The headaches for the Foreign Ministry courtesy the missionary crew just won’t stop:
The government appealed for restraint on Thursday after Evangelical groups pushed mass events in Jerusalem and several Korean missionaries were picked up in Afghanistan.
Actually, it’s the hijinx in Afghanistan that really got me:
Meanwhile, there are dozens of Koreans in Afghanistan, which the government has designated a restricted travel zone, on missionary work. “On Monday, UN military forces discovered three Korean women traveling through the dangerous Baghlan Province,” an official said. “They escorted them to the capital Kabul and turned them over to the Korean Embassy. In the process, the convoy came under attack by unknown assailants, but there were no losses.” On Wednesday, UN forces reportedly escorted another four Korean women travelers to the embassy.
OK… seven female Korean missionaries bumming through Afghanistan.
Now, I’m not going to dive into a obscenity-laced diatribe like I did last time something like this made the news, mostly on account that a friend of mine stopped speaking to me for a month afterward. Having said that, this seems to be a trend, and I wish these folk could find a different outlet for their spiritual energy other than going through Middle Eastern war zones trying to convert the heathen.
On the other hand, The NYT’s Norimitsu Onishi did a piece last November that takes a much more sensitive look at Korean Christian missionary activity than I could ever give the topic.
Sphere: Related Content
44 Comments
In regard to your “obscenity-laced diatribe,” I thought it was pretty damned funny. It’s too bad you can’t write more posts like that one, but I guess friends are important too.
I can’t understand why even though flakey fundamentalist religion came over here from America, secular, reasoned criticism thereof didn’t come along as part of a package deal. It’s like nobody here has ever heard of Voltaire or the Englightenment. It always makes me deeply embarrassed that Korean Christians are some of the world’s most hysterical believers and that this is one of the few things that Korea can even get attention for.
Reasoned criticism has been brought here by innumerable American “missionaries” of various stripes — including lawyers. It didn’t take.
Along with a lack of critical reasoning skills, it seems these people also lack a basic understanding of the crusades and the religious sources of the unrest in the region now. One thing I will say for them, they have a much higher threshold for risk than do I. Aside from being passionate about religion and the accompanying absence of reasoned criticism, I have always wondered why that has not caught on in Korea. How much of it is a result of it not fitting into the neoconfucian view that loyalty is absolute, no matter what, therefore negating any need or use for it or perhaps does part of its unpopularity stem from the fact that it is the foreigners way of thinking and therefore rejected by default?
Maybe they were hookers looking for better paying clients.
I can only wonder if these “missionaries” belong to one of the churches in my neighborhood that has its members sneak around and paste up illegal advertising just to raise money for the church, the same church that forced it neighbors to move by playing REALLY LOUD MUSIC until they wanted to leave and then bought up their property.
If these people get whacked, it will not bother me in the least.
Why are we so hostile to these guys (well, girls in this case)?
I’m just being somewhat of a devil’s advocate (I guess that’s a cheesy phrase in this context, but it came out before I caught it).
I tend to think their going to Afghanistan is particularly foolish, but they aren’t going to places to strap bombs to their bodies and blow up double decker buses in a crowded city. I wouldn’t mind if their native goverments didn’t spend much energy or money to save them if they get captured. They knew the risks going to a land with radical Islamic groups and then trying to preach Christianity, but why do we have such a violent reaction to it?
I am thinking back to my first month in Korea in a hakwon that had only one other foreign teacher. It was in a city where you didn’t see another foreigner much, so we all would always stop each other in the streets and chat if we ran across one. But, this teacher I worked with, if we were in the street and came across two mormons, he’d go out of his way to be rude to them and walk away in disgust, and he was not a hot headed person or rude in general. I don’t get it.
I think much of it is from our education, and James brought up one of my favorite topics from my past.
“also lack a basic understanding of the crusades and the religious sources of the unrest in the region now”
I was taught in school and through bits and pieces of references laced throughout our society that the crusades were the first seeds of Western colonialism, a product of the lowest time in western civilization - the Dark Ages -, that European despots decided to relieve pressure off of themselves by sending Europe’s poverty stricken peasants to invade a foreign land to kill, plunder, and colonize under the false pretexts of religion.
It wasn’t until much later, until just a few years ago in fact, that while watching the history channel, something dawned on me.
Was Israel and Syria, and Iraq, and Iran always Muslim?
Then I started thinking about other broad strokes of history I was aware of but never really thought about. Islam became an “empire” didn’t it? It spread out of Saudi Arabia to cover much of the same territory the Roman Empire held, didn’t it? It spread through what? warefare, right? It even took over Spain for a good bit of time, right?
So, when I was watching 1492, the movie about Columbus, I see this scene where the Queen of Spain is sitting on horseback with a nobleman, and they are watching the peasants and soldiers looting a town they just (re)took from the Muslim powers, and they watch this peasant mob pull down the scepter like thingy icon from off the top of the dome of the local mosque, and the queen looks at the nobleman and says something very close to, “And there goes a couple hundred years of culture…” meaning what a shame that sight was…..
and I think, “Damn strange things for the Queen of Spain to be thinking as she is in the middle of spending great amounts of energy and blood to do things like conquer this area? If she felt that bad about it, why fight at all?”
But, of course, I highly doubt the real queen of Spain at that time, if she saw that sight, would have had those thoughts. The queen in the movie was expressing our contemporary thoughts and desires.
And since we’re also talking about criticial thinking and reasoned criticism, why is it I get annoyed at the habit of painting so much of the Other as taffy and rosebuds?
What I mean is, having realized I probably swallowed hook line and sinker something highly questionable throughout my education in school and in pop culture, concerning the crusades, I started doing some reading on the topic, and what I found was some pretty good academic gymnastics.
Yeah, sure, the tendancy in these books did mention that the spread of Islam was through the sword, but what they decided was more importantly a factor I should understand was how much more tolerant they were. Even they seemed to notice this line of argument was shaky, so after mentioning some of the worst parts of rule by the Greeks or Byzantian Empire, they would often decide to focus on how impressive the administrative activities of the rising muslim dynasties were. It was impressive how (after having conquered greats amount of terriroty), they were able to bind these areas together in efficient administration. Wonderful!
But, having learned a lot from Edward Said and other post-(Western) colonial theory, I was a bit confused. So, what makes the Muslim Empire(s) palatable was their great efficeint bureaucratic system that held the areas of the empire together? Uhh….. And then I started to think about some other things…….like the frequently run across idea in even general culture is that while Western society was wallowing in the mires of the Dark Ages, we have the muslim (empires) to thank for keeping science and knowledge alive…….which is a good thing……but then I think again about arguments Said does a great job of pointing out about how Western culture justified the colonial effort…..???…
And I’ll jump to another one of my favorites. The building of the Pyramids. For most of my educated life, I never paid any attention to something that should have jumped out at me when I first heard it.
It dawned on me one night a few years ago watching the history channel. It was the Egyptian national historic department minister guy who you have probably seen since he is frequently on shows about Egyptican ancient history. Anyway, he was talking about recent efforts to dig up around the pyramids to find out more about the people who built them. And he was going out of his way to say that the idea the pyramids were built by slaves was a bad, misguided misunderstanding held by some. He used as evidence the fact archeologists were digging up dewelling places and food shopping and production areas for these workers and other things that were created to take care of the workers, so they surely weren’t slaves.
And for some reason that night something that never occured to me when I had heard the same argument before in the past came to me —- what the hell do people think happened with slaves in the US?
Maybe it was because I had recently seen a special on Thomas Jefferson and the slave-2nd wife he had and his travels with her brother.
Should I now start to go back and document how American slaves were fed and housed to point us toward a conclusion we didn’t have slavery or it wasn’t so bad????
And all of this is tied to another of my favorites. I remember very well how my 4th grade teacher told us in a few lessons about this great people called the Mayans. How they controlled a great amount of territory, but they were a people who concentrated on science and living with the land rather than war. How they had this great game that was something like soccer and basketball combined. About how they had these great cities at harmony with the land while back in Europe, you had the Dark Ages, plagues, and burning people at the stake for the Inquisition.
And how it wasn’t until years later, and after they had broken the code for the writing system of the Mayans, that I happened to read an article about how the opposing team from another village was often sacrificed to the gods if they lost that neat socetball game and how the wonderful stone work walls of written history told tales of seasonal warefare and conquest — also including brutal, ritual sacrifice of humans to the gods.
And lastly, to jump back to Korea, still in the same first city I worked in in Kangwon Province, the guy who replaced the morman hater was 51 year old Canadian who was nice and normal, but definately a child of the 60s. I mean he was just like an average person, but had ideas about the world very much in line with the 60s. Anyway, he and I used to take long walks around the city for exercise, and one of the frequent comments he’d make, at least once a walk, was —- upon coming across some big Christian church with the red, neon cross standing on the room, “Isn’t that kind of disgusting to see?” or something similar.
Once or twice I pointed out to him that Buddhism was a Korean import….but I gave up trying to get into a discussion with him about it and would just nod whenever he’d mention the disgusting nature of seeing Christian churches in Korea.
Which just reminded me of one I haven’t remembered in a long time. The same guy I wrote about who went out of his way to be rude to the mormans before walking off and refusing to talk to them —
I think a lot of my sentiments can be found in what usinkorea wrote.
Christianity in Korea is, in some ways, a unique animal. At least in terms of how it came to this country and took root. Building hospitals and schools and having the locals run it. Not particularly imperialistic, really. Not really forced on the people, either.
I get annoyed by the Bible thumpers and the people with loudspeakers, but just as much I admire the churches that set up the weekend medical/dental clinics for undocumentated workers, arrange programs for the poor, or set up clearinghouses of information to help migrant workers.
Going into Afghanistan, Iraq, or other Muslim countries takes guts. The fundamentalists who are doing this, even if you don’t agree with their religious viewpoint, are undoubtedly doing it out of utterly selfless reasons. And as usinkorea noted, they aren’t strapping bombs to themselves.
And the Christians who are going into China and even North Korea to bring out refugees… why mock these people? These are the ones who are doing the thing that so many of us on this blog seem to wish would happen more often. I don’t know if I would have the guts to do what they are doing.
Why is it that in the West it is considered so okay to bash Christians for the sake of bashing Christians. I am a Democrat, but the one thing I found so difficult to stomach is how many of my fellow Dems were so quick to roll their eyes at any mention of Protestant or Catholic values. What intolerance.
. . . why do so many of us tend to have so strong a reaction to things like this??
Well, to quote Mammonides faith without reason or intellectual skepticism is a dangerous thing. This sort of mindless zeal is the same thing that leads others to kill in the name of what they believe, regardless of their religious bias. This activity is not for the sake of sharing “Christianity in an area that is briefly open” but is more so the vehicle of organized hysteria and this hysteria is often used by the greedy as well to line their pockets.
Christianity in Korea has been appropriated on a large scale by many who are more interested in mammon than a greater service to their own community. As *one* example I have personally experienced, I once attended just such a church here in Seoul and noted the loud, raucacious music, the repetitive use of “death”, “blood” and various slogans that were designed to arouse passion, the powerpoint presentation regarding their “growth” in numbers and found it profoundly disturbing since there was a fixation upon growth and building but not on a message or service to a community. There was little to no discussion upon the teachings of Jesus, rather it was all gore, blood and guts. This church reminded me of the yerning a child has when they see an adult doing grown-up things and wishes they could grow and be a big person, all without having gone through the stages of development that naturally occur in time.
I have not mentioned the use of organized religion here in Korea (by many) as a great tax dodge since a church is tax-exempt and can be owned by a sole Proprietor.
Not all churches are bad in Korea though. I’ve personally seen some doing some outstanding work in their community; work that is really inspirational. These churches are not so much interested in growing members, rather they place a greater emphasis upon teaching, works and service. These wonderful congregations are in the minority though, I’m sad to say.
A common tendancy with me and much of what I write on the net is not so much defense of the things like the missionaries but concerned more with wondering why those following Western higher education have such a tendancy to —- if we want to put it in Christian terms — obsess over the splinter in their own eye while going out of their way to excuse or ignore the splinter in the Other guy’s eye.
Even in the most intelligently written and researched material found throughout the humanities in Western education you often find either a directly or indirectly or implied idea, while they are examining the factors that created moment of bad and horrible and “evil” events/trends in Western social history, that it was better “elsewhere” often seemingly “everywhere else”, — the idea that similar trends or elements are limited to and unique only in Western social history.
In pointing out that Buddhism was not a native cultural product of the Korean peninsula, I’m not really offering a value judgement on the importation of Buddhism or Christianity coming into Korean society.
Cultures and societies have been mixing and mingling and doing rather nasty things to each other forever, and sometimes I did mutually beneficial things, sometimes at the same time.
I don’t see a whole heck of a lot of clarity out in the world from an academic viewpoint —- even when we have the best minds working on it…..
i’m amazed at where people will take a mission, my wife had a friend that was going to Ireland of all places….I suppose the heathen are everywhere….
that should be “they did mutually beneficial things”…
I mis-remembered the scene from 1492 — here is the portion I was talking about –
http://www.allmoviescripts.com.....aad586.htm
EXT. STREETS OF GRANADA - DAY
A huge Islamic Crescent being pulled down from the minaret of a mosque. SOLDIERS are holding back a crowd at the foot of the tower. To the ecstatic cries of the crowd, a Cross is hoisted up in its place… Astride horses, COLUMBUS and the Treasurer SANTANGEL are watching the scene.
They push through an extraordinary scene. The city of Granada has just been reclaimed from the moors after several years of siege. All around them, SPANISH SOLDIERS are herding, bedraggled columns of the defeated MOORS, bearing only a few possessions. Ragged, half-starved men, women and children.
SANTANGEL
These people built Granada… Centuries ago! It is a great victory over the Moors, Don Colon — and yet what a tragedy it is!
The THREE HORSEMEN pass a procession of grateful PENITENTS, who are crawling on their knees, chanting
psalms and flagellating themselves. At the head of the procession, HOODED PRIESTS carry a statue of the Virgin Mary swathed in silk and lace.
The gates of the Alhambra Palace are in sight.
COLUMBUS
Is this a good time to meet her?
SANTANGEL
It couldn’t be better. Victors can’t say no.
Bells are pealing triumphantly. The noise is tumultuous. They ride towards the magnificent palace.
It is definitely a good thing for christians to go into places and build schools, hospitals, etc. The problem is that it is often contingent on trying to spread the word of God.
It is not a selfish act of giving or helping, it is this bizarre attempt to try and make these people believe in the Western concept of Christianity..
Let’s turn the tables. How well do you think it would go over if burka-covered muslims went door-to-door around the U.S. like Mormons or Jehovas?
I guess what I’m saying is, if you want to help people, great. But why does it have to be done with the underlying motive of spreading christianity?
These people are crazed lunatics, and wierd religious fundamentalists in their own right. Sure, they aren’t strapping bombs to themselves, but taking that next step isn’t too far fetched.
Look at the abortion issue in the U.S. We have seen christian fundamentalists bomb abortion clinics on numerous occasions. If that isn’t terrorism, what is?
I think the problem many people have with Korean Christians comes not from their Christianity, but from their extreme resemblence to the Pharisees. It is like the first Korean Christians were reading the Bible, came across the verses about the Pharisees — “Oh! Standing on the street corners, proclaiming my own righteousness while forgetting all the difficult stuff about mercy and making myself a better person!” — and thought, “That’s for me!”.
“these people believe in the Western concept of Christianity…”
Christianity and two other world religions are origniated in the Middle East at the junction of the Western and Eastern worlds.
“These people are crazed lunatics, and wierd religious fundamentalists in their own right. Sure, they aren?€™t strapping bombs to themselves, but taking that next step isn?€™t too far fetched.”
A few abortion clinc bombings puts these missionaries a half-step from suicide bombers?
The way this major trend in intellectual thought and learning has been going in Western academia and social theory, you would think in the past the ideal situation was a massive repetition of the current North Korean state — socieites locked into themselves where thought of the outside world were rightly considered plagues on the inner sanctity of native thought.
As for burka=covered muslims, I haven’t run across any Islamic missionaries in the US, but I know where to find a couple of mosques and I know there are Islamic centered schools created to serve the desires of the Muslim communities who created them.
And I’m not about to run screaming the sky is falling or lock my children in their rooms so they won’t run the risk of being tainted by them.
I semi-understand the craze against christian missionaries because I was brought up in the same intellectual trend as most of us educated in the Western world —- but why not pause a minute…
What exactly are we objecting to today? If a burka wearing Muslim missionary came to my door, I’d probably be as annoyed with them as I am the Jehovah’s witnesses, but I wouldn’t feel like they were trying to rape my culture, brain wash me, or destroy the fabric of all that is sacred in American society.
I would not look at them as demons come from a foreign land to erase American culture and turn it into something evil.
Above all, I would understand I have the ability to think and act according to my own will.
In today’s educated world, it seems we want to believe thought has never flowed or that the flow of thought is somehow abnormal and to be guarded against — that individual cultural communities are as fragile as eggs and must be protected, because any change in them is a bastardization of the “true” nature of that society.
What I mean is, we seem to tend to work against historical social reality.
Like I said, Buddhism didn’t origninate in Korea. Neither did confucianism.
Found around the entire globe are elements of three primary religions that origninated in the same limited geographical area.
And for that matter, Foucault and Derrida are contemporary cult figures you can find being read and influencing young minds around the world.
What makes these christian missionaries “crazed lunatics” “weird” abnormal and destestable???
What great harm are they doing?
Are they really just a step away from suicide bombers?
If we agree with certain trends in Western social thinking, how far are we supposed to go in the suppression of ideas or certain kinds of ideas?
usinkorea, you said much of what I was thinking.
I also think, regarding the Pharisee comment, that it’s rather unfair to assume that these people risking their lives are the same people who are using church membership to further their businesses or who treat others like crap Monday through Saturday. In fact, I highly doubt they are the same people and they would share your dismay at such behavior.
Why is it okay to lump all billion+ Christians together?
As for using schools and hospitals to “spread the Word of God,” if you read things like James 2, the feeding the body and feeding the spirit go hand in hand.
These missionaries believe they have something that everyone desperately needs, whether it’s the fundamentalists who believe they have the only path out of Hell or other Christians who believe they have a way to bring meaning, comfort, and fulfillment to empty lives. They are not trying to spread Christianity like one spreads communism or capitalism. Each individual brought to God is considered a victory, regardless of where. To deny people behind the bamboo curtain or the burqa this just because of geography would be a tragedy. Nobody (today at least) is forcing this on anyone; you can always say no.
And I, for one, would have an interesting chat over coffee with the burqa-clad proseltyzers going door to door.
But are you sure that these missionaries in China, Iraq, and Afghanistan are the mammon-seeking type? Unless you know for sure, it’s rather unfair to paint them with that criticism.
I respectfully disagree “usainkorea” as for the harmless nature of Christian evangelism. More people have died in the name of Christ than have been saved (literally speaking and not in rhetorical sense). One can only look at the history of Christianity to see how destructive it has been. Proselytizing religion has historically done more harm than the supposed evils it allegedly sought to replace. It is patently absurd to allow people who’s beliefs are so founded in irrationalism, irrationalism which in turn fosters intolerance, hatred, etcetera. Perhaps you have the luxury of smiling in the face of ignorance but such ignorance and absolutism produces people who are, to paraphrase Christ, “twice as fit for hell” as the ones before them.
One will know a thoughtful Christian by the quiet, steady works; works that reflect their thoughts, rather than their fervor or zeal.
“It is patently absurd to allow people who?€™s beliefs are so founded in irrationalism, irrationalism which in turn fosters intolerance, hatred, etcetera.”
One of the problems I have with blaming contempoary Christian missionaries for the Inquisition is that I would tend to think “intolerance, hatred, etcetera” are more the norm in social history than abnormal. Even in today’s world, it is still a common feature.
So, it is a tough sell to convince me that — from what we know specifically about these missionaries in the story — the ultimate end of their work is going to be burning people at the stake or nailing them on crosses.
And you can already see my second point from the way I wrote the first
I guess I should add this at this point —
I’m not a big fan of the evangelical movement that seems to have become rather widespread in American Christianity recently. I a Christian, but I always perferred the example Jesus mentioned in the story of the poor man who came to the temple and quietly said a prayer in the back without notice and then went on his way.
However, I also question why I dislike this evengelical movement. Why do I have such a natural tendancy to look down on it immediately?
And in reading something like the story of those Koreans going to Iraq and Afghanistan, I feel a “natural” pull toward many of the same general types of ideas I’ve been arguing against in my comments.
Why?
Because especially with things outside of American society I have much more knowledge and intuitive sense about, I question why I have some of this natural, really extreme distaste when I hear about something like those missionaries.
In my first comment I wrote I was in part being a “devil’s advocate.” I’m not really that, because I really believe most of the defense I offered for those Korean missionaries is close to correct.
I really don’t think we should naturally assume they are bad people doing a terrible thing.
But what really interests me, and what I still can’t put a finger on well, is why it seems a wide trend among those educated in the West and along Western academic lines — have such a “natural” knee-jerk negative reaction to Christians and stories like the Korean missionaries….
OK i havent been following this for a couple days but …
My point is that hysterical fundamentalist Christianity has been imported and is flourishing so mightily here that we can export it (and eventually perhaps belief in fan death) to other superstitious countries. But …
Secularism, skepticism towards religious dogma, a scientific outlook, Darwin, Bertrand Russell, tolerance towards belief in other religions, or unbelief altogether. Yaddah yaddah. Skepticism, willingness to subject beliefs to scrutiny, and the abandonment of reliance on faith altogether, are an important factor in making the Netherlands, for example, a civil society. The absence of all of these things, OTOH, helps account for the total absence of civil society in, for example, Saudi Arabia . Skepticism and secularism, not belief, are two things thate define Europe and North America as modern civil societies, and unfortunately they are not doing nearly as well here in Korea as religious fanaticism. At any rate, I was criticizing the excessive credulity of Koreans to any passing religious carpetbagger, and criticizing Christian fundamentalism only in passing.
I can’t stop Christian missionaries or Moonies or Hare Krishnas from haranguing people in the street, nor would I want to. My point was that there isn’t, in Korea, anybody on the other side of the fence to counteract the barrage of religious propaganda. There are always going to be people willing to accept religious dogma without any proof, and who insist on spreading their belief to others. Saudi Arabia and many other places have got that. What they don’t have is a sufficient population of people with a skeptical and critical outlook that have been responsible for the advancement of civil society. Korea is better at this than Saudi Arabia, but it could be better still.
And this is why there are entirely legitimate grounds for viscerally negative reactions to missionaries, because missionaries create believers, not skeptics, and believers are not going to advance civil society here. We don’t need more blind belief here in Korea.
What makes these missionaries “crazed lunatics,” “abnormal and detestable”? For starters, how about preaching Christianity in a region where the religion (Islam) prescribes the death penalty for conversion? Or knowingly going into a war torn and unstable area and doing something you know may result in harm and death either to yourselves or others?
I would think we could lay a lot of carnage and social devastation at the feet of science and (social) Darwinism and a whole lot of other -isms in human history.
“Skepticism and secularism, not belief, are two things thate define Europe and North America as modern civil societies…”
I agree, but there is also a flip side to the coin that is also valid. First, I agree with the “secularism” if you mean non-state religion as a key difference between the West and Muslim states. If you start moving from there to societ in general, I would start disagreeing.
Next, skepticism is also limited. Ideas like “freedom” and others that are the cornerstones of Western democracy are treated like universal laws — or more correctly universal principles — but they are in a significant way taken on as faith.
“My point was that there isn?€™t, in Korea, anybody on the other side of the fence to counteract the barrage of religious propaganda.”
I think we’re getting carried away here. Unless things have changed dramatically in the last few years, Korean society is about 50% non-religious, 25% Buddhist and 25% Christian. One of the significant reasons Korean Christians show some extremeism comes from the fact they are outnumbered.
And one of my key points is that — when thinking about the 25% of Korean society that is Buddhist, how come the western expats don’t tiss and snarl?
I like using movies as examples of pop culture — so, there was a scene in the movie A Fish Called Wonda - where Kevin Klien, the dumb criminial who nonetheless thought he was an intellectual because he read things he didn’t understand, is in the car in a weird pose and Jamie Lee Curtis asks what he is doing, and he said it was a meditation technique the Buddhist monks used before going into battle, and Curtis looks at him with a condescending face and says, “And what form of Buddhist were these?” or something like that.
The point was that Klien was showing his ass for not knowing that Buddhism was a pacifist, peaceful religion.
Well, the problem with that is that Buddhist monks in at least Korea did practice warfare at different times in Korea’s long history.
And I can still remember the Buddhist monk riots in Seoul in, I think it was, the late 1990s when they had to pick a new leader.
I think there is more going on with our “visceral” anger at the Korean missionaries than what Korean Christians bring to the table.
“because missionaries create believers, not skeptics, and believers are not going to advance civil society here. We don?€™t need more blind belief here in Korea.”
This could be true, but I don’t think it is even a general rule. If part of a faith that is stressed and accepted, blindly or not, is “love thy neighbor,” I would think civil society has been advanced.
It seems to me the worst of religious extremism, except for perhaps suicide cults and whatnot, comes from a marriage of the religion with other socio-political forces. Like in the Cold War, communism (and capitalist democracy) were taken up by places like Iraq and Central America, but they were just as animated by local and historical conflicts in those areas. We might be able to make the same argument today with Islam and the geographical areas where the conflict is worse.
And about the last paragraph, I agree. I don’t get it. But, I don’t get people in humanitarian orgs who go to war torn areas to do good despite the threat to life and limb either.
I think calling these missionaries one step away from suicide bombers is pushing the point a little too far.
And I think a good bit of our initial reaction to news like this is based on somewhat of an indoctrination we have recieved via Western higher education. We are programmed to look down on “faith” and religion. We are taught to like to believe that whatever else the Western humanities have developed for us are so much better and grounded.
That, I don’t buy……..
I used to think the more education a person has, the smarter he becomes.
Boy was I stupid….
I am Christian but boy there is some strange people out there. Check out this site. If you notice a lot of it is in Korea.
“>http://www.themaninthesynagogue.org/allsets.htm
Okay here goes …
“I would think we could lay a lot of carnage and social devastation at the feet of science and (social) Darwinism and a whole lot of other -isms in human history… Skepticism is also limited …”
OK this is basically an attack on rationalism, in favor of faith, which can’t be argued with because you just believe it, and you’re implying that if skeptical, scientific reasoning is limited, then that means religious dogma must be right. I can’t argue with this, if you demand blind belief, that pretty much precludes any critical examination.
Yes, there is still a large proportion of the population with little religious affiliation. That wasn’t really my point. Korea has happily imported a religion that derides Buddhism and Shamanism as superstition, but it has so far not imported the kind of critical consciousness that can subject Christianity to the same scrutiny.
“And one of my key points is that ?€” when thinking about the 25% of Korean society that is Buddhist, how come the western expats don?€™t tiss and snarl?”
This is such an obvious one, I can’t believe it hasn’t occurred to you already. Buddhists don’t get the same derision, because they dont insist on calling the beliefs of everybody else “superstition.” They don’t harrass random strangers with threats of hellfire or accussations of Satanic possession. Accordingly, they don’t earn nearly as much opprobrium as some Christians have so rightfully earned from those brainwashed, snooty liberal, Buddha-loving expats you keep talking about. Missionaries are disliked for perfectly legitimate reasons.
Doesn’t mean, of course, that I think it’s a good idea to limit their free speech with restrictions on proselytization in a society where civil society and pluralism is sufficiently developed to make it safe to do so. Proselytizing Christianity in a war stricken Muslim country that prescribes the death penalty, for apostasy, however, is a criminally stupid idea that endangers the lives on oneself and others. Such people should be discouraged by their home governments as much as they possibly can.
I see your point, James, but how are we so sure these women are of the street corner-with-loudspeaker-and-placard variety?
Thank you JYC. Great comments. And much better written than I could ever do.
No. I’m pushing more for not moving to extremes.
My point — Science should not generate blind faith either, and the world of science and rationalistic thinking has produced horrors too. I’m not yin and yanging to the extremes — trying to create a bi-polar world where either you are for science (faith) or against it.
Statements like “I think saying these Koreans are one step away from suicide bombers is going too far” are meant to argue for more consideration of tolerance, not demanding blind faith in faith over rationalism.
So, while I can stomach “Missionaries are disliked for perfectly legitimate reasons.” Calling these Korean missionaries we don’t really know much about as being in the same boat as suicide bombers and peppering statements about them with very strong words like “brainwashed” and “lunatics” and such tends to go too far, in my opinion.
Given some of the strong comments against Chrisitans, I would imagine we might be more critical of Buddhism than we are or maybe it is because we don’t know as much about it in Korea — especially because most of us come from cultures that were historically Christian — so we bring a good bit of our own baggage/understanding into an interpretation of what we see in Korea.
I used the example of the Buddhist monk riots that took place in the late 1990s. Those riots were pretty big and went on for a little while. At the time, it exposed items of greed and political conflict inside Korean Buddhism that we expats would probably never have seen unless we could read Korean well or we looked for it —- with our rational, critical eye on issues of faith — blind and whatnot.
And Buddhism doesn’t reach out to people in Korean society? The only people who come to the faith do so because they were born in Buddhist families? The Buddhist don’t recruit? This could be mostly true, but I would tend to doubt it. I would bet it isn’t nearly as common as evangelicalism in Christian churches in Korea, because I’d probably have seen more of it from the Buddhist side if it were, but I doubt they don’t seek to convert people too.
If we’re going to talk about the uncritical Christians standing on street corners, what about the follows of the Buddhist faith we can see on buses or the subway in with shaved heads and a monk’s clothing?
I understand them less than I do outwardly Christian fundamentalists, because I’m from a Christian background, and maybe that’s why I feel the need to pull the trigger on Christians much faster than I do on the Buddhists. The Buddhists are neat cultural icons, but the outward Christians are things to worry about???
And does Buddhism omit hell or concepts of punsihment? It’s just a meditative, peace oriented faith?
I thought Buddhism has a strong concept of rejection of life and a concept of repetition in a cruel world until the soul reaches enlightenment. I haven’t read a whole lot of Buddhist texts, but I’ve read some and some about it. Buddhism doesn’t have heaven and hell as a Christian or Jew would characterize it, but it does have otherwordly stages of soul development with some being much better than life on earth and some worse and earth as a zone of pain that the most souls come back to again and again until the soul is able to let go/reject that world.
I would find it hard to believe that someone with a guiding principle of skepticism, especially high skepticism of people with Christian faith, would favor those people who have great faith in rejection of the objective world.
And I’m thinking about my 2nd year in Korea and a student who was with my Canadian co-worker’s classes most of the time. He felt very bad for her, because she had serious mental problems, which he said reminded him of his sister, and he disliked a good bit that her parents tried to solve these problems by sending her off to Buddhist retreats and turned to greater faith as the answer.
There are some fundamentalist Christians who don’t believe in modern medicine and doctors.
I think both of this type of faith is wrongheaded.
I simply think, as I stated earlier, we are very quick on the trigger in attacking Christians because we know them in both an academic and emotional sense……there is a lot tied up in our feelings about how the Christian faith is practiced in Western society and beyond……..but we are much more quick to give the benefit of the doubt to a Buddhist or Hindu.
(This same Candadian guy used to talk a lot about his travels in India and how wonderful it was that it was “a nation of monks.” That wasn’t how he phrased it, but it captured the same idea — that all around India, you saw truly Hindu people, and that was great. This is the same guy who would always, at least once, each time we went on walks, point to a neon red cross on a large Korean Christian church and say something like, “Isn’t it a little disgusting to see that?!”
And I know for a fact this guy knew nothing about Christianity or Buddhism in Korea. He was in Korea to save up enough money to go on another 3 month tour of the world — this time in Africa — as he had done with just about every region of the earth. He had great photo albumns. But, getting ready for such a trip meant he hardly went out in Korea in an effort to save money. He didn’t get close enough to Korean adults outside of class to get an idea what was going on.)
And I’ll close with what I’ve been repeating. In much of this, I’m playing devil’s advocate. I’m questioning why we react with what I tend to think is over the top criticism/derision of Christians?
The missionaries going to Iraq and Afghanistan are criminal now?
They are right beside suicide bombers?
They are endangering others by going to Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, I guess that is true if we consider the people they might convert might get killed for such conversions. But even here, the blame for such an outcome belongs to the missionaries and the ones who were converted?
I simply wish we’d spread the criticial eye around more —- and that we question ourselves more when we find ourselves taking extreme positions.
I’m not even saying certain things are not worth taking an extreme position on.
But the stronger our feelings, the more I think we need to keep an eye on ourselves….
Here is the thing about these people: I think that we admire their faith and their ability to translate that faith into action they feel is in line with their beliefs. What I think bothers most of us about them is their seeming blindness to the fact that they are taking their live in their own hands, if the fact that they are traveling through a war zone (despite Bush?€™s declaration that the fighting is over) with an active insurgency where Koreans have been targeted before doesn?€™t get them killed, they are traveling with the intent to proselyte to the Muslim population who at best take an extremely dim view of that and at worst will try and kill them based on the perception these missionaries are trying to force their religion on them. Here in Korea, the people we all see at the train and subway stations shouting at the top of their lungs about how Jesus loves us and we should believe in him if we don?€™t want to burn in hell are offensive not because of their faith but because they choose to go out of their way to try as hard as they can to be as obnoxiously loud about proclaiming their faith all the while it is perfectly clear that they are not interested in really educating people or converting people to their faith. They always remind me of a junkyard dog on a chain that insists on straining and barking as loud as it can. This inevitably leads to someone going over to them and telling them to shut the f*!% up which of course just eggs them on to be even noisier and more contentious. By contrast, the Mormons and JWs that are out there proselyting can be persistent but by and large, I have found that they will honor a request to be left alone. The Buddhists are even more low impact. The most significant thing they do is occasionally a monk will go out and try to drum up some funds for the temple by beating on his/her Buddha beater which I think is pretty cool. I think it is the combination of obnoxiousness that we in Korea have all witnessed combined with their apparent disregard for personal safety (read significant probability of bodily harm or death) that earns them the label of crazy nut job that many give them. I think we can all recognize the fact that there are many religious groups that have helped those in need with various services. It is not clear whether or not these missionaries will be strictly engaged in proselyting activities of the type we are used to seeing or of they also plan on offering some sort of legitimate aid. Given the fact that they have to sneak in and out of the country, I think it is safe to assume they are just going to preach and nothing more.
I honestly didn’t run across that much noteworthy street preaching in Korea. I had forgotten about the Buddhist in the street beating the gourd. And I can remember vaguely some of what you are saying about a loud Christian yelling about Jesus, but not much of it stands out. What I can recall on the yelling side was usually walking along the side walk — with either myself and/or that person also walking so I didn’t get annoyed. And I can remember the same thing from the onion sellers to young adult activists near universities. I generally tuned it out, but my Korean wasn’t great either.
The morning yangpa truck really got on my fucking nerves… Who the hell wants to buy onions at 7:00 AM!!
On the subways and trains, any memory of the fundamentalist Christians is mixing with the pan-handlers, children with gum, people selling things on the subway, and a few “guest speakers” promoting their political point of view (subway activists).
I know Korean Christians lean toward the fundamentalist side. I just have the reservations about our (Western educated and raised adults) tendancy to have a knee-jerk negative reaction against demonstrated Christianity — which I’ve explained above.
On the blindly throwing their lives away — I would doubt they are doing so — unless by blind you mean the reason they give for doing so isn’t good enough — that it is a product of blind faith. Because I think they understand the danger, they have just decided it is worth it (which they might change their minds if faced with that death).
Also, I don’t think Iraq is like Afghanistan. I don’t have much knowledge about this topic, but I do remember hearing on the cable news some time back that there is a Christian community and history in Iraqi society — Tariq Aziz (or however you spell the former foriegn minster’s name) was an Iraqi Christian.
Even in Afghanistan, from all I know, it was the Taliban — a minority, often foreigner dominated group — that pushed the Islam fundamentalistic thing to an extreme.
And from the heads that have been chopped off and the non-Muslims killed, it doesn’t seem to me we can say that Christian missionaries are the primary and certainly not the only target.
Yes. I’d say it is likely if one of these girls (or guys) gets killed, their Christian outreach/missionary work had a good bit to do with it. I do remember hearing something on the news about some Iraqis who had converted getting killed, but to me it would seem, given the frequency other foreigners and Iraqis and Afghans are getting killed, the fact of missionary status is more of a handy excuse. And for the Iraqis, the primary motivation to kill them seems to chosing to work as a policeman or in the new military or for the new government rather than for converting to Christianity or talking to them……at least from what we get on the news in the US.
I am not assuming they are the obnoxiously agressive type of missionary. I dont thhink they are completly blind to the dangers they are putting themselves in either. I am saying that those are two factors that tend to get people upset. If I want to hear about religion, I will discuss it with whomsoever I wish. If I am approached by a missionary, that is alright because I can turn them down with no feelings hurt. The beligeret type are offensive in that they single people out of the crowd and tell themto believe or they will fry in hell and any attempt at civilized discussion, reasoning or even polite disagreement is out of the question. The are not quite as bad as the A-holes in the trucks that drive around the apartment complexes with their PA system crancked up selling onions, potatoes and squid but only marginally less annoying.
Kushibo is right, it would not be fair of me to assume they are the same type of people. Whatever else they may be, they obviously believe in their religion.
“I?€™m questioning why we react with what I tend to think is over the top criticism/derision of Christians?”
Yaddah yaddah… let me try this again. You keep implying that Buddhism and Christianity are really just the same thing, and that all these granola girly men hold double standards by heaping scorn on Christianity, while praising Buddhism/Hinduism simply because it’s exotic. This is still just obstinately ignoring the obvious point, Judaism/Christianity/Islam on one hand and Buddhism/Hinduism on the other are not the same. I wonder if in all your little epiphanies wherein you discovered that fundamentalist Christianity is so terribly misunderstood and gets a bad rap, why it has never occurred to you in all the millenia of history here in East Asia that there has never been a war fought for religion. There has never been a jihad, nor any crusade. The obvious reason that this has been the case is that both Christianity and Islam were extremely slow in getting here. One of the few places on this side of Asia where we do have religious war? The Phillipines, between Muslims and Christians.
Why no religious wars? Buddhists have certainly engaged in proselytism, even Hindus succeeded in spreading their religion as far as Borneo in the past. That’s not what makes these religions different from Christianity.
What is different is they are not absolutist. They do not have jealous gods. They do not deride other beliefs as superstition or idolatry. They do not hate unbelievers or dismiss their beliefs a priori. For educated people from civil, pluralist socieities where a certain degree of compromise and disagreement on these matters has recently become tolerated, it’s only natural and rational that they would feel revulsion and disgust for many Christian missionaries. So it makes perfect sense to me that your Canadian friend would be grossed out by the inroads of Christianity into a part of the world that had long been a haven free of religious absolutism, though of course not from all of the other problems of the monotheistic societies.
BTW, you really should go ask your local ulama about the position of Islam on apostasy. All four of the major schools of Islamic law prescribe death as the punishment, and unlike some of the more famous hudud punishments (ie. amputation) this bit of Islamic law is still widely believed as justifiable, if not generally enforceable. The Christian community in Iraq, like all Christians in the middle east, are the descendants of stragglers who never converted to Islam, not people who converted from Islam, as they would have been executed for doing so. Likewise, they would have been executed for attempting to proselytise their “polytheism” among the Muslim faithful. Given such background, I think there is plenty of evidence for describing Christian missionaries who insist on proselytising in war torn Islamic countries as “lunatics” and “brainwashed.” If anything, aggressive proselytism in the middle east is likely to further weaken the status of the dwindling native Christian populations who still live there.
In my personal experience in Korea I was never once spoken to by a Buddhist that wanted to discuss religion. On the other hand, it seemed that most of the time I was randomly approached by English-speaking Koreans I would be asked within minutes whether or not I was a Christian. And it’s little things like this that turn you off from that type of person. Who cares if I am Christian? Why is that an issue?
The only other Koreans that wanted to talk to strangers were the complete nutjobs. Hence the Christians and the nutjobs get lumped together.
usinkorea states that Buddhists also try to convert in Korea. Perhps they do, but I never witnessed it. While the Christians were down in Itaewon everytime I was there singing and trying to save us heathens. Again, just an annoying side effect of the actions of these people. Please leave me alone.
The neon red crosses. They are bizarre, in bad taste, and a blight on the evening landscape. Why do we need glowing red neon crosses to indicate the location of every christian church in Korea? It feels like another desperate attempt by Christians to get out their message and stick their noses in everyone elses lives.
usinkorea and others also said that they would welcome burka-clad “missionaries” knocking on their door — and I’m sure they would. You are all educated intelligent people that look at things critically. But where is most of the “coverting” going on by Christians? In poor devastated areas where peoples lives are in desperate situations and usually disillusioned with there present situation or lot in life.
Look at Korea. The missionaries came in after the Korean war. I remember one of the government men I worked with telling me that when he was a child he lived on a small island in the early 1970s. As he tells the story, the Island had very little to offer in terms of entertainment, or infastructure. The misssionaries came and built a community center of some sort with a playground. Of course the children came to play, and at the same time they were indoctrinated with the beauty of Christianity.
I don’t think that poor children in areas still recovering from war are able to have an informed discussion with these missionaries about the impact of Christianity on the region. No, they were young and poor, and looked upon these bringers of “technology” and fun as great people. Not too surprising that they would begin to follow these new peoples beliefs. The Christians seemed more enlightened and rich, so they must have something going for them.
Be a good Christian. That is great. Help people. Also great. But work on yourslef and help people in a more constructive manner. When your personal choice is to head off to Iraq to save the heathen from their terrible beliefs, your Christianity and thought processes are misguided.
Does anyone really think that what the people of Iraq really need is Koreans trying to teach them about Christianity? If you do something is terribly wrong. And those that head off to do this type of work have something wrong in their minds.
And these individuals are not one step away from suicide bombers. But what I find interesting is that much of the support for the Iraq war seems to come from right-wing Chirstian conservatives. I just find it ironic that these people spout off about the crazed beliefs of these muslim fundamentalists, when their own mindset is just based on a slightly different from of fundamentalism, and that many of the U.S. Christians are just as hard-assed in their views as the muslims are in theirs.
What we need is tolerance, not pathetic attempts at trying to make the whole planet believe in the same things. Stay home missionaries and leave everyone else alone.
I think you score well with the difference between the history of Christianity and Islam in the world vs Buddhism.
I did find it a little weaker here — “So it makes perfect sense to me that your Canadian friend would be grossed out by the inroads of Christianity into a part of the world that had long been a haven free of religious absolutism, though of course not from all of the other problems of the monotheistic societies.”
I don’t consider the point about us having no right to consider these Korean Christians one step away from suicide bombings is useless.
I’ll keep my little epiphanies up my ass because I feel like it, and you can yadda yadda me as you please.
In fact, one of the things the Canadian would also repeat several times in our walks was how he had been in some Meditteranian islant like Malata or something, and he had slightly strayed from the tour group and found a door to a place underground where they kept torture devices of unspeakable nature. It was obvious he was tieing this in with his gross disgust for the very sight of a neon cross in far eastern Korea.
So, my question, do you expect the infiltration of Christianity that you have seen in Korea to lead to religious wars? Is it going to split Korean society into civil bloodshed like it has elsewhere in the past? Is the new element of religious intolerance going to spiral out of control and repeat what history should have taught us to avoid?
I haven’t heard about any Koreans blowing people up in the name of Christ.
So while I recognize a good bit of reason in your point that Buddhsim and Hinduism have not sprouted any religious wars on the scale of the crusades, I think my questions just above are still valid.
I would also make a minor point on the historical side. Korean society, devoid of a monotheistic absolutist religion, did go through periods of ideologicla purges. The start of the Chosun Dynasty was both a political and ideological attack on the powers of the Koryeo Dynasty and especially the state support of Buddhism. Buddhism was attacked both as a “destructive” religion that taught the fundamental fragmentation of the harmony of a healthy society, and it was attacked politically as a corrupt religion that held too much sway over the monarchy and the ruling families. It was attacked as a faith that drained valuable resources that left the nation too weak to defend itself. Part of that attack was on large tax free estates and large amounts of slaves.
The drive to reform the state away from what was described the “evils” of Korean Buddhism led to the over throw of the kingdom in favor of the neo-Confucian centered forces that were pushing for reform.
Besides the purge and blood shed that came with the changing of the dynasty, a little later into Chosun’s history, there were counter-purges that were more about the previous ruling families and especially the monarchy to regain power from the newer neo-confucian elite, but they also involved in part an attempt to return Buddhism from the brink of fading out under the onslaught of the early Chosun reforms. This struggle between neo-Confucianism and Buddhism continued for a long time in Korean society.
I don’t know enough about the early-modern or traditional periods of history in other parts of Asia to tell if there were similar clashes between ideologies involving religion as well.
Japan was continually slaughtering itself based on whatever, and they had some Buddhism and Shintoism as key parts of the society.
I know very little about India, but wasn’t it a fragmented society — with part of that fragmentation being continual struggle between regions and/or tribal groupings?
I’ll have to think about other places.
It is clear you are right that monotheism —- which video games like Civilization seem to think is a necessary step up in advancement —- produced (at least in part and probably in large measure) in Christianity and Islam and early Judaism a mind set that led to things like the Crusades and the Inquisition.
But, what are the excuses or points of criticism for other societies?
I have already made the point that science and reason have been used to justify committing horrors in the world.
I haven’t found a culture yet that hasn’t done some of that.
So, I look at what is going on today.
I don’t see Korean Christians blowing people up in Iraq or rampaging through the streets of Seoul slashing the throats of non-believers.
On the last point, I want to google around the news for how frequently Afghans and Iraqis are or are not getting converted and how many of them that are have been killed for it.
Then I will know more about how to take the comment about needing to go see my local Muslim cleric.
I don’t mean that as a totally snide remark. I really do want to see if there is information about that out there to see what the situation is in the real setting…..
One of my epiphanies that just popped up involves Kareem Abdul Jabar (the NBA great) saying back when the Irainian leader put the hit out on Rushdie that, yes, technically if someone defames Muhammed, it is the duty of any Muslim to kill him, but it didn’t mean he was going out to buy a guy to do it…..
…..I’ve got to go or my wife isn’t going to be more angry at me for not doing what she just said to do……..
Hmm… I’m always a late poster… I doubt anyone will read this, but…
I’ll be a Marxist for a moment and say that most human wars are wars over who controls land/resources/labor–wars are economic. You take the biblical story of how God told the Israelites to wipe out the canaanites, because the cannaanites are evil, but if you look at the end result of that story, the Israelites are living on Canaan with Canaanite “stuff”. Actually sometimes just to make a point, the bible tells the Israelites to burn the vineyards and slaughter the livestock, but their livestock still graze on their land afterwards.
This is true whether we are talking about Maori tribes killing some smaller tribes or yes, even Buddhists killing non-buddhists or even worse, OTHER Buddhists. Shaolin monks weren’t doing Kung Fu because they thought it would be nice to engage in an activity which will earn them dividends in the far future. Pureland buddhists and Zen buddhists were butting heads too.
But what is this about religion? Sometimes there are wars that religions create and even drive. But you can’t say that the Crusades were purely religious. Religion was used as a driving force but a lot was at stake to be lost and won. Why did so many Africans become Muslims? Because a muslim could not make a fellow muslim a slave. This might be politically incorrect to say, but the decision to become a Muslim could be a purely an economic decision.
In our modern 20th century, people in power didn’t use religion to drive warfare but used nationalism/fascism/communism to drive war. And I would go so far as to venture that the these “non-religious” wars of the 20th century killed more humans than all the wars in human history combined prior to the 19th century. So should I say, “let’s get rid of all the -isms in human civilizatin!” That’s kind of silly.
What’s religion? I like to define that term by saying that it’s conviction based on an unsubstantiated/unprovable/untestable/unverifiable claim. I.E. Jesus is your personal savior is one. (until maybe tomorrow when God will cast you into the fiery chasm) But what about.. “All Aryans are One Glorious People? ” Isn’t that really a religious sentiment? Or, killing all the educated masses of Cambodia will lead to an Agrarian Paradise?(i guess this isn’t religious, since it was proved to be false) Voting Democrat/Republican will make US a better country. I think the statement, “Christianity has done the world more harm than good” is a religious statement using my definition, because counter factual speculation about a world without Christianity or a world without religion or a world without human abstract constructs in general, just is silly.
What I want to say is that if someone wants to prance around somewhere and speak in gibberish and insist that green is red and leprechauns live in our bellybuttons, who cares? Ahh! Some of you care because some of us believes that red is green and that leprechauns live in our nostrils.
If these green/red-bellybuttonists insist upon martyrdom, I must insist that that is their divine right, even if that makes people in the West look like wankers. You have every right to say that green/red-bellybuttonists are fools, but that’s probably because you are just a heathen red/green-nostrilist.
Having dropped my wife off where she wanted to go, I wanted to highlight a point again, because I think it’s worth it.
You made some great points about the Christianity in Western history.
But, do we believe we see clear signs in contemporary Korean Christianity that lead us to believe they are likely to repeat the mistakes made in the European Middle Ages? Do we deride Korean Christianist so much because we recognize it is on the path to a repetition of the Spanish Inquisition? Or that a future unified Korea will witness the Southern Christians converting the heathen Northerns at gun point or else? Or that a unified Christian Korea will feel it must wage war on the non-Christian Chinese?
And again, we don’t have to look to look so far back to get at this point.
When we look around at what annoys us about Korean Christianity, do we think Korean Christians are reaching a point to where they are going to go to Saudi Arabia and try to assassinate the royal family with a suicide car bomb? Do we think Korean Christians are going to blow themselves up in Korean Buddhist temples?
I just want us to think about it —- when we point back to the clearly horrible things done in the name of Christ in our Western social history, are we not placing on the backs of Korean Christian our own baggage?
Are we really pushed to the extremes we use in disgust of Korean Christians based on what they have done?
What besides being annoyed listening to them in public and thinking they aren’t tolerant enough do we have to justify the revulsion?
It seems to me what we keep offering up —- is a glimpse at our own cultural past —
and maybe that shoe would fit —- if you could convince me what you see in Korea today is clearly pointing to a repetition of that past.
Otherwise, is seems to me we end up with a great amount of distaste for public annoyance.
Also, what about their throwing their lives away for doing missionary work in a war ravage Muslim nation –
Let’s say we knew a group of Korean nurses who were going as a group on their own — not connected an effort by the Korean government — and not connected in the beginning to any Iraqi or Afghani hospitals — because they were so compelled to go for humanitarian reasons.
Would we think they were criminally insane?
I’d think they had a few screws loose.
But, would we feel the same level of disgust for them we do for the missionaries?
No.
What is behind the greater disgust?
Because the missionaries are dealing with religion and the nurses are dealing with the human body?
Why does that warrant great disgust?
Again, throw history out the window for a moment. We’re talking about the Koreans today and I don’t think a credible argument can be made that they are on the path back to the Middle Ages or even some elements of contemporary Islam.
I guess we can say, as you did in the last paragraph, that the missionaries are more detestable than nurses, because they put more than themselves at risk. They put the people they might convert.
Is that enough to warrant the amount of disgust we put on their shoulders?
What does justify it? Hating the Korean missionaries of today?
Correction — “usinkorea and others also said that they would welcome burka-clad ?€œmissionaries?€? knocking on their door ?€” and I?€™m sure they would. You are all educated intelligent people that look at things critically.”
No. I believe I said the Muslim missionaries would annoy me as much as the Jehovah’s witnesses and other Christian missionaries do….
Nurses would be going to help people, not convert them. And you can say that in the minds of these missionaries, they think that converting people to Christianity is helping them. But it is this mindset that is the problem. Thinking that people who do not believe in what you do need help.
People that are not Christians should be left alone, they do not need this help from crazy Koreans. And of course the missionaries have every right to go and become martyrs, but that doesn’t make it right or justifiable.
“The misssionaries came and built a community center of some sort with a playground. Of course the children came to play, and at the same time they were indoctrinated with the beauty of Christianity.
I don?€™t think that poor children in areas still recovering from war are able to have an informed discussion with these missionaries about the impact of Christianity on the region. No, they were young and poor, and looked upon these bringers of ?€œtechnology?€? and fun as great people.”
I can see this. But to play devil’s advocate, did the beauties of Christianity wear off on them?
Did they wake up to realize how they had been terribly mislead and are ashamed of themselves for having had such weak self-will at the moment of conversion?
Along another line —- are we applying a Star Trek prime directive here?
I don’t mean that to sound snotty. As I said, I can see and feel the dislike for changing people’s minds on something as big as religious faith at a time of personal/emotional weakness and I see it as a very valid point, but does that mean you have to avoid those places that are not socially healthy if you aer a missionary? or individuals who are at a moment of crisis?
Let me put it this way, how often do we think people who are not religious come to find religion through a moment of crisis?
What would we guess are the percentages in those who seek religion out of a period of personal crisis vs those who do so out of a well-reasoned, critical process of self and social evaluation?
(I mean that as a legitimate question, because I have seen where people have convereted to and from Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam through a planned comparison.)
If we limit conversion from one religion to another or from non-faith to faith as mostly done in a moment of crisis, and if a big part of our derision of people like the Korean Christian missionaries is based on reason and critical thinking, how far along the line are we travelling toward a conclusion that all religion is blind and for the emotionally and/or mentally weak? Say, a Ted Turner opinion?
“Be a good Christian. That is great. Help people. Also great. But work on yourslef and help people in a more constructive manner. When your personal choice is to head off to Iraq to save the heathen from their terrible beliefs, your Christianity and thought processes are misguided.”
OK. Right there. “Help people in a more constructive manner.”
The missionaries would say that they are being helpful in the most important manner. They would say if the person they are reaching out to is a good Christian, he/she would not only find eternal peace after death, but that following the faith would also help with emotional and social well being — as long as they weren’t killed by a Muslim fundamentalist who the conversion pissed off to the point of murder…..
Is the retort that they are only achieving conversions because they can “brainwash” the people because they are weak willed and not worldly enough a strong arguement?
I’m not sure. Maybe.
But what it some of those poor weak willed bastards go through the rest of their lives as a Christian and die happily?
What if some years later, when they are back on their feet and in a more comfortable setting, they decide they were duped and toss Christianity aside? Kind of like Larry Flint?
How much harm has been done to either hypothetical person converted? Even Larry Flint might have taken one or two positive things from his limited time of conversion…
“Does anyone really think that what the people of Iraq really need is Koreans trying to teach them about Christianity? If you do something is terribly wrong. And those that head off to do this type of work have something wrong in their minds.”
Here comes one of my yada yada epiphanies….
At I think the 25th anniversary of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in the US, a couple of guys in that hillarious group of Brits said that they agreed the Life of Brian was the best work they had done.
They said that they had sat down to right a Python type skewering of the culture of Christianity or Christianity or whatever, so they startd reading the New Testement, and, as they said themselves, they quickly realized it was hard to lambast “Love they neighbor as thyself.”
So, having been forced to take a slight moment of reconsideration from what they had origninally thought would be an easy rip-roaring job, they looked around and decided what needed the ripping apart was the obvious history of organized Christianity — so they came up with the idea of Brian — someone who would parallel the path of Jesus, but whose adventures would point out how people had a way of fucking up “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
I would think a heavy dose of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” would be a damn good message for the Iraqis and Afghans.
Of course, even I have serious doubts about how well the Korean missionaries are going to stay on message, but I don’t know anything about this specific group. I don’t know if they are going to lead Iraqi Christians to take up guns and force their once fellow Muslims to “covert or die” but I highly doubt it.
It seems to me the arguement we’ve been hearing in this discussion hasn’t been that the blind Christianity we expect the Koreans to teach the Iraqis or Afghanistans is only going to lead them to kill their fellow countrymen. Instead the criticism, at least how I read it, was that their conversion was terrible because it was going to lead their fellow countrymen to kill them….
If that is the case, a heavy dose of hearing “love thy neighbor love they neighbor love thy neighbor” whether it converts them or not, might not be too bad a message to hear.
Of course, if they repeat street preaching from Seoul that the Muslims are going to burn in hell if they don’t convert, I doubt the body count is going to lower at all….
But, again, I don’t know if these Korean Christians that started this good discussion are going over with bandaids and “you’re going to hell” or “love thy neighbor”….
But, my main point is that I don’t agree that anybody who thinks something good might come from the work of these missionaries is a delusional fool.
I think they are nuts because it is so dangerous over there. I would think the same about a group of nurses going over there without an agreement they would be protected by the military.
But, I don’t see how I have enough information to give a good guess at a conclusion that there is no way they will accomplish anything good because they are Christian missionaries.
Let me have another one of my epiphanies….as I was writing that part above, I wanted to slip in a comment about Ghandi, but I somewhat missed the right point to do so.
Ghandi was not a Christian, but he understood the value of “Turn the other cheek” and “love thy neighbor.” He beat the hell out of those two drums in India — when religious sectarian slaughter was gong on at the same time colonial slaughter was too.
And those two messages that he beat again and again and again reached around and extended into the ears of a Christian, Babptist preacher in the southern US — Martin Luther King Jr. And during a very bad period in (Christian) American society — in the Bible belt of all places — where the idea of “love thy neighbor” had been buried for a long time (when it came to minorities) and in the whole of the United States where the theme of “turn the other” cheek looked like it was going to go the way of “burn baby burn” — King’s bringing up of Ghandi and echoing him and beating those same drums constantly, even in the face of bodily harm and death, helped get American society, especially the Bible belt, remember some of those forgotten or unpracticed aspects of Christianity, and the US climded away from a second civil war and the frequent bloodshed that was on our city streets.
So again, I can’t tell whether those Christian missionaries from Korea are going to work good, ill, or indifference in Iraq or Afghanistan. I think they are taking too big a risk, but……not to push this point too far…..if I were Martin Luther King Jr.’s or Ghandi’s father, I’d told them to look after their own family too.
I’m not saying the comparison is valid or that the example of King and Ghandi negatives what might very well be the wrongheaded approach to life those Korean missionaries might have or might not have.
I’m just not sure I can lay on their shoulders all the ills I know religious intolernace has caused in Western social history and in the social history of other places….
On the Iraq War II and the fact that Christian fundamentalists are in support of it meaning they are just in the same league as suicide bombers —
that would be true if you thought the outwardly Christians who support the war are doing so with religion as the primary or a key reason for that support….
If you believed their support for the war was based on some desire to repeat the Crusades — that they believed the war in Iraq was justified in large part as a planting of the Christian flag, by military force, in the Muslim Middle East. To push the point too far on my part —- that Bush is Richard the Lionheart and Hussein really was what he claimed (however sincerely) that he was the modern Saladin.
But I have returned in the last couple of years to the Bible belt in the US, and I don’t hear a whole lot of people justify the war as a war of religion to over through the Muslim faith in Iraq. I don’t hear people really saying it is a Holy War.
I might hear too many people saying they expect WMDs to be dug up at any momement in the sands of Iraq, but I don’t hear a lot of people saying we had to go to war in the name of Christ.
In fact, if they were a lot of that going on around here, we probably wouldn’t see the articles in the press about the need for exit strategies due to the dropping popularity of the struggle over there.
On what Virtual Wanderer said, my earlier swipe at science and reason and things like Darwinism turing into Social Darwinism — which Japanese society ate like hot cakes, along with the toys western industrialism helped them make, to then turn against the Korean and most of Asia, to do what? Accomplish what their pre-modern, non-Darwinianized forefarthers had tried hard to do before all that — namley conquer the rest of Asia —- was meant to swipe at the religion of science.
We have great minds like Stephan Hawkins boldly claiming in a book for mathmatical morans like me that our great scientific, post-modern world was on the threshold of seeing the mysteries of the universe boiled down into one single equation, and many of the other great intellectual minds of the day and a large measure of those dedicated to the religion of science say, “Wow! That’s great!” and my knee-jerk reaction is to say, “Oh for fuck
s sake….”
Why? Because I look back at the history of civilization and realize that every 300 years or so, even the average educated moran like me, or even down to the not so educated moran, looks back at some of the most cherished ideas held by the greatest minds of so long ago held, and he thinks, “How could the people back then have been so fucking stupid?” (To quote Kim Jong Il via Team America).
No no solid scientific reason I can really understand, I personally think a couple of hundred years from now middle schoolers are going to look back at the Big Band Theory and wonder what the fuck we were smoking…..”
I simply cannot contemplate an absolute nothingness. I know science tells me I’m a complete idiot if I don’t believe before the big bang happened, there was not only a nothingness, but not even space (or area). Sorry. My brain just can’t handle it. Complete nothingness. Nothiness void of even time and space. Nope. My head will explode if I try to cram that in. All this mind-boggling huge amount of matter and space simply popped from no where?
I know Lucretius was fossilized before Stephan Hawkins was born or before the Big Bang Theory was discovered as proven by science — but when I ran across his idea that something can’t come from nothing and something can’t become a true nothing, that made a hell of lot more sense to me.
Later, I also read a book called, The Big Bang Never Happened — whose title appealed to me for obvious reasons.
I recommend the book, because if you can get over what is really a cheesy title, it is written by someone who knows enough about math and cosmology to write an interesting book that takes the dominate strain of science today to task. He argues that around the time of Einstein and definately after him, cosmology and too much of science became math oriented — that it went from observing nature and working out the math, it went to working out the math then pushing the observations of nature to fit that. He used a good quote from Einstein that said when he was asked what he would do if they coming observations of the sun, I think it was, revealled that light didn’t bend to the effect of gravity, and he said God had better have made it that way, because the math worked. I don’t remember it correctly. I read the book over a decade ago or so, but that was the general idea.
The second primary goal of the book was to lay out an alternative cosmological theory against the Big Bang that was being developed, apparently, out of research done by some scientists in norther Europe who were working on plasma theory.
I don’t pretend to understand 1/10th of the math even remotely or comprehend the science at all. Hawkins wrote the dumbed down book for general consupmtion, and the author of this other book did too, but if what he writes about this other research holds any water at all, it is worth buying the book if you are curious about such things.
(He also goes into some ideas he has about how the nature of grand “cosmological” theories that tie the whole world into a neat equation were developed from the difference between geographically smaller and more trade oriented socities and larger states were slave owning was more common, but I don’t remember that part much.)
My point is that science is often influenced by certain leaps that are faiths.
It seems to me when you start to really hear about the cutting edges of science or the broader foundations of much of the creative activity that produces breakthroughs or at times that ties together loose ends in theories that guide but don’t exactly define applied science, you run into some forms of faith.
And as I said, you always have room for break throughs — even stunning break throughs — that make what was believed before as absolute gospel look like unbelieable nonsense to even the average man…….
I’ve written a novel today, but I find the discussion interesting, and my wife interrupted me before I had my thought out, but I want to take up the nurses question and the question of “they think that converting people to Christianity is helping them. But it is this mindset that is the problem. Thinking that people who do not believe in what you do need help.”
I don’t think you can lay thought out as a blanket, obvious charge.
We can’t say that all people who are converted are done so by coersion and/or were brainwashed because they were spiritually weak at the time.
Yes. I agree we have to consider seriously the fact that the areas were missionaries make the biggest headway is in nations that are poor and in turmoil. And as I said conversions within a society that is stable often comes after a period of personal crisis.
But, do we really have the place to say that by and large, these conversions are not healthy?
That they have nothing to do with health?
Or that they are even generally deterimental?
I wonder what the recoversion rate is in the third world areas?
Has large scale conversion or significant numbers of converts in certain societies (in the modern/contemporary setting) led to greater misery and social strife?
Have we seen that enough to come to a general conclusion about the general situation?
Do we know enough in the general setting or about these specific Korean missionaries to conclude the deserve to be called lunatics and clearly bad people setting out to do what is ultimately a bad thing?
And what happened to free will?
I agree the emotionally disturbed or unlearned being primary targets for conversion is a good point….
but are they really brainwashed beyond repair?
Is human will really degraded so much in most of these conversions in the Third World or whereever —
that the converted become a lost cause, because
if they don’t come to their senses and revert away from the conversion…
…they simply prove they were too well brainwashed at the beginning to ever help themselves get out of that bad mindset?
The poor converted will either snap out of it in the future or risk being written off as lost causes to the negative forces of Christianity???
I apologize for writing such long post with so many freaking typos and stupid grammatical mistakes.
I got caught up in the thoughts of the discussion at the same time my wife was wanting me to do a few things and talk to me about a few mundane things and then drive her some where, and I type very fast, and having my brain pressed too much while letting my fingers go, I got carried away and screwed up a lot….
I hope at least the large majority of it made some sense…..
Me again….
One of the things I’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years is freedom to my reading wander whereever my fancy wanted to take me. Part of that time has been looking to fill in some black holes in my reading on world history. This discussion made me decide to focus some attention on India. I can’t get to library until later, but I did some googling, and I found this quote interesting in light of our discussion…
Also, I want to slip in only one thought from me — this passage and thoughts about the discussion on monotheism leading to blind faith and intolerance and conflict with non-believers made me think of this —- the Greek and Roman Empires were polytheistic….
http://www.indianchild.com/indian_kingdoms.htm
The victory of good over evil is epitomized in the epic Ramayana (The Travels of Rama, or Ram in the preferred modern form), while another epic, Mahabharata (Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata), spells out the concept of dharma and duty. More than 2,500 years later, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi, the father of modern India, used these concepts in the fight for independence (see Mahatma Gandhi, this ch.). The Mahabharata records the feud between Aryan cousins that culminated in an epic battle in which both gods and mortals from many lands allegedly fought to the death, and the Ramayana recounts the kidnapping of Sita, Rama’s wife, by Ravana, a demonic king of Lanka (Sri Lanka)