Korean Religions Research Articles

Book Review: The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915

Book Review: The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915

The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915 by Sung-Deuk Oak (review)

Reviewed by: The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915 by Sung-Deuk Oak Deberniere Torrey The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915, by Sung-Deuk Oak, Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013, xxv, 411p. The dustcover photograph of missionary Samuel A. Moffett standing with Kil Sŏnju, the charismatic leader of the Pyŏngyang revivals, is a fitting introduction to Sung-Deuk Oak’s narrative of the engagement between Christian theology and the religion and culture of early modern Korea. Oak sets out to correct the impression that the first Protestant missionaries to Korea were proponents of cultural imperialism and a rigid theology that molded Korean Christianity into the conservatism for which it is known today. Oak introduces his thesis by pointing out that this faulty impression results from scholars’ over-reliance on Arthur J. Brown’s disparaging comments of 1919 depicting Protestant missionaries as austere and intellectually conservative, and the first Korean Christians as blindly imitating this attitude. Oak suggests that Brown’s comments were likely tainted by his conflict with missionaries in Pyŏngyang over administrative issues, and are not supported by the historical evidence, which he then presents in the body of this monograph as a process of theological exploration and negotiation between missionaries and Koreans, resulting in a distinctly Korean Protestantism. Oak draws a variety of related elements into each section of his discussion, thematically organized around topics such as, “God,” “Saviors,” “Spirits,” and “Ancestors.” Some chapters are more coherent than others, but overall, Oak’s multifaceted approach, drawing on a wide range of material new to contemporary English-language scholarship, offers an informative and thought-provoking glimpse into the formative period of Korean Protestantism, helping to correct simplistic assumptions about the missionary-Korea encounter. Appropriately, the narrative opens with the search for a Korean name for God. In Chapter One, Oak relates how Protestant missionaries and Korean converts finally settled on “Hanănim,” drawn from the pantheon of Korean folk religion, but given the new meaning of “The One Great One,” thanks to the similarity between the various spellings of the original term and hana (one). The Koreanization of God went further than simple terminology, however. Prominent missionaries ascribed to a “fulfillment theory” that attributed the origin of Korean religions to a primitive monotheism, and offered a biblical [End Page 136] interpretation of the Tan’gun myth that suggested the Christian Hanănim was the god worshiped by Korea’s founders. Thus, Christianity was a fulfillment of Korean religious aspirations. This Christian-inspired “rediscovery” of Korea’s religious roots coincided with a growing nationalist sentiment against the traditional domination of China and the new threat of Japanese imperialism, further wedding Protestant Christianity to an emerging modern Korean identity. Chapter Two describes how the symbol of the cross and Christian messianism coincided with cryptic messages in the Chŏnggam-nok, a popular book foretelling the end of the Yi dynasty and the coming of a messianic figure. Oak suggests that the rapid growth of Protestantism corresponding to a series of political and natural disasters leading up to the end of the Chosŏn may be partly attributed to this coincidence between Christian iconography and popular imagination. For instance, references in the Chŏnggam-nok to mysterious sipsŭngjiji (“place of the victory of ten”) as places of refuge during the coming disasters drew many people to the Protestant churches with their crosses, shaped like the Chinese character for ten. Images of Korean patriots executed by the Japanese on cross-shaped frames also linked the cross to Korean nationalism, further associating Christian iconography with popular hopes for the future. The next two chapters focus on encounters between missionaries and the traditional Korean practices of shamanism and ancestor worship. In Chapter Three, Oak describes how the Protestant missionaries’ “initially rationalistic and modern worldview was transformed by [the encounter with] shamanism” (p. 183), compelling them to develop a theology that accounted for spirit possession and exorcism. Missionaries such as Hulbert, Gale, and Underwood were among the first to study Korean shamanism. One outcome of this Christian approach to spirit manifestation was that Korean “Bible Women,” some of whom had been...

Thought of Ideal World in Korean Religions,Trial Discussion for the Research

Thought of Ideal World in Korean Religions,Trial Discussion for the Research

The ‘National Studies’ in Korean Religions

The ‘National Studies’ in Korean Religions

Immoral Rights: Korean Populist Collaborators and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1904–1910

ON JUNE 10, 1905, AS JAPAN strove for victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Yi Yong-gu and Song Pyŏng-jun visited the Seoul residence of Hasegawa Yoshimichi, the commander of the Japanese army in Korea. The two Koreans were there to make a secret agreement with Hasegawa to assist Japanese soldiers on the northern battlegrounds. Yi and Song were the leaders of a pro-Japanese organization called the Ilchinhoe (Advance in Unity Society). The majority of its members were followers of the Korean religion Tonghak (Eastern Learning), founded in the 1860s. After the meeting with Hasegawa, Yi organized the Transportation Unit for Northern Progress (Pukchin Susongdae) to deliver supplies to Japanese soldiers in Manchuria and to spy on the Russian army. According to the Ilchinhoe’s official history, he and the members of the unit were devoted to this mission. When dispatching an agent to conduct espionage in the Tuman River area, Yi told him, “Our fellow Koreans are being crushed at the brutal hands of the Russians, and we do not have the luxury of caring [only] for ourselves. Even if your life is endangered by Russian soldiers, be heroic, and thoroughly monitor and report their secrets and weaknesses.” The two men said their farewells through tears.1 In Korean history, the Ilchinhoe members who took part in this mission are remembered as “notorious collaborators.”2 In addition to creating the Transportation

Profiles of Contemporary Korean Religions: The Emergence of Neo-Ethnicity

Profiles of Contemporary Korean Religions: The Emergence of Neo-Ethnicity

한국 그리스도교 비평 . Han'guk Kŭrisŭdogyo pip'yŏng [A Critique of Korean Christianity] (review)

Reviewed by: 한국 그리스도교 비평 . Han'guk Kŭrisŭdogyo pip'yŏng [A Critique of Korean Christianity] Miryam Woohyuk Choi, Senior Research Fellow 한국 그리스도교 비평. Han'guk Kŭrisŭdogyo pip'yŏng [A Critique of Korean Christianity]. By 이찬수 Ch'an-su Yi, Seoul: Ewha Womans University Press, 2009, 341p. A Critique of Korean Christianity surveys the history of research on Christianity as a 'Korean Religion' over the last century while at the same time, from the standpoint of the history of religious culture, it critically [End Page 145] examines the prospects for 'Korean Christianity,' that is to say, the relationship between 'Korea' and 'Christianity,' in the 21st century. Its author Chan-Su Yi is a religious studies scholar who treats both Catholicism and Protestantism - under the rubric of Christianity - as Western religions in Korea. He is a Protestant minister and professor who was once fired by his university for bowing before a Buddhist image. This book is essentially a history of studies of Korean Christianity over the last 100 years or so, situating various research findings in their respective historical contexts. The author argues that scholars have tended to define the history of Christianity in Korea as a history of martyrs, in the case of Catholicism, and as a history of missionaries, in the case of Protestantism. They have treated the last century of Christian history as separate from Christian history in the West and, adopting an apologetic stance, have linked the history of Christianity in Korea to the many changes Korean society has undergone over those approximately hundred years, as the political environment on the peninsula changed from feudalism to colonial rule. By the 1970s, Protestant scholars in particular, adopting the Minjung theological perspective, began to include women, laity, and smaller local denominations of Christianity as subjects to be included in the history of Christianity. It was not until the 1990s that some scholars began to approach Korean Christianity with the tools of the academic discipline of religious studies. The author tries to determine the nature of "Korean Christianity" within Christianity as a product of the encounter between the specific distinctive characteristics of Korea and the unique universal characters of world Christianity, as reflected through Korean culture. He does so while maintaining a critical attitude toward those Korean scholars of Christianity who have tried to put some distance between Christianity and Korean culture. As a result, this book is a fruit of hermeneutical reflection reflecting the author's hope that Christianity will become an integral part of Korean culture, while the author criticizes the non-Korean nature of previous studies of Korean Christianity which have ignored the fact that Christianity has forged a close relationship with the Korean people and has become an important element of Korean history. [End Page 146] This study, grounded in a religious studies perspective, is based on a view of Korea that takes Korea as an organic unity, with its independent nature assured by its tendency to live in the present, by its mass culture, and by the co-existence of both individualism and an understanding of human beings as defined by their relationships. Furthermore, the author assumes that we are witnessing a move away from the way of thinking that is centered on the West toward a pluralism that has multiple non-Western centers. This new perspective takes as its foundation a recognition of the unique characteristics of different geographical regions that sees threads of cultural distinctiveness running through them. It is a call for a revolutionary change in the way research has been done on Christianity in Korea. In addition, the author makes several specific critical observations about Christianity as a Korean religion. 1. Korean Christianity and nationalism: If the role of religion is to define a national identity in terms of ethnicity, apologetics and navigating through ups and downs, Christianity has consistently played a leading role in the acceptance of Western civilization and the forging of a modern Korean people. 2. Korean Christianity and human rights: When we consider that religion has as its core teachings that promote the realization of true human freedom, the Christian view of humanity is faced with a challenge in contemporary Korean society. It has to be re...

Religion as a Moving Target: Keynote Address for "International Conference on Korean Religions in Inter-Cultural and Global Contexts"

Religion is a moving target in the sense that it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is and does; hence the numerous definitional problems. It is also a moving target in the sense that the elements that constitute religion are not stable, and are subject to kaleidoscopic changes. Conventional labels such as shamanism, Buddhism and Confucianism tend to distract our attention from these changes and instabilities. They become associated with certain standard concepts, which may have little to do with the actual practice of their believers or are equally present in the conceptual world of the adherents of other religions. Over the years these labels cover different realities and the distinctions between them may become so vague that it becomes difficult to classify certain phenomena under one of these rubrics. Korea's religious history shows, for instance, that so-called "Confucian values" were propagated by Buddhist songs, and that the core of these values, the virtues of filial piety and loyalty to the throne, by the middle of the nineteenth century had ceased to be "Confucian" in any meaningful way, having become generally accepted by people from whatever religious conviction. In practice, a constant process of reassembling and reconstituting takes place, which means that not too much value should be assigned to the origin or authenticity of religious phenomena, and that a notion such as syncretism becomes useless as a distinguishing characteristic.

Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion (review)

Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009. 251 pp. Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF demonstrates Laurel Kendall's rigorous and masterful observation that the aboriginal belief system and its practices can serve as lens through which we can see modernity and social life as they continually unfold in South Korea. It is paragon of work written by mature ethnographer having built long-term engagement in the field, in this case in exploration of issues relating to Korean religion and modernity. This book's contribution to both subjects clearly builds upon Kendall's research and publication record from the last three decades. To name few, these publications include Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits (1985), The Life and Hard Times of Korean Shaman (1988), Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity (1996), and Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class and Consumption in the Republic of Korea (2002). Along with these previous publications on religion specializing in shamanic rituals and modernity with focus on women's worlds and gendered practices, this book continues to articulate the understanding of Korean shamanism as consisting of on-going practices of the present time-not as an icon of feudal past. This understanding comes from her unfailing challenge to the assumption that shamanism represents something fixed and dead, and therefore something not modern. This, in turn, connects to criticism of the dichotomy between tradition and modernity. In this exemplary anthropological work, based on now life-long engagements with the same research participants, it is extremely helpful and intriguing to discover changes in the lives of informants with whom we are already familiar from Kendall's previous work. For example, we again encounter Yongsu's Mother, the key informant shaman from Pine Endurance Village, the ethnographic site featured in Kendall's books in the 1980s. At that time, Yongsu's Mother was novice professional shaman whose narratives and relationship with other women clients reflected the challenge and solidarity set by rural Korean women against patriarchal society rendered particularly so as an impoverished nation still struggling in the aftermath the Korean War. The personal-lifeprogress of this shaman is shown in Kendall's 1990s publication on Korean weddings, which focused on the experience of this shaman as mother of adult children. Yongsu's Mother appears regularly in Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF, now senior shaman who trains and accompanies other professional shamans in successful shamanic ritual events, and whose life story and shamanic practices have come to represent experiences and practices of semi-urban middle class. The connection between the material affluence of booming Korean economy that has adapted to Western commodification is richly evoked in Kendall's delineation of Yongsu's Mother's narratives that validate the offering (referred to by the participants in these shamanic rituals as the divine appetite ) of Chivas Regal and bananas that takes place as part of current shamanic ceremonies. Readers of Kendall's scholarship will further appreciate her sense of and sensitivity to time-of the duration of its passing and the (critical reflection of) nostalgia that emerges from it-that is crossed in the lives and careers for both research participants and the researcher throughout their longterm relationships. In other words, readers glimpse not only Yongsu's Mother as she advances in life and her career, but also the author's paralleled maturity, revealed in dialectical nostalgic reflection: while resistant to a simple comparison between the materialist present and more innocent time when all of us were younger (131), Kendall candidly reminisces about Korean rural communal life before televisions and automobiles became more prevalent, taking attention away from ritual and personal gatherings. …

In Search of "Korean-ness" in Korean Religions through Border-crossing: A Comparative Approach

What elements make Korean religions distinctive? This is an issue that has attracted a lot of attention from many scholars in the field. What would be an effective avenue to approach the ways in which external religions are adapted or transformed to Korean society and culture? In this article, Hur suggests that the task of tackling this question can benefit from a border-crossing approach, particularly through comparison with Japanese religions that offer a range of contrasting features. In order to illustrate this, Hur offers two examples that sharply distinguished Korean religions from Japanese religions in early modern times. One is the value of filial piety which dominated Korean Confucianism but was almost invisible in Japanese Confucianism. The other is Buddhism's role in funerary rituals and ancestor worship: Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea was kept at bay from the dominant ritual arena of ancestor-related rituals; in contrast, Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan was the central agent of funerary rites and ancestor worship rituals. Hur suggests that border-crossing, comparative approaches that involve Japanese cases can contribute to de-localizing Korean religions and, at the same time, to localizing Korean-ness found in Korean religions in the context of society and culture.

Koreanization of Christianity

Short discussion of ostensible adaptability, common theme and overlap between Christianity and other Korean religions contributing to factors determining business development effort and relationship between person or entity of Korean origin and American and reckoning with current WASP standard bias in USA. [For PDF or Word version with multiple art work JPEG images, please e-mail the author.]

The Emergence of Korean Religions and The Thoughts of 'South-Chosun' in the 19th Century

19세기 조선사회는 고통과 불안이 일상화되었고 정신문명은 갈수록 황폐화되었다. 우리민족은 삶에 지치고 힘들 때마다 ‘현실세계로부터 구원과 이상세계의 도래’를 간절히 원망願望하여 왔다. 조선조 후기에 들어서면서 참혹한 흉년과 무서운 질병의 확산은 사회 모순을 심화시키고, 가치혼돈·좌절감·분노·소외감·박탈감·절망감을 초래하고 있었다. 민중들은 고통스럽고 악과 불의로 가득 찬 현실세계를 부정하고 새로운 이상세계를 희구하고 있었던 것이다. 남조선 사상을 처음으로 기록한 사람은 최남선이다. 그는 남조선을 “본래 조선민족의 현실고現實苦에 대한 정신적 반발력으로부터 만들어낸 하나의 이상사회 표상이며, 곧 언제까지고 희망으로 품는 조선”이라 했다. 남조선은 내우외환과 위정자의 무책무능無策無能으로 고통스러운 현실을 살고 있는 민중들에게는 생명의 의욕을 불러일으킬 수 있는 곳이었다. 그러나 남조선은 소망所望 만으로 이루어지는 것이 아니었다. 이를 완성시킬 진인 곧 구원자를 필요로 하고 있었다. 한반도에는 선경비향仙境秘鄕인 ‘남조선’이 있어서 때가 되면 인류를 구원할 진인이 출현하여 사람들을 인도한다고 보았던 것이다. 이러한 남조선 사상은 우리민족사에서 종교전통의 토양을 형성하고 있었다. 일반적으로 종교의 토양은 구원에 대한 믿음과 이상사회의 추구에 있다고 볼 수 있기 때문이다. 남조선 사상은 비록 조직과 교단은 없었지만, 왜곡된 현실세계로부터의 구원과 이상사회의 도래를 민중들의 무의식적 가치관에 뿌리내리도록 했으며 사회구성원 전체에게 이에 대한 강력한 메시지를 전해줌으로써 조선조 후기 종교전통의 토양을 마련하고 있었다.

Editors’ Preface

Editors’ Preface Seong-nae Kim and Don Baker Korea offers both challenges and opportunities for scholars of religion. The opportunity it presents comes from its religious diversity. The Republic of Korea is the only country in the world in which both Buddhists and Christians each claim between 20% and 30% of the population. It also has what may be the most visible community of practicing shamans in the industrialized world. There are more Confucian shrines per capita in Korean today than in any other nation on earth. And Korea is home to a large assortment of new religious movements, ranging from the Unification Church to Daesoon Jinrihoe. In addition, close to half of the South Korean people say they have no particular religious affiliation. There is, therefore, much for a scholar of religion to study in Korea. This distinctive diversity also poses challenges for anyone trying to understand the religious culture of Korea. First of all, given the broad range of religious organizations with a significant presence in Korea, is it possible to encompass them under an umbrella term like “Korean religions”? Do they all have enough distinctively Korean elements in common that we can view them all as manifestations of an underlying religious culture that is unique to Korea? Or, if they are so diverse that we should talk about different religious cultures, how can we explain the fact that they peacefully coexist in a society as densely populated as Korea is? This religious diversity combined with the peaceful coexistence prevailing among the various religious traditions in Korean society makes Korea unique among the various nations on the earth. Although this phenomenon needs much more serious scholarly analysis, there has been no specialized academic journal providing a forum for such analysis in a global context. Also scholarly analysis is needed to illuminate the role of religion in the particulars of the history and culture of the Korean people: for example, the relationship between Confucianism and gender, colonial modernity and post-coloniality, the Korean [End Page 5] War and Cold War experience, modernization and economic growth, the traumatic experience of social displacement and class-based value conflict, democratization and civil society, transnationalism and Korean diaspora community, globalization and so on. This new journal, by promoting international and inter-disciplinary communication among the scholars of Korean religions around the world, aims to make the historical and cultural particulars or universals of Korean religions accessible to scholarly analysis, and to develop theory and methodology applicable to the study of Korean religions, thereby challenging the wider academic community and also drawing the attention of new scholars of religion. The first volume (September 2010) deals with preliminary questions regarding cultural and historical definitions of Korean religions, in other words, ‘problematizing “Korean Religions”’. What constitutes “Korean religions”? Is it relevant to define Korean religions in terms of Korea’s national and cultural identity or should Korean religions be understood within a regional context? What are the distinguishing characteristics of “Korean” religions compared to “Japanese” or “Chinese” religions? Under what historical circumstances was the idea of “Korean religions” formulated in the study of Korean religions? How do we approach the historical variations in the forms of Korean religions? The first five articles in this volume discuss these issues from various perspectives and contribute to expanding the horizon of our understanding. The earlier forms of the articles were presented at an International Symposium held in Seoul in December 2009, organized by Sogang University’s Institute for the Study of Religion, and sponsored by its SK Supex Fund. The conference opened with a presentation by Hee-Sung Keel, who asked “what does it mean to study Korean religion(s)?” Keel suggested that, to answer that question, we have to be aware of the wide range of meanings various scholars assign to both “religion” as well as to “Korean,” when they apply that adjective to the various religions of Korea. The remaining four papers from this conference included in this issue can be read as responses to the issues raised by Keel. Chongsuh Kim argues that the fact that the academic study of religions in Korea was pioneered by Westerners and then by Japanese has affected how not [End...

What Does It Mean to Study Korean Religion(s)?

When we study Korean religion, we face two sets of basic questions. First, what do we mean by “religion”? How broad should be the range of phenomena that we want to include in our study? Should we study Korean religion as a single organic unity or as a plurality of diverse traditions? Above all, the classical question whether or not religion is to be regarded as a phenomenon sui generis needs to be addressed one way or another by any scholar engaged in the study of Korean religion. Second, what do we mean by “Korean” in studying Korean religion(s)? How strongly should we stress its/their Korean identity? Is there a distinctive Korean character underlying all Korean religions or Korean religious culture in general, past and present? In addressing these issues, we need the wisdom to avoid two extremes of essentialism and radical nominalism. Apart from these methodological issues, we need to pay more attention to the rich and dynamic religious world of Korean society today than has been accorded to it thus far. Closer analysis of the interaction between various religious traditions and groups is another area that has been neglected in the study of Korean religion. Finally, it is always worth remembering that we study Korean religion as much for the spiritual values and insights it may have for today’s world as for its importance in deeper understanding of Korean society and culture, the primary concern of Korean studies in general.

The Concept of “Korean Religion” and Religious Studies in Korea

“Korean Religion” is often thought to be a simple sum of various religion like Shamanism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity and “new religions” in Korea. However, it might be more accurate to say that it is what the unique Korean religious mind has manifested and transformed in the framework of particular religious traditions during a particular time. In a time of modernization, the concept of Korean religion above all has become largely reduced and purified through social differentiation. It has also become popularized and has taken on distinctively global traits beyond its Asian provincialism. “Korean Religious Studies” in its process of becoming concretized since the 20th century has regarded the aspects of Korean Religion such as basic religiosity, universality formed through comparison, and indigenous peculiarity as its core research themes. In the future, we can expect that Korean Religious Studies will actively share a horizon of comparison with studies that are based on religious experiences of East Asian countries including China and Japan. Moreover, it will participate in the restructuring of world religious studies, while at the same time pursuing a more profound identity of Korean Religion.

Oversea Korean and Korean Religions in Shanghai, China

Oversea Korean and Korean Religions in Shanghai, China

On the Problem of Material Religion and Its Prospects for the Study of Korean Religion

This paper argues that the “material turn” evident both in recent scholarly studies of East Asian religion (and religious studies more generally) and within the discipline of anthropology holds great promise for the study of Korean religions. The study of material religion raises questions about how aspects of the material world come to be regarded as sacred, how they come to be regarded as empowered and agentive things, how devotees engage material religion through embodied practice and visual regimes of understanding and venerating, and how specific historic moments influence material religion. Anthropology brings to the discussion an awareness of material objects as possible nodes of human relationships, relationships between humans and gods or other entities, and between humans, deities, positive and negative power, and the sacred things themselves. It raises questions about the production, maintenance, and proper disposal of sacred objects. It also brings magic back into the mix as a means of understanding some of the essentially religious ways contemporary people contend with the quirkiness of the market and other uncertainties, and how the modern commodity market itself accommodates the production, appropriation, and consumption of sacred and magical goods.

Confidence in Religious Leaders in Korea: A Research Note

Korea may provide an important testing ground for assessing religious growth as a correlate of religious authority. In Korea from 1985 to 1995, all religious groups experienced growth, but from 1995 to 2005 only the Catholic population did so. Favorable images of Korean Catholicism compared to other Korean religions point to one factor that may account for this trend, namely, confidence in religious leaders. Up to now there has been no empirical test measuring confidence in religious leaders among different religious groups in Korea. Using the 2003–2007 Korean General Social Surveys cumulative data, we found a hierarchy of confidence in religious leaders ranging from highest to lowest as follows: Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, no religion. Our finding may suggest the continued vitality of Catholicism in Korea.

Syncretism between Korean Muism and Religions

Syncretism between Korean Muism and Religions

Trends of Religious Identification in Korea: Changes and Continuities

Korea's religious context is not simple. According to the 2005 Korean Census, the Korean population consists of 23 percent Buddhists, 18 percent Protestants, and 11 percent Catholics, with 47 percent nonreligious. To accurately describe Korean religion in recent periods, we have used 1985, 1995, and 2005 Korean Censuses. We found that Korean people became more religious from 1985 to 1995, but that change was stalled from 1995 to 2005. The percentages of Buddhists and Protestants exhibited little change, and Buddhism continues to be an important religion in the lives of Koreans. Only the number of Catholics increased from 5 percent in 1985 to 11 percent in 2005, and the increasing percentage of Catholics occurred within all subgroups, regardless of age, gender, education, home ownership, and urbanicity.