A History of Korean Christianity/The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions 1876-1915 (2016)

A History of Korean Christianity. By Sebastian C. H. Kim and Kirsten Kim. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, Pp. 373. $99.00); The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions 1876-1915. By Sung-Deuk Oak. (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2015, Pp. 450. $49.85.)As a second-generation Korean American, and a third-generation Protestant, I have a deep interest in the mission history of the Korean peninsula and the faith story of the Korean people, my people. However, until recently many of the historical accounts and texts compiled by western missiologists and historians have leaned towards the gross romanticizing of Korea's mission and evangelism story. Traditionally, historical texts and retellings have celebrated the successes of the church's growth among consecutive generations of Koreans and the diaspora. They gloss over any loss experienced by Korean culture, traditions, and religions at the hands of a Christian theology of conquest. Documents like these do little to critically examine early Korean mission and evangelism and its supersessionist encounters with Korea's lived indigenous religious traditions and spiritualties. In fact, the earliest documents recounting Korean mission strongly debate whether or not Korean spiritual practices could be categorized as belonging to a religion at all.After a slew of texts that do little to candidly approach the history of Korean Christianity, both Sueng Duk Oak's The Making of Korean Christianity and Sebastian C. H. Kim and Kirsteen Kim's A History of Korean Christianity, veer sharply away from this pattern. Oak and Kim and Kim thoroughly examine Christian mission and its partnership with what can only be called the colonization of culture and indigenous religions by western churches. Both texts, while comprehensive histories of Western Protestant mission on the Korean peninsula, find a way to focus on the indigenization of Korean Christianity rather than solely missionary lore. Anglican church historians in particular will find these books attentive to and critical of the contributions of Anglican missionaries and the greater Anglican church as it worked together with ecumenical partners towards a Christian Korea.Each book is divided into sections that emphasize periods of mission history and themes in the encounters between the Western church and indigenous Korean religions and spiritualties. Oak's text focuses on themes of cultural and religious encounter, taking readers through intersections of Protestant mission and Korean culture and religion. Oak's text highlights the relationship between effective evangelism and the missionary's growing understanding of Korean history, culture, spirituality, and the Korean people. He references the controversy surrounding the name of God, savior imagery, and the early study of Korean indigenous religions like Shamanism, animism, and eco-religions, as well as the clash between Christianity and ancestor veneration, indigenized Christian rituals, and translations of Biblical texts. Oak's text is sharply cognizant of the post-colonial optic in its critique of Korean mission history. A refreshing perspective for this reader. …