Religious Experience in Trauma: Koreans' Collective Complex of Inferiority and the Korean Protestant Church

by KwangYu Lee

Overview

This book offers a psychohistorical analysis of the rapid growth of the Korean Protestant Church. KwangYu Lee looks at some of the traumatic historical events of Korea in the 20th century, including the fall of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), the Japanese Occupation (1910-1945), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Korean Military Dictatorship (1961-1987), and explores the psychological impacts of these events on the collective unconsciousness of Koreans. He argues that Koreans’ collective (or cultural) complex of inferiority, which was caused and gradually exacerbated by these traumatic events, along with their psychological relationships with their two colonizers—the Japanese and Americans—prompted them to convert to Korean Protestantism en masse as a means to avoid their psychological pains and to fulfil their futile desire to become like Americans, their overtly idealized psychological-object.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030535834
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	09/03/2020
Series:	Asian Christianity in the Diaspora
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	488 KB

About the Author

KwangYu Lee is an ordained minister of the Korean Methodist Church. Currently he works for Korean Community Church of New Jersey and is a guest lecturer for the Pastoral Care and Counseling Program in Korean of Blanton-Peale Institute&Counseling Center.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Korean Protestant Church at Present and the Necessity of a Psychohistorical Approach to Its History.- 2. : A Historical Sketch of the Growth of the Korean Protestant Church in the Twentieth Century.- 3. : A Jungian Psychohistorical Theory: An Interpretive Tool.- 4. The Traumatic Twentieth Century of Korea: Japanese Imperialism, the Korean War and the Korean Military Governments.- 5. The Growth of the Korean Protestant Church from a Jungian Psychohistorical Perspective: Trauma, Cultural Complex, the Theology of Prosperity/Bliss and the Governmental Support.- 6. Conclusion: The Korean Protestant Church with the Cultural Complex of Inferiority.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Dr. Kwang Yu Lee deeply engages in intersectionality among Korean history and religion, psychology and theology. His work, out of his desire for healing of Korean people from their past traumas, is the first to apply Jungian psychology to Korean people’s trauma and religious experiences and offers an alternative reason behind the growth of Protestant church in South Korea." (Angella Son, Professor of Psychology and Religion, The Theological School, Drew University, USA)

“The remarkable thing about this book is that it unfolds the tragic side of Korean history as it is magnified in the emergence and decline of the Korean Protestant Church. Using a fresh Jungian approach to psychohistory, the author focuses on the cultural unconscious that stands between the personal and collective unconscious. Trauma emerges as the key cultural complex to explain Korean religious life and the story is brilliantly told. (Robert S. Corrington – Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Philosophical Theology, Emeritus, Drew University, USA)

“This timely volume interweaves several theories of psychology with the historical development and recent decline of 20th century Protestantism in South Korea. Dr. Lee offers a thought-provoking and critical contribution that also charts the interplay between religious experience and trauma and the impact of both on Korean Christians. The book envisions both psychological healing and a new contextual theology for the future of Christianity in Korea." (Christopher J. Anderson, Special Collections Librarian and Curator of the Day Missions Collection, Yale Divinity Library, USA)