Christianity in Korea.

Park, Joon-Sik

Christianity in Korea.

Edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr., and Timothy S. Lee. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 408. $42.

Robert Buswell of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Timothy Lee of Texas Christian University have coedited a volume that provides an impressively comprehensive overview of Korean Christianity. This multidisciplinary book is written under the premise that the study of Korean Christianity in its unique historical and cultural context is requisite to a proper understanding of both modern Korean society and global Christianity.

The first chapter, by James Grayson, provides a succinct and lucid survey of Korean Christian history and serves as a backdrop for the various topics addressed in the volume. The subsequent chapters are organized under four headings: "The Beginning of Christianity in Korea"; "Christianity, Nationalism, and Japanese Colonialism"; "Christianity and the Struggles for Democracy and Reunification"; and "Growth and Challenges."

The contributors reflect critically on many of the crucial issues in the history and life of Christianity in Korea, from the family and social ethics expressed in early vernacular Catholic writings, to the Christian roots of the Korean Constitution, the role of women in the Korean mission field, minjung theology, Korean evangelicalism, and the sibling rivalry between the Catholic and Protestant communities. In a chapter on the reunification of the two Koreas, Anselm Min provides a solid Trinitarian basis for unity and solidarity and incisively portrays the most compelling mission of the Korean church as being an instrument for overcoming the "exclusive systems of identity" and for abolishing "all structural sources of inequality and discrimination." Reflecting on the impact of modernization on Korean Protestant religiosity, Byongsuh Kim poignantly points out a strong correlation between the cultural captivity of the Korean church and the decline in its growth rate and social influence. An interesting sociological study of evangelical conversion of women in Korea is presented by Kelly Chong, who argues that Korean evangelicalism has served a contradictory, double role for women--liberating as well as oppressing.

Christianity in Korea is an excellent guide--probably one of the best resources available in English--for the study of Korean Christianity. Yet, considering that Korea has become the second largest missionary sending country in the world, with more than 12,000 missionaries, a chapter on the significance and future of the Korean missionary movement would have made the book an even more valuable resource.

Joon-Sik Park is the E. Stanley Jones Associate Professor of World Evangelism at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware, Ohio. He previously served as pastor of multicultural United Methodist congregations in Ohio and Kentucky.