introduction
During my visits in the various worship services, I’ve heard most times the word “revival” and I’ve noticed how some pastors emphasised a lot the revivals that happens in Asian or African countries.
From one side it’s a great thing that Christianity is growing in areas which seemed hostile, like for example muslim countries like Indonesia or Iran, but on the other side there’s often an excess of triumphalism, and there’s almost the idea that we Europeans are “less believer” than people from all those Asian and African countries.
But the question is, are all those revivals really good, or is there something else going on ?
South-korea: from the war to the growth of christianity
This time I want to write about one of the country of revivals, which is South-Korea.
After the end of the Second World War, Korea was splintered in twice, and now we have on one side North-Korea, a dictatorial and anti-religious regime still forthcoming his program with King-Jon Un, and on the other side South-Korea, a democracy which knew a very exponential growth of Christian people.
And right now 30 % of the population are Christians, most were originally from the North and they fled to the South as North-Korea became the regime we all know.
Most of them are Protestants or Evangelicals ( 19 % ), then come the Catholics ( 10 % ), like the actual president Moon Jae-in.
But I have to say that in this Christianity growth there are also shadows.
from revivals to sects: the ROAD GRACE CHURCH case
I decided to write this post as some days ago I read on some Internet news about the arrest of a cult leader, named Shin Ok-ju.
She was the leader of a church named Grace Road, and in 2014 she convinced 400 people to move to Fiji in 2014, claiming they would be safe from imminent natural disaster.
Once there, their passports were taken away and many of them reported being beaten to “drive out evil spirits”.
On Monday, a South Korean court found Shin guilty on several criminal charges including violence, child abuse and fraud.
“The victims suffered helplessly from collective beatings and experienced not only physical torture but also severe fear and considerable mental shock,” said a sub-court of the Suwon District Court.
Five other church officials were also sentenced. There has been no comment from the church.
Here’s the entire article about the fact and also a witness from an ex-member .
Well, looking at all the stuff just three things come in mind: end-time catastrophism, survivalism and also brainwashing, the same modus operandi that reminds the Jonestown tragedy in 1971 but also the mass suicide in Uganda happened nineteen years ago. Fortunately this time no one died.
MANMIN
That Road Grace case is unfortunately not an isolated one, just last November, one pastor, Lee Jae-rock, has been sentenced for 15 years to jail for raping eight female followers of his megachurch.
He was the pastor of a religious movement named Manmin, meaning ” all creation; all the nations; all the people”.
The Manmin church was founded in 1982 and now it counts 120.000 members and 103 missionaries all around the world. In 1999 the movement was ejected by the Christian Council of Korea over a “heretical claim” allegedly made by the pastor in July 1998, when he stated that he was “sinless and exempted from dying”.
According to the BBC article the pastor was, for the followers, a sort of “little God”, and thanks to this suggestion he proceeded to force the women to have sex with him, till finally they denounced him.
UNIFICATION
Most interesting is the story of the Unification Church, a sort of syncretic church found by Rev. Sun Myong Moon in 1954 after he had a vision of Jesus at the age of 16. And due to his re-interpretation of the Old Testament doctrines, especially about the marriage, the church was eventually rejected by the Church Council.
In Italy the Unification Church became famous for the “Milingo case”. Emmanuel Milingo was a catholic bishop and exorcist from Zambia who was excommunicated as he decided, in 2001 at the age of 71, to marry Maria Sung, a follower of the Unification Church, who was almost 30 years younger.
A strong faith is important but without discernment it doesn’t work.
