Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea

Epilogue: The Beleaguered Success of Korean Evangelicalism in the 1990s

139 Epilogue The Beleaguered Success of Korean Evangelicalism in the 1990s We have to understand the situational character of religious experience, that is, we must conceive of it in its particular context. When seen historically, culturally, sociologically, and religiously, our experience and its forms are always conditioned. —Joachim Wach At the beginning of the twentieth century, Christians constituted less than 1 percent of the Korean population.1 Near the end of the century, according to a 1995 survey by the South Korean National Statistics Office, Christians constituted 26.3 percent of the population, surpassing Buddhists, the next-largest religious group, with 23.3 percent of the population. Among the Christians, Protestants predominated, accounting for 75 percent of the entire Christian population (and 19.7 percent of the general population), and Catholics constituted the remainder, save two to three thousand Eastern Orthodox Christians.2 These numbers reveal that Christianity—especially Protestantism—rose to the status of a major religion in South Korea in the past century. What these numbers obscure, however, is that within Korean Protestantism itself there exist two main subgroups—evangelicals and, for lack of a better term, non-evangelicals—and that, between them, evangelicals predominate. Throughout Korean Christian history, non-evangelical Protestants have played and continue to play vital roles. This was the case especially during the 1970s and 1980s when liberal Protestants created Minjung theology and took the lead in opposing political dictatorships.3 Even so, in terms of numbers and churchly influence, evangelicals overshadow their nonevangelical counterparts. In fact, evangelicalism has so predominated the 140 | Epilogue Korean church that evangelicalism and Protestantism are often synonymous in Korea. The rise of Korean evangelicalism has been discussed in earlier chapters . In light of this discussion, one might suppose that such success would have persisted through the end of the century, that the 1990s, no less than the previous decades, would have been a triumphant one for Korean evangelicalism . But such a hypothesis would be incorrect. Rather, Korean evangelicalism underwent a much more ambiguous and troubling development in the 1990s. Indeed, in that period, Korean evangelicalism—despite enjoying significant successes in politics, the economy, and civil society—was beleaguered by stalemated growth, scandals involving its prominent members, and challenges posed by other religions of Korea. Evangelical Predominance in Korean Protestantism We have seen in earlier chapters that Korean Protestantism was imbued with an evangelical ethos from the beginning, especially after the great revival of 1907. Chapter 4, with its focus on the beliefs and practices of the evangelicals, confirms this generalization, making use of two 1982 surveys on Korean Protestant religiosity: the Centennial Comprehensive Study of the Korean (Protestant ) Church (CCSKC) and the Investigation into the Growth and Religiosity of the Korean (Protestant) Church (IGRKC).4 Unfortunately, these surveys were not replicated in the 1990s. Another major study on Korean Protestant religiosity was conducted by Gallup Korea in 1997, however: Han’guk kaesin’gyoin ŭi kyohoe hwaltong kwa sinang ŭisik (Korean Protestants’ Churchly Activities and Religious Consciousness ).5 This survey took up broader issues than those of the CCSKC and the IGRKC and did not ask some of the significant questions posed in the earlier studies, such as those concerning the inerrancy of the Bible or the essentiality of the Holy Spirit (born-again) experience. Still, some of its questions were revealing. Some of the more telling ones asked whether the respondents had accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior (73.2 percent said yes); had experienced the Holy Spirit (52 percent, yes); were certain of their salvation (67.9 percent, yes); and believed in the imminent end of the world (68.9 percent, yes), the return of Jesus (80.7 percent, yes), and the possibility of salvation in other religions (24.5 percent, yes).6 These findings, when compared with those of the 1980s studies, suggest that Korean evangelicalism became diluted somewhat in the 1990s. Granted, one should not read too much into some of these figures, such as those relating to the Holy Spirit experience and the certainty of salvation, since even Epilogue | 141 a respondent who had not experienced them might nonetheless have considered them essential, in which case she might still qualify as an evangelical . Overall, it is clear that even while evangelical religiosity became diluted somewhat in the 1990s, the evangelical ethos for the most part continued to predominate in the Korean Protestant Church. But what percentage of Korean Protestants and their...