Author : Byongsung Lee
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (1 download)
Book Synopsis Christianity and Modernity in Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule by : Byongsung Lee
Download or read book Christianity and Modernity in Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule written by Byongsung Lee and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study critically examines the complex relationship between Christianity and modernity in Korea under Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). Unlike Western colonies in Africa and Asia, Korea was colonized by Imperial Japan (1868-1947)--a non-white, non-Christian, non-Western imperial power. This unique Korean experience complicated the interactions of modernity, coloniality, and Christianity. Challenging the colonial modernity position, this study argues that a proper understanding of the formation of the modern in Korea requires an examination of the tripartite relationship among Japanese colonialism, the missionary enterprise, and the Korean pursuit of modernity. This trilateral relationship made both Korean Christianity and Korean modernity distinctively Korean, and made the colonial era the critical and transformative period in the formation of Korean modernity.This study argues that modernity is an epistemological category characterized by Enlightenment, industrialization, democracy, "a secular age," and the interaction between imperialism and colonial resistance, and that four conceptual distinctions are crucial for understanding the formation of modernity in colonial Korea: 1) the modern as a condition and as a normative frame, 2) the Western and the modern, 3) modernization and modernity, and 4) the colonial and the modern. This dissertation examines the impact of Christian modernity on the formation of Korean modernity, noting that Protestant missionaries in colonial Korea were a product of what Charles Taylor calls "a secular age" and that they embodied Christian modernity. Special attention is paid to the Federal Council of Evangelical Missions in Korea (the Federal Council), a union organization of Western missionaries in colonial Korea that embodied characteristics of Anglo-American modernity, representing a microcosm of Anglo-Protestant civil society.This study discusses the socio-political meanings and impacts of Christian modernity by focusing on three topics. First, it analyzes a controversial definition of "religion"--a Western modern concept--in the Korean context, and its relationship with "civilization" in colonial Korea, examining how civilization-oriented Protestant missions and the "civilized" rule of colonialists interacted with Koreans' pursuit of a modern civilization and how this interaction contributed to the formation of Korean modernity in colonial Korea. Second, this study examines how social and moral teachings delivered by Protestant missionaries of the Federal Council interacted with the colonial moral order imposed by Japanese colonialists, and how this interaction influenced the formation of modern morality in colonial Korea. It also analyzes the socio-political impact of the hostile relationship between Christian modernity and Marxist modernity on the Korean peninsula. Finally, this study explores how the mode of organization of Protestant institutions inspired by mission institutions like the Federal Council embodied Anglo-American organizational modernity, colliding with the organizing principles of Japanese colonialists, who held a primarily hierarchical and authoritarian view of society and state." --
