Abstract
Women’s lives throughout history have been marked by a continuing struggle to resist the patriarchal structures that confine them while also making the best of their circumstances. Indeed in some or perhaps all societies, men and women are often expected to fulfill their gendered (read hierarchical) roles for the good of the state. South Korean women are no different in this regard, even in the modern era. Rather than assuming false consciousness, scholars note that women are well aware of their circumstances and actively resist or accommodate these cultural expectations in their personal lives. Kelly Chong’s Deliverance and Submission is an incisive look at the lives of middle-aged evangelical Christian Korean women and how religion “works” in paradoxical and contradictory ways that both empower oppressed individuals and yet constrain their agency.
To unpack this story, Chong first provides much needed background on the two ideologies at work in the lives of Korean evangelical women: neo-Confucian patriarchy and conservative evangelicalism. The former, which emerged prior to the introduction of Christianity, contains characteristics that both resemble and differ from Western forms of patriarchy. A married woman in this system is spatially and socially removed from her family and placed under the authority of her husband and his family, particularly his mother. She is expected to be the moral guardian of the home, maintain harmony, produce male heirs, oversee their education, generate informal means of income, and maintain kin networks. In short, a married woman is to be modest, submissive, yet strong and responsible, and her reward is in her authority as a future mother-in-law in the lives of her adult children.
For its part, evangelical Christianity today is largely the import product of American Protestant missionaries dating back to the nineteenth century. It has historically been viewed as a positive alternative to the corrupted regime of Korean politics, a resource of resistance during the Japanese occupation, a structural support through the provision of Western medicine, expanded lay education, and the formation of religious organizations that rely on the active participation of believers. These socially beneficial effects along with the fairly favorable opinion of evangelical Protestantism, helped it grow at a phenomenal rate resulting today in not only having the largest Christian congregation in the world (Yeoido), but also five of the top ten largest of this type of social organization. But as Chong points out, this growth was not arbitrary: evangelical Christianity and its characteristic trait of literal Biblical interpretation was tacitly supported by the Korean government due to its emphasis on strong family ties which political leaders believe is the key to the nation’s economic success. This tacit support implies a connection that Chong underscores throughout the remainder of the book: that Korean evangelical Christianity supports neo-Confucian patriarchy which in turn was enforced out of national economic interests.
Scholars of religion know that state support of a religion does not guarantee its growth. Growth requires popular support. Given the oppressive nature of this form of patriarchy and its attendant reinforcement in evangelical religion, Chong asks: why would so many Korean women flock to this religious tradition? Based on interviews with 96 middle-class and middle-aged evangelical women in a Methodist church and a Presbyterian church in Seoul, Chong illustrates the complex ways that these religions both provide a sense of release or deliverance from domestic suffering while also mitigating any change in the structure that is the source of this pain. What we learn from their stories is that, far from being passive cultural dupes, Korean evangelical women experience empowerment through religious narratives of healing and conversion as well as opportunities to leave their domestic environment and its weighty obligations. For these women, personal stories of “sincere” religious conversion revolve around a theme of domestic crisis (including negative suppressed emotion and physical ailment), and resolution of that crisis (spiritual renewal and reported physical healing) via divine intervention. The case of South Korean women is unique in that these stories occur after they are married (as opposed to the conversions in late adolescence seen in the United States), in a social context where secular psychotherapy is persistently taboo, and where its resolution entails more than coping but self-reported healing (sometimes physical). As a relational faith tradition, South Korean evangelical women engage with and find comfort in God as perfect substitute father/husband who unconditionally loves them. Put differently, while this masculine deity has delivered them from their physical and earthly distress, they are required to submit to a spiritual relationship that resembles the very social structure in which they sought liberation-provided healing.
Once they convert, Korean evangelical women get involved in the life of a local congregation, and here again Chong illustrates the cognitive bargaining at work in their lives. On the one hand, church is highly female-centered, and acts as their main site for social interaction and a place to learn, achieve, and find fulfillment. With church networks, women can gain relational support to counteract the felt “outsider-ness” within their homes. Through small group meetings and group prayer sessions they have an outlet to work out their domestic concerns. Given that Korean culture’s tendency to acknowledge only women’s domestic accomplishments, church work allows for a new form of prestige and status. On the other hand, the brunt of the labor in the church is done by the women while opportunities to achieve leadership despite these efforts are few and far between. Moreover through seminars and sermons, Korean evangelical women are told that they are responsible for the harmony of the household via their submission to their husbands; savvy religious leaders (almost exclusively male) recognize women’s power in the family and turn it into a problem requiring self-discipline: wives’ “egoism,” “haughtiness,” and impatience lead to familial disharmony. This self-discipline of submission and obedience brings with it the supposed benefit of character change in their husbands. While women in these congregations openly criticize these teachings, Chong observes, they show no organized effort to resist or challenge the leadership and its message. This reflects not only the realization that most of these women have few or no other social option, but also that the core theology of dependence on God (rather than the self) draws away the potential power of women to act as change agents in these cultural systems.
While Kelly Chong’s work illustrates the woven-ness of neo-Confucian and evangelical patriarchal ideologies, it raises more questions that require comparative research. How is religious (dis)empowerment different within the Korean context? While choosing two different Protestant sites for her research we are not shown any comparative distinctions that might bring her findings in sharper relief. How might different religious traditions such as Pentecostalism, Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Buddhism interact with neo-Confucianism? Responses from non-religious counterparts also would have enriched this study by drawing out different narratives that rely on other ideological sources of empowerment. These problems aside, Deliverance and Submission demonstrates the strengths of qualitative research to illustrate gendered social dynamics and it complicates our understanding of how religion functions in familial relationships in a modern non-Western context. As readers we are reminded of the paradox that liberation for the masses often conceals a larger and more dominant oppression.