Glocalization of " Christian Social Responsibility " : The Contested Legacy of the Lausanne Movement among Neo-Evangelicals in South Korea (original) (raw)
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This paper examines the contested legacy of the First Lausanne Congress in South Korean neo-evangelical communities. In response to growing political and social conflicts in the Global South during the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of evangelical leaders from more than 150 countries gathered at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974 to discuss the proper relationship between evangelism and social action. The meeting culminated with the proclamation of the Lausanne Covenant, which affirmed both evangelism and public involvement as essential elements of the Christian faith. However, the absence of practical guidelines in the Covenant opened the door for all sorts of evangelical social activism, whether from the Evangelical Right or the Evangelical Left, for years to come. In light of such diverse ramifications of the Congress at both the global and local level, this paper explores the various ways in which the idea of " Christian social responsibility " has been interpreted and implemented by two distinct generations of neo-evangelical social activists in contemporary South Korea in relation to their respective socio-historical experiences of the Cold War and the 1980s democratic movement.
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ABSTRACT A HISTORICAL, BIBLICAL EVALUATION OF THE COMITY AGREEMENT AND ITS IMPLICATION FOR SOUTH KOREAN CHURCHES’ COMITY STRATEGY FOR NORTH KOREA South Korean churches are on the verge of interdenominational cooperation for the reestablishment of churches in North Korea. With the anticipation of South Korean churches’ official accessibility to the North, the necessity of unity among South Korean churches has been voiced. Any evangelistic endeavors by South Korean churches directed to the North that includes excessive division, competition, and duplication will likely deter effective evangelization of North Korea. For this reason, South Korean churches are suggesting unity for the sake of the effective evangelism of North Korea. Furthermore, South Korean churches desire to employ convergent negotiations between evangelical and ecumenical churches in the spirit of global convergence among evangelicals, the World Council of Churches (WCC), and the Vatican. In this regard, South Korean churches have a similar context that historical global consultations on comity have experienced. South Korean churches have experienced a confrontational paradigm conflict/convergence between evangelicalism and ecumenism, which developed from historical comity consultations. In the meantime, South Korean churches have questioned the potential effectiveness of developing one church body in North Korea to help eliminate confusion between South Korean churches and the people of North Korea. However, this scheme is being debated. This dissertation demonstrates that South Korean churches would benefit from the historical lessons of comity by not repeating errors that the ecumenical movement brought through its pursuit of visible church unity, while sacrificing the essence of the Gospel. The writer further attempts to reveal the experience of evangelicals and their admission to ecumenical movements, and how preserving the essence of the Gospel has not been possible when attempting to create visible unity with ecumenical institutions. This dissertation argues that the attempts of visible unity among various institutions of Christendom and their compromise of biblical doctrines led to a view of the church and her unity that is antithetical to the biblical model. From this perspective, this dissertation will suggest that interdenominational cooperation among South Korean churches for the purpose of the reestablishment of churches in the North needs to be assisted by understanding the historical/biblical implications of comity. This dissertation will present strategies for maintaining historical/biblical justifications, and it attempts to prove that attaining one church body in North Korea is a strategy with no historical/biblical support. The only feasible strategy is the implementation of a method of cooperation, both historically and biblically supported, for the reestablishment of North Korean churches by adopting a comity agreement for a limited timeframe with geographic specificity, but without theological compromise or denominational unification. Incheol Mun, Ph.D. Roy Fish School of Evangelism and Missions Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014 Supervisor: John Michael Morris, Ph.D.