February 18, 6:00 – 7:30pm
Badè Museum, Pacific School of Religion
1798 Scenic Ave., Berkeley, CA
Livestream Access to the Lecture will be available here
Join us for this special lecture with Dr. Nami Kim, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. This event is co-sponsored by PSR’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry, the Graduate Theological Union’s Korean Student Association & Pacific School of Religion’s Asian and Pacific Islander Program Initiative.
Abstract:
Experiencing the slowdown of the domestic church growth, Korean Protestant Christianity entered the phase of post-hypermasculine developmentalism. Hypermasculine developmentalism characterized not only the society’s rapid industrialization and urbanization during the three decades of military regimes but also the “miraculous” growth of Korean Protestant Christianity from 1960s until late 1980s. The Protestant Right, a subset of Korean Protestant Christianity, resurfaced as a unified social and political force in the post-hypermasculine developmentalism period. The reemerged Protestant Right that combines conservative evangelical/fundamentalist gendered theology with social and political conservatism, wittingly or unwittingly, engaged hegemonic masculinity by redefining, reclaiming, or reasserting it.The Protestant Right’s anti-LGBT movement has shown its reassertion of hegemonic masculinity in relation to sexual minorities and gender nonconforming people. This talk discusses the ways in which the Protestant Right has led the anti-LGBT movement in South Korea. It will specifically examine three loci of the Protestant Right’s anti-gay bashing: mass media, the grade school, and the military, and expose the complex but often hidden interplay between homophobia, heterosexism, anticommunism, and ethnocentric nationalism of conservative Korean Protestant Christianity.
Nami Kim is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Kim’s research interests meet at the intersections of feminist theology, feminist theory, Asian North American religious/theological studies, and world Christianity. Her most recent articles include “Roundtable: Asian/Asian North American Feminist Theologies” (co-authored with W. Anne Joh, publishedJournal of Feminist Studies in Religion), and her co-edited volume (with W. Anne Joh), Critical Theology against U.S. Militarism in Asia: Decolonization and Deimperialization, is forthcoming (Palgrave, 2015). She is currently working on the manuscript on the gendered politics of Korean Protestant Right. Dr. Kim served as co-chairs of the Women and Religion and the Asian North American Religion, Culture, and Society at the American Academy of Religion, and currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion as well as the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion.