Introduction to the Special Section: Korean Religions and COVID Restrictions

As our regular readers know well, the Journal of Korean Religions is not a theology journal. Instead, we publish studies of religion in society, defined broadly. Over the last thirteen years, we have had special issues on Pure Land Buddhism, on the experiences of Christian missionaries in Korea, and on religious ritual and the state during the Chosŏn era. We have included between our covers studies of the history of the thought and practices of various religions in Korea, discussing not only Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism, but also shamanism and new religions such as Tonghak. We do not restrict ourselves to religion in the past, of course, but look at religion in Korea's present as well. We have shared with our readers articles about religion and the media, about the role religions have played in relations between North and South Korea, and about the roles religion plays in Korean communities outside the peninsula.

In this issue, we have three articles delving into how Korea's Christian communities—Catholic and Protestant—have dealt with a problem of the present: the COVID-19 pandemic. Christians place a lot of importance on regular weekly meetings for worship. The South Korean government, on the other hand, was concerned about those religious gatherings serving as venues for the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus. Different Christian organizations in Korea responded in different ways to their government's demand that they prioritize concern for public health and temporarily change the way their congregations gather for ritual expressions of their faith.

In our first article on this topic, Franklin Rausch looks at the response of the Catholic Church. It would not be unreasonable to expect the Catholic hierarchy to insist on holding in-person Sunday worship services even if a pandemic is raging. After all, Catholicism is a sacramental religion and, as Rausch points out, the Eucharist is an extremely important sacrament for Catholics. The problem facing the Catholic Church during the pandemic is that the sacrament of the Eucharist is only available to lay believers through in-person interactions between a priest and the members of his congregation. Despite the importance it placed on the Eucharist, during the height of the pandemic the Catholic hierarchy suspended in-person Sunday masses. Even when they were allowed to reopen their churches, they continued to follow government directives and placed limits on how many people could be in their churches at any one time.

Rausch explains why the Catholic Church cooperated with the government's plans for minimizing possibilities for transmission of the virus. Relying on what was written in the weekly Seoul and Daegu diocesan bulletins, Rausch argues that Catholic cooperation was inspired by the teaching of the Church to love our neighbors. That is a core doctrine of Christianity. However, a few Protestant pastors did not give that ethical imperative the same priority the Catholic hierarchy in South Korea gave it.

Timothy Lee shows that, unlike in the highly centralized Catholic Church, Protestant pastors were able to respond in different ways to the directives of the government to curtail public gatherings in order to reduce COVID infection rates. He identifies four different ways those pastors chose to respond: there were those who were willing compliers, those who were begrudging compliers, those who were amenable non-compliers, and those who were defiant non-compliers. Most did as the Catholics did and complied. However, those who refused to place the health of the public ahead of what they believed were the demands of their Christian faith, as they understood it, made the most noise, protesting loudly against what they called a government attack on the freedom of religion.

Unfortunately, those who made the most noise garnered the most attention. This gave many non-Christians a negative impression of Protestant Christianity. It is easy to make the mistake of taking those who show up on the evening news, loudly asserting that real Christians have to resist government attempts to get them to modify their religious practices in order to minimize the threat to the lives of their fellow Koreans that COVID posed...