Indigenization of the Gospel Through the Christian-Confucian Dialogue in Korea

Abstract

The Korean Church has grown very fast in a short period and is still struggling with many issues posed by Korea’s cultural and religious heritages. Korean Christianity has still conflict with traditional religions such as Shamanism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. While conservative Christianity, particularly Protestantism, was begun in Korea by Western missionaries, Korea has long been a society of religious pluralism. The Christianity sown and grown in the Korean soil is still not fully indigenized and inculturated into Korean cultures. That is, the Korean Christianity does not have a proper understanding of Korea’s pluralistic religious thoughts and culture, so it still considers them as heretical and idolatrous. Thus, Christian-Confucian dialogue is an urgent task for Christians to fulfill the task of indizenization of the Gospel in Korea because two religions as living forms of culture have together strongly influenced the Korean society. In this article, I explored the theme, “Indigenization of the Gospel in the Korean Soil,” focusing on the Christian-Confucian Dialogue. I first examined encounters of the two religions in the history of the Korean Church with regard to the issue of ancestral ritual. Second, I explicated methodology in the encounter between Christianity and Confucianism in the Korean context. Specifically, I presented some guidelines which are important for this comparative theological work. Then, I suggested process theology and Yulgok's Confucian thought as a model of Christian-Confucian dialogue in Korea. Finally, I discussed tasks for the dialogue between Christianity and Confucianism, especially the task for indigenizing Christianity in Korea.