The Pyongyang revival of 1907 and Japanese rule

From Wonsan to Pyongyang

In the summer of 1903 missionaries gathered for some days of prayer at Wonsan. Robert Hardie, a Canadian-born Methodist medical missionary asked to speak on prayer, confessed to his colleagues that his work had borne no fruit because of his own pride and lack of faith. He then made the same confession before the Korean congregation in Wonsan. When a missionary laid bare his sin before Koreans, they too began to confess, and meetings of prayer and repentance spread over the next few years to Kaesong, Seoul and Pyongyang. In August 1906, it is told, the missionaries in Pyongyang studied the first letter of John with Hardie and prayed.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9

Every winter the Jangdaehyeon church in Pyongyang held a Bible class at which men from the surrounding districts studied Scripture for days together. What happened at its evening meeting in January 1907 was set down a few years later by William Blair, a missionary who was there, in The Korea Pentecost and Other Experiences on the Mission Field. As he tells it, the whole congregation prayed aloud at once; then men rose one after another to confess their sins in tears, and those who had hated each other asked forgiveness and were reconciled. Jonathan Goforth, a Canadian Presbyterian missionary in China, visited Korea that year and left his own account of the revival Goforth, When the Spirit's Fire Swept Korea. The habits rooted in those years, such as early-morning prayer, and how historians weigh the revival are in the Theology course's The Korean church in the twentieth century.

In September of the same year the first presbytery of the Korean Presbyterian church was formed in Pyongyang, and it ordained seven seminary graduates as the first Korean ministers. Among them were Gil Seon-ju and Seo Gyeong-jo, younger brother of the colporteur Seo Sang-ryun, who had carried the Scriptures into Korea years before. The presbytery and its creed are in the Reformed Faith course's Presbyterians in Korea.

A people without a country

In August 1910 Japan annexed Korea. On 1 March 1919 a declaration of independence was issued in Seoul in the names of national representatives, and for months demonstrations spread across the country. Of its thirty-three signers, sixteen were Protestant Christians, fifteen of Cheondogyo and two Buddhist The Korean Declaration of Independence. Among them were Yi Seung-hun (1864–1930), the Presbyterian elder who founded the Osan school, and Gil Seon-ju. Protestants were a small part of the population, yet churches and Christian schools carried the movement's messages, and many believers were arrested.

Yu Gwan-sun (1902–1920), a Methodist student of the Ewha school, was arrested on 1 April crying for independence in the market at Aunae near her home in Cheonan, and died in prison the next year. On 15 April at Jeam-ri, south of Seoul, Japanese soldiers gathered the village men in the Methodist church, opened fire and set it ablaze. Christians and followers of Cheondogyo died together, and Frank Schofield, a Canadian missionary, soon came to the site and made it known to the world in photographs and reports.

September 1938

In the 1930s the colonial government required schools and churches to take part in rites at Shinto shrines, calling a bow at the shrine a citizen's courtesy, not religion. The Catholic Church accepted that account in 1936, following an instruction from Rome, and Methodist leaders took the same road at about that time. Some Presbyterian missions closed their schools rather than comply.

In September 1938 the twenty-seventh General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, meeting in Pyongyang with police looking on, resolved that shrine worship was a national rite and not a religious act. According to its Minutes of the 27th General Assembly, the delegates went to the Pyongyang shrine that day and bowed, and those who tried to speak against it were silenced. Those who complied did not all comply for the same reasons. Some believed the government's explanation; others gave way for fear that churches would be closed and flocks scattered. The churches were drawn in deeper still, and in July 1945, in the last weeks of the war, the Protestant denominations were bound together into a single body at the government's will.

Many refused. Ju Gi-cheol (1897–1944), who had studied under Yi Seung-hun at the Osan school, was pastor of the Sanjeonghyeon church in Pyongyang. From 1938 he was imprisoned again and again; while he was in prison his presbytery removed him from his ministry and his church had to close. He did not yield, and he died in prison in April 1944. Pastors such as Yi Gi-seon, Han Sang-dong and Ju Nam-seon, and many believers whose names are not remembered, stayed in prison until liberation, and some died there. They held to the first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3), and to the answer of Daniel's three friends before the golden statue:

If the God whom we serve exists, then He is able to deliver us from the blazing fiery furnace and from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden statue you have set up.

Daniel 3:17-18

Wesley says of the three that "they were resolved to suffer rather than sin, and leave the cause to God" Wesley.

A church that remembers in repentance

After liberation the Assembly withdrew the resolution (in 1954, by the usual account). How the church divided over the repentance asked for by those released from prison is told in Presbyterians in Korea.

The years 1919 and 1938 show two faces of love of country. In 1919 Christians stood beside their people at the risk of their lives, and took up no arms. In 1938 the state called a bow before its gods a patriotic rite. To love one's people is good, but the church bows to God alone. The apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29), and Matthew Henry, on Daniel, writes, "We are to be meek in our replies, but we must be decided that we will obey God rather than man" Matthew Henry.

As the revival of 1907 began with the confession of sin, so a church stands again when it confesses 1938 rather than hiding it. Rather than point at those who gave way, we remember this story rightly when we ask what we are being asked to bow to today. "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed" (James 5:16) holds for one believer and for a whole church. The next lesson, The church in two world wars, follows the churches of the world through war and dictatorship in the same years.

Practice