Abstract
International readers will benefit greatly from this nonsectarian Korean perspective on the recent history of Christianity on the Korean Peninsula—South and North. The book is the collaborative effort of historians affiliated with the Society of the History of Christianity in Korea and the Institute of the History of Christianity in Korea. In eight informative chapters, the three-man team responsible for the book—Kim Heung-Soo, Ryu Dae-Young, and Lee Jin-Gu—tell how Korean Christianity has been both transformed and transformative during the past seventy politically, socially, and economically tumultuous years.
The book is the final volume of a three-volume history of Christianity in Korea initially published in Korean. It has been a long time coming, with the first two volumes appearing in 1989 and 1990, respectively. The Korean edition of the volume under review appeared in 2009—twenty years after the first volume in the series. As the preface explains, this delay can be attributed to the complexities and attendant controversies associated with any attempt to construct a universally satisfactory narrative for an era many of whose key players are still alive—an era of unprecedented political, social, industrial, economic, and religious transformation, replete with theological conflicts and denominational polarizations—many of whose key players are still alive. Construction of a broadly agreeable narrative for this period must have indeed been a daunting and exceedingly delicate task, which the authors have impressively achieved.
This volume resumes the longer story, beginning with chapter 10, “The 1945 Liberation and the New Beginning.” and concludes appropriately with chapter 17, “Widening Horizons of Mission Work.” Each of the eight chapters is further subdivided along helpfully thematic lines. Thus the first two chapters in the book (chapters 10 and 11), headed respectively “The 1945 Liberation and the New Beginning” and “The Korean War and the Church,” include accounts of the post–Japanese-colonial reconstruction of the church and the cataclysmic division of the peninsula into two diametrically opposed political entities, which squelched churches in the North and transformed churches in the South. For outside observers, who may imagine Korean Christianity as a somewhat monolithic phenomenon, chapter 12, “Denominational Schisms and the Birth of New Denominations,” is particularly helpful. The book’s chronicling of the development of Korean Bibles, hymnbooks, theological education, Christian media and research, interchurch cooperation, and theological developments provides a bird’s-eye view of the dynamic ecclesiastical and theological vigor for which South Korean Churches have become famous. Chapter 15, “Changes in the North Korean Church,” provides a short but insightful glimpse into the Socialist Christian Church and its ideology of self-reliance (Juche).
While response to the Korean edition of this volume would no doubt be tempered by the theological and social orientation of the Korean reader, for English-reading outsiders like me the book fills a lacuna; it is a handbook that one would want to keep close to hand for quick reference.
Finally, while the book is replete with useful footnotes, it is not indexed, nor does it include a bibliography. Both of these features would have enhanced this already useful hand guide to Christianity in Korea since 1945.