Page 56 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

Conservative Moralistic Preaching

Western missionaries led the Korean church in her infancy. The theology of the

missionaries, therefore, laid the doctrinal foundation for Korean church and left a decisive

influence on her until now. What, then, was the theological background of these missionaries?

One of the mission administrators of the Foreign Mission Institute of United Presbyterian Church

of North America remarked on the theological tendencies of the early missionaries to Korea:

Typical missionaries in the first 25 years were those of the Puritans. . . . They
regarded dancing, smoking, and card playing as sins to which the Christian saints
should never addict themselves. They were strictly conservative in criticizing the
Bible and the theology and held fast to Pre-millennium opinion on the Second
Advent of Christ persistently. They considered High Criticism and Liberal
Theology as a dangerous cult. 112

The conservative evangelicalism was the theology of early missionaries who “had been

most affected by the evangelical awakening and kindred revivals of the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries.” 113 Strongly influenced by Puritan heritage of New England, 114 their

puritanical preaching exhorted the Korean church to follow a literalized transfer of moral

precepts from the Bible. They maintained that a biblical life was to live according to literal

imperatives of the Bible. Koreans welcomed the moralistic sermons because they needed a new

Kim, 95 percent of the Korean churches are conservative, that means liberal socio-prophetic
preaching is less than 5 percents in Korean preaching. Sung-Kun Kim, “Korean Protestantism
and the Problem of Fundamentalism,” Kidokkyo Sasang (Christian Thoughts) (May, 1988), 155-
56.

112
A. J. Brown, The Mastery of the Far East (New York: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1919), 540.

113
Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity: The Great Century
in Northern Africa and Asia, A.D. 1800-A.D. 1914, Volume VI (New York & London: Harper &
Brothers Publishers, 1944), 336.

114
Brown, Mastery of the Far East, 540.