No one aware of the disasters of the past will expect that religious studies
will continue to prosper without a struggle. The most important lesson from
the past century is that the flourishing of learning, including that of religious
studies, needs open, tolerant, and pluralist political and social circumstances.
A closed, suppressive, and monolithic society necessarily leads to the fall and
end of religious studies and of any form of learning. Therefore, scholars
responsible for learning ought to do their best to help establish a context in
which everyone has the right to publish his or her views. In the final analysis,
the formation of the circumstances that learning requires depends upon the
ideas and actions of the people as a whole, including scholars. At the beginning
of the twenty-first century, we can conclude that a bright future is waiting for
religious studies and true religion in China, if only scholars, as well as religious
and irreligious people, have the courage to use their own reason and act
accordingly.Korea
The strangeness of ‘religion’Until the late nineteenth century, there was no word for ‘religion’ (jongkyo,
) in Korean. What ‘religion’ implied was so strange that a new word had
to be invented. The only option available was to use the ‘new word’ from
Western culture. It was translated from Japanese and imported during the
period of ‘modernization’ (Chung 2006: 387–392).
That does not mean, however, that Koreans did not have any experience
of transcendence, the sacred, absoluteness, or mysteriousness—experiences
that were later included in ‘religion’. Seeking an ‘exit’ from existential
situations, Koreans devised various terms which implied the above concepts.
They also had a word for deity, conceived of as an omnipresent and omnipotent
creator (e.g. in general, Ha-neul-nim). Specific functional powers were also
treated as divine beings: nature gods, house gods, and so on. Ways of living
had been organized according to the norms governing relations between human
beings and deities. The ‘answer’ that people sought was described as releasing,
rescuing, unburdening, and overcoming (Pul-lim) (Chung 2003b: 169–173).
Koreans lived lives conscious of punishment and forgiveness, and they wanted
to obtain support and compassion from divine beings. However, no ‘system’
was formulated for these experiences. They constituted a life style or way of
living (Chung 1997: 23–32).
There were also ‘religions’ in Korea before there was the word ‘religion’.
From the third century CEthe Korean peninsula was pervaded by Con-1111
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