NATIONALIST MISSIONS, MIGRATING CHRISTIANS: A POSTCOLONIAL HISTORY OF A CANADIAN-KOREAN CHURCH RELATIONSHIP AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA, 1898 - 1988

Abstract

The reasons for the decline of Protestant Christianity in Canada since 1966 continue to be a matter of debate among church historians. To date the context of missionary histories, global Christianities, and postcolonial migrations has not been adequately considered in this discussion. International Christian relations initiated during the time of the Missionary Movement shed light on recent changes in the Canadian religious landscape. From the beginnings of Canada’s Missionary Enterprise at the turn of the 20th century, mission stations in Yongjeong, Manchuria and throughout northeastern Korea were the site of diverging religious commitments which were the result of different expressions of Protestant nationalism. This divergence created tensions on the mission field in the postcolonial era that migrated across the Pacific with Koreans to Canada in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Special attention is paid in this dissertation to the period framed by South Korea’s Democratization Movement and the relationship between the United Church of Canada (UCC) and the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK). Ethnographic interview material is used to enhance and contextualize the archival data and is combined with an approach that seeks to balance institutional and cultural historical perspectives. The dissertation argues that from the start, Korean Christianity was at odds with the western version of Protestant nationalism, a defining feature of the Canadian church. It further contends that as the relationship between churches developed in South Korea and crossed into Canada, a new dynamic emerged whereby parts of the UCC were transformed by Korean Christians. This previously overlooked historical process situates Canadian Protestantism within a postcolonial context to reveal the persistence of Canadian colonial missionary attitudes on one hand and the ways in which relationships inevitably resulted in new hybrid identities on the other. This study promotes an understanding of religious and social developments in Western nations in conversation with global postcolonial religious histories.