What Should Christians Do about a Shaman-Progenitor?: Evangelicals and Ethnic Nationalism in South Korea

In the past fifteen years, global evangelicalism has emerged as an important field of study. A key contributor to this study has been Paul Freston, who authored Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, a book Harvey Cox of Harvard describes as "utterly indispensable for scholars of religion, not just for students of Third World evangelicalism."1 In the book, Freston discusses South Korea as a "regional Protestant 'superpower'" and "a key centre of evangelicalism in the Third World, both in numerical strength and missionary-sending importance." He then observes that Korean evangelicalism has not received sufficient treatment in Western-language scholarship, especially on its relationship with Korean nationalism. Thus, he states, "We need more nuanced analysis of the relationship between Protestantism and various versions of Korean nationalism in more recent times."2