one thing i'm sort of fascinated by is the fact that Seoul basically has to deal with the Korean versions of evangelicalism while if I go to either a Japanese Anglican (or even Catholic church!) both feel more like mainline denominations
Replies
Korean presbytarianism is /nutso/
aug 25, 2025, 6:23 pm • 16 1 • view
the korean presbyterian church in our community shares our (pcusa) space, and there are definitely some frictions.
aug 25, 2025, 6:36 pm • 4 0 • view
like i went to a NSKK church in Nagasaki last time in Japan and they had a pride flag
aug 25, 2025, 6:08 pm • 40 1 • view
how on earth did Japan get mainliners and Korea get most of the evangelicals
aug 25, 2025, 6:17 pm • 38 0 • view
Mostly due to Japan not having a numerous Christian population and evangelicals being incredibly important to Korean independence, nationalism, democratization and are supported by the government
aug 25, 2025, 6:19 pm • 47 1 • view
Japanese mainliners in total are less than a single percent of the population while in Korea the total Christian population is around 17-20% with its historical size being around 50-60%
aug 25, 2025, 6:21 pm • 30 1 • view
Billy Graham is considered a national hero btw
aug 25, 2025, 6:22 pm • 18 0 • view
His wife was born in Pyongyang.
aug 25, 2025, 6:30 pm • 8 0 • view
Yeah that’s part of the reason why he became a unofficial ambassador to North Korea for South Korea
aug 25, 2025, 6:31 pm • 10 0 • view
yup yup. Korea was flooded by american missionaries, especially after the war, and most of (all?) the dictators were christians who gave them support and actively attacked/suppressed Korea's indigenous religious traditions.
aug 25, 2025, 6:24 pm • 3 0 • view
The dictators aren’t Christian park was a Buddhist and Chun was a Buddhist during his administration only becoming a born again during his later life in the 2010s
aug 25, 2025, 6:30 pm • 1 0 • view
my understanding is that park was a presbyterian?
aug 25, 2025, 6:32 pm • 0 0 • view
The fuck you got that from? He attended church as a child but never joined.
aug 25, 2025, 6:33 pm • 0 0 • view
no need to be aggro. I feel like I was told that by a professor, but a quick google search says you're right. doesn't change that he pursued overtly pro-evangelical and anti-indigenous religious policies
aug 25, 2025, 6:38 pm • 1 0 • view
When your saying indigenous religous do you mean shamanism or Buddhism cause Buddhism is about as indigenous as Christianity to Korea
aug 25, 2025, 6:42 pm • 2 0 • view
on top of that, even among nonchristians, korean churches got a lot of street cred for later switching tack and strongly supporting democratization. That's being eroded now by the hauty chauvinism towards nonchristians, but it still lingers
aug 25, 2025, 6:24 pm • 1 0 • view
Park Chung Hee gave (favored) churches state funding and land, and made life miserable for practitioners of the folk religion and institutional buddhism. even with democracy, you get people like Lee Myung-bak using the regulatory powers of the state to attack nonevangelical religious institutions
aug 25, 2025, 6:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Wow that's wild. I'd heard the younger generation was very secular while the preceding generation was very Christian but somehow I didn't internalize the extent of the decline. Did the fall of the dictatorship just totally discredit Christianity for most Koreans?
aug 25, 2025, 6:32 pm • 1 0 • view
No lol it increased it prestige the subsequent years in the 90s is what did that
aug 25, 2025, 6:34 pm • 5 0 • view
one of those questions to which the answer is surely something like *12 Hour Documentary with a Title Like FIRE AND STEEL: THE EMPIRE OF THE RISING SUN AT THE DAWN OF THE AGE OF INDUSTRIAL WAR Plays in the Theater of the Mind*
aug 25, 2025, 6:24 pm • 7 0 • view
Konishi Yukinaga to Shimazu Yoshihiro on the dock at Busan, December 21 1598: "okay yes we did get our asses beat real bad, but if we play the long game I'm pretty sure we can stick them with a much crazier flavor of Christianity than we'll get stuck with." Yoshihiro: "bro what is wrong with you?"
aug 25, 2025, 6:36 pm • 4 0 • view
Konishi, ignoring him, looking around at medieval Busan: "this town is pretty neat, it would be sick if there were some sort of convoy headed here, perhaps on a mechanical contrivance? pursued by impure corpses animated by evil spirits? you could make a really fun play about that."
aug 25, 2025, 7:26 pm • 2 0 • view
Yoshihiro: *frantically flipping through a Bushido manual looking for the phrase "wellness check"*
aug 25, 2025, 7:26 pm • 2 0 • view
I don't know anything about these two lords but I'm absolutely obsessed with the comedic potential of Apollo repeatedly spiking the dodgeball of prophecy off of Yukinaga's face while Yoshihiro freaks out about it.
aug 25, 2025, 7:27 pm • 2 0 • view
I knew a Korean Christian who tried to control all the decisions by saying it was what Jesus wanted. "Jesus told me we should have pizza for lunch." "Jesus says we should go home early."
aug 25, 2025, 6:24 pm • 9 0 • view
Was it Jesus’s literal younger brother? Many such cases in Asia.
aug 25, 2025, 6:29 pm • 3 0 • view
The Empire basically. Mainliners had no credibility in Independent Korea because they had largely remained quiet or collaborated with Imperial authority. The Evangelicals didn't, and thus, got more traction. (Also, charity goes *far*)
aug 25, 2025, 6:29 pm • 5 0 • view
Well, Japan is about 2% Christian and Korea is 31% Christian, so I assume that has a lot to do with it.
aug 25, 2025, 6:21 pm • 6 0 • view
right, but that 2% could be evangelical! but most of the churches in Japan are more in line with American mainline practice
aug 25, 2025, 6:22 pm • 6 0 • view
I think these things are related in the sense that missionaries clearly had way more success in Korea than they did in Japan. That presumably had a kind of pile on effect. And a proselytizing missionary religion offers more room for evangelicals, I think.
aug 25, 2025, 6:24 pm • 6 0 • view
That said, I wonder if there's any other non-traditionally Protestant places where the Protestant population is predominantly mainline. Parts of Africa, maybe?
aug 25, 2025, 6:28 pm • 1 0 • view
There's three or four states in eastern India that are majority Baptist I want to say.
aug 25, 2025, 6:30 pm • 2 0 • view
Write, so that's Evangelical. I think there's some Methodists in the south Pacific, to the extent that we consider Methodists mainline rather than evangelical.
aug 25, 2025, 6:40 pm • 1 0 • view
Also, specific *kinds* of Christianity. Catholicism and Anglicanism are not Calvinism, and Calvinism's emphasis on covenant theology (God making agreements with humble and oppressed nations) might Hit Different in a nation under occupation.
aug 25, 2025, 8:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Nationalism. The Japanese tried to stamp out Christianity during the colonial period. It's no surprise that the most extreme elements in the North (Kim Il Sung himself) and the South (the Unification Church)!emerge out of Korean Reformed churches.
aug 25, 2025, 8:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Also, there's a general intensity with covenant theology (the idea that God has Made Promises to specific peoples for specific times.)
aug 25, 2025, 8:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Calvinism was already comfortable transferring God's favor from one oppressed people (the Hebrews) to another (the church through Jesus) to yet another (the Gentiles through Paul) and finally to themselves (Reformed Anglo-Americans.) From there to Korea, beleagued by Japanese idolaters - easy jump.
aug 25, 2025, 8:21 pm • 1 0 • view
Japan was easier to live in for most of the postwar period
aug 25, 2025, 6:19 pm • 1 0 • view
The evangelism budget all got seized from prewar denoms and allotted to the NKK
aug 25, 2025, 6:31 pm • 1 0 • view
The Moonies have a lot of power in Korea
aug 26, 2025, 4:57 pm • 0 0 • view
This does fit nicely with my theory that the collapse of mainline Protestants is intrinsically tied to the rise of fascism in the US.
aug 25, 2025, 6:10 pm • 12 0 • view
The whole thing reeks of gender in both countries, too Sects of Christianity that have hitched themselves to insecure men are a plague
aug 25, 2025, 6:29 pm • 1 0 • view