Outline
 Korea
 Christianity in Korea or Korean Christianity?
 Questions of indigeneity, locality, diaspora and mission
Book
 Sebastian Kim & Kirsteen Kim
 A History of Korean Christianity
 Cambridge University Press
 Forthcoming in 2014
Psy, Gangnam style
Conflict zone
World map
North-east Asia
2005 South Korean census results
 Christians 29%
 Protestants 18%
 Catholics 11%
 Buddhists 23%
 Other religions 1%
 No religious affiliation 47%
Korean Christianity – subject of great interest. Lots to analyse and explain

Christianity in Korea or Korean Christianity?
Korean initiative
 Mission history versus church history
 Colonial mission history
 Korean reception of the gospel
 Korean agency in its spread
Korean initiative
Korean Protestant churches
Koreans discovered Christianity in China and Japan
Read and translated the Bible
Invited missionaries – even funded them
Insisted missionaries baptise them
Missionaries used three-self method
Korean enthusiasm
In other words, Koreans grew the churches
Lay movement
 Story of the institution versus the story of the Christian community
 National history
 Lay movement
Lay movement
Catholic Church – century earlier
Korean scholars heard of Christianity in China
Read Christian books
Formed a Christian community
Sent one of their number to be baptised
Catholic Church dates Korean Church from 1784 – formation of baptised lay community
Significance for hierarchy-lay relations
Korean church
 Separate church structures
 Catholic versus Protestant
 Protestant denominational histories
 Christianity and nationalism

Korean church
Christianity as hope for the nation – threatened by foreign powers
Example of Western nations
Christian foundation
Christian leadership in nationalist activities against Japan, later for establishing South
Korea
Catholics and Protestants together in crisis
Closer relationship than previously thought
Korean unity
 Korean dualisms
 Yin-yang
 Inside-outside
 Gender
 Male and female spiritualities
 North and South Korea
Korean unity
Because its Korean, Christianity is a unifying force. Overcoming dualisms
Pyongyang as the heart of pre-1945 Korean Christianity
Christian theology of reconciliation – initiatives
Diaspora Christianity
Unifies scattered Koreans
 Korean diaspora
 Korean Christianity is wider than Christianity in Korea
 Diaspora and mission movements
Diaspora Christianity
7 million Koreans in diaspora
Diaspora in West, mostly post-1945, is mainly Christian (70-80%), mainly Protestant
Korean churches as community centres
Diaspora churches as missionary
Diaspora churches facilitating missionary movement from Korea

Questions of indigeneity and locality, diaspora and mission
Korean Christianity in world Christianity
Christianity as Korean
There is such a thing as Korean Christianity. Christianity is Korean as much as it is
British or Italian.
Korean Christianity
 Korean initiative
 Lay movements
 Unifying the nation
 Diaspora Christianity
 Exported globally
Korean world mission movement
Exporting Korean Christianity
South Korea is one of the largest missionary sending countries
14m wealthy Christians can fund a lot
Hosting WCC, WEA, etc.
Korean Christianity will affect us all
World churches
We are accustomed to mapping world Christianity by world churches.
World Council of Churches model
 Catholic Church
 Orthodox churches
 Protestant ‘church families’
 Evangelicalism
 Pentecostal movements
But issues often go by regions/nations rather than denominations
World Christianity
 Locally rooted – indigenous
 National and regional characteristics of Christianity
 Ethnic churches in diaspora
 Ethnicity versus denomination
 Mission movements
Cf. Anglicanism?

Historiography
 Colonial model (expansionist)
 Church history and mission history
 Christendom
 Mission as one-way sending
 Globalization model (diaspora)
 Settled churches and migrant churches
 World Christianity
 Mission as mutual sending, hospitality
Further reading
 Davies, Noel and Martin Conway, World Christianity in the 21 st Century 2 vols.
(SCM-Canterbury Press 2008)
 Hastings, Adrian (ed), A World History of Christianity (Cassell 1999)
 Hanciles, Jehu, Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration and the
Transformation of the West (Orbis, 2008)
 Irvin, Dale T. & Scott W. Sunquist, A History of the World Christian Movement
(Orbis 2001)
 Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (OUP
2002)
 Kim, Sebastian and Kirsteen Kim, Christianity as a World Religion (Continuum
2008)
 Martin, David, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Blackwell 2002)
 Sanneh, Lamin, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West
(Eerdmans 2003)
 Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Orbis 1996); The
Cross-cultural Process in Christian History (Orbis 2002)