Roman Catholic Church in South Korea
Aug 16, 2014
LIFESTYLE & CULTURE
South Korea’s Protestants Struggle as Catholics Grab Spotlight
The Pope’s visit to South Korea has cast a shadow over the nation’s Protestants, who still command larger flocks than Catholics but have been riven by infighting, scandal and growing disenchantment.
When most people think of Korean Christians, it’s Protestants that come to mind. The Protestant church exploded in South Korea in the years following the Korean War, dotting the night skyline with neon crosses and erecting megachurches.
But as it did so, the Protestants atomized into countless rival denominations, split by disputes over doctrine, personalities and styles — all without the unifying central authority of a papal figure. Scandals involving money laundering and squabbles over church succession have added to the damage.
That has left the Protestant church in a state of weakness, say some prominent Christians and scholars, leaving the Catholic church looking “more Christian” by comparison.
Despite an impression of South Korea’s Protestant churches being massive and wealthy, the reality is that — with the exception of the biggest megachurches — the vast majority are struggling financially, barely able to support themselves.
And among the ones that are genuinely big, the troubles are plentiful: churches being run like corporations, with powerful pastors and elders enforcing a strict hierarchy.
“Once churches become well-to-do, once they have more than enough for their needs, you have the problem of moral decay,” says Rev. Park Sang-chung, a former Presbyterian minister and executive director of the Christian Conference of Asia, said in an interview.
Because of this, he added, “Korean society doesn’t trust them anymore.”
Most prominent is Yoido Full Gospel Church, whose founding pastor was convicted earlier this year for embezzling millions of dollars, though several South Korean megachurches have been mired in scandals in recent years, with their alleged crimes ranging from embezzlement and bribery to forgery of documents and sexual assault.
“When you look at Protestant churches these days, they have suffered a great deal in terms of credibility and ethical issues,” says Sebastian Kim, a scholar at York St. John University in York, England whose book “A History of Korean Christianity” is due for publication this year.
“Many of the senior pastors see their church as kind of a private thing, because they worked hard to establish this church, they appoint the elders and so on. They regard themselves kind of almost as the church.”
For ordinary Koreans, watching the scandals of the Protestant church have turned many of them off — and some of them have found their way into the Catholic ranks.
When Rev. Park was invited to speak at Catholic universities back in the 1980s, he said, he began encountering Protestants who had switched their allegiances to the Catholic church.
“They didn’t like their church, or their minister, or their community,” Rev. Park says.
According to the 1985 census, Protestants outnumbered Catholics in South Korea by a ratio of four to one — a high water mark, according to Donald Baker, a professor of Korean cultural and religious history at University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Even then, though, there were signs of the coming trouble that would face the Protestant church. Son Bong-ho, a philosophy scholar at Hanguk Theological Seminary, warned in a 1983 article about the dangers of rapid church growth about “a fatal lack of critical attitude toward the materialism of modern culture.”
In a 1986 account, Donald Clark, a Korean history scholar who now teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, described criticisms of the Protestant church at the time of being “simply latter-day shamans who offer a cheap faith, raid other churches for members, and promise God’s blessings in material terms.”
Because of this, many Korean believers have migrated to the Catholic church, which is much better equipped to deal with an influx of new believers than its Protestant counterparts.
Crosses are displayed for sale at a Catholic church in Seoul on August 15, 2014.
There’s no way even for Presbyterians to sit at the same table, and that’s not a good testament to outsiders,” Rev. Park says. “It’s politics, it’s personality, it’s doctrine, it’s money.”
Unlike in Protestant churches, which are often led by one charismatic preacher who may not have received much in the way of formal theological education, many rank-and-file Catholics are drilled in the catechism. Catholic seminaries have also been producing a steady crop of new priests to minister to the faithful.
“Younger professionals, when they look at the Protestants, they are uneducated and corrupt,” in stark contrast to the “very steady and systematic Catholics,” Rev. Park says.
In addition, Protestants were much more divisive, unlike the Catholics who stood as one church. Rev. Park points to the number of Protestant groups that carry the Presbyterian denominational name.
During the first half of the twentieth century, the Catholics were the more pliant ones, owing to the faith’s long history of persecution and a belief that the faith would do best to lie low and get along with the authorities.
Protestants led the independence movement that opposed the Japanese occupation, and that moral credibility helped them grow. But in the postwar years, Protestants tended to stand by the anti-communist military governments, allowing the Catholics to step up as the conscience of the country, playing a key role in the country’s democratization movement.
“In the 1970s and 1980s, Protestant churches were by and large supportive of the military-backed government, whereas the Catholic church was against the government,” says Mr. Kim, the U.K. scholar. “It stood with the workers and farmers, and that really helped in shaping the ethos and credibility of the Catholic church.”
As Koreans tire of the Protestant scandals, Protestant leaders are starting to come around to the fact that their ranks are thinning — though it’s not clear that dramatic change is imminent.
“My reading of it is that the Protestant church is going through a crisis right now,” Rev. Park says. “They’re talking a lot about renewal and reform, and becoming more aware of its situation.”
“The Catholics will continue to grow, and the Protestants, until they realize the depth of their trouble and reform, will continue like this,” Rev. Park said.
It may also simply be that the Protestant church is ill-suited for the mood in South Korea these days, which after decades of rapid economic growth has settled into a period of more modest gains and soul searching about the country’s future.
“The Protestant church is still seen as a reflection of market ideology,” says Kirsteen Kim, professor of theology and world Christianity at the U.K.’s Leeds Trinity University.
“The Protestant church has been large and loud and very competitive, and now, people seem to be looking at religion as something that’s a relief from that kind of thing, something that connects them to tradition and meditation.”
SOURCE: WALL STREET JOURNAL Artilce HERE