Christianity in Korea as A Haven for Survival

You know there is a natural order of things when the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I am not even aware that a natural order of voluntary actions does exist as I get up from your bed, get dressed and get started for work. Floods in summer and snowstorms in winter are also swings of meteorological order.


Take the wheel of four seasons. I know well and the other folks do know that there could not have been any psychological factor involved on the part of those who happen to be their beneficiaries. Spring cannot come early only because frogs want it badly to come, can it?


Religions and ideologies come and go just like winds and rains. But they are different in that the two former items are optional whereas the two latter elements are not. Granted, you should concede shrewd realistic calculations play a great role in the embrace of specific religions and ideologies.


Some academicians pretend knowledge saying that the Korean people are devout. Extraordinarily devout. See arrays of Christian churches and cathedrals across the country, they say. See eager believers stopping you on your hurried way to the subway station to hand out leaflets of religious promotion.


Devout? In the land of liars, thieves, muggers and murderers? No, nothing like that. It has been a sheer move for survival. Confucianism preceded Buddhism which preceded Christianity, which only attests to the forces that have influenced the lives of the grassroots who accept the beliefs just like vacuum cleaners suck up dust and dirt.


Survival required more or less guile and mean streaks. Christian churches were taken advantage of such places as needy folks ran into American missionaries who had given the famished visitors bread and milk during and after the Korean War, and taught English and something else and taken orphans to the United States for adoption.


Even in the era of Korea-led ship building and Samsung-made electronic gadgets and others which have led to the exports exceeding 300 billion dollars, Christianity in Korea plays a pivotal role as a haven for popular survival. There exists a social atmosphere in which fresh employees search ecclesiastical denominations to which their corporate upper crusts belong and reconnoiter churches to which their general managers and CEOs frequent.


You should take note of a sophisticate social climate in which Korean Christian churches function as havens. Havens for tax and draft evasions. Almost all the major Christian clerics and influential lay believers as well tend to have "two-house families," the one in Korea and the other in the United States and others. Their allegiance is technically torn between Korea and the U.S., one or two or more members of their families holding the U.S. citizenships.


They are binational or international straddlers. They straddle across the Pacific Ocean, with the one foot in this land and the other in New York, Washington, L.A. or a certain county of the United States. They always appreciate all this convenience and comfort for Christian God and the United States of America that have made all this possible.