Abstract
This study examines a deep-seated anti-missionary sentiment of Korean theologians and church historians. Chai-Choon Kim and Jong-Sung Rhee were arguably most responsible for popularizing anti-missionary sentiment among Korean Christians. The main reason for the criticisms of both Kim and Rhee against the American Presbyterian Korea missionaries was the supposedly fundamentalist schisms of the Presbyterian Church of Korea in the 1950s, which both Kim and Rhee reasoned to have been originated from their Old Princeton theology. The theological rationale of both Kim and Rhee was the Barthian triumph frame that the Reformed Orthodoxy including the Old Princeton theology, which had been suspected of having a fundamentalist tendency, was overcome by Karl Barth’s Neo-Orthodoxy. These theological anti-missionary criticisms facilitated some younger Korean church historians, especially both Kyung-Bae Min and Man-Yul Lee, to view Korean church history from an anti-missionary, Korean ethnic nationalist perspective. Min emphasizes some seemingly good but anecdotal works of individual Korean native Christians, hence resulting in depreciation of the works of the missionaries and their Korean coworkers. Following Min, Lee goes even further, praising what some individual Korean Christians did for socio-political (anti-establishment) purposes and ignoring what the missionaries and their Korean coworkers did cooperatively for their Korean churches. Those Korean theologians and church historians with quite a strong anti-missionary sentiment might have succeeded in arousing Korean Christians’ ethnic nationalism, but in so doing, they have quite surely deprived Korean Christians of their critically significant and rich ecclesiastical and theological elements which have been originated from the missionaries.
Highlights
Korean theologians’ two distinctive criticisms of the Western missionariesThe purpose of this study is to present an in-depth understanding as well as a critique of some notable Korean theologians’ apparently very negative estimation of the past Western Protestant Korea missionaries, who made a decisive contribution in establishing Korean Protestant churches during their formative first 60 years, roughly from 1884 to 1945
This study examines how this tragic event happened in Korea, focussing on Chai-Choon Kim and Jong-Sung Lee, who began and led this movement on a theological – allegedly Barthian – ground, as well as on Kyung-Bae Min and Man-Yul Lee, who have deepened it for Korean ethnic nationalist reasons
Chai-Choon Kim and Jong-Sung Rhee depreciated the American missionaries with their Barthian triumph frame, they influenced their junior theologians to criticise them for another, Korean ethnic nationalist reason
Summary
The purpose of this study is to present an in-depth understanding as well as a critique of some notable Korean theologians’ apparently very negative estimation of the past Western Protestant Korea missionaries, who made a decisive contribution in establishing Korean Protestant churches during their formative first 60 years, roughly from 1884 to 1945. Chai-Choon Kim (1901–1987) was surely the most responsible for the anti-Western missionary sentiment in Korea, starting it in the 1930s and making it bloom from the 1950s up to the present He was absolutely critical of the American Presbyterian Korea missionaries’ conservative, Old Princeton theology, which he derogatively identified with the 17th-century Reformed Orthodoxy, but he was the most important theologian for having succeeded in replacing the Orthodoxy by a new, largely Barthian NeoOrthodoxy. Korean church historians’ ethnic nationalist anti-missionary movement: Kyung-Bae Min and Man-Yul Lee. Chai-Choon Kim and Jong-Sung Rhee depreciated the American missionaries with their Barthian triumph frame, they influenced their junior theologians to criticise them for another, Korean ethnic nationalist reason. Lee rarely sees these aspects, perhaps because he is too obsessed with his Korean ethnic nationalist ideology
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