The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876-1915

— 3 —Spirits

141 귀신, Koui-sin, 鬼神. Génie: les dieux; les diables; démon; mauvais génies. —F. C. Ridel, ed., Dictionnaire Coréen-Français, 1880 귀신 鬼神. A demon, evil-spirit, a devil. —H. G. Underwood, A Korean-English Dictionary, 1890 귀신 l. 鬼神 (귀신) (귀신). Spirits; demons. See 신. —J. S. Gale, A Korean-English Dictionary, 1897 In his English-Korean Dictionary printed in 1890, Horace G. Underwood , the first American clerical missionary to Korea, defined a “witch” as “무당, 무녀, 마슐녀편녜, 요슐녀편녜” (mudang, sorceress, wretch of magic, and wretch of witchcraft).1 Like Korean Confucian yangban elites and French Roman Catholic missionaries, Underwood rejected Korean demon worship, a broad term for folk religions , just as other Christian missionaries rejected magic and wizardry 1 H. G. Underwood, A Concise Dictionary of the Korean Language in two Parts: Korean-English (Yokohama: Kelly & Walsh, 1890), 289. A Korean scholar, Song Sunyong, who had participated in compiling 한불뎐 Hanbul chadyŏn: Dictionnaire Coréen-Français (1880), assisted Underwood’s linguistic work. Song transmitted French Catholic missionaries’ study of the Korean language to American Protestant missionaries. — 3 — Spirits Theories of Shamanism and Practice of Exorcism 142 — The Making of Korean Christianity in different mission fields. He despised the female mudang of Korean shamanism and put their ceremonies on par with Western witchcraft and all of its stigmas. And he defined kwishin of Korean shamanism as “a demon, evil-spirit, a devil,” which reflected the biblical terms and Christian demonology—the Greek “δαιμόνιον” was translated as “devil” in the King James Version (1611) and “demon” in the English Revised Version (1881), and the Greek “πνεῦμα πονηρòν” was translated as “the evil spirit” in both versions. By contrast, in 1897 James S. Gale’s KoreanEnglish dictionary defined mudang as “a witch, a sorcerer, and a female fortune-teller.”2 And it defined kwishin primarily as “spirits,” using a neutral academic term. Why did Gale temper Underwood’s appallingly negative definitions and use watered-down terms? What happened in the missionaries’ study of Korean shamanism in those seven years and beyond? More significantly, did their theoretical and anthropological study influence their practice in the church? With these questions, this chapter examines three topics in the encounter between Christian demonology and Korean shamanism. First, it delineates the initial prohibitive regulations and teachings on demon worship, and the universal practice of decimating fetishes and household gods. Second, it investigates the development of Protestant missionaries’ religious and anthropological study of Korea shamanism as “the real religions of Koreans” from 1890 to 1914. Third, it traces theological and ceremonial negotiations resulting from the encounter, especially from the practice of Christian exorcism of demon-possessed women by Korean Bible women. In the process of iconoclastic encounters with Korean folk religions, Anglo-American missionaries took over a kind of mudang role of casting out “devils and evil spirits.” Like French Catholic missionaries, North American Protestant missionaries attacked Korean folk religions on the one hand, and accepted the Korean shamanistic belief in the existence of the spirits, demon possession, and exorcism on the other.3 The difference 2 J. S. Gale, A Korean-English Dictionary (Yokohama: Kelly & Walsh, 1897), 353. 3 Kim Chongsuh, “Early Western Studies of Korean Religions,” in Korean Studies New Pacific Currents, ed. Suh Dae-Sook (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1994), 141–57; Boudewijn C. A. Walraven, “Interpretations and Reinterpretations of Popular Religion in the Last Decades of the Chosŏn Dynasty,” in Korean Shamanism: Revivals, Survivals, and Change, ed. Keith Howard (Seoul: Seoul PressxKorea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1998), 55–72. Spirits — 143 between French missionaries and Anglo-American missionaries was the latter’s semiscientific studies of Korean shamanism from the 1890s. The other difference was the hidden process of syncretistic blending of Protestantism with shamanism behind the evident confrontational collision of the two. Koreans’ conversion to Protestant Christianity signified more than a one-way push toward enlightenment, modernization, and Christianization of centuries-old beliefs. Even though Protestant missionaries attacked shamanism, burned down fetishes and talismans dedicated to household spirits, and inspired people to abandon “superstitious” beliefs and behavior, many Korean Christians retained their traditional animistic worldviews. In turn, Protestant missionaries’ biblical literalism and field experiences led them to accept a Christian version of exorcisms, although their rationalism and the constitutions of the churches denied miraculous healing in modern times. In this sense their field experiences overrode their backgrounds in modern science and theology. In the case of Korean shamanism, an overt Christianity–modernization nexus went hand in hand with a covert...