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Born This Way

In South Korea, where a Christian minority dominates the country’s culture and politics, fundamentalists are fighting a culture war against their list of abominations: homosexuality, evolution, even Lady Gaga. But one church in Seoul is fighting back, working from within the faith to make it more tolerant — one gay Christian at a time.


The Reverend Daniel Payne, left, at this year’s Korea Queer Culture Festival in Seoul. Payne, who is gay, delivers Sunday night sermons on tolerance and social justice from his church’s house of worship — a Seoul bar. Photo by Rob York

At first glance, the scene seems all too familiar. On the fringe of a gay pride festival, a local church has set up shop. A pastor preaches about homosexuality while his followers hand out Bible passages to passersby.

But look closer. The church is not protesting. The pastor is preaching a sermon of affirmation and acceptance. He is openly gay.

Much like in America, conservative Christianity dominates South Korea’s culture and politics, and there is no shortage of fundamentalist believers who call gay culture an abomination. But as the gay-rights movement has gained traction here in recent years, some liberal Christian congregations have started welcoming members of all sexual orientations, allowing gay Christians — that unlikely but real constituency — to work from within to make their faith more tolerant. One of these churches is the Open Doors Community Church, an activist Christian congregation in Seoul whose members are mostly gay.

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Rob York works for a think tank in Honolulu and still prefers communication by Post-it Notes.

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Christians and yoga


Demonstrating an intolerance that is noxious, bizarre, and antithetical to living in a globalized world, the founder of PraiseMoves – a recently concocted “Christian alternative to yoga” – is demonizing yoga, of all things. PraiseMoves founder Laurette Willis was, apparently, stunned to learn that yoga was related to Hinduism, and now decries the practice, suggesting that the mental components of yoga can lead, apparently, to something approximating possession: “If there's nothing in your mind, you're open to all kinds of deception… While I don't believe Christians can become possessed, I do believe we can become oppressed by demonic spirits of fear, depression, lust, false religion, etc.”

While the movement’s idiocy may neuter its effectiveness, the motivations for PraiseMoves are both destructive in its encouragement of religious division and demonization as well its curious inability to acknowledge religious dialogue and shared religious practices that have evolved through inter-religious contact. If Ms. Willis were to be told that the Christmas tree is a practice that has rich pagan roots, she might be nudged to reconsider her intolerance. Although factionalization and the rhetoric of religious and ethnic division has gained currency and publicity, Ms. Willis would do well to be reminded that religious practices neither developed in a vacuum, nor are they static: they are dynamic processes that have developed through intellectual exchange – polemic and violent as well as syncretic and peaceful – both within and with other faith communities.

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Kill or covert


"It's an incredibly violent video game… Sure, there is no blood. (The dead just fade off the screen.) But you are mowing down your enemy with a gun. It pushes a message of religious intolerance. You can either play for the 'good side' by trying to convert nonbelievers to your side or join the Antichrist." —Clark Stevens, co-director of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, speaking about the PC game Left Behind: Eternal Forces, in which players can convert or kill non-believers.

The game is based on the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which takes place in the apocalyptic post-Rapture world, in which Jesus has raised true believers in him to heaven while non-believers were left behind to face the Antichrist. Over 60 million copies of the books, which are ostensibly based on the Book of Revelations, have sold since 1996.

Those who play Left Behind: Eternal Forces may choose to join the Antichrist’s minions and play for his team, which includes fictional rock stars individuals with Arab and Muslim-sounding names.

Jeffrey Frichner, president of Left Behind Games, blithely dismissed accusations of racism and religious intolerance with the statement that, "Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ." The ramifications of being a non-believer in Frichner’s scheme, then, is that they ought to be slaughtered if they cannot be converted.

 

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