Showing posts with label Diane Winston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diane Winston. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Korean Churches Witnessing a 'Miracle' - DIANE WINSTON VIA RNS

For many South Korean Christians, who support reunification, anything is possible with faith.

For many South Korean Christians, who support reunification, anything is possible with faith. (Photo by Alan Mittelstaedt/Creative Commons)
Korean Churches Witnessing a 'Miracle'
A lot has happened on the Korean peninsula in the last few weeks. South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met for the first time; Kim took some serious steps toward denuclearization; and Kim and President Trump agreed to talk, but Trump abruptly canceled the historic meeting. On June 1, however, following a meeting with a high ranking North Korean official, President Trump announced that he plans to meet Kim Jong-un.
I watched these events unfold with interest since two months earlier, I had traveled to South Korea with 12 journalism students to report on ongoing religious, political and cultural developments.
When we landed at Seoul's Incheon Airport, the warm diplomatic tailwinds of the Winter Olympics had thawed relations between the North and South. Kim and Moon would soon meet. And there were rumors of a Trump and Kim parlay to follow.
My students had many questions about the role of religion in the land of K-pop, including Christianity's involvement in either promoting or preventing improved relations between the North and South. Even though half of all South Koreans are religiously unaffiliated, Christianity has had an outsized influence in the country. Many of the world's largest churches are located there, and many South Korean political and business leaders are staunch Christians.

Korean Christianity

For the first half of the 20th century, Christianity gained little ground in Korea. Confucianism, Buddhism and shamanism persisted despite efforts of Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries. But after the Korean War, the country's religious landscape changed dramatically.
Communists in the North banned most Christian practice, replacing traditional beliefs and rituals with Juche, an official state ideology that mixes Marxism and self-reliance with veneration for Kim Il-Sung, the nation's first leader.
The South's experience could not have been more different.
American support for the fight against Communism and its aid in postwar reconstruction boosted Christianity's popularity. That's because Christianity was the Americans' religion, and many South Koreans wanted what America had — wealth, freedom and "divine blessings."
Conversions soared and among the most successful churches were those espousing values similar to Confucianism, the Chinese philosophy that migrated to Korea some 1800 years ago, and is deeply embedded in its culture. Both Confucianism and conservative Christianity emphasize traditional gender roles, strong families, and respect for authority.
Today, almost 30 percent of the country is either Protestant or Roman Catholic, with conservative evangelicals playing a significant role in the nation's politics and culture.
Large Korean megachurches, like their American counterparts, tend to be pro-democracy, pro-free market and anti-communist. They support U.S policy and, like many evangelical and "prosperity" churches in the U.S., believe that Donald Trump is God's man.
During our visit, we found that many Korean Christians are wary of Kim's overtures to Moon, including talk of reconciliation. Their preference is reunification: one democratic country where Christianity is openly practiced.

Reunification not reconciliation

Indeed after the Korean War, many South Koreans yearned for a reunited nation. Many had relatives in the North and could not imagine a permanent separation. While many of these older Koreans still want to see the two countries reunited, young people do not share the sentiment.
In 2017, the government's Institute for National Unification found that 71.2 percent of 20-something South Koreans oppose reunification. For the time being, however, young folks are a minority. So today, about 58 percent of the population does favor a reunited peninsula, but their numbers are falling.
Younger Koreans have pragmatic as well as ideological reasons for opposing reunification. North Korea is a poor, totalitarian state. South Korea is a wealthy, democratic one. The political difficulties of bridging the difference seem insurmountable, especially with Kim in power. The economic challenge is equally daunting. South Koreans have worked hard for success and many do not want to jeopardize their high standard of living to help their "poor cousins" in the North.
But President Moon Jae-in, the son of North Korean refugees, has his own ideas about reconciliation and reunification. Unlike his conservative predecessor, Park Geun-hye, who was impeached and sentenced to prison for abuse of power and corruption, Moon is a former human rights attorney. He is willing to start with reconciliation, but his long-term goal is a united peninsula.

Action on the ground

While Moon Jae-in, Kim Jong-Un and Trump conduct a complicated diplomatic dance, religiously based, grassroots initiatives take small steps forward. For some, this means sending messages over the border, for others it's helping defectors adjust to the South, and for still others, it involves paving the way for reunification.
Staff at Far East Broadcasting System's Seoul office focus on evangelizing North Korea. They smuggle radios into the Communist-controlled country so citizens can listen to sermons, services and shows about Christianity. The station also broadcasts in South Korea, where its content includes information on reunification.
"We just want to share the Christian gospel," Chung Soo Kim, a staff member, told one of my students. Kim added that North Korean attempts to stop the programming have failed: "They cannot afford to jam our broadcasts. They do not even have enough food to feed their people."
Other Korean Christians assist North Koreans who have defected. There are about 31,000 defectors in South Korea, and many have trouble adjusting to their changed circumstances. The South Korean government provides some help, but clergy and churches try to fill in the gaps. According to some defectors, religion helps with acculturation.
The Rev. Chun Ki Won, for example, started Durihana International School in Seoul as an alternative for young North Koreans, whose foreign accents and hand-me-down clothes make them targets of ridicule in South Korean schools.
"I realized after rescuing North Korean defectors from China and leading them to South Korea that they don't settle down properly," Chun told a student through a translator. "We teach them the purpose of their lives and their identity. We teach them why God made them to suffer, and that there is purpose in that."
One of the more ambitious programs aimed at reunification is River of Life, a school run by Ben Torrey, grandson of a famous 19th century American evangelist, Reuben A. Torrey. Ben Torrey integrates reunification into the curriculum for Korean Christian children.
Torrey's students meet with defectors and, building on personal relationships, slowly embrace the idea of one Korea. Jin-soo (his first name), one of Torrey's students told my student through a translator: "I went to a public elementary and middle school. In that school, at least once a year, we talked about reunification, but it was just something in the textbook, nothing that comes alive." He explained how things changed once he had a chance to meet North Korean students. "I began thinking from their perspective," he said. "They are the same as I am."
Like Torrey, Korean Christians who support reunification see it as a political and religious goal. And although it's an uphill struggle, they believe with faith anything is possible.
In fact, that's the takeaway that struck several in my class: The faith of many Korean Christians supersedes political calculation. Or, as Ben Torrey told one of the students about a united peninsula, "God has to do it. It has to be a miracle." 
The ConversationThis piece, first published on June 1, was slightly updated to reflect the latest developments on North Korea.
Diane Winston, is an associate professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Transmitted by RNS. Copyright 2018 Religion News Service. All rights reserved.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

National Prayer Breakfast: What Does Its History Reveal? - RealClear Religion Diane Winston


National Prayer Breakfast: What Does Its History Reveal?

On the morning of Feb. 2, more than 3,500 political leaders, military chiefs and corporate moguls meet for eggs, sausage, muffins – and prayer. The Washington, D.C. gathering, the 65th National Prayer Breakfast, is an opportunity for new friends and old associates, from 50 states and 140 countries, to break bread and forge fellowship in Jesus’ name.
Convened on the first Thursday in February, the gathering, known as the Presidential Prayer Breakfast until 1970, has always included the American head of state.
As a scholar of American religious history, I am intrigued by how presidents negotiate the intricacies of church/state relationships versus religion/politics entanglements. Most avoid the former while trying to benefit from the latter. That’s why the prayer breakfast is noteworthy – it is an opportunity for leaders to appear as Christ’s servants rather than formidable heads of state.

Faith first

President Dwight Eisenhower began the tradition with the first breakfast in 1953. While Eisenhower was initially wary of attending a prayer breakfast, evangelist Billy Graham convinced him it was the right move.
Speaking to an audience that included Graham, hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and 400 political, religious and business leaders, Eisenhower proclaimed that “all free government is firmly founded in a deeply felt religious faith.”
Today, “Ike” – the 34th president’s nickname – is not remembered as being deeply religious.
However, he was raised in a pious household of River Brethren, a Mennonite offshoot. His parents named him after Dwight Moody, the famous 19th-century evangelist who likened the state of the world to a sinking ship and stated,
“God has given me a lifeboat and said… ‘Moody save all you can.”
 
President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a personal chat with Rev. Dr. Billy Graham in Gettysburg on Sept. 8, 1961.
Soon after his election in 1952, Eisenhower told Graham that the country needed a spiritual renewal. For Eisenhower, faith, patriotism and free enterprise were the fundamentals of a strong nation. But of the three, faith came first.
As historian Kevin Kruse describes in “One Nation Under God,” the new president made that clear his very first day in office, when he began the day with a preinaugural worship service at the National Presbyterian Church.
At the swearing in, Eisenhower’s hand rested on two Bibles. When the oath of office concluded, the new president delivered a spontaneous prayer. To the surprise of those around him, Eisenhower called on God to “make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people.”
However, when Frank Carlson, the senator from Kansas, a devout Baptist and Christian leader, asked his friend and fellow Kansan to attend a prayer breakfast, Eisenhower – in a move that seemed out of character – refused.
But Graham interceded, Hilton offered his hotel and the rest is history.

A strategic move

It is possible that Graham may have used the breakfast’s theme, “Government under God,” to convince the president to attend. Throughout his tenure, Eisenhower promoted God and religion.
When he famously said to the press, “Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is,” he was not displaying a superficial or wishy-washy attitude to faith. Rather, as Ike’s grandson David Eisenhower explained, he was discussing America’s “Judeo-Christian heritage.”
The truth is, Ike was a Christian, but he also was a realist. Working for a “government under God” was more inclusive than calling for a Christian nation. It also was strategic. Under his watch, the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, and “In God We Trust” imprinted on the nation’s currency. But legitimating the National Prayer Breakfast was a signature achievement.

A political meeting?

The National Prayer Breakfast has grown steadily over the years – from 400 attendees to close to 4,000. The presence of the U.S. president has made the event a draw for leaders worldwide and networking before and after the breakfast.
In a 2006 journal article, sociologist D. Michael Lindsay described the breakfast as a “veritable 'Who’s who’ of the political and evangelical worlds.” Invitations cast it as an opportunity to “seek the Lord’s guidance and strength … and to renew the dedication of our Nation and ourselves to God’s purpose.”
But according to Lindsey’s conversations with men who attend the breakfast, most attend for political reasons, such as meeting the U.S. president, rather than its spirituality.
For many, the upshot is making new friends with religious, political and business leaders. There also are opportunities for alliances that could happen away from public scrutiny. In 2010, for example, The New York Times wrote about possible ties between the breakfast’s sponsors and Uganda’s persecution of homosexuals.

A guide for the powerful

The prayer breakfast’s success would have pleased Abraham Vereide, the Methodist minister behind the meetings. Vereide immigrated from Norway in 1905 when he was 19. For many years, he ministered to the down and out – society’s cast-offs.
He started Goodwill Industries in Seattle and provided relief work throughout the Depression. But seeing how little progress he’d made, Vereide turned his attention from helping the poor to guiding the powerful.
According to author Jeff SharletVereide’s ultimate goal was a “ruling class of Christ-committed men bound in a fellowship of the anointed.” A fundamentalist and a theocrat, he believed that strong, Christ-centered men should rule and that “militant” unions should be smashed. Between 1935 and his death in 1969, he mentored many politicians and businessmen who agreed.
During the 1940s, Vereide ran small prayer breakfasts for local leaders and businessmen in Washington, D.C. The groups were popular, but he wanted to spread and enlarge them. Senator Frank Carlson was Vereide’s close friend and supporter. When Eisenhower, the first Republican president since Herbert Hoover, was elected, Vereide, Graham and Carlson saw an opportunity to extend their shared mission of nurturing Christian leaders.

Using the breakfast moment

 
President Bill Clinton saying ‘I have sinned,’ in a National Prayer Breakfast.
In the years since, presidents have used the prayer breakfast to burnish their image and promote their agendas. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson spoke about the harrowing days following John F. Kennedy’s assassination and his desire to build a memorial for God in the nation’s capital.
Richard Nixon, speaking after his election in 1969, said that prayer and faith would help America’s fight for global peace and freedom. In 1998, Bill Clinton, faced with allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a White House intern, asked for prayers to “take our country to a higher ground.”
But while presidents are cautious about their prayers, preferring generalities to specifics, keynote speakers (who are not announced until the morning of the event) are forthright.
In 1995, Mother Teresa condemned abortion as President Clinton, who supported women’s right to choose, quietly listened. In 2013, pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson castigated the nation’s “moral decay and fiscal irresponsibility” while President Barack Obama sat in the audience.
And just last year, Hollywood power couple Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, who produced the television miniseries “The Bible,” recounted how their Christian faith led them to create “family-friendly entertainment” that, they hoped, inspired viewers to talk about God, prayer and the Bible.

More changes with time

Just as speakers have become more diverse, so have attendees. There are Muslims and Jews as well as Christians of all stripes. The Fellowship Foundation, an organization started by Vereide that sponsors the breakfast, considers the National Prayer Breakfast as an inclusive event. Hillary Clinton has attended, as has Tony Blair, Senator Joseph Lieberman and musician Alison Krauss.
But while the breakfast is an open tent, the small seminars and discussions that fill the days before and after are exclusive. These meetings, also organized by the Fellowship Foundation, convene clergy, politicians, military leaders and businessmen for high-level discussions on the global intersections of faith, power and money. The president does not attend these meetings, but his confidantes do.
When President Donald Trump attends the 65th National Prayer Breakfast, historians may listen for echoes of Vereide’s call for strong Christian leadership while journalists may home in on clues for his future plans.
As for the rest of us, we may recall President Obama’s prayer in February 2016:

“I pray that our leaders will always act with humility and generosity. I pray that my failings are forgiven. I pray that we will uphold our obligation to be good stewards of God’s creation – this beautiful planet. I pray that we will see every single child as our own, each worthy of our love and of our compassion. And I pray we answer Scripture’s call to lift up the vulnerable, and to stand up for justice, and ensure that every human being lives in dignity. That’s my prayer as well for this breakfast, and for this country, in the years to come.”