Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America

Chapter 5. Christianity and Civil Society in Colonial Korea: The Civil Society Movement of Cho Man-sik and the P’yŏngyang YMCA against Japanese Colonialism

119 5 Christianity and Civil Society in Colonial Korea The Civil Society Movement of Cho Man-sik and the P’yŏngyang YMCA against Japanese Colonialism Kyusik Chang Protestantism, along with Marxism, was a foreign idea that had a profound influence on Korean society in the twentieth century. In the early modern period, Korean intellectuals accepted Christianity not as a religion but as a driving force behind the country’s push toward a modern society . Rhee Syngman, who, along with Ahn Chang-ho, was one of the most prominent leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, defined modern Western civilization as Christian civilization. He emphasized the need for achieving the same freedom and happiness that the United States had by making Christianity the basis of political, moral, and social reforms in Korea.1 Lee Dong-hui, who, with Rhee Syngman and Ahn Chang-ho, was one of the three main leaders of the Daehan Min’guk Imsi Chŏngbu (Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea), also insisted that Koreans preserve national freedom and independence by fostering brotherhood, patriotism, and independence through Christianity as Western nations did.2 Ahn Chang-ho accused American missionaries in Korea of trying to spread their religion while neglecting the cultural movement.3 However, 120 chapter 5 instead of criticizing Christianity itself, he criticized their mission policy, which reflected the views of conservative Presbyterian missionaries such as Samuel Moffett, who emphasized direct evangelism rather than educational or medical missions. Ahn Chang-ho’s criticism represented Korean intellectuals’ understanding of Christianity at the time; that is, they recognized Christianity and modern Western culture as two sides of the same coin. In fact, the international network of Christianity was a primary pathway leading to the adoption of Western culture, particularly the American culture of civil society within Korean society.4 Historical studies on Christianity in Korea have focused on the development of local churches and their roles in the nationalist movement.5 The rapid proliferation of Korean churches was exceptional in the history of modern Protestant missions. Further, Christian groups played a key role in the Korean national movement, as the three main leaders of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea had a Christian background. The lack of attention given to the Korean national leaders’ acceptance of Christianity as a symbol of modernity in the context of Western civilization , rather than merely as a religion, is noteworthy; that is, studies have focused on church growth or the Christian national movement. This essay traces the relationship between Christianity and modernity by focusing on P’yŏng-an, a province that had accounted for almost half of all Korean Christians during the first half of the twentieth century. It reconstructs the early history of Christianity in Korea by incorporating the modernity factor into the study of church growth and the national movement. One way Christianity contributed significantly to forming modernity in Korea was by its nourishment of the public sphere in the private realm through organizing debate clubs. In this regard, Jürgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere provides a useful tool in the analysis of the Christian social movement in Korea. Habermas presented a blueprint illustrating the bourgeois public sphere in eighteenth-century Europe with his concept of the private realm and the public authority sphere, that is, the state. Within the private realm, he distinguished the public sphere from civil society as the realm of commodity exchanges and social labor.6 According to his analysis, the public had long since grown out of early institutions such as coffeehouses, salons, and banquets and was held together through the medium of the press and its professional criticism. The press and its public chang 121 formed the public sphere of a rational-critical debate in the world of letters. The public sphere in the political realm evolved from the public sphere in the world of letters. The state-governed public sphere was appropriated by the public of private people making use of their reason and was established as a sphere of criticism of public authority.7 The public sphere in the political realm became institutionalized within the European bourgeois constitutional states of the nineteenth century. Although the historical context of capitalist development in Korean society was different from the Western society context in Habermas’ study, Korean Christian intellectuals examined Korea’s civil society and public sphere by following the Western model. These intellectuals attempted to foster...