discourse. The historical study of the conflict between Confucianism and
Catholicism also expanded its concerns to include cross-cultural issues between
different religious traditions (Keum 1982).
Direct engagement with concrete issues helped refine the identity and
methods of the study of religions. One example is in the writing of the history
of Korean religion. No one denied that such a history needed to be more than
a recounting of each religion’s history. In a religious culture individual religions
and their complicated ethos overlap. Therefore, the history of religions should
not only recount the facts in detail but also interpret those phenomena. The
integration of historical and phenomenological approaches became inevitable.
It was natural, therefore, that serious efforts were made to seek an alternative.
One leading scholar, Yoon Yee-heum called his position a ‘middle range
perspective’ that aimed to overcome ‘theoretical provincialism’ (Yoon Y. 1986).
With this movement the problem of the identity of the study of religions
emerged once again. Some scholars disagreed with the insistence that the study
of religions should be a discipline that had a single method. They maintained
that the study of religions should be a field which utilized various methods
selectively. They argued that the identity of the study of religions should never
be determined by a specific methodology. Rather, the method should be deter-
mined by the subject that the researcher has selected. Therefore, methodology
related not only to ‘how to?’ but also to ‘why?’ However, they also maintained
that the study of religions should not be a ‘theology’ in terms of confessional
statements originating from devotion.
The issue of the ‘why, what, and how’ of the study of religions in the late
1970s and its discussion throughout the 1980s was related to an increasing
concern for religion and religious culture in the other related academic fields.
Most of all, political science, sociology, and anthropology took a keen interest
in religion in the rapidly changing Korean society. There were arguments about
reductionism. The study of religions tried to establish its own specific identity,
insisting on anti-reductionism as well as anti-dogmatism. However, those
arguments have diminished in recent times, and scholars have come to
acknowledge that, as far as reduction is not ontological but descriptive, it has
to be recognized as one possible perspective.
The establishment of departments of religious studies and research institutes
in universities was another reason for the rise of issues of identity. In addition
to Seoul National University and its Institute of Religious Studies (1989), there
appeared, among others: Sogang University (1981) and its Institute of Religious
Studies (1998, formerly the Institute of Religion and Theology, founded in
1984), the Academy of Korean Studies (1984), Hanshin University (1993) and
a section for the study of religious culture in its Humanities Research Center
(1999), and Catholic University (1994) and its Institute for the Study of
Humanities (1998, formerly the Research Institute of Religious Education,
founded in 1978). Each research institute publishes periodicals as follows:
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
CONTINENTAL EAST ASIA
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