Home > Events > Luce Colloquium: What should Christians do about a Shaman-progenitor?: Evangelicals? Strategies for Dealing with Tan'gun Nativism in Korea

Luce Colloquium: What should Christians do about a Shaman-progenitor?: Evangelicals? Strategies for Dealing with Tan'gun Nativism in Korea

Timothy S. Lee, Assistant professor of the History of Christianity and the Director of Asian (Korean) Church Studies at the Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
243 Royce Hall
Los Angeles, CA 

Korean evangelicals are in a dilemma when it comes to Tan'gun, the putative progenitor of the Korean people.  On the one hand, evangelicals find Tan'gun unacceptable because he is thought to have been a divine or semi-divine being with ties to Shamanism. On the other hand, if evangelicals disparage Tan'gun, they run the risk of being stigmatized as unpatriotic, if not un-Korean.  This lecture discusses creative (and not so creative) ways in which evangelicals have dealt with this dilemma—and, in the process, reveals a cultural battle over the fundamental character of the Korean nation.

Cost: Free

For more information please contact

Sejung Kim
Tel: 310-825-3284
koreanstudies@international.ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu/korea

Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Asian Languages and Cultures, The Henry Luce Foundation