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Don Baker

Religions of Korea in Practice

Book edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr. Princeton University Press, 2007

The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), or Unification Church, is a small religion in Korea. Sun Myung Moon’s pikareum sex rituals from about 1946 to the early 1960s (and some say it continued on a smaller scale) were a national scandal in Korea. Moon was reviled for his perversion of the gospel by all the mainstream Christian Churches in Korea.

The editorial about the Unification Church in the Chosôn Ilbo, July 7, 1955, was titled: “Hananim Irûmûl Naegôlko Sesangûl Soginûn Saramdûl” “The Ones Who Deceive the World in God’s Name”

It was published three days after Moon’s July 4th arrest.

Sun Myung Moon’s “Providence of Restoration” has borne poor fruit.

This Introduction to the Religions of Korea in Practice book gives some context for the FFWPU in the religious landscape of Korea.

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INTRODUCTION

Don Baker

For students of religion, especially those interested in religious pluralism and religious change, the Korean peninsula is a fascinating place to explore. The spectrum of religious beliefs and practices in Korea is wider than almost any other place on earth. The peninsula has been divided roughly in half since 1945, with the Communist People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) on the northern side of a demilitarized boundary and the democratic Republic of Korea (ROK) on the southern side, giving it an even more diverse religious culture today than it had during its thousand-plus years as a unified country. In the North, the Communist government has suppressed most religious activity and replaced it with the ideology of Juche (chuch’e), literally “self-reliance,” an amalgam of Marxism and Neo-Confucianism with religious overtones. In the South, the opposite had occurred: since 1945, there has been an explosion of religious activity—particularly organized and self-conscious religious activity—leading to highly visible, vibrant, and growing Buddhist and Christian communities and expanding social roles for Korean new religions and traditional shamanism.

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The primary division in Korean Christianity—one that is even broader than those that divide denominations—is the split between the few churches that promote the social gospel and the many that preach the gospel of wealth. Though the social-gospel churches remain a minority within the overall Protestant community, they contributed significantly to the democratization of South Korea in recent decades; they preached that God demanded that all human beings be treated with respect, and then acted on that conviction by leading public demonstrations for free elections and for better treatment for workers. The gospel-of-wealth churches, on the other hand, preach that political issues should be left in the hands of politicians. They also preach that God will reward the godly in this life with wealth and health. Their sermons that faith will be rewarded with wealth have brought large crowds into their pews. Some outside observers argue that the gospel of wealth has also inspired the rapid economic development of South Korea, as Christian Koreans have worked hard to increase their own and their country’s wealth as a way of proving that they are the chosen people of God.

New Religions

Korea’s traditional religions have responded to Christian proselytizing zeal by adapting aspects of Christianity that have made Christianity such a powerful force in modern Korea. Some of those responses have been more successful than others.

Modern Korean Buddhists, for example, have written Buddhist hymns that the laity can sing together and have encouraged greater lay participation in Buddhist activities. These responses have stimulated a boom in urban Buddhism, which has kept the number of Buddhists in Korea ahead of the number of Protestant Christians. Confucians, on the other hand, have not adapted well to their fall from power with the demise of the Chosŏn dynasty. The main Confucian organization in Korea officially declared itself a religious organization only in the 1990s and also published a one-volume guide to Confucian teachings and practice that at first glance looks a lot like a Christian Bible. However, although Confucian values remain strong in Korean society and most families still honor their ancestors with Confucian memorial rituals, Confucianism as an organization is very weak, and less than 1 percent of Koreans identify themselves as Confucians to survey takers. Internal alchemy is growing in popularity, though most of its practitioners are unaware of its ancient roots in Chinese Daoism and its modern connections to the worship of Tan’gun, and many of these adepts might not even consider themselves religious. Finally, Korean folk religion has not come up with a coherent response to Christian inroads, since it has no central organizations to formulate policies. Shamans, however, do not appear to have lost much of their appeal despite urbanization and the popularity of Christianity. According to the membership figures of national shaman organizations, there are as many practicing shamans in Korea today as there are Protestant pastors.

Rather than internal transformation, another response to the Christian challenge has been the creation of new religions, based on the Christian model of people with similar religious beliefs forming religious organizations to promote those beliefs. It is estimated that there are more than two hundred new religions in South Korea today, but only a few of them merit our attention. These include Ch’ŏndogyo, Wŏnbulgyo (Wŏn Buddhism), Taejonggyo, Tan (Dahn) World, Chŭngsando (Jeungsando), Taeson Chillihoe (Daesun Jinrihoe), and the Unification Church.

Ch’ŏndogyo, Wŏn Buddhism, Taejonggyo, and the Unification Church (which considers itself a Christian organization) appear to have been created with the Christian model of modern religion in mind. They all hold Sunday worship services in buildings that look like churches, and they sing hymns at those services. However, the prayers they pray, the hymns they sing, and the doctrines they teach are unique to each of these religions.

Wŏnbulgyo (Round, or Consummate) Buddhism, as its name implies, is a new religion with Buddhist orientations. The language it uses sometimes is more modern-sounding than traditional Buddhist language, but its basic doctrines have many parallels with what is taught in mainstream monasteries. Wŏn Buddhists sing hymns and pray, but they also practice Sŏn meditation, seek enlightenment, and practice compassion. Ch’ŏndogyo, on the other hand, cannot be assigned to any of the traditional religious categories. The oldest of Korea’s new religions, it began in 1860 as a response to Catholicism. That is clear not only in its monotheism but also in one of its early names for god, Ch’ŏnju (the Lord of Heaven), the name Catholics had coined for their God. However, Ch’ŏndogyo theology is not Catholic. Instead, Ch’ŏndogyo combines a belief in one God and in the equality of all human beings before God with a Confucian vision of the universe in which everything is related to everything else and the goal of religious endeavors is to live in harmony with the universe.

Taejonggyo is equally difficult to classify. It considers itself to be the revival of the ancient religion of the Korean people, which would suggest that it has its roots in folk religion. However, many of its rituals resemble Christian, rather than shamanic, rites. Moreover, its theology shows clear Christian influence. Taejonggyo is the only indigenous Korean religion to worship a trinitarian God, even though its leaders insist that ancient Koreans shared their belief that Hwanin, Hwanung, and Tan’gun were three persons in one God. There are also elements in Taejonggyo that resemble elements of the Shinto religion that Japanese colonial powers introduced to Korea in the early twentieth century, including Taejonggyo’s focus on Tan’gun as a divine founder of both the Korean state and the Korean race. Nevertheless, Taejonggyo adherents strongly resist any suggestion that their religious beliefs have in any way been influenced by Christianity or by the Japanese.

One thing all these new religions have in common is Korean nationalism. They represent assertions of pride in native Korean tradition in the face of the challenge wrought by Christianity and the West. That is particularly clear in the case of the Unification Church (T’ongilgyo). The Unification Church clearly derives from Christianity; its original name, in fact, was the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. However, it differs from mainstream Christianity in several key doctrinal points. Of particular importance is the Unificationist belief that Jesus failed to complete the mission God assigned him. He was supposed to marry and bring sinless children into the world but was crucified before he could do so. That is why God decided to assign the Reverend Mun Sonmyong (Sun Myung Moon) the mission of completing that task and bringing salvation to humanity.

Wŏn Buddhism and Ch’ŏndogyo share the Unification Church’s belief that the most recent spiritual leader of the human race was born in Korea. They disagree over who that spiritual leader is (each nominates its own founder), but they agree that Korea has become the spiritual center of the world, the place to which everyone today should turn for spiritual advice and guidance. That Korea-centric worldview is shared by Dahn World, an internal-alchemy organization that has opened branches all over the world but insists that its leader, Yi Sŭnghŭn (Seung Heun Lee), is a renowned spiritual leader who is leading humanity toward an “enlightenment revolution.” [He is also known as Il-chi Lee.] LINK

Taejonggyo goes even farther in its assertion of a leading role for Korea in modern religion. Because Taejonggyo worships Tan’gun, the mythical ancestor of the Korean people, it is able to claim that God is a Korean. That belief is shared by both Chŭngsando (Jeungsando) and Taesŏn Chillihoe (Daesun Jinnhoe), though they do not worship Tan’gun as the Supreme Deity. Instead, they worship Kang Chŭngsan, whom they believe is the incarnation in human form on earth of the Supreme Lord Above. Chŭngsando and Taesŏn Chillihoe, though they worship the same God, disagree on many of the details of what their God taught in the first decade of the twentieth century, when he walked on Korean soil. However, they are alike in at least one important aspect. Neither Chŭngsando nor Taesŏn Chillihoe show much Christian influence in their doctrines, their architecture, or their practices. Neither their services nor their worship halls look anything like Christian services or churches. They do not sing hymns or sit in pews. Instead, they chant sacred mantras taught by their God. Both religious organizations have grown rapidly in the last two decades of the twentieth century, a possible sign of greater self-confidence among the indigenous Korean religious traditions.

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In the late 1950s the reputation of Moon and the FFWPU was very dirty.

Moon: “Let’s make our church a church for the intellectuals”

Ewha Womans University sex scandal as told in the 1955 newspapers

統一教會事件 = Unification Church Ewha incident [of 1955]

Moon’s theology for his pikareum sex rituals with all the 36 wives

Sun Myung Moon – Restoration through Incest

Where Sun Myung Moon got his theology from

Unification Church foreign missions may have been planned as a way out of the trouble it faced in Korea

Gods – William E. Padden

#Don Baker #Religions of Korea #Unification Church #FFWPU #Sun Myung Moon