Theology of Improvisation and Korean People’s Multiple Religious Identities

When my mother died in Korea in May 2013 my family had a relatively traditional Korean funeral, though all of us are Christian and I am a Presbyterian minister. What this meant was that three days after her death we had a funeral ceremony and observed the Third Day Ritual, a Confucian tradition. After forty-nine days, we celebrated the Forty-Ninth Day Ritual to release our mother’s soul to the “other world” of the deceased.² My sister-in-law announced that she had also requested weekly special masses for the deceased in her Catholic Church during these forty-nine days. When I asked my sister which religious tradition we were following in observing the Forty-Ninth Day Ritual, she was puzzled and asked: “Isn’t it Confucian?” Her husband, who knew more about Korean traditional rituals, had a similar response to my question. Later, thanks to an Internet search, we found that the ritual was originally a Buddhist tradition.

Such confusion and variety is common in Korean society. David Chung, a scholar of religion, describes what he calls the “syncretic phenomena” of Korean religious traditions, which might look “bizarre” to foreigners:

In Korean funerals, for instance, it is Confucianism that dresses the mourners in sackcloth, while the Buddhist bonzes chant their sutras for the departed to the Western Paradise, a Buddhist heavenly kingdom. It is a shaman who exorcizes the evil spirits that may annoy or harm the departed on his or her journey, while Taoist geomancers engage themselves in supervising the digging of the grave on the site that they believe to be the most “profitable” location.³

All of these components that Chung describes are no longer present in most contemporary Korean funeral rituals but can still be found in a remote, rural areas. Chung explains further:

Each religion plays a different note here, but in a strange harmony. Confucianism provides the religious etiquette; Mahayana Buddhism the ritual and the vision of future life; Taoism ensures the safe journey of the deceased to the spiritual world, while keeping an eye on the expected prosperity of the bereaved conformists to the rites; a shaman is needed to deal with the several souls of the dead directly.⁴

As far back as 1874, a French missionary to Korea had already noted this religious multiplicity of Korean people and said: “As a general thing, we may say that all-round Korean will be a Confucianist when in society, a Buddhist when he philosophizes, and a spirit worshipper when he is in trouble.”⁵ Christianity was imported to Korea in the eighteenth century and added yet another component to this already rich multiplicity. In particular, Christianity was shaped under the strong influence of Neo-Confucianism, which was the national religion at the time Christianity was introduced. The main influences are seen in the Confucian family-oriented, hierarchical, and patriarchal ideology on the church structure and the interpretation of its doctrinal belief. Since then and even before, understanding the multiple layers of religious practices and identity has been a daunting task for Korean people.

Such religious multiplicity, even if they are not aware of it, has become a norm or daily routine for Korean people regardless of their religious affiliations. Kathleen Greider addresses this point when she notes that “religious multiplicity within persons, families, and communities is more frequent than is usually acknowledged.”⁶ Pamela Cooper-White stands in the same line and theorizes more generally about multiple self-identity, though not on a religious level. She criticizes the “illusion of being one self”⁷ and instead argues for “a multiplicity of selves in relation.”⁸ She further claims that the “folding together of many selves” is probably a healthier and more “responsive form of selfhood in our world of . . . continual flux” than a single self.⁹ The challenge is: how could we theoretically formulate this multiplicity of selves and, in particular, religious identity? A major approach to religious multiplicity so far has been syncretism, defined as a fusion of diverse religious beliefs and practice into a new coherent system.¹⁰ I argue...