The Role of Religious Culture for Social Progress in East Asian Society

By Pickwick Publications

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Mar 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666721096

Book preview

Introduction

Kwangsuk Yoo

Religious culture is one of the most important keywords for a better understanding of rapidly changing East Asian society, especially China, Japan, and Korea. In spite of a strong influence of Confucian culture on all three countries, each society has shown a very different pattern of social progress in modern and postmodern times. This book tracks dynamic relationships between social progress and religious culture, organization, or movements in each society since 1945. Most social surveys have reported that East Asian people show a quite low level of religious identification and membership, even though many scholars specialized in East Asian society argue that they are very religious in a different way from Christian society, finding how religious culture is closely related to political, economic, and social subsystems in this region. In this context all contributors to this book try to explain that a real force for changing East Asian society is not only political power or economic class, but also an intangible religiosity based on religious belief and practice.

Chan’s chapter examines the role of Christian activism in facilitating political participation in the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (Umbrella Movement) from March 2013 to September 2014. Based on the integrated model of social movements formulated by Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald, Chan argues that the political opportunity for constitutional reform, the framing of civil disobedience for the movement, and the social mobilization efforts made by the organizational committees of the Umbrella Movement, together with a number of formal and informal Christian organizations and action groups, can partially account for the unexpected emergence of the nonviolence movement and its resistance against the Hong Kong government. The case of the Umbrella Movement in 2014 shows that Christian culture was and still is a valuable resource in promoting social progress and civil movement in East Asian society, providing scholars of religion with a new perspective for understanding the positive relationship between religion and civil freedom in the East Asian context.

Liyong Dai’s chapter predicts that a modern and transformed Confucian Providential Humanism with its particular transcendent idea can function as civil religion in China in the face of heavy regulation and persecution of sectarian movements from above in Chinese society. He tries to show that Chinese culture is returning to its own track of religious pluralism, especially against the backdrop of accelerating process of globalization and the increasing juxtaposition of different religious traditions. In his expectation, Chinese culture will recover its pluralized and asymmetrical equilibrium in a post-Cultural Revolution age and restitute its characteristic middle way. The question of how and to what extent Confucianism as the leading part of Chinese culture will recover and transform seems to determine the future of Chinese religious pluralism. As Dai emphasizes in this chapter, it seems that Chinese society shall become neither radically secularized nor drastically religious in the near future. Nonetheless, it is also noteworthy that Confucianism can play an important role in changing Chinese society both secularly and religiously.

The third chapter, on the Urban Industrial Mission (UIM) in Korea, traces the inseparable social and political relationship between UIM and the labor union movement in Korea since the 1960s. Given that scholars of religion have not paid much attention to the study of UIM in Korea, it makes a meaningful contribution to a better understanding of how and why UIM became so successful in making a qualitative advance in Korean politics and capitalism. Focusing on the Yeongdeungpo district in Seoul, it examines how Presbyterian activists of the Yeongdeungpo UIM (YDP-UIM) helped to establish labor unions, educate their leaders, and support these leaders legally and financially, even though their activities were very often interrupted by both military regimes and conservative Presbyterians until the 1980s. This tradition of social engagement by Christian activists beyond denominations is evaluated to play a significant role in leading to a qualitative change in Korean civil society from material growth and prosperity to human rights and democracy.

Brian Byrd’s chapter deals with the role of religious organizations in overcoming a natural disaster in Japan. Less than one percent of Japanese people identify as Christian. Yet huge walls have long existed between the many denominations represented in Japan. The chapter traces how Great East Japan Earthquake International Theological Symposiums supported by Fuller Theological Seminary helped scholars, clergy, and lay people from the evangelical, mainline, and Catholic traditions go beyond the walls that divided them and come together for ecumenical partnership and cooperation in their common mission to serve disaster victims, rebuild communities, and revitalize churches.

Daniel Ahn shows how the term Hananim in Korean Bible translation played a significant role in the growth of early Korean churches. Ahn examines the role here of John Ross, a Protestant missionary known for translating the Bible in Korea for the first time. Ahn’s chapter focuses on how and why John Ross adopted the term Hananim for translating the concept of God in Christianity. The unexpected success of Christian missionary work in Korea was and is still explained from various perspectives, even though all of them do not consider empirical or historical evidence thoroughly and critically. In this sense, Ahn’s study makes a meaningful effort to make clear the theological, cultural, and social context of missionary work surrounding the translation of God into Hananim in Korean.

Jinna Jin’s chapter shows clearly and precisely a close interaction between the Korean Christian diaspora and Korean diaspora or Korea in the American context. Unlike many studies of Korean immigrants in the United States and Canada, her chapter pays much more attention to the transnational dimension of Korean Christian diaspora across Korea, America, and Asia surrounding the issues of Korean democratization and reunification, child trafficking in Thailand, and Korean immigrants’ adaptation to American culture. As information and communication technology develops rapidly, each society is forced to understand those who immigrate or emigrate in terms of the mutual interaction between religion and ethnic diaspora as well as between the country that receives immigrants and their country of origin. In this light, this study can be cited as a good example for scholars who are interested in understanding the religious identity of ethnic diaspora in a global context.

The late Sung-Gun Kim is looking for a new public role for Korean evangelical Protestantism influenced by distinctive American Protestantism, reflecting the fact that Korean church leaders pay more attention to the private happiness of church members than encouraging them to engage in the public sphere of civil society. It is obvious that the phenomenon of privatization in Korean Christianity becomes even more remarkable as the individualistic trend overwhelms almost all aspects of Korean society. In this sense Kim’s chapter gives readers significant insight as to why Korean evangelical Protestants tend to identify themselves as conservative politically and economically, as well as religiously. The increase in economic and political polarization, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, should bring Christians to engage in various civil movements and produce public discourses on social inequality beyond so-called privatism, as Kim argues.

Evan Liu deals with the very sensitive but unknown issue of underground Christian seminaries in mainland China. Based on his field surveys and personal experiences, his chapter aims to show the potential impact of the underground seminarian education on the growth of Christianity in China. Given that the educational system of China has imposed an atheistic scientism under the communist ideology on its entire population during the last seventy years, the growth of Christian population in both house churches and three-self churches is regarded as a surprising social phenomenon by scholars of religion. In this context, this chapter provides a general introduction and description of the practical challenges Chinese Christians face in contemporary China.

These eight chapters were selected neither to confirm nor deny particular sociological or theological theories. They are, however, serious intellectual efforts to show how religions or religiosity interacted and still interact with other social actors under different the sociohistorical conditions of mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. Amid the rapidly increasing religious diversity in East Asia, the study of religions in East Asia becomes more important and necessary for more reasons than in the past. We hope this book can provide resources for those looking for practical evidence and new perspectives on the relationship between religion and society in East Asia.

1

The Role of Christian Activism in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement

Shun-hing Chan

Introduction

At 10 p.m. on September 26, 2014, the five-day class boycott campaign came to an end, and a crowd was holding an assembly outside the Central Government Office at Admiralty. The class boycott was a protest against the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) exerting restrictions on the nomination system for the selection of chief executive in 2017. Two student organizations, the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism, suddenly called for the crowd to occupy Civic Square, where there was a roundabout outside the Central Government Office. Hundreds of students climbed over fences, tore down barriers, and occupied Civic Square. The police arrested the students and took them to the Hong Kong Police College at Wong Chuk Hang. The next day, in the morning, riot police were deployed to the Legislative Council Complex and were ready to take further action. The three initiators of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) Movement went to the site in support of the students at 10 a.m. The police cleared Civic Square and arrested the remaining students in the afternoon at half past one. A total of seventy-four students were taken to the Hong Kong Police College. At 8 p.m., the two student unions organized another assembly at Tim Mei Avenue at Admiralty, demanding that the police release all of the arrested students. Many citizens flooded into Admiralty and surrounded the police from outside. On September 28 at 1:40 a.m., Benny Tai declared the launch of OCLP, taking over the Central Government Complex to begin the Occupy campaign.

The Umbrella Movement was one of the largest collective actions in the history of Hong Kong. Hong Kong people used the Occupy Movement to exert pressure on the Chinese and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Governments, demanding the implementation of direct elections in Hong Kong.¹ As stated in the Hong Kong Basic Law, Hong Kong people had the right to universal suffrage, but the Chinese Government increasingly exercised its control over Hong Kong after 1997. The Umbrella Movement was a campaign that attempted to claim the rights of universal suffrage.² Those who participated in the campaign requested that the Chinese Government abide by its promise to Hong Kong people and allow them to select their own chief executive in 2017 and elect the legislative council in 2020. According to the findings of the Public Opinion and Political Development Studies conducted by the Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, more than 20 percent of the population (1.2 million people) participated in action at the occupied areas.³

While Christians were one of the many social factions that participated in the campaign, they were a unique group in the Umbrella Movement.⁴ Two out of the three OCLP initiators were Protestants, and more than 50 percent of the members in the OCLP’s organizing committees were Christians.⁵ The Catholic Church and the Protestant community provided material resources for a variety of activities organized by OCLP. This paper examines the relationship between Christian activism and the emergence of the OCLP / Umbrella Movement from the perspective of social movement theories. The research question of this paper is: How did Christian activists frame the Umbrella Movement and provide support for mobilization efforts, thus facilitating political participation in the movement? In this paper, Christian activism refers to those Christian actions that strive for constitutional reform via the OCLP / Umbrella Movement. Two levels of Christian actions were identified: (1) the Christians who worked inside the OCLP’s organizing committees, particularly those who offered their ideas and strategies and organized social mobilization; and (2) the Christians who provided support to OCLP from outside. Many Christians engaged in OCLP as individuals, groups, and organizations. They also helped facilitate their fellow Christians to participate in the campaign, which greatly strengthened the movement.

This paper investigated OCLP during the period from March 27, 2013, to September 27, 2014, focusing on how the Christian initiators framed the movement, as well as how Christian activists facilitated the Christian community in supporting the movement. Three related terms regarding the OCLP / Umbrella Movement—Occupy Movement, Occupy Central Movement, and Umbrella Movement—need to be explained. The Occupy Movement is a general term that can refer to both the Occupy Central Movement and the Umbrella Movement during the period of March 27, 2013, to December 15, 2014. The Occupy Central Movement refers to the Occupy Central with Love and Peace Movement, which advocated occupying the business and financial area Central in Hong Kong. However, protesters occupied three other regions after September 28, 2014, including Admiralty, Mong Kok, and Causeway Bay, due to a series of confrontations between the protesters and the police at Admiralty. The Umbrella Movement was the name given to the Occupy Movement by international correspondents who captured the moment when protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves from the pepper spray used by the police. The collective action during the period of September 28 to December 15, 2014, can be called the Umbrella Movement. Many protesters who occupied the three different zones denied the leadership of the two student unions and the three OCLP initiators. Benny Tai once lamented that OCLP had been replaced by the Umbrella Movement because the two movements were different in concept.⁶ In terms of the movement’s development, the Umbrella Movement can be regarded as an extension of OCLP, with changes in form and content.

The data for this paper were collected from field research, newspapers, articles on the Internet, and in-depth interviews. The author conducted field research in the occupied zones at Admiralty and Mong Kok during the period of the Occupy Movement. Newspaper reports, particularly articles published by Christian Times Weekly in both print and online versions, were important sources of reference. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven informants, including three members in two OCLP organizing committees. The OCLP / Umbrella Movement provides a significant case through which to observe and study the relationship between Christian culture and social progress in Hong Kong. The movement began with a few Protestants who wanted to make changes in the political system by introducing Martin Luther King Jr.’s model of civil disobedience to Hong Kong, and it evolved into a socially transforming movement that strove for democracy in the city. The case of the OCLP / Umbrella Movement shows that Christian culture is a valuable resource in promoting social progress in East Asian society.

Theoretical Framework: An Integrated Model of Social Movement

This paper uses an integrated model of social movements to examine the OCLP / Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Formulated by Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald, the integrated model consists of three related variables—political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes—that account for the emergence and development of social movements.⁷ Political opportunities refer to the structure of political opportunities and constraints confronting a movement, with a focus on the basis of changes in institutional structures or the informal power relations of a given national political system. Mobilizing structures refer to the collective vehicles, formal as well as informal, through which people mobilize and engage in collective action, with a focus on meso-level groups, organizations, and informal networks. Researchers who have emphasized the formal organizational manifestations of mobilization processes hold that social movement organizations (SMOs) are a force for social change. Other researchers have suggested the critical role of grassroots settings in facilitating and structuring collective action, particularly informal groups in work places and neighborhoods. Framing processes refer to the conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action. Framing processes emphasize the shared meanings and definitions that people bring to their situation.⁸ McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald stressed that the effects of these three variables are interactive rather than independent. Most political movements are set in motion by social changes that render the established political order more vulnerable or receptive to challenge. However, in the absence of sufficient organization, such opportunities are not likely to be seized. Mediating between the structural requirement of opportunities and organization are the emergent meanings and definitions—or frames—shared by the adherents of the burgeoning movement.⁹

The three researchers further highlighted two critical interactive relationships among the three variables. The first is the relationship between framing processes and the kinds of objective political changes that are thought to facilitate a movement’s emergence. Such changes encourage mobilization not only through the objective effects they have on power relations, but also by setting in motion framing processes that further undermine the legitimacy of the system or its perceived mutability. The second is the relationship between organization and framing processes. Framing processes encourage mobilization, as people seek to organize and act on their growing awareness of the system’s illegitimacy and vulnerability. At the same time, the potential for the kind of system for critical framing processes is conditioned by the population’s access to various mobilizing structures.¹⁰ This integrated model of social movements is useful in understanding the role of Christian activism in facilitating the emergence of the Umbrella Movement, of which the three concepts can be operationalized in the context of the OCLP / Umbrella Movement. For political opportunities, the NPCSC stated that Hong Kong people could select their chief executive and elect the legislative council in 2017 and 2020, respectively, and the HKSAR Government commenced a five-month consultation on the dual elections in December 2013. Many Hong Kong people considered that this was an objective political opportunity, and they should grasp this opportunity to select their own chief executive. This sociopolitical environment gave rise to the OCLP / Umbrella Movement.

For mobilizing structures, OCLP was supported by a number of formal and informal Christian organizations and action groups. The organizing committees of Deliberation Days and Occupy Central were the OCLP’s movement organization. In addition, the Hong Kong Christian Institute, the Protestants in Support of Constitutional Reform, and the Confession of Christians Watching over Hong Kong were examples of formal and informal organizations and action groups that supported the movement. For framing processes, the frame of OCLP was the idea of civil disobedience expressed in its Manifesto. This frame was adopted from Martin Luther King Jr.’s model of civil disobedience. The frame of OCLP included both secular and religious messages. The secular message stressed a protest against the unjust system with the principle of nonviolence. The religious message embraced the spirit of sacrifice embedded in the Christian faith. Thus, the frame of civil disobedience provided shared meanings to Hong Kong people in general and the Christian community in particular.

Background: Constitutional Reform in Hong Kong

OCLP in 2014 was an episode of continuous social movements striving for democratization in Hong Kong. In 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration announced that Hong Kong would revert to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, rather than extend its lease as a colony of the United Kingdom. The Hong Kong Basic Law adopted in 1990 stated that Hong Kong could select its chief executive and elect the legislative council by universal suffrage according to Article 45 and Article 68, respectively. In 2007, the NPCSC endorsed Hong Kong’s selection of its chief executive and the legislative council by universal suffrage after 2017. However, the Chinese Government has continued to deny Hong Kong people the right of universal suffrage. On August 31, 2014, the NPCSC announced its decision to select the chief executive by universal suffrage in 2017, with the following restrictions: (1) only one nominating committee could nominate candidates for chief executive, and the number of members, composition, and formation method of the committee should be the same as the previous one; (2) each candidate must have the endorsement of more than half of all the members of the nominating committee; and (3) the nominating committee should nominate two to three candidates for the office of chief executive. Hong Kong people called this decision shutting the three doors, referring to the stringent regulations made by the government to control elections, rather than election by universal suffrage in accordance with the principles of universality and equality. Hong Kong people were disappointed with the NPCSC’s decision. Consequently, many joined the Occupy Movement to protest against the Chinese Government’s endorsement of controlled elections.

OCLP was officially