Renovating Holiness: Wesleyan Sanctification Encountering Buddhist Enlightenment (Musung Jung)

This essay is part of the Renovating Holiness Project.  Musung Jung is Assistant Professor in the Department of Christian Studies at Korea Nazarene University.  He studied at Yonsei University, Northwest Nazarene University, Korea Nazarene University (B.Th.), Emory University (M.Div.) and Asbury Theological Seminary (Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies).  Due to the format of this blog, the footnotes of this essay have been removed.

Photo Credit: Danielle Harms

I. The Korean Context
The two most dominant religions in Korea are Christianity and Buddhism. 
     According to the 2012 survey, 22.5% of the Korean population identified themselves as Christians whereas 22.1% confirmed themselves as Buddhists. This situation puts the Korean Church into an evangelistic challenge regarding how to effectively reach out to Buddhists.
     The fact of the matter is that the Korean church at large has engaged in aggressive evangelism to Buddhists with little concern and respect for their religious reality.  As a result, their antipathy to Christianity has increased, and their receptivity to the gospel has decreased. 

     To break out this vicious cycle, the Korean church needs a paradigm shift from triumphalist evangelism to dialogical one.  As Edinburgh 2010 rightly states, “witness does not preclude dialogue but invites it, and dialogue does not preclude witness but extends and deepens it.”  Such evangelistic dialogue with Buddhists requires that the Korean Church discover some meaningful points of contact between the two religious traditions.  In this regard the Korean denominations rooted in Wesleyanism can play an important role by exploring and presenting the correlation between Wesleyan sanctification and Dono-Jeomsu (a particular understanding of enlightenment within the Korean traditions of Buddhism).

II. Buddhist Dono-Jeomsu (Enlightenment)
Dono-Jeomsu was first proposed by the Buddhist monk Jinul (知訥, 1158–1210), the forerunner of Korean Zen Buddhism as well as the founder of the Jogye Order (曹溪宗), the largest Buddhist denomination in Korea today.  Dono (頓悟) signifies “sudden enlightenment,” and Jeomsu (漸修) denotes “gradual cultivation.”  Combined together, Dono-Jeomsu involves the unified idea of “sudden enlightenment followed and supported by gradual cultivation” in search of the purest and highest state of one’s mind, namely nirvana (涅槃).
     According to Jinul, any human being is a prospective buddha with the indwelling buddhahood.  (“Buddha” literally means “the enlightened one.”)  He explained: “Everyone is originally a Buddha…[and] possesses the impeccable self-nature…The sublime essence of nirvana is complete in everyone. There is no need to search elsewhere; since time immemorial, it has been innate in everyone.”

Renovating Holiness: Empowerment in Holiness and Feminism (Deanna Hayden)

    I set down the phone, dropped my face in my hands and slowly let the tears fall.  As my husband sat nearby, holding our baby boy, he waited for me to settle down enough to explain.   A year before, I had felt the Lord’s call on my heart to become a senior pastor.  Following months of communicating with districts around the country, I had finally interviewed.  The leadership of the church had been enthusiastic toward me, and - even as the voices of some were raised questioning the validity of having a female pastor - my responses seemed well received.  Several people told me they expected favorable congregational vote.  After the vote, however, those questioning voices had carried enough weight to turn down my opportunity to come as their pastor.  The apologetic phone call informing me of the decision left me heartbroken and confused.
    In a holiness denomination that has ordained women since its inception, how could women be refused the opportunity to fulfill their call simply because of their gender?  And from a broader perspective, what is it in the soul of the Church that seems inclined to deny the full equality of men and women?
Can the call to a life of holiness speak to the work of feminism? 
Are they two contrasting theories, or might they relate to each other?

Photo Credit: World Bank Photo Collection

Feminism Defined
    Simply defined, feminism is “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.”  Looking through theological and biblical lenses, we could add “religious” to the categories of equality advocated by feminism.  In a variety of cultures, this term has taken on negative connotations.  Within religious circles including some areas of Christianity, feminism is often assumed to have specific political agendas, and is quickly written off as being irrelevant and even oppositional to a life of Christian faith.  The work of feminism is then something to be ignored, if not opposed.