Christ and Caesar in Modern Korea: A History of Christianity and Politics (review)

148KOREAN STUDIES, VOL. 23 Christ and Caesar in Modern Korea: A History of Christianity and Politics, by Wi Jo Kang. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. 214 pp., $19.95 paper. Invoking Jesus' enigmatic response to the Pharisees, Wi Jo Kang, a professor at Wartburg Theological Seminary, promises an "interpretive history ofthe development of Christianity in relation to the political development of modern Korea" (p. vii). The author delivers a thematic narrative, yoking missionary efforts in the late Chosön kingdom to "Christian presidents" in the late twentieth century. Complete with experiential references, four appendices, and a general bibliography, the book gives the English reading public a unique perspective on Korean Christianity's remarkable journey through authoritarian rule and domination. In the opening chapters, Kang highlights the Christian mission to nineteenth -century Chosön. Bereft of any original research, the author reproduces heroic claims of period texts, heralding the royal persecutions of Catholic martyrs and the modernizing successes of Protestant missionaries. His sketchy portrayal of the Christian struggle with Neo-Confucian officialdom leaves the reader wondering why Neo-Confucians were so hell-bent on exterminating the early converts. A doctrinal or institutional analysis of Christian-Confucian conflict would have proved useful, but the reader does, nevertheless, gain an understanding of the church's foundation, a foundation that sustained it during the transition from Confucian to colonial rale. To introduce colonial church-state relations, Kang reprints his earlier work, Religion and Politics in Korea under the Japanese Rule, without apology or reference. Invoking political themes (politics of oppression, politics of cultural rule, politics of war), the author depicts a Christian community in opposition to the colonial state, particularly in the March First Movement. While Christian participation in the March First Movement was significant and deserves extensive review, Kang underplays the Christian practice of state accommodation . The "loyal recognition" by missionaries and church leaders is hard to reconcile with Kang's resistance model, particularly by the late 1930s, when the imperial regime successfully incorporated Christians through state Shintoism , the allegiance oath, and the movement for denominational unity. By remaining at the discursive level of church-state declarations, the author fails to address colonial state strategy and the church's own internal debates over political action. While it is important to read what church elites say in documents, it does not necessarily help in understanding why they and their laity act against, for, or with the state over time. This problem intensifies in the remaining chapters, as Kang chronicles the church's role in postwar social movements and accompanies the reader from national division and the Korean War to military regimes and, most recently, a BOOK REVIEWS149 a "Christian president." In this narrative, the reader comes to view Korean Christianity as "the spearhead ofthe democratic movement in Korea," (p. 1 14) despite its record of support for authoritarian rule. In amplifying the small voice of Christian dissent against the conservative cacophony of church collaboration , the author misrepresents the postwar church and its institutional practices ofpower. In reconstructing Christian activism in the democratic movement of the 1970s and 1980s, Kang identifies activists by their Christian membership , as if religious affiliation explains political practice. Pursuing the social biography of these Christians would have provided linkages between institution and belief, belief and practice, particularly in the transformative minjung movement . Despite abundant materials in Korean and English, however, Kang never addresses the minjung movement and its influence on the church's political practice nor does he address international church bodies and overseas Korean Christians who played vital roles in the antistate struggles of this period. Without critical insight into these actors, we are left to surmise why some church sectors adopt progressive sociopolitical roles while the majority remain wedded to the dominant social, economic, and political regimes in Korea. This skewed chronicle ofpostwar church-state conflict is disrupted by the author's thematic forays into the Unification Church, anti-Americanism, and North Korean Christianity. While topical, these chapters, unfortunately, divert the reader away from church-state relations and pursue the author's own idiosyncratic agenda. In the Unification Church chapter, Kang notes the successful growth of new religious movements and their obeisance to the state...