A Reflection on the Growth and Decline of the Korean Protestant Church

Abstract This article examines the reasons for the growth and decline of the Korean Protestant Church during the following five periods: * In the early period of settlement (1884-1909), growth originated from the emancipation motif modern values, the Christian's moral life, the Revival experience, Bible study, and the prayer culture. The Korean church did not polarize evangelism and social action. * During Japanese domination (1910-1945), growth came from the respect of the people toward the church. The church served the nation, consoled and healed the minds of the people, and gave brave witness of their faith in God. However, political persecution, economic devastation, socialist influences, and finally the coercion of the Shinto shrine worship to the church blocked church growth. * During the recovery time (1945-1960), the social anomie after the nation's liberation and the Korean War ironically became a seedbed for church growth. However, the church improperly made her image pro-government and pro-America. * During the time of industrialisation and urbanisation (1960-1995), Korean Protestantism achieved great growth and the highest percentage. Most of the Korean Protestant churches in cities, taking advantage of the mass rural--city migration, were actively involved in evangelism and church planting. University mission organisations and military missions were most active. Yet, they did not do well in terms of holistic evangelism. On the other hand, the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), the Urban Rural Mission (URM,) the minjung churches and others carried out social mission work. * After the time of urbanisation (1995-2005), church membership began to decrease. The Protestant church-planting policy in city areas became inappropriate. In addition, the church's political conservatism fell out of favour with the young generation. The sudden politico-economic changes in Korean society and the commitment of the Korean Christians had created very favourable conditions for Protestantism. However, those conditions now disappeared, and the church must overcome its inability to accommodate itself to the new changes. One of the impending tasks of the Korean church is to set qualitative goals and gain the costly respect and credibility of the Korean populace. Korean Churches and Evangelism Christianity has now become a major religion in Korea, in spite of its relatively short history: 230 years for Roman Catholicism and 130 years for Protestantism. Most churches in Asia find it difficult to engage in evangelism, partly because many Asians believe that their own traditional religions are better than Christianity, but also because the majority of Asian countries have experienced the negative effects of Western colonialism. Incidentally, Korea was not colonized by a Western country; this may not be the sole reason we have seen substantial growth of the church in Korea. According to the most recent government statistics, collected in 2005, the Christian population in Korea was 29.2 percent of the total population: 18.3 percent Protestants and 10.9 percent Catholics. The next most prominent religion was Buddhism, at 22.8 percent. However, the Protestant population has declined over the past 10 years, since 2005, while the membership of the Catholic Church has grown rapidly. This has attracted the interest of many academics. Scholars are investigating this religious phenomenon in order to analyze the reasons behind this growth in Catholicism and decline in Protestantism. This article is written with the intention of sharing the unique experience of the Korean churches in terms of church growth and decline, hoping that it will provide other contexts with some insight. In order to do so, both socio-political and theological approaches to the history of the Korean Protestant church are used to find out the main reasons for the church growth. …