BALANCING COMMUNITIES: Nation, State, and Protestant Christianity in Korea, 1884–1942 | By Paul S. Cha

One way to examine the history of Christianity in Korea is through the conceptual framework of glocalization, that is, the dialectics between the global and the local. This approach addresses how Christianity was acculturated to fit the local context, and in turn, how Korean Christianity was incorporated into the global Christian community. In Balancing Communities, Paul S. Cha draws attention from the local side of this two-way interaction to the global one by focusing on the actions and discourses of Western missionaries in relation to Korean Protestants and the local state authorities—at first, Chosŏn and subsequently the Japanese governor-general of Korea. The deliberate shift in focus is based on a critical assessment of the field’s prevailing scholarship, which Cha claims portrays native Koreas as the main protagonists in Korean Protestantism while marginalizing foreign missionaries. Such a skewed approach, according to Cha, falls short in capturing how Korean Christians became part of the broader Christian world. By placing more emphasis on the global side of the story, Cha seeks to restore a balanced perspective in the historiography of Korean Christianity.

In this context, Balancing Communities can be read as an effort to revive and update what some scholars have termed “missionary historiography”—an approach that sees the history of the Protestant churches in Korea through the lens of Christian missions worldwide. This missionary-centered approach faced challenges from the 1970s onward as a generation of historians began to formulate alternative perspectives. For example, “nationalist historiography” put emphasis on the agency of Korean natives, and “minjung historiography” tried to connect Christianity with the political project of liberating the oppressed. Nowadays, the dominance of a single historical paradigm has come to an end, and the field has grown increasingly diverse. However, the zeitgeist that prompted the move beyond missionary-centered narratives continues to have a significant influence on the historiography of Korean Christianity. Therefore, scholars who are still under the influence of nationalist or minjung perspectives may take a critical stance against Balancing Communities and regard it as a rehashing of outdated “missionary historiography.” Meanwhile, it might receive a more favourable response from those who have become weary of the nationalist undertone of the field or have adopted a more cosmopolitan perspective. 

To take a closer look into its content and structure, Balancing Communities offers a politico-religious history of Korean Christianity, focusing especially on some of its Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterian and Methodist churches, within the timeframe from the arrival of the first group of American missionaries on the Korean Peninsula in 1884 to the Japanese colonial government’s expulsion of them in the wake of the Asia-Pacific War in 1942. The book is largely organized in chronological order, starting with the missionaries’ first successful foothold in medical missions at the end of the nineteenth century (chapter 1). It then proceeds to document their expansion into new regions against the historical backdrop of Chosŏn’s entry into relations with the United States and other Western nations at the turn of the twentieth century (chapters 2, 3, and 4), focusing on how the American missionaries forged ideally equal and yet realistically hierarchical partnerships with native Koreans. Chapters 5 to 7 address the problem of church-state relations, as the missionaries sought to maintain their religious authority over Korean Christians while dealing with the growing pressure from the Japanese colonial powers in regards to Koreans’ mandatory participation in the Shinto shrine rituals. For students of the history of Korean Protestantism, much of these narratives may sound familiar. Nevertheless, the book offers a wealth of new information, especially in parts where Cha enriches his arguments with primary sources obtained through archival research in the US and Europe.

Yet, considering that Cha’s main goal is to restore a balance between “the Korean nation” and “Christian universalism” in writing a history of Korean Christianity (6), readers might be left with the impression that American Protestantism is unduly identified with “Christian universalism.” To be fair, Cha allows some space for the early history of Catholicism in Korea, which served as a reference for American missionaries’ interaction with the Chosŏn government as well as their expansion (chapters 1 and 2). He also reports on a case of interaction between Protestant and Catholic communities in Hwanghae Province (chapter 4). Nevertheless, Catholicism is only featured in the background throughout the book. Cha is perhaps aware of this limitation, as the subtitle of the book qualifies “Christianity” with the adjective “Protestant.”

That being said, the book would have been still enriched by a more comprehensive exploration of the roles played by foreign missionaries from other Western nations, such as Australia and Canada. Their influence on some Presbyterian Christians in Korea represents a significant aspect of the history, particularly concerning the controversies on the Shinto shrine ceremony and socio-political engagement. Additionally, an expanded discussion on Christian communities in China and Japan could further enhance the book’s scope and depth. Considering that a fair number of Korean Christians migrated to China or Japan for education or political freedom in the time frame discussed in the book, it would have been informative to learn more about how the Christian communities in East Asia interacted with one another. Taking a broader perspective that includes missionaries from non-American Western countries as well as Christian communities in other East Asian nations, we might have a better understanding about how Koreans became “members of a Christian community … which transcends national boundaries” (3). In its current form, Balancing Communities is less about the relationship between the Korean nation and the universal Christian community and more about the relationship between American Protestant missionaries and the Presbyterian and the Methodist churches in Korea.

Myung-Sahm Suh

Sogang University, Seoul