해방 후 한국 개신교의 정치참여: 역사와 평가 = Political Participation of the Korean Protestant Churches in Post-Colonial Era: History and Evaluation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Main focus of this article is laid upon describing the historical evolution of political participation by the Korean Protestant Churches since the Liberation. Then I tried to make an evaluation to the Churches` political activities. Firstly, to describe the history of the Churches` political activities, I identified four dimensions of political participation: (1) political party strategy, (2) securing influence on political society strategy, (3) voting and campaign strategy, (4) social movement strategy. Securing influence on political society strategy has long been the Churches` most favored political choice. Voting and campaign strategy was also favored by the Protestant leaders during the period of the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1970s and 1980s, some progressive Protestants depended on social movement strategy, and their significant contribution to the democratization movement is well-known fact among Koreans. Responding to the reinvigoration of election politics since late 1980s, Korean Churches` activities concerning election campaign were remarkably vitalized. Since the 1990s, conservative Protestant groups, who seemed to have been reluctant to overt political participation, began to plunge into political arena. Conservative Protestant groups, represented by the Christian Council of Korea(CCK), adopted social movement strategy in the 1990s. And it was developed into ``political activism`` in early 2000s, including political party strategy. In this paper, I presupposed two conditions for Churches` political activities to be successful: (1) social recognition and respect of church leaders` moral superiority, (2) convergence between public language and religious language, or effective communication between them. Taken as a whole, recent political activities overwhelmingly led by conservative Protestant groups appear to fail to satisfy both conditions. Therefore, as happened in the years of 1940~1945 and 1955~1962, there is quite a possibility that unpopular political participation of Korean Churches will entail decrease in Protestant population.