Major Protestant Revivals in Korea, 1903–35

Abstract

This paper reviews five major revivals and four revivalists of colonial Korea and discusses key issues of the revivals. It has three aims: to search for a new perspective on the interpretation of the revivals of colonial Korea; to map a new lineage of the revivals; and to provide contemporary Korean Protestant churches in crisis with some issues to consider for their renewal. The conventional image of the revivals in the colonial period has been that they were ‘passive, otherworldly, and introversive’. This stereotypical image reflects the historical context of the nationalist or minjung theologians of the 1970s and 1980s. They criticised contemporary mass revival meetings for their orientation toward emotionalism, individual salvation and prosperity, church-centred growth and dispensationalism. They argued that ahistorical revivalists were actually supporting the dictatorial government by depoliticising the churches. Yet a revised interpretation began to emerge from the late 1980s. And the first centennial of the 1907 P'yŏngyang Revival in 2007 has produced heated debates on its historical meaning for the renewal of a declining church. This paper emphasises the positive side – the nationalistic, reformative and indigenous elements of revivalism – without ignoring the negative legacy. I discuss Yi Tonghwi's revival in Hamgyŏng province and East Manchuria in 1908–11 as a development of the first revival of 1903–7. And I will identify the influence of Daoism, rather than that of shamanism, on the revivalists.