A Cautionary Tale of Theological Education in a Global and Transnational World

Nami Kim

Under the banner of globalization, some mega-sized churches in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) have invited charismatic, bilingual (Korean and English) male ministers in their forties and early fifties who have been leading congregations in the United States as the successors of senior pastors upon their retirement.  The large to mega-sized churches have also sent out pastors and missionaries to the United States for the purpose of “planting” churches that bear the name of their mother churches in Korea as well as for further missionary training in various mission organizations.  

Along with heteropatriarchal male prerogatives, fluency in English has become a prerequisite for leading a large to mega-sized church, or for getting a full-time teaching position in a theological institution in South Korea, a “regional Protestant superpower.”* This is a reflection of the larger Korean society in which the command of English is considered to be one of the most valuable skills for an individual to climb up the ladder of success.  

Accordingly, having a degree, or at least a certificate, from a U.S. academic institution on one’s resume is often considered a ticket to a higher rung in the social hierarchy. Networking among Korean alumni of U.S. universities, including graduates of U.S. theological schools and seminaries who have settled in Korea, has also become crucial social capital for advancement.  When deans or professors of their alma mater visit, all alumni are mobilized to welcome them. A few U.S. seminary professors even proudly share how much they enjoyed visiting Korea because of the level of hospitality they received from the alumni. Transnational connections and networks are firmly established in the name of advancement of theological and pastoral education.

Some critical voices have been raised regarding the function of U.S. higher education in producing transnational elites in the financial sector. What about U.S. theological education? What are the responsibilities of U.S. theological institutions that have inadvertently contributed to producing transnational elites who have become a privileged class in a postcolonial society and who would carry church ministries and theological education in the global South in ways that continue to support neocolonial, heteropatriarchal, and homophobic practices of dominant Christianity rather than resist and challenge them?

Reportedly, accredited theological institutions in South Korea annually graduate about 6,000 ordained or ordination-track people, and many of them are left wandering in the so-called clergy job market. In a heteropatriarchal church context, it means that qualified heterosexual women (not to mention LGBTQ individuals) are rarely considered to be viable candidates for pastoral leadership. Religious power and privilege wielded by a small group of (male) ministers and those who benefit from such power have become enormous in Korean Christianity.** As the number of ethnic minority churches and students in theological institutions grows in the U.S., this question of accountability of U.S. theological education seems equally applicable to the American context as well.

Theological educators both in the U.S. and from/in the global South need to critically rethink what are the ways in which theological education can become liberatory instead of serving as a tool of reinforcing hegemony in a global and transnational world.  Theological education should be able to contribute to transforming church power structure that is governed by a neoliberal market economy, hypermasculine developmentalism, and heteropatriarchy. It is not enough to emphasize the importance of critical theological education that can serve as a critical voice and as an emancipatory praxis in a global and transnational world.

Certainly, it is not fair to lump all ministers and professors educated in the U.S. into one group as if there were no power differentials among them and as if the kinds of theological education they have received were homogeneous. No doubt there are people who seek to make prophetic changes in current church politics, theological education, and the larger society in both the U.S. and in South Korea through their ministry, teaching, and activism.  However, those of us who have been educated in the U.S. academy are all implicated in the complex web of this power structure. Therefore, it is our responsibility to ask where we stand, while critically examining our complicity, and assess how we can commit to challenging the dominant power structure from which we have benefited. This is the crucial yet difficult, and even painful, task that we face; but before it’s too late, let us remind one another of the necessity of our task.    

^*Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 61.

**See Nami Kim, “S(e)oul Search: The Changing Religious Landscape in Seoul and Its

Implications for Defining ‘Asia,’” ASIANetwork EXCHANGE: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts 18, no. 1 (Fall 2010): 40-52.

*Professor Nami Kim is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Spelman College at Atlanta, Georgia.