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Early Buddhism and Christianity in Korea: a study in the emplantation of religion (review)
- Korean Studies
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 13, 1989
- pp. 130-132
- 10.1353/ks.1989.0006
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Book Reviews Early Buddhism and Christianity in Korea: a study in the emplantation ofreligion, by James Huntley Grayson. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985. iii, 143 pp. Bibliography, glossary of Chinese character terms, index. US $32.00. This book, which is based on the author's dissertation in anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, argues that there are clear stages of development for religions which move from one country to another. Under the proposition that both Buddhism and Christianity are now thoroughly "emplanted" as Korean religions, Grayson finds patterns in their "Koreanization." His book is useful as a study in comparative religion and as a source of insights into major currents in Korean history. Grayson models his study on a process of adaptation outlined by anthropologist Ralph Linton in A Tree of Culture (1959), which involves phases of (1) importation of a cultural practice, (2) acceptance, (3) evolution/adjustment, and finally, (4) elimination of the old ways of doing the same thing. Using the diffusion of Buddhism in north and south China after the Han to illustrate what was essentially a process of contact, penetration/diffusion, and expansion, Grayson goes on to propose his own model for missionary religions: (1) resolution of value conflicts, (2) toleration by elites, (3) solving conceptual and linguistic problems, (4) successful competition with other religions, and (5) political conditions which encourage growth. These things may happen rapidly or slowly, depending on the circumstances, and Korean history offers several variations on the theme. In pre-Buddhist Korea, the existing religion, which was a forerunner of what we now call shamanism, included a high god, represented on earth by kings who acted as shamans. The existence of this concept of the "Lord of Heaven" made it possible for people in the ancient state of Koguryö (?37 b.c.-668 a.d.) to understand the idea of the Lord Buddha when Buddhism first came to Korea, BOOK REVIEWS131 sometime before 372 a.d. Koguryö Buddhism grew steadily and remained strong in Parhae, Koguryö's successor state (713-926). Meanwhile, in the southern kingdoms of Paekche and Silla, the faith evolved into sects which were patronized by the aristocracy. Grayson offers a detailed discussion of the way Buddhism developed in Silla, building first on missionary contacts with sects in China, then becoming the ideology of the "modern" ruling class—the state creed, in effect— and finally, being diffused as a popular religion in nondoctrinal sects, mixed it would seem with certain elements of shamanism—namely, Koreanized Buddhism . Koryö (918-1392) and the early Chosön period to 1600 are not part of this study. Grayson turns directly from late Silla to the seventeenth century, setting the scene with an excellent outline chapter on Korea after the Hideyoshi invasions . The Catholic church in Korea is his focus here, as he notes its contact with Korea during the Imjin War and then goes on to summarize the bitter history of the church in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Grayson's view, the two centuries of Korean Catholicism since 1784 comprise an example of the "slow penetration" model. The progress of Catholic Christianity was slowed by government suppression, the result of its association with a particular faction in the intelligentsia (the silhak school), its general conflict with Confucian morality (the rites controversy), and its acceptance in the twentieth century of Japanese colonial rule. Protestant Christianity is the subject of Grayson's fifth chapter. Because of the presence of Korean Christians in Manchuria, he proposes that Korean Protestantism was already established before the coming of the western missionaries in the 1880s, and that the faith only needed cultivation in order to flourish. The Protestant missionaries who took charge of the cultivating at the turn of the century also made some inspired strategic decisions, notably adoption of the Nevius Plan of self-support and self-propagation. This is by far the best developed of the book's chapters and comprises an effective short introduction to twentieth century Korean Christianity, the coincidence of Christianity and nationalism under the Japanese, and the explosive growth of the church amid the tribulations of the post-war era. In Grayson's view, Protestantism grew because it built on...