This special issue presents discussions of the role and meaning of religion for Korean society. Covering wide-ranging time periods, the authors explores with their own cases four major characteristics of Korean religion: Creativity, Greater Responsiveness, Adaptability, and Prophethood. Their topical religious traditions include Neo-Confucianism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Korean new religious movements.

This pioneering book presents thirteen articles on the fascinating topic of emotions (jeong 情) in Korean philosophy and religion. Its introductory chapter comprehensively provides a textual, philosophical, ethical, and religious background on this topic in terms of emotions West and East, emotions in the Chinese and Buddhist traditions, and Korean perspectives. Chapters 2 to 5 of part I discuss key Korean Confucian thinkers, debates, and ideas. Chapters 6 to 8 of part II offer comparative thoughts from Confucian moral, political, and social angles. Chapters 9 to 12 of part III deal with contemporary Buddhist and eco-feminist perspectives. The concluding chapter discusses ground-breaking insights into the diversity, dynamics, and distinctiveness of Korean emotions. This is an open access book.

The cultural landscape plays a momentous role in the transmission of Christianity. Consequently, the global expansion of the church has led to the increasing diversification of world Christianity. As a result, scholars are turning more and more to native cultures as the point of focus. This study examines how this new discourse evolved as well as presenting a missional methodology based on the study of the native landscapes of Korea. Kale Yu argues that the process of formulating and communicating Christianity was less consistent than is usually supposed. By immersing the reader in the thought and lived experience of various Korean contexts, Professor Yu recreates the diversity of cultural landscapes experienced by Korean Christians of different periods in history. The result is a new interpretation of cross-cultural missional interactions.

By making Korea a central part of comparative history of East Asian religion and society, this book traces the evolution of Korean religion from the oldest representation to that of the current day by utilizing wide-ranging interdisciplinary and comparative resources. This book presents a holistic view of the enduring religious tradition of Korea and its cultural and social significance within the wider horizons of modern and globalizing changes. Reflecting nearly five decades of the author’s work on the subject, it presents an understanding of the main current in Korean religion and social thought throughout history. It then goes on to examine discourses on values and morality involving the relationship between religion and society, in particular the human meaning of economy and society, which is one of the most central and practical problems in the contemporary world with global relevance beyond Korea and Asia. Addressing the overview of the Korean religious tradition in the context of its impact on the making of modern society and economy, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Religious Studies, Korean Studies and Asian Studies.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems- both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

Park investigates the unexpected success of early Korean creationists, who were mostly scientists, and argues that creationism is not a product of the lack of intelligence or proper scientific education but a consequence of more profound social developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Known as the religious belief rejecting evolutionary theory, creationism has become a global issue. Although it was often known as a problem unique among fundamentalist Protestants in the United States, it has been appropriated by people with diverse religions around the world, including Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. Many scientists and educators perceive this dissemination as a threat to modern pedagogy and scholarship, although few of them are aware of its historical and cultural contexts. Through an intensive study of the birth and growth of the anti-evolutionary movement in South Korea during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this book traces an important part of this worldwide movement against evolution. The author argues that South Korean creationism started from the country's past as a developmental state during the Cold War but proliferated further amid subsequent democratization and globalization. Creationism reflected the new identifications of some Korean scientists and engineers with evangelical faith, who actively formed their own domain outside of the state hegemony and authority. This book is a valuable reference for scholars interested in the dynamic interaction between science and religion in East Asia.

The problem of the barbarous excess of human suffering is becoming the main question of global Christianity. In an intercultural, globalizing world, how do we envision the wounds of sin and God's saving work of healing, liberation, and redemption? Salvation for the Sinned-Against attempts to address these questions and to suggest a renewed understanding of God's salvation for the victims of sin within the intercultural and globalizing context of the twenty-first century. It offers a thorough treatment of Edward Schillebeeckx, intercultural hermeneutics, and the Korean concept of han, and brings them into dialogue with the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes. This book is the first in-depth study of han from a Roman Catholic perspective and the first to attempt to integrate han into Roman Catholic theology in order to begin to envision salvation for the sinned-against creature. Its insights into the experience and message of salvation for the sinned-against (as well as the perpetrators) speak not only to the ecclesial sphere but to the public sphere and beyond. Although written from a Western, North American social location, this is a book that can be useful far beyond this context.

Religious culture is an important keyword for understanding rapidly changing East Asian society, especially China, Japan, and Korea. Despite the common influence of Confucian culture on these countries, each has shown a very different pattern of social progress in modern and postmodern times. Although surveys report a low ratio of religious identification and membership in this region, people in this area are religious in a different way from Western societies, and religious culture is closely related to political, economic, and social subsystems. A real force of changing East Asian society is not only political powers or economic classes, but also an invisible culture based on religious belief and practice. This book focuses on the dynamic relationship between social progress and religious culture, organization, or movements in each society since 1945.

Kwon explores how Korea's two major religious groups, Buddhists and Protestants, have emigrated and how their religious beliefs affect their adjustments after immigration. Kwon bases his study on a survey of 114 Korean congregations, participatory observation of a Buddhist temple and a Protestant church, and in-depth interviews with 109 devout immigrants. He finds that non-religious variables-urban background, educational level, and social class-have a greater effect on adjustment to the host society than religion does. Religious congregations promote members' social capital for adjustment, but at the same religious participation serves as a barrier to assimilation.