Abstract
This chapter investigates how Confucianism, an inevitable socio-religious force among Koreans/Korean Americans, has fundamentally influenced the constructs of Korean American faith in deep theological relation with the other codes. Although there seems to be only one rigid form or style of Confucian practice in the Korean American church under the top patriarchal leadership of the male elder pastor, in reality there have been several recent style variations. The chapter presents two of them that are most widely accepted and practiced: the God the Father style and the Mother as Good Mentor style.
As a general thing, we may say that the all-around Korean will be a Confucianist when in society, a Buddhist when he philosophizes, and a spirit worshipper when he is in trouble (Homer B. Hulbert, The Passing of Korea [New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1906], 403).
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Notes
- 1.
As Matsuoka rightly sees, the Asian American church has been the reservoir of original Asian culture and linguistic heritage; the culture includes various religious traditions. Among many religious traditions, Asian American scholars find that the three major religions—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shamanism—have been and are most influential in Asian American religiosity in general and in the formation of Asian American Christian spirituality specifically. Later, I explain why I combine the two religions into one code—the Buddhist Shamanistic. Matsuoka, Out of Silence, 13–15; Hee An Choi, Korean Women and God: Experiencing God in a Multi-Religious Colonial Context (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), 11–40; J. Y. Lee, Preaching, 29–40; Lee, The Early Revival, 41–48; Kim, Preaching the Presence, 7–8; and others.
- 2.
Edward Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London; New York: Routledge, 1998), 550.
- 3.
Siu-chi Huang, Essentials of Neo-Confucianism: Eight Major Philosophers of the Song and Ming Periods (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 3–5. Huang points out that Neo-Confucianism needed its own metaphysics or (positive) philosophical construction of the universe that would be devoid of the Buddhist-nihilistic idea of the universe “which had long been the dominant force in the thought-life of the Chinese.” Ibid., 5.
- 4.
As we shall see at greater length later, in the Confucian teaching men are superior human beings over women in every sense of humanity. Thus, his primary, if not sole, focus is men.
- 5.
Peter Nosco, “Confucian Thought: Neo-Confucianism,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 4:17.
- 6.
Lee Dian Rainey, Confucius & Confucianism: The Essentials (Oxford; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 27–29. Rainey observes that “filial piety has shaped almost every aspect of the Chinese life: attitudes toward authority, where and how people lived, concepts of self, marriage practices, gender preferences, emotional life, religious worship, and social relations.” Ibid., 29.
- 7.
Sor-hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 110. Tan finds some Confucians after Confucius to be more “blatantly sexist.” He also observes that even educated women at the time who wrote texts to teach other women appeared to support patriarchy. Among those texts, the most famous is Han dynasty Ban Zhao’s Admonitions for Women. However, Tan sees certain changes in women’s roles and aspirations in later educational texts such as the Tang Dynasty’s Women’s Analects. The latter “devotes a section on how to manage the household, and is less submissive in tone.”
- 8.
Julia Ching, Chinese Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 84–89; Dong-Shik Ryu, The Christian Faith Encounters the Religions of Korea (Seoul, Korea: The Christian Literature Society of Korea, 1965), 68.
- 9.
Seungkeun John Choi, “Worship, the Corporate Response of the Community of the Baptized: Renewing the Korean Immigrant Church and Its Worship” (Ph.D. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2011), 61–71.
- 10.
For more detailed discussions on the relation between Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, see Yao, Introduction to Confucianism, 233–238; Jee Loo Liu, An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: From Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2006); Qingsong Shen, Confucianism, Taoism and Constructive Realism (Wien: WUV-Universitätsverlag, 1994).
- 11.
Nosco, “Confucian Thought,” 4:35; E. Kim, Preaching the Presence, 17.
- 12.
Choi, Korean Women, 35. Cho Hae Joang also points out that there was a purely political and economic reason behind choosing Confucianism over Buddhism. Founders of Chosun wanted to expel from the political and economic center previous Buddhist elites still loyal to Goryeo. Cho Hae Joang, “Male Dominance and Mother Power: The Two Sides of Confucian Patriarchy in Korea,” in Confucianism and the Family, eds. Walter H. Slote and George A. De Vos (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 189–90.
- 13.
Kwang-ok Kim, “The Reproduction of Confucian Culture in Contemporary Korea: An Anthropological Study,” in Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity, ed. Tu Wei-ming (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 220; Andrew Eungi Kim and Gil-sung Park, “Nationalism, Confucianism, Work Ethic and Industrialization in South Korea,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 33:1 (2003): 44.
- 14.
Donald Baker, Korean Spirituality (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), 45–47; Choi, Korean Women and God, 40.
- 15.
Jung-Kuo Yang, Confucius: “Sage” of the Reactionary Classes (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1974), 36–37; Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 11; and Henri Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religion (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 53–75.
- 16.
Choi, Korean Women, 39.
- 17.
Lee Rainey, “Confucianism and Tradition,” in Historicizing “Tradition” in the Study of Religion, eds. Steven Engler and Gregory P. Grieve (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 232.
- 18.
D. Howard Smith, Chinese Religions (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), 32–34.
- 19.
Choi, Korean Women, 39; Hongkyung Kim, “A Party for the Spirits: Ritual Practice in Confucianism,” in Religions of Korea in Practice, ed. Robert E. Buswell Jr. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 163–176; and Spencer J. Palmer, Confucian Rituals in Korea (Berkeley, CA; Seoul: Asian Humanities Press; Po Chin Chai, 1984).
- 20.
Choi, Korean Women, 39.
- 21.
For instance, whenever a new president is elected every five years in Korea, the very first place that the president-elect visits is the Seoul National Cemetery. At the cemetery, the president-elect, along with his or her new cabinet members, as a sign of wishing the welfare of the nation, remembers and gives (spiritual) honor to the country’s founders and hero/heroines.
- 22.
In neighboring modernized Japan, the situation is almost the same. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and through the Japanese imperialistic period, which ended with the defeat of World War II, Confucianism played a significant role in solidifying the central government and imperialistic agendas. The Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 was a good example of this. The Rescript “stressed the Shinto tradition of the imperial lineage and Confucian concept of the subject’s loyalty to the emperor,” which “was implemented not only in Japan but in Japan’s colonies of Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and China.” After World War II, however, Confucianism was removed from the state’s official education system and the public domain as revered studies. Yet still, Confucian ideologies and values such as “loyalty, hierarchy, and social harmony” exert their influence on language, social structure, political philosophy, and family functionality. Carolyn Francis and John Masaaki Nakajima, Christians in Japan (New York: Friendship Press, 1991), 19.
- 23.
K. Kim, “The Reproduction of Confucian Culture,” 204, 225; Byong-ik Koh, “Confucianism in Contemporary Korea,” in Confucian Traditions, 199; and Baker, Korean Spirituality, 46.
- 24.
Hongkyung Kim, “A Party for the Spirits,” 163–176.
- 25.
More than often not, the Asian American church is metaphorically perceived as “the household of God” or “the family of God,” either implicitly or explicitly rooted in Confucian cultural ideology. Peter Cha, Paul Kim, and Dihan Lee, “Multigenerational Households,” in Asian American Christianity Reader, eds. Timothy Tseng, Viji Nakka-Cammauf, and the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity (Castro Valley, CA: Pacific Asian American & Canadian Christian Education Project and the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity, 2009), 129–130; Heup Young Kim and David Ng, “The Central Issue of Community: An Example of Asian North American Theology on the Way,” in People on the Way, 39.
- 26.
E. Kim, Preaching the Presence, 19–20.
- 27.
Alumkal, Asian American Evangelical, 153.
- 28.
E. Kim, Preaching the Presence, 20.
- 29.
Ibid., 22.
- 30.
The sermon entitled “Succeed the Heritage of Faith” was preached on Joshua 24:14–28 by Rev. Won Sang Lee at Korean Central Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC, on May 13, 2012. http://kcpc.org/kcpc/main/podcast/podcast_00.asp (accessed April 30 2014; my translation).
- 31.
E. Kim, Preaching the Presence, 20–22.
- 32.
Ai Ra Kim, Women Struggling for a New Life (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), 56–58.
- 33.
Ibid., 59–61.
- 34.
Ibid., 61–64.
- 35.
S. Lee, From a Liminal Experience, 138–141; Grace Kim, “장로교회 여성의 역할,” 222–228.
- 36.
Djchuang, “Women Asian American Christian Ministry Leaders,” http://djchuang.com/2010/women-asian-american-christian-ministry-leaders (accessed December 7, 2011).
- 37.
Kim, Bridge- Makers, 108.
- 38.
Pak et al., Singing the Lord’s Song, 34. When Koreans practice tong-sung-ki-do, all people in the congregation pray out loud in unison. Anybody can participate in the prayer, whether ordained or lay, men or women, young or old, new members or old, and so on. They can also pray in tongues or by clapping if they prefer. Mostly people do not care about what and how others pray during tong-sung-ki-do, unless they are severely disturbed by others’ voices and (extreme) actions.
- 39.
Chung, Struggle to Be, 145.
- 40.
Choi, Korean Women and God.
- 41.
For Korean American feminist scholars, the goal is the full restoration of the gender-egalitarian vision and reality in the Korean American church context. Also, their visionary scope on egalitarianism goes beyond the church context and gender issues. They pursue the dream of a restored world where all human beings of all colors, genders, social strata, political stances, and economic rungs can enjoy full harmony with one another. The gender inequality issue in the church, although highly significant, is just a part of the ultimate goal. Chung provides a sound example of this in her Struggle to be Sun Again, especially in chapters three and six.
- 42.
E. Kim, Preaching the Presence of God, 19–22; J. Kim, Bridge-Makers, 112–113; A. Kim, Women Struggling, 117–118.
- 43.
J. Kim, Bridge-Makers, 116–117.
- 44.
E. Kim, Preaching the Presence, 20–22.
- 45.
The sermon entitled “The Sojourner Awaiting the Eternal Home” was preached by Rev. Hee Chan Kim at Living Stone Baptist Church, San Jose, California, on December 10, 2011, on the text, Hebrews 11:13–16. http://www.livingsbc.org/bbs/board.php?bo_table=sermon&wr_id=186http (accessed May 1, 2014; my translation).
- 46.
The sermon, “Becoming the Mother of Faith,” was preached by Rev. Dong Won Kim at Grace Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, California, on December 5, 2013, on the entire chapter, Exodus 20. http://kimdongwon.net/index.php?mid=sermon2&comment_srl=11255&page=12&document_srl=49272 (accessed May 1, 2014; my translation).
- 47.
McClure, The Four Codes, 42.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Peter Cha and Grace May, “Gender Relations in Healthy Households,” in Growing Healthy Asian American Churches, eds. Peter Cha, S. Steve Kang, and Helen Lee (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006), 164–182.
- 50.
McClure, The Four Codes, 72–80.
- 51.
S. Lee, From a Liminal Place, 27–28.
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Yang, S. (2016). The Confucian Egalitarian Code. In: Evangelical Pilgrims from the East. Asian Christianity in the Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41564-2_4
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