Abstract
Most Korean American churches are evangelical-Pentecostal and have set up “Spirit-led” churches across various denominations. Their Pentecostal characteristics most vividly appear in their communal worship services, through such practices as audible prayer, the Praise and Worship band, speaking in tongues, prayers for healing, the charismatic leadership and preaching of the pastor, and so on. What is most intriguing is that (1) worship becomes a time and a place where all the other four codes discussed thus far appear in integration with the Pentecostal Liberation code. (2) Korean American Pentecostal spirituality takes on a strong flavor of (spiritual) liberation, given their socially oppressive wilderness situation in America. Three styles of the code are introduced: the Pure Spiritual style, the Prosperity Living style, and the Liberal Subversion style.
I seemed to see a kind of blue vapor, or mist, settle down on the congregation, and people turned pale. (Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001], 103)
Male and female, black and white, young and old, rich and poor—all experience and enjoy God’s liberating and empowering presence in the here-and-now. Such worship is an earthly participation in a heavenly reality. (Petrus J. Gräbe, “Worship,” in Encyclopedia, 465)
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Notes
- 1.
This is also aligned with the general understanding in Pentecostalism that “the worship service is the heart of Pentecostalism,” which is “borne out in the writings of early Pentecostals who paint, over and over again, a picture of a worshipping community experiencing the awe, wonder, and joy of the Holy Spirit.” Ibid., 463–464.
- 2.
James F. White, Introduction to Christian Worship (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000), 26.
- 3.
Ibid., emphasis added.
- 4.
See Connie Ho Yan Au, “Asian Pentecostalism,” in Handbook of Pentecostal Christianity, ed. Adam Scott Stewart (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 31–37; Lee, The Early Revival, 54–55; Ma, “Korea,” 280; Wonsuk Ma, William W. Menzies, and Hyeon-Sung Bae, eds., David Yonggi Cho: A Close Look at His Theology and Ministry (Baguio City: APTS Press; Seoul: Hansei University Press, 2004); and Hwa Yung, “Mission and Evangelism: Evangelical and Pentecostal Theologies in Asia,” in Christian Theology in Asia, 262–263.
- 5.
Cecil M. Robeck, The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006), 119–122.
- 6.
William W. Menzies, “The Reformed Roots of Pentecostalism,” PentecoStudies 6, no. 2 (2007): 78–99.
- 7.
Vinson Synan, The Holiness–Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 103–104.
- 8.
Guy P. Duffield and Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (Los Angeles, CA: L.I.F.E. Bible College, 1983), 314–315.
- 9.
Pentecostal believers “view their worship experience as a continuation of the way early Christians worshipped God and experienced baptism in the Spirit.” Thus, cessationism, a notion that argues that the old supernatural ways of God’s revelation have ceased, is denied in the Pentecostal movement. Gräbe, “Worship,” 464.
- 10.
Synan, Holiness–Pentecostal Tradition, 89–92.
- 11.
Estrelda Alexander, “Women,” in Encyclopedia, 460–463.
- 12.
Edith L. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 164–177.
- 13.
Paul W. Lewis, “China,” in Encyclopedia, 95–96. By 1948, the Assemblies of God of China was the largest Pentecostal mission body achieved by the foreign mission, which had nine districts, 150 churches, about 12,000 members, and 6 small Bible schools around the country, which yet reflects the small size of the Pentecostal movement in China at the time.
- 14.
Alan Hunter and Kim-Kwong Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 154.
- 15.
Murray A. Rubinstein, The Protestant Community on Modern Taiwan: Mission, Seminary, and Church (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 142.
- 16.
Lewis, “China,” in Encyclopedia, 96.
- 17.
The Chinese government officially only allows the presence and operation of the so-called Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) as the state-registered and state-sanctioned church. All other forms of Christianity are illegal even today.
- 18.
See footnote 367.
- 19.
Lewis, “China,” in Encyclopedia, 96.
- 20.
Ibid., 277.
- 21.
Yan Au, “Asian Pentecostalism,” 32.
- 22.
Ma, “Korea,” in Encyclopedia, 276–278.
- 23.
Ibid., 280.
- 24.
Ibid., 277.
- 25.
These lower-class people included, but were not limited to, “railway employees, telegraph workers, nurses, and miners, who had moved from the rural areas to seek employment in urban centers.” Also among them were servants, craftsmen, and lower-level bureaucrats. The Pentecostal element of physical healing might have been a strong attraction for most of them who lacked access to modern medical help. Indeed, Yoshimasa sees divine healing, along with sanctification, as the two most important Pentecostal pillars that undergirded the early stage of the Pentecostal movement in Japan. Ikegmai Yoshimasa, “Holiness, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Movements in Modern Japan,” in Handbook of Christianity in Japan, ed. Mark R. Mullins (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2003), 130–132.
- 26.
Ibid., 126.
- 27.
Ibid., 127.
- 28.
Mariko Kato, “Christianity’s Long History in the Margins,” The Japan Times, February 24, 2009. Kato notes that “[t]he Christian community itself counts only those who have been baptized and are currently regular churchgoers—some 1 million people, or less than 1 percent of the population, according to Nobuhisa Yamakita, moderator of the United Church of Christ in Japan.”
- 29.
Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 51–53; Alena Govorounova, “Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia,” Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture Bulletin 36 (2012): 14.
- 30.
Jordan Piper, The Spirits Are Drunk, 118; Govorounova, “Pentecostalism,” 14.
- 31.
Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, 123–134. Not many Korean churches were Pentecostal or Charismatic when Korean churches first began to form, aided by mostly non-Pentecostal foreign missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, rather suddenly throughout the late 1980s and all of the 1990s, the Pentecostal trend was popularized and intensified in most Korean mainline denominations when the Americanized revivalist Praise and Worship movement hit. See Seung-Joong Joo and Kyeong-Jin Kim, “The Reformed Tradition in Korea,” in The Oxford History of Christian Worship, eds. Geoffrey Wainwright and K.B. Westerfield Tucker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 484–491. As a particular branch of Pentecostalism, the Charismatic movement has been considered “the renewal movement” within the mainline Christian denominations with a strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Eric N. Newberg, “Charismatic Movement,” in Encyclopedia, 89–90.
- 32.
David B. Barret, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1:13–15.
- 33.
Anderson, Pentecostalism, 141.
- 34.
E. Kim, Preaching the Presence, 58–59.
- 35.
Ibid., 58; also see Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).
- 36.
These days Korean Christians practice the mentioned Pentecostal performances mainly during alternative services, such as Wednesday evening service, Friday vigil service, seasonal revival meetings, and/or small group prayer meetings. The primary Sunday morning service, though to a great extent it is still largely Pentecostal in nature, is mostly reserved for the so-called traditional service format. This by no means indicates that Pentecostal practices hold secondary status in the ecclesial liturgical practice but that there is an effort to design the Sunday morning service to be accessible to the general public. Note that almost a fourth of the newcomers to the Korean American church, who migrate from Korean, are first-timers to the church experience. This dual tendency of Pentecostal liturgy also applies to two other styles discussed later.
- 37.
2 Timothy 4:8.
- 38.
William Wedenoja, “Society, Pentecostal Attitudes toward,” in Encyclopedia, 443–445.
- 39.
J. Lee criticizes this kind of Pentecostal solution to the social problems as “ecstatic” and “temporary” influenced by the self-directed Shamanistic practice. J. Lee, Korean Preaching, 126.
- 40.
The sermon entitled, “Abraham, the Person Who Intercedes,” was delivered on Genesis 18:22–26 by Rev. Kyu Sup Lee at the Korean Church of Queens, East Elmhurst, NY on September 1, 2013. http://kcqny.org/index.php?_filter=search&mid=sermon01&search_target=title&search_keyword=%EC%95%84%EB%B8%8C%EB%9D%BC%ED%95%A8&document_srl=29564 (accessed May 22, 2014, my translation).
- 41.
Kate Bowler finds four prominent Pentecostal themes of prosperity to be present in most Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in the U.S., regardless of racial boundaries; they are faith (in and through the Spirit), wealth, health, and victory. Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Korean American Pentecostals that follow the Prosperity Living style seem to cherish the same four Pentecostal merits, especially the first three.
- 42.
Yung, “Mission and Evangelism,” 262. Rev. Choi retired in 2008 and now serves the same church as the pastor emeritus. His last name appears in literature as either Choi or Cho, depending on each author’s preference.
- 43.
Andrew Eungi Kim, “Korea,” in Christianities in Asia, ed. Peter C. Phan (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 227–228. Rev. Choi even states explicitly that poverty, poor health, and economic misfortune are largely due to one’s lack of faith or proper relation with the Holy Spirit. He believes the supernatural power of the Spirit helps one advance in these three areas of worldly blessings. Yung, “Mission and Evangelism,” 263.
- 44.
Candy Gunther Brown, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 281.
- 45.
Yung, “Mission and Evangelism,” 263.
- 46.
Hwa Yung, “The Missiological Challenge of David Yonggi Cho’s Theology,” in David Yonggi Cho: A Close Look at His Theology and Ministry, ed. Wonsuk Ma (Baguio City, Philippines: APTS Press, 2004; and Seoul: Hansei University Press, 2004), 69–93 at p. 87.
- 47.
Eunjoo Mary Kim, “A Korean American Perspective,” 99, 102–103.
- 48.
The sermon entitled, “Abraham and the Blessings of God” on Genesis 12:1–5 was delivered by Rev. Yonggi Choi at the Yoido Full Gospel Church, Seoul, Korea on February 8, 2008. http://www.fgtv.com/fgtv/player/player_chovod.asp?CODE=0&SECT=1aV&TSECT=11&DATA=1a090208m&ANUM=21367 (accessed June 2, 2014, English subtitle).
- 49.
Old, The Reading and Preaching, 655–656.
- 50.
Pak et al., Singing the Lord’s Song, 36, 40–41.
- 51.
Ibid., 41–42.
- 52.
Minjung theology is generally understood as an indigenous Korean theology with a heavy focus on “socio-political concerns for praxis,” mainly for the sake of minjung. The Korean term minjung is commonly “defined as the grass-roots people who are oppressed politically, exploited economically, alienated socially and kept uneducated in cultural and intellectual matters.” Bae, “Full Gospel Theology,” 430.
- 53.
Suh, “Minjung Theology,” 151.
- 54.
Gräbe, “Worship,” 466.
- 55.
Gräbe continues: “Children testified about their experiences of Spirit baptism and were even asked by adults to deliver the principle address at worship services. Pentecostal believers realized that all people can be chosen vessels through whom the Holy Spirit may choose to speak.” Ibid., 466–467.
- 56.
Bowler, Blessed, 199–213. Bowler acknowledges that race and gender issues are still critical ones in the Pentecostal circle today, in spite of certain historical improvements throughout the twentieth century.
- 57.
Alumkal points out that most Asian American Christians have adopted “mainstream [white] American evangelical theology” and faith practices as their theological and spiritual foundation. Alumkal, Asian American, 67–69. Thus, it has been inevitable that notions of women’s subordinate roles in and out of the church context and white racial supremacy embedded in that particular theological stream also have been a part of Asian American faith formation.
- 58.
Bae, “Full Gospel Theology,” in Asian and Pentecostal, 427–446; Young-Hoon Lee, “The Korean Holy Spirit Movement in Relation to Pentecostalism,” in ibid., 426; Chong Hee Jeong, “The Korean Charismatic Movement as Indigenous Pentecostalism,” in ibid., 458–460; and Pak et al., Singing the Lord’s Song, 42–43.
- 59.
J. Lee, Korean Preaching, 126.
- 60.
Ibid., 124, 126, 137.
- 61.
E. Kim, Preaching the Presence, 139.
- 62.
Ibid., 158.
- 63.
Pak et al., Sing the Lord’s Song, 43.
- 64.
Ibid., 42.
- 65.
Harvey Cox senses the slow yet powerfully spreading influence of Pentecostal liberation theology around the world, especially in Asia and Latin America, which as a social critique aims for the transformation of the world into the promised Kingdom of God. Harvey G. Cox, Fire from Heaven, 238–241, 299–321. Especially see the last chapter, “The Liberating Spirit.”
- 66.
Cox, Fire from Heaven, 263–321. Wolfgang Vondey also provides a useful description of the historical (mis)understanding of Pentecostalism in America, specifically regarding Pentecostal social engagement, scholarship, egalitarianism, ecumenism, and so on. Wolfgang Vondey, Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London; New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), especially chapters three through five.
- 67.
P.D. Hocken, “Charismatic Movement,” in Encyclopedia, 477–519.
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Yang, S. (2016). The Pentecostal Liberation 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_6
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