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A Critical Reading of Korean Church as a Space and a Process of Creating Cracks: A Christian Ethical Study on a Space of Violence and Control

  • The Korean Journal of Chiristian Social Ethics
  • Abbr : 기사윤
  • 2013, (27), pp.237-274
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Christian Social Ethics
  • Research Area : Humanities > Christian Theology

WooYoung Park 1

1협성대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

We can easily find some spaces that strengthen instrumental effectiveness rather than human dignity, ‘success myths’ of capitalism, and hierarchical social orders in Korea. When we try to critically read multiple and deep contradictions of these spaces, we could make some chasms in them and differently arrange and create new types of spaces. For spaces could make a great effect on those who live there in terms of their ways of life and knowledge. If we mainly experience some spaces that make us accept one-sided and uniformed ways of life, it can be a space of control and violence in our lives. Henri Lefebvre defines space as a product that does not mean just an object but a globality, that is, a second environment. It means that a space as a product can function as a context for another process of space-making. And it can be related to opening a reciprocal relationship in new spaces. For him, thus, space is not only a product but also a productive action itself. Space is not just a space of control and violence but also a dynamic space for solidarity, communication, and even deterritorialization when different and heterogeneous components are connected to pre-existed spaces. And space also includes bodies inside itself. They can be moral agents who can raise critical questions inside the spaces and make new movements toward a more humane society. Their critical reading of spaces can reposition different relationships around themselves and reset themselves in the world as a process of being in the world by being against ‘device paradigm’ and continually making self-criticism based on their moral communities. All these processes are based on a theological concept of church as a cosmic body of Christ or as an earth community. When church can be a communal source for aresistance against social evils that make a humane life impossible, church can be claimed as a ‘sacred space.’ The point is not about space as a being but as a change of usage of it. That will be a continual process of making new relations in the church.

Citation status

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