[KS] most Christian city in Asia

Richard Miller rcmiller at wisc.edu
Fri Dec 5 23:34:59 EST 2003


It absolutely is not a Korean-only phenomenon. Indonesia, for example,
officially recognizes "five religions:" Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu,
and Buddhist. I believe that this usage (Christian vs. Catholic) comes from
Dutch practice during the colonial period. It's not really a
"mistranslation," I don't think, although it certainly doesn't line up with
mainstream US practice.

Richard

Richard Miller
UW-Madison School of Music
http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~rcmiller/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws
> [mailto:Koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws]On Behalf Of
> sumnom at u.washington.edu
> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 9:21 PM
> To: Korean Studies Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [KS] most Christian city in Asia
>
>
> I do not believe this is only a Korean phenomenon. While teaching
> World Regional Geography courses at the University of Kentucky in
> the early 1990's, I often read undergraduate essays with
> sentences like, "Ireland is primarily Catholic but there are some
> Christians too." At first I thought this was an amusing error
> until I found out that some of the churches these students were
> attending did not consider Catholics to be Christians. They may
> have called them something akin to  papists, idolators, or Mother
> Mary cultists, but they were not willing to acknowledge them as
> Christians. I saw some tracts that went so far as to equate the
> pope with Satan.
>
> I do not know what the official doctrinal stances are of the
> various protestant churches are in Korea in relation to this
> issue but I would guess there might be more to this question than
> a simple mistranslation.
>
> Joshua Van Lieu





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