interest in also
> knowing about the history of Catholicism in Korea, not just
> Protestantism. He had prepared nothing on Catholics, telling us
> they weren't "Christian." I think they have since renamed the
> course or changed the curriculum, though I'm not sure.
>
> T'NP
>
=====
John Holstein
Sungkyunkwan University
Seoul 110-745, Rep. of Korea
e-mail: jfholstein@yahoo.com
Cell phone: 82-17-727-0264; Office: 822-760-0264; Home: 822-942-7718
Web site "Korea Mosaic": http://koreamosaic.net
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6973 is a reply to message #6971] |
Sat, 06 December 2003 05:25 |
Lucas Husgen
Messages: 13
Registered: February 2002
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Junior Member |
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All of this may have to do with the Protestant conception of themselves as
representing the true essence of Christianity and therefore being more
rightly called Christians, whereas the name of Catholicism ("the
allencompassing") in their mind would point to the institutional aspect of
Christianity, and therefore be a token of corruption of original values.
I experienced the fierceness of Korean Christians at Kangnung Tanoje once,
in their protesting of this heathen festival: it hinted that they would
probably take the same stance towards Catholicism.
Generally, a recent book by Robert Greeley, 'Catholic Imagination', on the
basis of sociological surveys shows that Catholics are generally of a more
liberal mindset than Protestants.
So I wonder: isn't it also true for a fact that Koreans are much more
taking to Buddhism again these days? Might they not have become wary of
the strictness, involved with hardline Protestant communities?
Still, I do remember a Seoulite travel group (at least, they had a Seoul
accent) at Hyangiram, poking fun at the place.
Best,
Lucas
On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 22:34:59 -0600, Richard Miller
wrote:
> It absolutely is not a Korean-only phenomenon. Indonesia, for example,
> officially recognizes "five religions:" Christian, Catholic, Muslim,
> Hindu,
> and Buddhist. I believe that this usage (Christian vs. Catholic) comes
> from
> Dutch practice during the colonial period. It's not really a
> "mistranslation," I don't think, although it certainly doesn't line up
> with
> mainstream US practice.
>
> Richard
>
> Richard Miller
> UW-Madison School of Music
> http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~rcmiller/
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws
>> [mailto:Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws]On Behalf Of
>> sumnom@u.washington.edu
>> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 9:21 PM
>> To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>> Subject: Re: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
>>
>>
>> I do not believe this is only a Korean phenomenon. While teaching
>> World Regional Geography courses at the University of Kentucky in
>> the early 1990's, I often read undergraduate essays with
>> sentences like, "Ireland is primarily Catholic but there are some
>> Christians too." At first I thought this was an amusing error
>> until I found out that some of the churches these students were
>> attending did not consider Catholics to be Christians. They may
>> have called them something akin to papists, idolators, or Mother
>> Mary cultists, but they were not willing to acknowledge them as
>> Christians. I saw some tracts that went so far as to equate the
>> pope with Satan.
>>
>> I do not know what the official doctrinal stances are of the
>> various protestant churches are in Korea in relation to this
>> issue but I would guess there might be more to this question than
>> a simple mistranslation.
>>
>> Joshua Van Lieu
>
>
--
There's nothing like the old songs, but what's the good if you can't
remember them. Mem. Mem. Memory.
William H. Gass
http://www.kirogi.demon.nl/index.htm
http://www.lucashusgen.net/index.html
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6974 is a reply to message #6972] |
Sat, 06 December 2003 12:54 |
Keith Pratt
Messages: 14
Registered: December 1998
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Junior Member |
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Pastor Hahn Manyoung told me a week ago that he places the high water mark
of Christianity (by which he means, no doubt, Protestantism) at 1992, when
1 in 4 Koreans claimed to be Christian. Since then middle-class
consumerism and apathy have begun to take the same toll in Korea as in the
UK.
Keith Pratt
On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, John Holstein wrote:
> In regards to the popularity of Christianity in Korea, a Protestant
> missionary recently told me that he has noticed a decline in the
> number of Christians, beginning around the '88 Olympics. He says that
> Korea is slowly becoming a more secular society, and that the
> Christian churches aren't adapting to this change.
>
> --- "T.N. Park" wrote:
> > Wayne Patterson wrote:
> >
> > >Dear Ruediger --
> > >
> > > I too have seen this quote somewhere but, like you, cannot
> > >remember where I saw it. But, the fact of the matter is that
> > >the statement is not true. Manila would qualify as the most
> > >Christian (Catholic) city in Asia.
> >
> > You have touched upon a key problem one encounters when studying
> > religion in Korea: 'kidokkyo,' the word for Protestant, is probably
> > more often than not translated as 'Christian.' This, in turn, leads
> > to a reverse translation of 'Christian' being translated, often
> > inappropriately, as 'kidokkyo.'
> >
> > This is often self-reinforced, even by Korean Catholics, who might
> > say in English, "I'm not Christian, I'm Catholic."
> >
> > Certainly it is sometimes useful to differentiate between Catholics
> > on the one hand and Protestants on the other, but not to the point
> > of labeling Catholics and Orthodox, both of whom have a notable
> > historic presence in Korea, as non-Christian. Catholics make up a
> > fairly significant minority in this country (former President Kim
> > Daejung is Catholic), and the combined numbers of Catholics and
> > Protestants make South Korea one of the most Christian countries in
> > all of Asia, not just East Asia.
> >
> > I'm not sure when/where the kidokkyo="Christian" label came into
> > being in Korea, or how it ended up sticking so well, but I
> > speculate it may have come from Protestant missionaries themselves,
> > though I have nothing to back that up with. Does anybody know for
> > sure?
> >
> > A few years ago when I was a master's candidate at Yonsei, I took a
> > class called "History of Christianity in Korea," and the professor
> > was baffled when I and another student expressed interest in also
> > knowing about the history of Catholicism in Korea, not just
> > Protestantism. He had prepared nothing on Catholics, telling us
> > they weren't "Christian." I think they have since renamed the
> > course or changed the curriculum, though I'm not sure.
> >
> > T'NP
> >
>
>
> =====
> John Holstein
> Sungkyunkwan University
> Seoul 110-745, Rep. of Korea
> e-mail: jfholstein@yahoo.com
> Cell phone: 82-17-727-0264; Office: 822-760-0264; Home: 822-942-7718
> Web site "Korea Mosaic": http://koreamosaic.net
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
> http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
>
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6975 is a reply to message #6964] |
Sat, 06 December 2003 13:20 |
lawrence driscoll
Messages: 27
Registered: December 2001
|
Junior Member |
|
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Dear Ruediger and list members:
I read with much interest the replies of Mssrs Paterson and Holstein to the
inquiry regarding the quote: "before 1945, Pyeongyang was the most Christian
city in Asia" .
The current confusion about who should be counted among Christians is indeed
a sad one for Catholics. In East Asia it seems the fact that Catholics are
not counted among Christians is rooted in the missionary language that was
popularized in the 19th century. The Catholic Christian missionaries in
Korea, as those in China earlier, had chosen the word "Chonju" (C:Tianzhu
Vĺ) to translate the word God. Respectively the Catholic religion was
called "Chonjugyo" (Heaven Lord learning) and Catholic believers were called
"Chonjugyoin".
But the newly arriving Protestant missionaries to Korea, chose the word
"Hananim" (based on the pure Korean word "hana" or "one") to translate the
word God, and like their Chinese missionary colleagues, chose the word
"Kidok"(C:Jidu îÂ) for Christ and "Kidokgyo" (Christ learning) as the name
of their religion. Subsequently in Korean society the word "Kidokgyoin"
became the accepted word for Christian and the Catholics were contented to
leave it that way.
At that time sectarian exclusivity was so strong that if a Catholic
missionary in a rural area knew that it was impossible for a parishioner
who moved away to reach the church of his baptism, he would not advise him
to attend a Protestant church as an alternative. The reverse of this was
probably also true. We can then imagine that the believer returned to his
Buddhist, Shamanist or Chundokyo roots.
Perhaps one can say the root of the problem for Catholics, and the
misunderstanding among the general public, is that the Catholics, unlike the
Protestants, did not employ a native word for Christ to identify themselves
among the Korean (or Chinese) people.
This problem for Catholics is not unique to Asia however. When Christians of
the Roman persuasion, assumed the word "catholic",i.e. universal, as the
appelation for their church, their Christian identity in the world faded,
even among their own believers. The confusion is so widespread that today
one can even hear a Catholic refer to himself as a "Christian Catholic"
instead of a "Catholic Christian".
Finally, I am not surprised at the quote heard by Mr. Frank and suspect that
from a Protestant perspective it is correct. In Patricia Cornwell's
biography of Billy Graham's wife, we learn that in the 1930's Ruth Bell
Graham's missionary parents chose not to send her to school in nearby
Shanghai, but rather to a well established Christian high school in "Pyeng
Yang", "where academics were rigorous and the Bible was acknowledged as the
authoritative word of God".
Best regards,
Lawrence Driscoll
____________________________________________________________ _____
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6976 is a reply to message #6964] |
Sat, 06 December 2003 11:19 |
Onno Veer
Messages: 7
Registered: July 2000
|
Junior Member |
|
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The dutch usage of Christian as non-catholic is still widespread in Holland. Interestingly it is generally used to describe only a small part of protestants in Holland; the least liberal groups. These Dutch "reformed" Christians have their roots in Calvinism and still very recognisable. They have their own schools, political parties etc... Very liberal protestants would hesitate to use Christian as meaning non-catholic.
Onno
GIP, Korea
>From: Lucas Husgen
>Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>Subject: Re: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
>Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 11:25:52 +0100
>
>All of this may have to do with the Protestant conception of
>themselves as representing the true essence of Christianity and
>therefore being more rightly called Christians, whereas the name of
>Catholicism ("the allencompassing") in their mind would point to the
>institutional aspect of Christianity, and therefore be a token of
>corruption of original values.
>
>I experienced the fierceness of Korean Christians at Kangnung Tanoje
>once, in their protesting of this heathen festival: it hinted that
>they would probably take the same stance towards Catholicism.
>
>Generally, a recent book by Robert Greeley, 'Catholic Imagination',
>on the basis of sociological surveys shows that Catholics are
>generally of a more liberal mindset than Protestants.
>
>So I wonder: isn't it also true for a fact that Koreans are much
>more taking to Buddhism again these days? Might they not have become
>wary of the strictness, involved with hardline Protestant
>communities?
>
>Still, I do remember a Seoulite travel group (at least, they had a
>Seoul accent) at Hyangiram, poking fun at the place.
>
>
>Best,
>
>Lucas
>
>
>On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 22:34:59 -0600, Richard Miller
> wrote:
>
>>It absolutely is not a Korean-only phenomenon. Indonesia, for
>>example,
>>officially recognizes "five religions:" Christian, Catholic,
>>Muslim, Hindu,
>>and Buddhist. I believe that this usage (Christian vs. Catholic)
>>comes from
>>Dutch practice during the colonial period. It's not really a
>>"mistranslation," I don't think, although it certainly doesn't line
>>up with
>>mainstream US practice.
>>
>>Richard
>>
>>Richard Miller
>>UW-Madison School of Music
>>http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~rcmiller/
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws
>>>[mailto:Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws]On Behalf Of
>>>sumnom@u.washington.edu
>>>Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 9:21 PM
>>>To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>>>Subject: Re: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
>>>
>>>
>>>I do not believe this is only a Korean phenomenon. While teaching
>>>World Regional Geography courses at the University of Kentucky in
>>>the early 1990's, I often read undergraduate essays with
>>>sentences like, "Ireland is primarily Catholic but there are some
>>>Christians too." At first I thought this was an amusing error
>>>until I found out that some of the churches these students were
>>>attending did not consider Catholics to be Christians. They may
>>>have called them something akin to papists, idolators, or Mother
>>>Mary cultists, but they were not willing to acknowledge them as
>>>Christians. I saw some tracts that went so far as to equate the
>>>pope with Satan.
>>>
>>>I do not know what the official doctrinal stances are of the
>>>various protestant churches are in Korea in relation to this
>>>issue but I would guess there might be more to this question than
>>>a simple mistranslation.
>>>
>>>Joshua Van Lieu
>>
>>
>
>
>
>--
>There's nothing like the old songs, but what's the good if you can't
>remember them. Mem. Mem. Memory.
>
>William H. Gass
>
>http://www.kirogi.demon.nl/index.htm
>http://www.lucashusgen.net/index.html
>
>Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client:
>http://www.opera.com/m2/
>
>
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6977 is a reply to message #6964] |
Sat, 06 December 2003 10:40 |
William Brown
Messages: 24
Registered: March 2002
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Junior Member |
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My missionary parents both graduated from the Pyongyang Forieign (sometimes American) School mentioned by Don Clark and I have often heard/read this phrase but always "outside of Phillippines". I suspect Ruediger, or whomever he talked to, just forgot that part. No need to blame Korean Protestants.
I suspect a 1/6 ratio, if that is correct, would be higher than cities such as Macao or Nagasaki or Singapore. It seems too high though.
I've also heard/read that the Methodist bishop in Pyongyang in 1945, and the general Christian population, made it easier for the Soviets to take over the city and establish Kim Il-sung's government. Apparently they were persuaded about the good side of communism only to be purged six months later. The bishop disappeared, never to be heard from again.
From this learned community, is there any truth to that story? With Christian groups back visiting Pyongyang, I think it is relevant.
Thanks for your note Don. I immediately ordered your book to give to my parents for Xmas.
Shop online for kids toys by age group, price range, and toy category at MSN Shopping. No waiting for a clerk to help you!
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6978 is a reply to message #6964] |
Sun, 07 December 2003 05:28 |
Horace H. Underwood
Messages: 84
Registered: September 2001
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Member |
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Dear List
Catholics may or may not be more liberal than Protestants now, as indicated in the book Lucas refers to, but in the 1950's the Catholics in our high school class at Seoul Foreign School were forbidden to attend events that took place in Seoul Union Church, and even in the 1980's it was considered quite daring when a Catholic priest in Arizona allowed a few of us Presbyterians to receive mass. The Korean side is just as bad (though I am not at all sure they learned it from the missionaries), and you don't even have to look as far as the Catholic-Protestant divide. One of the rueful comments of older missionaries which I remember, also from the 1950's, was that in Korea there were Jesus Presbyterians and Christ Presbyterians, and Jesus wouldn't talk to Christ.
Horace H. Underwood
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Lucas Husgen
Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 11:25:52 +0100
>All of this may have to do with the Protestant conception of themselves as
>representing the true essence of Christianity and therefore being more
>rightly called Christians, whereas the name of Catholicism ("the
>allencompassing") in their mind would point to the institutional aspect of
>Christianity, and therefore be a token of corruption of original values.
>
>I experienced the fierceness of Korean Christians at Kangnung Tanoje once,
>in their protesting of this heathen festival: it hinted that they would
>probably take the same stance towards Catholicism.
>
>Generally, a recent book by Robert Greeley, 'Catholic Imagination', on the
>basis of sociological surveys shows that Catholics are generally of a more
>liberal mindset than Protestants.
>
>So I wonder: isn't it also true for a fact that Koreans are much more
>taking to Buddhism again these days? Might they not have become wary of
>the strictness, involved with hardline Protestant communities?
>
>Still, I do remember a Seoulite travel group (at least, they had a Seoul
>accent) at Hyangiram, poking fun at the place.
>
>
>Best,
>
>Lucas
>
>
>On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 22:34:59 -0600, Richard Miller
>wrote:
>
>> It absolutely is not a Korean-only phenomenon. Indonesia, for example,
>> officially recognizes "five religions:" Christian, Catholic, Muslim,
>> Hindu,
>> and Buddhist. I believe that this usage (Christian vs. Catholic) comes
>> from
>> Dutch practice during the colonial period. It's not really a
>> "mistranslation," I don't think, although it certainly doesn't line up
>> with
>> mainstream US practice.
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> Richard Miller
>> UW-Madison School of Music
>> http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~rcmiller/
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws
>>> [mailto:Koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws]On Behalf Of
>>> sumnom@u.washington.edu
>>> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 9:21 PM
>>> To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>>> Subject: Re: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
>>>
>>>
>>> I do not believe this is only a Korean phenomenon. While teaching
>>> World Regional Geography courses at the University of Kentucky in
>>> the early 1990's, I often read undergraduate essays with
>>> sentences like, "Ireland is primarily Catholic but there are some
>>> Christians too." At first I thought this was an amusing error
>>> until I found out that some of the churches these students were
>>> attending did not consider Catholics to be Christians. They may
>>> have called them something akin to papists, idolators, or Mother
>>> Mary cultists, but they were not willing to acknowledge them as
>>> Christians. I saw some tracts that went so far as to equate the
>>> pope with Satan.
>>>
>>> I do not know what the official doctrinal stances are of the
>>> various protestant churches are in Korea in relation to this
>>> issue but I would guess there might be more to this question than
>>> a simple mistranslation.
>>>
>>> Joshua Van Lieu
>>
>>
>
>
>
>--
>There's nothing like the old songs, but what's the good if you can't
>remember them. Mem. Mem. Memory.
>
>William H. Gass
>
>http://www.kirogi.demon.nl/index.htm
>http://www.lucashusgen.net/index.html
>
>Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
>
>
>
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6983 is a reply to message #6964] |
Sun, 07 December 2003 23:12 |
Timsanglee
Messages: 16
Registered: October 1999
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Junior Member |
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Dear List:
Thanks to Mr. Ruediger for initiating this interesting thread. Messrs
Driscoll and Underwoodâs replies have prompted me to contribute my own two cents.
First, I don't think Mr. Driscollâs reply is well informed. For one thing,
it would come as a surprise to Korean Catholics if they were told that they
didn't count among the Christian population, since they are not so ignorant as to
not know that Catholicism is a species of Christianityâthough I would not
rule out some exceptions. No Korean scholar of religion worth his or her salt
would reckon Korean Catholics in such a way, either. To be sure, a Korean
Catholic wouldn't call herself kidokkyoin. But that's not because she doesn't
consider herself to be Christian but because the word has become so identified with
Protestantsâespecially the Evangelical Protestants, who comprise upwards of
ninety percent of South Korean Protestantsâthat to refer to herself in such a
way would be to invite misunderstanding. One can verify how widely the
Protestants now monopolize kidokkyo just by perusing some Korean newspaper reportage
on Protestantism. True, Korean Catholics generally refer to themselves as châĹ
njugyoin, but they also have another termâkĹrisdokyoinâthat they use as a
more comprehensive term to refer to themselves and Christians of other
communions. Indeed, the trend among Korean religion scholars is to shun kidokkyo when
referring Christianity in favor of kĹrisdokyo, regardless of what the
dictionary says.
Mr. Driscollâs account of how the Catholics ended up with ChâĹnju and the
Protestants with Hananim is problematic. One of the best authorities on this
subject outside Korea is Dr. Oak Sung Duk, currently a research scholar at UCLA.
In this year's Association for Asian Studies meeting at New York, in a
session entitled Koreanizing Protestantism, Dr. Oak presented a paper entitled âHanÄ
nim: The Term Question in Korea, 1881-1911.â In it he persuasively showed
that during the first twenty years of Protestant missionary work in Korea, the
missionaries could not reach consensus on what Korean term to use for God. The
first widely used term was hanĹnim, due to the efforts of John Ross, the
Scottish missionary to Manchuria who was the first Western missionary to make a
lasting contribution to building a Protestant church in Korea, through the
gospels of Luke and John that he, Yi ĹŹngchâan, and other Koreans translated in
1882 and had secretly distributed in Korea. HanĹnim later came to be pronounced
hananim, not because it had much to do with hanaâ âoneââbut because that's
how the old hangĹl word for hanĹnim was pronounced by Koreans of Pyongyang and
its environs, and since this area constituted the âJerusalem of Koreaâ (I am
more familiar with this expression that the other one that got this thread
started), hananim became the normal pronunciation for the term. Both hanĹnim and
hananim did not initially have much to do with the notion of âone,â though
such a notion may have been one of its more faint connotations. The terms
referred to what anthropologists call a high godâthe god who is at the top of a
hierarchy of godsâand had associations with the sky. Thus in its original form,
hananim hardly denotes a transcendent monotheistic deity.
From the start, many missionaries followed Rossâs recommendation and used hanĹ
nim/ hananim to refer to God, since the word provided enough of a conceptual
base to develop their notion of God and was readily understood by Koreans.
But a minority of them resisted this usage, bothered by the term's polytheistic
associations. And this was a powerful minority since its leader was none
other than the venerable Horace G. Underwood. Guess what term Underwood preferred
instead? It was TâyĹnjyu, the older form of ChâĹnju. It was only in 1904
that Underwood also switched over to hananim. This happened only after his
colleagues James S. Gale and Homer B. Hulbert had done some creative exegeses on
hananim and the TangĹn story. Gale persuade Underwood that the original
meaning of hananim was indeed the âOne Great Oneâ that the Koreans had lost sight
of; Hulbert that TangĹn story was really a reflection of the Trinity, with
Hwanin as the Father God, HwanĹng as the Spirit, and TangĹn as the Messiahâthe
bear woman then had to stand in for the Virgin.
It is also wrong to assume that Korean Catholics use only ChâĹnju to refer
to God. They quite openly use hanĹnim as well. Anyone in doubt should check
out the Catholic Bible, kongdongbĹnyĹk sĹngsĹ, which, by the way, was
published in 1971 as a result of an ecumenical translation project undertaken with
the more liberal segment of Korean Protestantism. Consequently, given that âhanĹ
nimâ is truer to the original native meaning of the word than what âhananimâ
has now come to mean, one can argue that nowadays the Catholicsâ term for God
is truer to Korea's tradition than the Protestantsâ term.
Now, a few words on Mr. Underwoodâs reply. Christians, be they Korean or
not, should deplore that âJesus Presbyteriansâ wouldn't speak with the âChrist
Presbyterians.â (Actually, these days a great many Presbyterians from both
camps get along quite well with each other.) But that Christians split into
groups is neither anything new nor anything peculiar to Korea (I am aware this is
not what Mr. Underwood implies). Well into the mid twentieth century,
Catholics and Protestants tended to deprecate each other. Even among the Protestants,
the division occurred from early on. The year 1529 is an infamous year for
Protestant solidarity, in that that yearâjust twelve years after the outbreak
of the Reformationâ Martin Luther and Urlich Zwingli, the founder of the
Reformed/Presbyterian tradition along with John Calvin, split over their inability
to agree on the meaning of a single verse in the Bible, Matthew 26:26, which
dealt with the Eucharist. This split had grave consequences since it prevented
the Lutherans and the Reformed from forming a common front against the
Catholic Counter Reformation. Even in more recent periods, examples of split among
Protestants abound. It could be argued that the alleged Jesus Presbyterianâ
Christ Presbyterian split in Korea, for example, started out as a reflection of a
similar theological split that had occurred in the United States, between the
Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Church of America (later
renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church). Isn't a little pun in order here as
well?: How deplorable is it that the Presbyterians of the USA wouldn't talk to the
Presbyterians of America!
Finally, until 1965 or so, I don't think Korean Catholics were any more
tolerant of other religions than their Evangelical counterparts were. But the
Second Vatican Council, which ended that year, changed all that. This council's
inclusive stance towards non-Catholic Christians and other religions enabled
Korean Catholics, for example, to participate in ancestral rites that they had
shunned previously for fear of committing idolatry. They also actively pursue
interreligious dialogue, even as their Evangelical counterparts continue to
belittle the native religions. The council's activist stance on social justice
was also significant since it enabled the Catholicsâformerly living a more or
less ghettoized existenceâjoined their liberal Protestants (the Minjung
Protestants) in overthrowing the dictators of the 1970s and 1980s, with the MyĹngdong
Cathedral and Cardinal Suhwan Kim emerging as icons of the Korean democratic
movement.
Sincerely,
Timothy S. Lee
Brite Divinity School (TCU)
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| Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6986 is a reply to message #6964] |
Mon, 08 December 2003 12:12 |
lawrence driscoll
Messages: 27
Registered: December 2001
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Junior Member |
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Dear Mr. Holstein, and listmembers:
In my previous message I neglected to comment on your shocking revelation
that a graduate course in the history of Christianity in Korea, taught at a
distinguished Christian university like Yonsei, didn't include information
about how Christianity was first conveyed to Korea from China, by Korean
Catholic (Christian) laypersons. I have always held Yonsei in high esteem
and so was disappointed to hear this.
Can anyone shed some light on this subject?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Lawrence Driscoll
> > >
> > > >Dear Ruediger --
> > > >
> > >
> > > You have touched upon a key problem one encounters when studying
> > > religion in Korea: 'kidokkyo,' the word for Protestant, is probably
> > > more often than not translated as 'Christian.' This, in turn, leads
> > > to a reverse translation of 'Christian' being translated, often
> > > inappropriately, as 'kidokkyo.'
> > >
> > > This is often self-reinforced, even by Korean Catholics, who might
> > > say in English, "I'm not Christian, I'm Catholic."
> > >
> > > Certainly it is sometimes useful to differentiate between Catholics
> > > on the one hand and Protestants on the other, but not to the point
> > > of labeling Catholics and Orthodox, both of whom have a notable
> > > historic presence in Korea, as non-Christian. Catholics make up a
> > > fairly significant minority in this country (former President Kim
> > > Daejung is Catholic), and the combined numbers of Catholics and
> > > Protestants make South Korea one of the most Christian countries in
> > > all of Asia, not just East Asia.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure when/where the kidokkyo="Christian" label came into
> > > being in Korea, or how it ended up sticking so well, but I
> > > speculate it may have come from Protestant missionaries themselves,
> > > though I have nothing to back that up with. Does anybody know for
> > > sure?
> > >
> > > A few years ago when I was a master's candidate at Yonsei, I took a
> > > class called "History of Christianity in Korea," and the professor
> > > was baffled when I and another student expressed interest in also
> > > knowing about the history of Catholicism in Korea, not just
> > > Protestantism. He had prepared nothing on Catholics, telling us
> > > they weren't "Christian." I think they have since renamed the
> > > course or changed the curriculum, though I'm not sure.
> > >
> > =====
> > John Holstein
> > Sungkyunkwan University
> > Seoul 110-745, Rep. of Korea
> > e-mail: jfholstein@yahoo.com
> > Cell phone: 82-17-727-0264; Office: 822-760-0264; Home: 822-942-7718
> > Web site "Korea Mosaic": http://koreamosaic.net
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
> > http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
> >
> >
>
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| Re: most Christian City in Asia [message #6987 is a reply to message #6975] |
Mon, 08 December 2003 14:00 |
Gari Keith Ledyard
Messages: 124
Registered: September 1999
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Senior Member |
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It doesn't look like anybody knows of a reference for P'yongyang
as "the most Christian city in Asia." I think that the root source of the
idea, and probably the misunderstanding, came from the background so well
described by Don Clark in his posting and in his soon-to-appear book.
But other interesting issues have arisen and I'd like to address
two of them. T.N. Park and others have commented on the great gap between
the Western understanding of "Christianity" and the Korean understanding
of "Kidokkyo," and I'm sure that their impressions resonate with the
experience of many on this list. But the historical and scholarly use of
the term "kidokkyo" in Korea is a little more nuanced than the sharper
distinctions driven by zealots on both sides.
The first great historian of Korean religions, Yi Nunghwa
(1869-1943), who wrote histories of all of them-- Buddhism (which was his
own religion), Confucianism, Daoism, Shamanism, Korean "superstitions" in
general, and finally "Kidokkyo,"-- treated the latter as including both
the Catholic and Protestant wings. In fact his pioneering work, "History
of Korean Kidokkyo and [the related] Foreign Relations"
k^up oegyosa>, 1928, had much more on Catholicism than on Protestantism,
if only because the Catholic history was much longer and a great deal more
complicated and problematical. Along with many others and in spite of his
book's title, he often used the earlier coinage, Kaesin kyo ("reformed
religion") to distinguish Protestantism from Ch'^onju kyo or Catholicism.
The Korean translation of the first comprehensive history of Korean
Protestant Christianity, by George Paik (Paek Nakchun)-- his Yale PhD
dissertation "The History of the Protestant Missions in Korea, 1832-1910,"
published in Seoul in 1929)-- bears the title
(1973).
The term _kidok_ (Chinese _jidu_) originated in China as an
abbreviation of a transliteration of "Christ"--perhaps _Jilisidu_ (or in
the older Wade spelling that reflects its probable treaty port origin,
_Kilissutu_; those who are familiar with Protestant Chinese translations
of the Bible may know of a more accurate form). The Chinese dictionary
defines Jidujiao (Kidokkyo) as Protestant Christianity.
Although the popular idea of Kidokkyo as excluding Catholicism
seems to prejudice the latter, the Catholic establishment itself seem to
accept that usage, if unhappily. If one looks up "Kidokkyo" in the Korean
Catholic Encyclopedia, (1985), one is
directed to the entry "Kurisuto kyo." In this entry the term "Kidokkyo"
appears but three times, and only within quotes. The entry defines
"Kurisuto kyo" as the proper term for an as-yet undivided Christianity up
until the time of the Schism, when it splits into the "Roma Kat'ollik
kyohoe" and the "Tongbang Ch^ong (Eastern or Greek Orthodox) kyohoe."
With the Reformation the Protestants split off from the Catholic
communion. After discussing the various complications arising from the
Reformation, the article continues:
"In Korea during the Kaehwa Period, from the opening of ports in
1876 to the Japanese annexation of 1910, both the Kat'ollik and Kaesin
religions were called Yaso (Chinese Yesu, =Jesus) kyo without distinction,
but then came to be distinguished as Ch'^onju kyo and Yaso kyo,
[respectively], and then later as Kat'ollik and Yaso kyo, with the latter
especially being called "'Kidokkyo'" or "Kaesin kyo," which situation has
continued until today. Thus, before anyone knew it ["^on^u t^ot"], the
term 'Kidokkyo' in the sense of 'Kuristo kyo' had come to be commonly
understood as the equivalent of 'Kaesin kyo.'" Confirming the permanence
of this change, the article concludes, "...And so in general we can divide
[Christianity] into three principal forms. Comparing them by the number
of believers, we can calculate as follows: the Roman Catholic Church, 800
million, the Eastern Orthodox Church about 200 million, and the
Protestants [the word spelled out phonetically], about 100 million."
Putting aside some quibbling about some of this (especially those
numbers), the main conclusion for our discussion would seem to be that
Korean Catholics tend to want to avoid the term "Kidokkyo" and have
tacitly come to accept that in Korea it refers to Protestants only.
The statement about the Catholics and the Protestants both being
known as "Yaso kyo" in the Kaehwa period was news to me, and I suspect it
will be to many others also. Catholicism had been known in Korea as
Ch'^onju kyo since at least the 17th century, and that name certainly did
not drop out of usage between 1876 and 1910. Even so, the particular
circumstances of that period are relevant to to the sharp terminological
distinction between Catholics and Protestants in Korea. Catholicism had a
bloody history from 1785 up until the first half of the 1870s. After 1801
it was officially prohibited as a subversive and implacable enemy of the
Korean state, and while it had amazing success in maintaining its
existence and actually growing under those circumstances, still the
government and by far the great bulk of the Korean population considered
it as a legally treasonable entity with which it was dangerous in the
extreme to be associated. This changed with the Western treaties in the
early 1880s, but significantly France, as the homeland of the underground
foreign missionaries, had the greatest difficulty in entering into
official relations with Korea. It wasn't until 1886 that a treaty was
signed between them. Ironically, it was that treaty which made it
possible, by virtue of its freedom of religion clause, for Protestant
missionaries to legally enter Korea. Yet the government and the average
Korean still remained wary of Catholicism for some years afterwards.
In that situation it behooved the Protestants to sharply distinguish
themselves from the Catholics. And that was not hard to do, since in
those days most mainline American Protestants (from which the great
majority of the new missionaries came) were strongly and overtly
anti-Catholic, and the Catholics (especially the French who had dominated
in Korea) likewise in reverse. From the Catholic point of view as well,
it would have created difficulties if both they and the Protestants went
under the same name. It would seem to me that what happened "before
anyone knew it," in the words of the Korean Catholic Encyclopedia, must
have happened even sooner. In fact, given Korean circumstances in 1886,
it was inevitable that the two groups would not call atention to their
common heritage. And for that reason, I don't see that there is much cause
for head wringing over Catholicism's seeming expulsion from Christianity
in Korea, as perplexing as that is for even unreligious Westerners. It
doesn't seem to perplex Korean Catholics as much as it does the
foreigners.
When I started this posting I intended also to talk about Lawrence
Driscoll's contribution, which raised the issue of "Hananim." But I now
see that new postings also touching on that have arrived in the In Box, so
I will absorb those first.
Gari Ledyard
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| Re: Re: most Christian city in Asia [message #6989 is a reply to message #6988] |
Mon, 08 December 2003 22:32 |
Timsanglee
Messages: 16
Registered: October 1999
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Junior Member |
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Below is a quote relevant to our discussion. It's from Syncretism: The
Religious Context of Christian Beginnings in Korea (New York: SUNY Press, 2001) by
David Chung, who died a year or so ago:
"The Protestant church, especially Presbyterianism, grew so rapidly and
strongly that a prominent visitor [fn. #44] to the provincial capital, P'yongyang,
is said to have named it a 'Jerusalem.'" (53)
Looking up the footnote #44, I find "John R. Mott." But that's it! There's
no reference to Mott's work, or whether Mott meant a Jerusalem of the East or
Jerusalem of Korea. So the hunt continues, albeit narrowed down somewhat,
unless Chung has thrown us a red herring.
Best,
Timothy S. Lee
Brite Divinity School (TCU)
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| Re: most Christian City in Asia [message #6990 is a reply to message #6987] |
Tue, 09 December 2003 11:39 |
James H Grayson
Messages: 48
Registered: September 1998
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Member |
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8.12.03
Dear List Readers,
Just a few comments further to Prof. Ledyard's contribution.
Yesu-gyo (Jesus Religion) is another word for Protestantism.
Indeed, Yi Huisung's Kugo taesajon defines it as 'Kidokkyo-ui
sin'gyo' ! the new (reformed) religion of Christianity. There is also a
precedent for its usage amongst early Protestant missionaries in
China. I haven't been able yet to trace this in Dallet, but I seem to
recall that 19th century Korean Catholics were interrogated about
whether they were followers of Yesu-gyo.
The term is found in the title of three of the four mainline
Presbyterian groups which refer to themselves as Han'guk or Tae
Han Yesu-gyo Changno-hoe. The Methodist Church on the other
hand styles itself as Kidokkyo Tae Han Kamni-hoe. The most
liberal branch of Presbyterianism uses Kidokkyo in its title rather
than Yesu-gyo. This has led to the somewhat jokey reference to
Jesus Presbyterians and Christ Presbyterians. As a Methodist
missionary to Korea in the 1970s, I had not heard the term Yesu-
gyo used widely until I was working in Taegu where it was the
common term (amongst non-church goers as well) for
Protestantism.
Terms can always have inappropriate applications. When I taught
seminarians World Religious History at the Methodist Seminary in
Seoul in the 1980s, I like to remind them ( when discussing
Christianity) that Methodism was not kaesin-gyo because
Methodism did not come out of the Reformation - ie it couldn't be
seen to be reformed or protesting about Catholicism. It was an
evangelical movement within the Church of England. This was a
new thought for many.
Whatever, thoughts many first generation Protestant missionaries
may have had about Catholic doctrine, certainly the personal
regard for key figures such as Bishop Mutel was quite high.
James H. Grayson
Prof. James H Grayson, Ph.D.
Director, Centre for Korean Studies
School of East Asian Studies
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK S10 2UJ
j.h.grayson@sheffield.ac.uk
Office: +44 114 222-8418
FAX: +44 114 222-8432
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| RE: most Christian City in Asia [message #6991 is a reply to message #6964] |
Tue, 09 December 2003 14:25 |
Sayers, Robert
Messages: 5
Registered: December 2003
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Junior Member |
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For what it's worth: I interviewed quite a number of Korean onggi potters
in the 1980s, many of whom traced their ancestry back to 19th century
communities of Catholic believers. The latter referred to themselves as
kugyo, or "old believers," in contrast to singyo, "new believers," meaning
Catholics who joined the church after the persecution era (or at least
during the modern period). The implication was that they "suffered for the
survival of the Korean Church" whereas the new believers did not. As I
recall, some of them also lumped Protestants among the "singyo," although
Kidokkyo was more commonly used.
Robert H. Sayers
Arlington, VA
-----Original Message-----
From: James H Grayson [mailto:J.H.Grayson@sheffield.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 11:40 AM
To: Korean Studies Discussion List
Subject: Re: [KS] most Christian City in Asia
8.12.03
Dear List Readers,
Just a few comments further to Prof. Ledyard's contribution.
Yesu-gyo (Jesus Religion) is another word for Protestantism.
Indeed, Yi Huisung's Kugo taesajon defines it as 'Kidokkyo-ui
sin'gyo' ! the new (reformed) religion of Christianity. There is also a
precedent for its usage amongst early Protestant missionaries in
China. I haven't been able yet to trace this in Dallet, but I seem to
recall that 19th century Korean Catholics were interrogated about
whether they were followers of Yesu-gyo.
The term is found in the title of three of the four mainline
Presbyterian groups which refer to themselves as Han'guk or Tae
Han Yesu-gyo Changno-hoe. The Methodist Church on the other
hand styles itself as Kidokkyo Tae Han Kamni-hoe. The most
liberal branch of Presbyterianism uses Kidokkyo in its title rather
than Yesu-gyo. This has led to the somewhat jokey reference to
Jesus Presbyterians and Christ Presbyterians. As a Methodist
missionary to Korea in the 1970s, I had not heard the term Yesu-
gyo used widely until I was working in Taegu where it was the
common term (amongst non-church goers as well) for
Protestantism.
Terms can always have inappropriate applications. When I taught
seminarians World Religious History at the Methodist Seminary in
Seoul in the 1980s, I like to remind them ( when discussing
Christianity) that Methodism was not kaesin-gyo because
Methodism did not come out of the Reformation - ie it couldn't be
seen to be reformed or protesting about Catholicism. It was an
evangelical movement within the Church of England. This was a
new thought for many.
Whatever, thoughts many first generation Protestant missionaries
may have had about Catholic doctrine, certainly the personal
regard for key figures such as Bishop Mutel was quite high.
James H. Grayson
Prof. James H Grayson, Ph.D.
Director, Centre for Korean Studies
School of East Asian Studies
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK S10 2UJ
j.h.grayson@sheffield.ac.uk
Office: +44 114 222-8418
FAX: +44 114 222-8432
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| Hananim [message #6992 is a reply to message #6983] |
Thu, 11 December 2003 12:17 |
Gari Keith Ledyard
Messages: 124
Registered: September 1999
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Senior Member |
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To a large extent, problems involved in the relationship the term
Hananim and related forms to ancient Korean religious concepts are not
resolvable. Against the widespread view that there was such a concept and
a word for it going back to the very beginnings of Korean religious
thought, the fact is that we have no textual attestatiom of such a word
until the 1880s or at most a few years earlier. To the extent that the
issue turns on the beliefs of one religion or another it becomes a matter
of theology and faith, and historical criticism is beside the point if one
believes in the principle of the freedom of religion. But as a matter of
historical and cultural criticism, it is at least relevant to examine
issues of methodology or the lack of it in approaching the question. As
already noted on the list, Don Baker's article in The Review of Korean
Studies, 5/1 (June 2002) is a very useful guide through this thicket.
One is certainly free to examine the earliest sources of Korean
history for the purpose of understanding as best we can what early Korean
beliefs were like. And in those sources there is no lack of references to
heaven and various other matters of the divine to think about. But to
suppose the existence of such a late-appearing word as "Hananim" already
in the mistiest beginnings of Korean life seems to me to go beyond the
line. Timothy Lee seems to do that. Not only does he seem to suggest
that the forms "han^unim" and "hananim" already existed in those times, he
goes on to give a fairly concrete definition for them in application to
Korea's highest antiquity. He says: "Both
> hanĂ
Ânim and hananim did not initially have much to do with the notion
> of âÂÂone,â though such a notion may have been one of its more faint
> connotations. The terms referred to what anthropologists call a high
> godâÂÂthe god who is at the top of a hierarchy of godsâÂÂand had
> associations with the sky. Thus in its original form, hananim hardly
> denotes a transcendent monotheistic deity.
The religious ideas implicit in this statement seem quite appropriate to
the ancient source materials, and I have no quibble with them. It's
bringing the "hananim" terms into the statement that I disagree with.
What we have to do, in my view, is to start with the earliest
forms we concretely know and see what we can deduce about them, and remove
all discussion of ancient Korean religious thought from the debate.
The two forms hananim and han^unim seem to appear out of nowhere
in the first half of the 1880s, when the first Protestant project to
produce a Korean translation of the Bible began. The Tonghak form of the
word, Hanullim, probably originated around the same time, though it is
possible that it goes back a little earlier. The form Han^ollim, used in
the new religion Taejonggyo, appeared around the end of the first decade
of the 20th century. All of these forms were used by their respective
supporters as the name of a transcendant monotheistic deity.
Prior to the time of emergence of these forms, the Sino-Catholic
term "Ch'^onju" had been used by Catholics as the term for "God." It had
been known in China since the late 16th century and in Korea at least by
1620. It was actively discussed by scholars critical of the Catholics
during the 18th centuy, and propagated in an active religious way from
1784 on. As Lee explained, the Protestant pioneer Horace B. Underwood
had preferred this term to "Hananim," out of the conviction that the
latter had polytheistic connotations. But Tonghak had also used
"Ch'^onju." It appears in the writings of the founder, Ch'oe Che'u
(Su'un, 1820-1864), which date from the period 1860-1864 and are all in
Chinese.
The meaning of "Ch'^onju" is transparent in the characters: "Lord
(or king, master, ruler, etc.) of Heaven," or "Heavenly Lord." But the
important fact for Underwood, and apparently for Ch'oe Che'u earlier, was
that it was established in Korea as the name of God, as they understood
it. Ch'oe Che'u too preached the idea of one God only.
Lawrence Driscoll, representing a long established interpretation,
stated in his posting that "Hananim" took its root from Korean hana,
"one." But Gary Rector considered that mistaken and argued that the root
was really han^ul, "heaven." I'm in Rector's school.
The reason I choose han^ul is because of the pre-existing use of
"Ch'^onju" by the Catholics and the Tonghaks. The fact is that the
resulting form *Han^ulnim is made up of exactly the same semantic elements
as "Ch'^onju." Rector interpreted "nim" as the common honorific suffix,
and it is that. But it is also a long attested word for "king" or
"ruler," and appears as such in Middle Korean texts and in sijo and kasa
poetry from the 16th century on, and in orally transmitted sijo attributed
to known historical figures of much earlier periods.
We can take the forms hanullim, han^unim, hananim, and han^ollim
as all derivable from . As for the more complicated forms,
the double -ll- is simply a transformation of -nl-, similarly to the name
"Silla" and the word "kollan," "difficult," and hundreds of other common
examples. The simpler forms han^unim and hananim come from an alternative
Korean phonological rule to resolve the clash between joined l's and n's
(which Korean tongues and ears cannot abide): the "l" is dropped. It's
just like in the present modifier form of the verb sal-, "to live," and
hundreds of similar examples. One doesn't say saln^un, but san^un. Thus
from *Han^ulnim we can get by regular Korean rules: Han^unim or Hananim.
The difference between the different middle vowels of the two
forms arises from the fact that the vowel in the second syllable of Han^ul
was originally the now obsolete Middle Korean vowel called the "area a,"
or "lower a" (so called because it was written under the consonant rather
than to the right of it as with the "regular a"). "Arae a" in the first
syllable of words began to merge phonologically with "regular a" around
the end of 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. But in the second
and later syllables and/or in suffixes the effect was more disorderly.
Usually it merged with the vowel ^u (the second to last vowel in the
present order of the alphabet.) But it could also turn into a "regular
a." Thus we can see two forms of the word for "heaven" in the late 19th
and early 20th century"-- han^ul and hanal. Phonologically, these changes
were completed were pretty much complete by the end of the 18th century,
but in the script the old orthographies with the "area a" continued to be
used well into the 20th century. They weren't effectively abolished until
the unified orthography rules of 1933. Thus, in the period when the terms
hananim, etc., first appear, the "arae a" was still before the eyes of
readers.
Insofar as the modern language is concerned, han^ul has become the
standard form and "hanal" would be considered old-fashioned or irregular.
But in the 1880s standarization was still far in the future. Following
the trend, many Protestants now prefer the form "Han^unim," and for the
Catholics, who accepted the term only later, this is also the standard
form. But of course "Hananim" is still preferred by many Protestants.
In the Tonghak form the irregular transformation prevailed, and
the second vowel became ^u. But the final -m of Han^ullim seems to have
conditioned a rounding of ^u into u, giving us Hanullim.
The ^o in the Taejonggyo term term for God, Han^ollim, cannot be
accounted for by ordinary Korean phonological rules. It would appear that
the creators of this form either purposely changed the vowel so as to be
different from the Tonghak (now Ch'^ondogyo) form, or indulged in creative
word play to make the word also jibe with one of its important concepts,
"Han^ol," or "Korean Spirit," (or perhaps Korean mind or sensibility). If
that is the case, they would have been opting either to depart from the
concept "heaven" or meld it into other tenets of the religion.
What can be drawn from all this? My conclusions are two. The
first is that all the modern forms of Hananim, etc. are inventions of
around the time that they first appear, and that at least in the
Protestant and Tonghak cases, they were simply calqued forms of
"Ch'^onju," created in translating that term into a new, pure Korean term.
My second conclusion follows from the first: that prior to the
late 19th century, it is very doubtful that any compound noun like
"Han^u(l)nim" ever had any existence in the spoken or written Korean
language. It's not impossible that Catholics could have glossed or
discussed the term ch'^onju using , but in the very few
Catholic han'gul texts (there were hundreds) that survived the
persecutions, the vernacular term does not appear.
One can well imagine the need for a change from "Ch'^onju" on the
part of non-Catholics. In the 1860s and early 1870s, thousands of
Catholics were killed by the Korean state in what the government hoped
would be the final extirpation of Catholicism in Korea. Ch'oe Che'u was
executed before this bloody persecution began. When he adopted the term
Ch'^onju for God in the monotheistic sense, he could not have been unaware
of its use by Catholics. Every policeman and magistrate in Korea knew
that word and was ever alert for any sign of it. Ch'oe himself referred
to the challenge of the West in his writings, vividly evoking the sense of
foreboding in Korea after the Westerners forced China, in 1860, to accept
Western international norms and lift all prohibitions against the practice
of free trade and free religion, all of which was seen in Korea as the
total humiliation of China. Could Korea not be next? This spiritual
crisis was precisely the matrix and the context in which Ch'oe heard God
speaking from heaven, causing him to imagine and create the Tonghak
religion. Doubtless some of the people killed in the great persecution of
1866 to 1871 were Tonghaks, dragged into the Catholic net by the term
"Ch'^onju." What would have been more natural than Koreanizing it in a
vernacular form to escape the dreaded syllables? We can't be sure whether
it was the Protestants or the Tonghaks who did this first, but both had a
crucial interest in dissociating themselves from the Catholics. My belief
is that to accomplish that end, they translated the most central term in
their faith into a vernacular form. It was all the more attractive as it
would be more comprehensible familiar to ordinary believers than the
Chinese "Ch'^onju."
It is not logically possible to prove a negative, and it would be
foolhardy to say that a certain compound noun made out of genuine, known
elements in a given language had never existed. But the fact remains that
in all the glossaries and other sources from which we have recovered old
Korean vocabulary from pre-alphabetic times, no hint of "hananim", etc.
can be found. Nor is it known from any Middle Korean text following
Sejong's invention of the alphabet. Nor has anyone ever reported such a
word from any of the Korean language source materials that become more and
more numerous from the end of the 17th century on.
And if there had been such a concept and such a word with such a
serious religious significance, which somehow had managed to find a line
of social transmission over the centuries, would it suddenly appear in the
1880s in three variant forms? The odds would seem to be low.
Note that the the forms of hananim, etc. that do exist all have a
variation in the second syllable of han^ul, which resulted from the
fallout of the doomed "arae a." That process had occurred within no more
than a couple of hundred years of 1880. The fact that the -ln- contiguity
had phonologically resolved itself in two different ways, in one a dropped
-l-, in the other a doubled -ll-, is not in itself abnormal. But if such
a thing had happened in the deep past, the odds are that one form would
have gradually dominated and the other dropped out of common use, or that
the two forms would both survive with some differentiation in meaning.
In English, for instance, both "guard" and "ward" originated in the same
word, but substantial semantic differentiation has occurred.
The older one claims the word hananim, etc. to have existed, the
longer the odds against finding it as hananim, han^unim, and hanullim all
suddenly together in the same time and place with no significant semantic
difference between the forms. "Hananim" has to be rescued from antiquity.
Gari Ledyard
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| Hananim [message #6994 is a reply to message #6992] |
Fri, 12 December 2003 08:31 |
James H Grayson
Messages: 48
Registered: September 1998
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Member |
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12.12.03
Dear List readers,
The discussion of the origins of the term 'Hananim' have made for
very interesting reading.
In terms of its usage in Protestant circles, the term originates
with the translation of the New Testament by John Ross, a
missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland residing
in Manchuria from the early 1870s. Before he went to China, Ross
was already bi-lingual as he was a native Gaelic speaker. In total
he had a command of 11 languages. In the nineteenth century,
missionaries were divided over the 'Term Question' - that is, what
term do you use for the One and Only God - an issue which had
been wrestled with by the Jesuits centuries before. There are
essentially three options - use an existing term, transliterate a
European (Greek or Latin) term, or create a new term. The Jesuits
opted for the latter. Most Protestants in China (including the
eminent James Legge) opted for the first option, choosing the term
Shang-ti. They did so because of a type of missionary theology
called Fulfillment Theology, that is the high god of a particular
people is in fact the one and only god known through Jesus Christ.
Ross was clearly in this camp. In fact, his penultimate book
published in 1909 was called 'The Original Religion of China' and is
based on this thinking. It also fits in with an academic line of
thought from Andrew Lang to Wilhelm Schmidt.
Thus, when Ross conceived the idea of translating the New
Testament in the mid-1870s, he had a principle that wherever
possible Korean terms should be used in preference to Chinese or
Sino-Korean terms. This was especially important regarding the
term for God. This issue would have been discussed at length with
the varying team of Korean translators who worked with him and
his brother-in-law John McIntyre. The translation work was done
from the Delegates' Version of the Chinese Bible and the Greek
Bible, and was done four times before the publication of the first
two Gospels in 1882. Certainly, the term Hananim and variants
must have had some general currency by that time as it was
known to Ross's colleagues who were moderately educated, from
the northwestern part of the peninsula, and were neither Catholics
nor members of the Tonghak.
One possible explanation for why there were three (or more?)
different versions of the term may be that we should not think of
Hananim as a proper name, but rather think of it as a descriptive
word - the ruler of Heaven. If that is the case, to my mind it would
not be surprising to find variation in terminology. What is important
is what is being described, a high god. High gods are not unusual
in world pantheons, and it would be no surprise to find such a diety
amongst the Korean pantheon. In fact, one could argue that one
reason for the ready acceptance of Catholicism is that the concept
behind 'Ch'onju' resonated with an existing belief.
The explanation 'hana' in 'Hananim' as meaning 'one' is quite
common amongst many Protestants today, and I think may have
begun with ideas of James Gale. Certainly, it is often used by
contemporary Protestants to distinguish the 'Christian' God from
what they see as the polytheistic high god of Korea. This idea, of
course, runs counter to the intention of people such as John Ross.
It is my impression that overwhelmingly contemporary Korean
Protestants use the term 'Hananim' for God rather than 'Hanunim'.
The latter term was used in the first thoroughly modern translation
of the Bible, the Kongdong ponyok of the early 1970s with
Protestant and Catholic translators, but did not find favour with
many Protestants because it was the term popularly used by the
Catholic Church. The most recent translation, the P'yojun sae
ponyok of the early 1990s reverts back to using 'Hananim'.
For me, the importance historically of the Ross Translation is it
that led to the formation of groups of (Protestant?) Christians before
the arrival of missionaries in the mid-1880s. This has meant that,
unusually, the Protestant community (like the Catholic community)
was self-evangelised from the beginning, and forms an important
part of the explanation for the rapid growth of Christianity in Korea.
The use of the word 'Hananim', whatever its history, is a key part
of that history.
Best wishes,
James H. Grayson
Prof. James H Grayson, Ph.D.
Director, Centre for Korean Studies
School of East Asian Studies
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK S10 2UJ
j.h.grayson@sheffield.ac.uk
Office: +44 114 222-8418
FAX: +44 114 222-8432
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| Re: Hananim [message #6996 is a reply to message #6992] |
Fri, 12 December 2003 13:57 |
Timsanglee
Messages: 16
Registered: October 1999
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Junior Member |
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Dear List:
Iâll second Professor Graysonâs post on John Ross and Hananim, and cite the
following passage from Rossâs article entitled âCorean New Testament,â
published in Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal (November-December 1883):
âIt is now about then years since I wrote my first article to the Recorder
giving an account of my first contact with Coreans at the village called the â
Corean Gateâ . . . One of the most important matters to be decided in every
translation of the Scriptures is the names of the Deity and of spiritual subjects;
with most of these we had little trouble. Neither of the terms employed in
China for âGodâ is admissible in Corean. The term [sangje in Chinese
characters] in Corean Shang-de, is known in its classical sense to scholars only, to
others not at all, as Taoism, which has adopted it in China, has no following
in Corea. The term [sin], in Corean Shin, is never used alone and when
employed it is invariably as in the Chinese classics [kwisin], pronounced gooi-shin,
this order of the two terms being constant, and as in China, they are the
counterpart of the lares and penates of the Romans. Hence both terms were
inappropriate for our purpose. In the Corean-French Dictionary I discovered that the
Roman Catholics have transliterated their Chinese terms, among other [châĹ
nju] tiun-joo. Years, however, before the appearance of that dictionary I had
adopted the name in universal use in Corea, nor have I ever met a shadow of
objection against it. Strange to say it is the native Corean for the Roman
Catholic term. The Corean for âheavenâ is hanal, for âlordâ or âprinceâ nim,
originally Chinese; and Hananim is the term by which Coreans everywhere
acknowledge the Ruler above and the supreme on earth. This term I have tested in
every way with Coreans and my conviction is that the introduction of a foreign
term would be a serious mistake.â
At the very least, this evidence refutes Gari Ledyardâs speculation that
Hananim was invented by either Protestants or Tonghaks. It should also be noted
that the ChâĹnju that the Tonghaks/ChâĹndokyoists believed in was not a
transcendent monotheistic God, in that Tonghaks held this deity and humans to be of
the same essence, as attested by their famous doctrine innaechâĹn.
Best Regards,
Timothy S. Lee
Brite Divinity School (TCU)
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