The missionary enterprise of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS, American Southern Presbyterian Church) in Korea was initiated by the arrival of ‘seven pioneers’ in Korea in 1892. By a comity agreement between the three Presbyterian missions, the southwestern region of Korea, known as Honam or Jeolla province, was assigned to the American Southern Presbyterian Mission. Until 1940, when they were forced to end their mission work in Korea and to leave the country by the Japanese colonial administration, the American Southern Presbyterian missionaries contributed to the formation of indigenous Protestant Christianity in Honam by planting churches, and building hospitals and schools. They also encouraged the Korean converts to establish their own churches following the Nevius method which stressed the founding of threeself independent churches. In this thesis, I attempt to analyze the process of the formation of indigenous Protestantism in Honam according to the three themes of traditions, encounters, and transformations. Presbyterians in the South shared with other leading Southern Protestants such as Baptists and Methodists both the warm evangelistic impetus of evangelicalism and an appeal to the Bible to justify racism. In particular, ecumenical missionary movements originating from a series of evangelical revivals helped the Southern Presbyterian workers in foreign lands overcome their inherited identity as the adherents of a geographically, culturally, and theologically sectional organisation to become the advocates of a more pan-evangelical obligation. Southern Presbyterian Korea missionaries already shared many common elements of evangelical theology and middle-class values with other Protestant missionaries even before the initiation of their mission work in 1892. From 1892 onwards, in response to the example of their Northern Presbyterian counterparts in the Korea mission field in initiating a more amicable relationship with their Southern colleagues, their isolated Southern identity gradually began to dissolve. The dominance of the pietistic stream of evangelical Christianity in Honam resulted from the congruence between Southern Presbyterians’ missionary Christianity and the traditional worldview of Honam people. In addition, a series of events, such as the revivals in the 1910s, the March First Movement in 1919, the complete revision of the constitution of the Korean Presbyterian Church in 1922, and the devolution of church and school management administration were the primary landmarks in the successful founding of indigenous Honam Christianity. If mission history is in part about what happens to one Christian tradition when it crosses geographical and cultural frontiers, my primary contribution in this thesis is to show in what ways the evolving Southern Presbyterian tradition at home was further changed and transformed, and then indigenised, in the Honam context. The thesis concludes that the progressive weakening of Southern Presbyterian sectional identity, first in the United States and then in Korea, significantly facilitated the indigenisation of Christianity in Honam. Crucial in this process was the democratising impact of revivals and the implications of wider ecumenical relationships with representatives of other denominations and regions. Honam Presbyterianism today is not a replica of the American Presbyterian tradition in its traditional Southern form. However, it does display many of the same features as the broad pan-evangelicalism to which the Southern Presbyterian mission increasingly adhered.

This thesis discusses the emergence of anti-Japanese resistance movements based on mission schools in Seoul and Pyongyang established by American Northern Presbyterian missionaries in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Korea. It examines how Korean elites from the schools, despite Japanese surveillance, took part in national independence activities by orchestrating diverse systematic anti-Japanese organizations at home and abroad. It is also explored how educational missionaries influenced the formation and development of Koreans’ national consciousness and anticolonial activism, thereby unveiling missionary attitudes toward Korean independence and the Japanese colonial regime. This thesis broadly explores three key issues. Firstly, this research demonstrates the subtle interplay between mission education and socio-political dimensions of Korea in the imperialist milieu of East Asia. This issue pays particular attention to hegemonic contest between American missionaries and Japanese colonialists over mission schools, emerged in the imperialist landscape of Western powers. This study traces how the unique but mutually incompatible projects of evangelization and colonization pursued by missionaries and colonialists respectively encountered in a site of mission education. It is also important to note the clash between American democratic ideas and Japanese values, each in their own way trying to civilize the Koreans. Secondly, this study illuminates the connection between Koreans’ expectation of mission education amidst foreign imperialist threats to Korea and their collective vision of making a sovereign nation. Especially, pro-Protestant Korean reformers attributed Korea’s inability to check the imperialist intrusion to Confucian civilization and sinocentrism deeply rooted in Korea. Therefore, under an epoch-making slogan of ‘civilization and enlightenment’, the reformers sought modern Western elements derived from mission education in order to protect Korea from imperialism and simultaneously to develop it into a strong ‘civilized’ nation. For them, mission schools were not simply religious institutions for evangelism, but incubators to produce national leaders for Korean independence and restoration of sovereignty by diffusing liberating knowledge and patriotic sentiment throughout Korea. Mission education thus had multiple objectives and roles in a particular historical condition of Korea. Lastly, this thesis considers the anticolonial discourse and praxis of mission-educated Koreans during Japan’s early colonial era of Korea. The modernizing vision of Korean reformers flowed into the curricula and contents of mission education, Korean students imbibing Western concepts such as democracy, equality, and freedom related to Korean nationalism. This intellectual interaction imbued the students with critical consciousness reflecting their colonial reality, leading them to form anti-Japanese organizations intended to subvert the colonial regime. The anticolonial activism of Korean students reinforced the tense interaction between missionaries and colonialists. The principle of political non-interventionism taken by the missionaries crumbled away when the students engaged in anti-Japanese movements, and the missionary involvement in colonial politics resulted in the colonialists’ policies to eliminate missionary power in mission education. Observing the advent of anticolonial activism in mission schools, this research elucidates the unintended missionary links with Korean resistance movements against Japanese colonialism and for Korean independence.

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 1996. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-241).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 1996. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-241).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 1996. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-241).

This dissertation critically examines both the discursive and empirical significances of recent newcomers in the Haitian religious field, namely Korean and Korean American Protestant women missionaries. This confluence of Korean and Haitian Protestantism, which first emerged in the early 1990s, is a compelling case of the diversification of contemporary transnational and even global Christianity. Protestant Christianity was implanted in Haiti and Korea at around the very same time, in the nineteenth century, by North American missionaries who were inspired to work in new national religious fields by the Second Great Awakening (1790-1840) and its evangelical fervor. In the eyes of North American missionaries, both countries were religious wildernesses waiting to truly receive and understand the Good Word. Since then, in both Korea and Haiti, westernization, Western hegemony, and Western neo-colonialization have featured strong undercurrents of North-American-derived Protestantism. However, the respective lots and religious fields of each country have been dramatically different overall largely because of national and global economic and political forces. South Korea enjoyed formidable growth both in its economy and its evangelical Christian population after the Korean War (1950-1953), resulting in Korean Christianity’s zealous participation in evangelical Protestant mission overseas, following the models of North American mission enterprises, especially toward the end of the century. Meanwhile, Haiti continued to suffer from natural disasters, political turmoil, and widespread abject poverty. Thus, overseas Haitian Protestant mission work is altogether non-existent, though internally evangelical prosetalization efforts are legion and often aggressive. Vodou and Catholicism, meanwhile, continue to captivate the majority of the Haitian masses, but Protestantism is clearly on the rise across the nation. In is into this socio-religious context that Korean Protestant missions expanded in the Caribbean nation, an expansion that has amplified especially since the tragic 2010 earthquake. Toward understanding these developments, this project investigates the influx of Korean and Korean American Protestant missionaries in contemporary Haiti and the reverberations of North American evangelicalism as channeled through and adapted by Korean missionaries. With all of these historical and contemporary contexts in mind, this dissertation more sharply focuses on a specific group of actors in the Haitian religious field, namely contemporary Korean American Protestant women missionaries. I argue that their activity suggests a new type of examples for current scholarly discourses about the relationship between gender and evangelical missions. By way of historical analyses of both Korean and Haitian Protestant Christianity and oral histories based on interviews with Korean missionaries in Haiti, this study argues that Korean evangelicalism has developed a distinctive gendered praxis that claims both continuity with and divergence from North American evangelicalism. It also shows that in both South Korea and Haiti, twentieth-century U.S. hegemony and military occupation were significant factors in propelling Protestant Christianity. / Religion

The present research has been undertaken within a narrative approach which is based on social constructionism. For the purposes of fostering more effective communication between science and theology, I also adopt the postfoundationalist way of thinking which was suggested by Van Huyssteen. I made use of the seven movements that were proposed by J C Müller to present the research undertaken with four young adult Christians. Korea is a multi-religious society in which various religions coexist, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism, Christianity and several new religions. In the religious background of Korea, people are free to choose their religion, but sometimes their religious freedom has been limited by the patriarchal family system. In particular, young adult Christians who are in the period of emerging adulthood may face an even more difficult situation when they practise a different religion from that of their family. They are still under the strong influence of their parents emotionally and financially, but they want to be adults with their own independent identity. Moreover, Korean social prejudice against Christianity causes the young adult Christians much difficulty in maintaining their faith life comfortably. In order to listen to their stories regarding their faith life, I selected four young adult Christians who have non-Christian family members in their household, who are unmarried, and are therefore still dependent on their parents. With the co-researchers, individual interview sessions and group interview sessions were held, and a web-activity devised in which their stories were told and developed in collaboration with various disciplines that were influencing their discourses within the stories. They were experiencing tensions with their non-Christian family members in maintaining their Christian faith life and were feeling powerless in the relationship with them. Furthermore, in their relationship with other Christians in the church the co-researchers complained about the lack of understanding, regarding their specific family background, shown by those believers who do have Christian relatives in their household. The narrative research process allowed the co-researchers to interpret their difficult stories and to think through the meanings of these and their effect. In this manner, they could reinterpret their painful stories and uncover new meanings that might assist them to be more satisfied in the future. Having discovered new meanings for their painful stories, the co-researchers are not powerless people any longer; instead, they are active people who are dreaming for, or envisioning, a better future with their non-Christian family. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

The Christian church was begun in 19Ih century in the traditionally multi-religious society in Korea. Christianity holds a major position in Korea today and has for the past 20 years been growing rapidly in numbers. Despite its phenomenal growth, the churches. and Christianity in general, have been suffering from several ailments, of which dualistic thinking is not the least. Anthropological dualism amounts to not only distinguishing between soul and body, but also ascribing a separate and independent existence to each of these "components" of the human being. This dualism (as well as others) developed in the church under the influence of traditional Korean religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Shamanism that have been teaching such dualisms. The Korean Christian mindset has to this day been dualistic both as a result of such cultural and philosophical influences and o€ ideas brought by the early missionaries to Korea. The influence of Platonic dualism is still widespread in the conservative and gospel church. This study focuses on: + examining the nature of the problem of anthropological (and other forms of) dualism + how the problem has been manifesting itself in Korean churches and in church education + the most momentous influences on Korean Christianity and churches resulting in a dualistic mindset regarding life in general and the human being in particular + the impact of anthropological dualism on church life and especially on education in the context of the church + the Biblical view of the human being, and on + how the pervasive problem of anthropological dualism can be eradicated. It was found that, although the Bible uses a whole variety of words that somehow relate to or describe the human being, these words or t e n s do not refer to "parts" or "components" but rather to different facets of the human being, much like one can refer to the different facets of a polished diamond. Whenever a word is used, it refers to a particular perspective from which the human being is approached or viewed but in the final analysis, it refers to the whole being. Discovery of this perspective was important in view of the dualistic tendencies in Korean churches and in church education. Application of a holistic view of the human being enables one to approach education as the guiding, leading, enabling, equipping and discipling of educands (those who are being guided etc.) as whole, total and integrated persons. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The Christian church was begun in 19Ih century in the traditionally multi-religious society in Korea. Christianity holds a major position in Korea today and has for the past 20 years been growing rapidly in numbers. Despite its phenomenal growth, the churches. and Christianity in general, have been suffering from several ailments, of which dualistic thinking is not the least. Anthropological dualism amounts to not only distinguishing between soul and body, but also ascribing a separate and independent existence to each of these "components" of the human being. This dualism (as well as others) developed in the church under the influence of traditional Korean religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Shamanism that have been teaching such dualisms. The Korean Christian mindset has to this day been dualistic both as a result of such cultural and philosophical influences and o€ ideas brought by the early missionaries to Korea. The influence of Platonic dualism is still widespread in the conservative and gospel church. This study focuses on: + examining the nature of the problem of anthropological (and other forms of) dualism + how the problem has been manifesting itself in Korean churches and in church education + the most momentous influences on Korean Christianity and churches resulting in a dualistic mindset regarding life in general and the human being in particular + the impact of anthropological dualism on church life and especially on education in the context of the church + the Biblical view of the human being, and on + how the pervasive problem of anthropological dualism can be eradicated. It was found that, although the Bible uses a whole variety of words that somehow relate to or describe the human being, these words or t e n s do not refer to "parts" or "components" but rather to different facets of the human being, much like one can refer to the different facets of a polished diamond. Whenever a word is used, it refers to a particular perspective from which the human being is approached or viewed but in the final analysis, it refers to the whole being. Discovery of this perspective was important in view of the dualistic tendencies in Korean churches and in church education. Application of a holistic view of the human being enables one to approach education as the guiding, leading, enabling, equipping and discipling of educands (those who are being guided etc.) as whole, total and integrated persons. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 250-255).