earticle

영어

A religious pluralism is not a strange phenomenon in Korea because the Korean society consists of various living religions. Christianity is just one of those religions. Although Korean Christianity’s history, Catholic and Protestant, is not long, it has occupied a quarter of the whole population in south Korea. So, Christianity, a foreign Western religion, now exists as one of the main religions in Korea. Although Christianity is now a Korean people’s religion, it is also true that the Christianity introduced from Western countries is still not indigenized or inculturized into Korean culture in a true sense. That is, Christianity in Korea does not fully understand Korea’s pluralistic religious culture, so it still regards it as heretical. In this context, achieving a true encounter between Christian faith and Korean religious cultures is an important task for Christianity in Korea. It is extremely significant for Korean Christians to study comparatively other religions as living partners for Christian faith in order to make Christianity spiritually rich and fruitful in the Korean context. Although the main streams of Christianity are conservative and still opposed to other traditional religions, it is evident that Christianity in Korea has been influenced by other traditional religious cultures in whatever. In particular, the Confucian influence on Christianity in Korea was so strong because the state religion of the Choson dynasty, which lasted until the Japanese occupation in the modern times of Korea, was Confucianism. Even though many people don’t confess Confucianism as their religion, it is undeniable that Confucianism is functioning as a core and basis of Korean lives and cultures. The purpose of this paper is to explore spiritual formation for Korean Christians by doing a comparative study of Christianity and Confucianism in Korea. In this paper, I have dealt with the important issue, “Confucian-Christian dialogue” in the Korean context, focusing on the theme of spirituality. I first tried to define the term ‘spirituality’ from a comparative perspective. Second, with reference to the experience of interfaith encounters in Korea, I have searched for some models of Christian spirituality and spiritual formation which are desirable in the context of Korea. As conclusion, I have discussed about several tasks for the encounter between Christianity and Confucianism, especially for a spiritual formation in the context of the Korean Churches.