Review of Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology

Another Amazon review, this time of Simon Chan's smashing new book on Grassroots Asian Theology (IVP, 2014). Simon Chan teaches systematic theology at Trinity Theological College in Singapore.

Hayao Miyazaki: in praise of air

Hayao Miyazaki! Lover of air, lover of the wind, lover of flight! Lover of human beings and umbrellas and flying machines! Lover of all that flies or that dreams of flight or that flies only in dreams! Of the four mythical elements, Tarkovsky made films out of Earth, Kubrick made them from Fire, Orson Welles from Water – but to you belongs the consummate artistry of Air.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

On the poisoned earth at the world's end, hope is the colour of blue: a girl's dress washed blue in blue blood, as blue as the hopeful sky.

Castle in the Sky (1986)
In my mind the flying castle had become so natural, so taken for granted, that when the girl in the blue dress levitated, when she floated on pure air, I was stunned. Only later did I remember that everything that passed before my eyes had been levitating, floating on pure air.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Standing in the rain at the bus stop with an umbrella in my hand, by the light of the street lamp I saw its feet, its big shy feet, and fell in love with a flying creature as strange as dreaming.

Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
The bakery, the broomstick, the black cat, the girl with the wind in her hair, the magic of small things: "We fly with our spirit."

Princess Mononoke (1997)
Gods and demons, wolves and blood, prostitutes and lepers. It all sounds perfectly regular, but in fact it is the strangest thing in the world: a Miyazaki film with no flying. Luckily there is a beheading, so my children liked it all the same.

Spirited Away (2001)
Of all the Disney children's horror films set in brothels, this is quite possibly the best.

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
I love you, old lovely wise young Sophie! I love you, Howl, you and your feathered wings, you and your generous lost heart! I love you, O wondrous ever-changing castle that creeps upon the earth! I love you, Turnip Head, magic scarecrow, you whose changeless face expresses more than symphonies!

Ponyo (2008)
After I watched it the first time, I hurried to put the children to bed and then sat down and watched it all again. It was midnight when it finished for the second time, and I leaned back in the darkness and thought: truly it takes magic and mermaids and flying things to show the ocean for what it really is.

The Wind Rises (2013)
Driving home from the cinema today I saw in the distance an aeroplane, an ordinary flying machine lumbering its way across the Sydney sky, and for just one second my heart thrilled as if at the sight of magic.

Shusaku Endo: Christ and Japan

The Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo – described by Graham Greene as one of the century's greatest writers – was always wrestling with the relation between Christianity and Japan. In an interview, he said:

"But after all it seems to me that Catholicism is not a solo, but a symphony. It fits, of course, man's sinless side, but unless a religion can find a place for man's sinful side in the ensemble, it is a false religion. If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan's mud swamp, it cannot be a true religion. What exactly this part is – that is what I want to find out" (cited in Emi Mase-Hasegawa, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo's Literary Works, 72).

Endo's 1966 novel Silence portrays the visit of a Portuguese Jesuit priest to Japan in the 17th century. In one scene, the priest looks out over a ruined village, and prays: "The village had been burnt to the ground; and its inhabitants had been completely dispersed. The sea and the land were silent as death; only the dull sound of the waves lapping against the boat broke the silence of the night. Why have you abandoned us so completely? he prayed in a weak voice. Even the village was constructed for you; and have you abandoned it in its ashes? ... Have you just remained silent like the darkness that surrounds me? Why? At least tell me why. We are not strong men like Job who was afflicted with leprosy as a trial. There is a limit to our endurance. Give us no more suffering. So he prayed. But the sea remained cold, and the darkness maintained its stubborn silence."

Essential anime for theologians

A guest-post by Steve Wright, a PhD student in Sydney – he recently introduced me (and my kids) to the incredibly rich and magical world of anime films, so I asked him for a post on the topic...

Anime is simply Japanese for "animation". These are a far cry from the Warner Bros. cartoons of your childhood. Grab some takoyaki and ramune (maybe some sake), set the language options to Japanese with English subtitles (avoid English dubs at all costs), and prepare to whisper in quiet amazement: "sugoi da na..."

• Howl's Moving Castle
• Paranoia Agent
• Tokyo Godfathers
• Tekkonkinkreet
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
• Ghost in the Shell
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Haibane Renmei
• Akira
• Grave of the Fireflies

On Korean theology, and Karl Barth's reception in Korea

Since moving to Sydney last year, one of the highlights has been my involvement with a number of Korean theology students. While my Korean students tend to be interested in studying the great western traditions – Calvin, Barth, Bonhoeffer – they have in turn sparked my own interest in the traditions of Korea. The deep reception of neo-Calvinist theology in Korea; the astonishing reverence for European traditions; the vehement debates over Barthian thought; the momentous efforts at theological indigenisation; the fierce struggle sparked by the suicide of Chun Tae-il (a devout Christian labourer who committed political suicide in 1970, setting himself on fire with the cry, “We are not machines!”) – all this I find profoundly absorbing, disorienting and affecting.

I’m especially fascinated by the relation between Karl Barth and Korean theology. Sung-Bum Yun (1916-1980), the only Korean theologian to study under Barth, became the leading advocate of theological indigenisation, and one of the country’s most controversial Christian figures. I’ve been reading about him lately, and trying to track down all his works that were translated into English. (I haven’t yet been able to find English copies of his Sung Theology or Korean Culture, Religion and Christianity – if anyone has access to these, please let me know!)

By all accounts, Sung-Bum Yun was a prodigiously energetic scholar: he translated a huge amount of German philosophy and theology into Korean, including Kant’s critiques (he was regarded as one of the country’s leading Kant authorities); he wrote books on Barth, St Paul, Confucianism, ethics, theological anthropology, and above all on Korean religion and culture. All his work appears to have been driven by an immense and highly creative commitment to Barthian christology.

In one of his books available in English, Ethics East and West (trans. Michael C. Kalton, 1977), he advances a stinging critique of western (Kantian) ethics, arguing instead that Korea’s deep Confucian heritage provides a better context for interpreting the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. Observing that Barth’s doctrine of freedom marks a decisive break with the western ethical tradition, he also argues for a striking resonance between Barthian ethics and a Confucian view of the communal, familial context of freedom. All of which leads Yun to his remarkable Barthian-Confucian theology of “filial piety”, where the relation between parent and child provides a frame for understanding all other human relationships and all human action.

There’s an extremely valuable analysis of all this in the excellent study by Young-Gwan Kim, Karl Barth’s Reception in Korea: Focusing on Ecclesiology in Relation to Korean Christian Thought (Peter Lang 2003). Kim provides a broad account of the institutional and denominational contexts of Barth’s reception in Korea. He argues that the distinctiveness of Korean Barth-reception has much to do with the culture’s deep Confucian heritage, and with the intimate connection between Confucianism and the rise of Christianity in Korea. (It was Confucian scholars who first translated the Bible into Korean: Confucianism is already entwined with the roots of Korean Christianity.) After tracing the broad history of Barth’s reception in Korea, Kim provides an extensive analysis (pp. 225-324) of the work of Sung-Bum Yun. Although he is critical of Yun’s tendency towards philosophical abstraction (it becomes hard to see where the salvation-event fits into his elaborate system of Tao, jen, and filial piety), he concludes: “we cannot deny Yun’s insistence that Korean Christianity is strikingly a Confucian-influenced Christianity and that therefore the indigenization of Karl Barth’s theology within the Korean Confucian context is a viable theological enterprise” (p. 324).

Of course none of this is as easy as it sounds, since even today a huge number of Korean pastors and theologians view Barth’s theology as a dangerous “liberal” deviation from Calvinist orthodoxy. Young-Gwan Kim’s study doesn’t go into much detail about this Calvinist context of Korean theology; but I think it’s one of the most fascinating aspects of Korean Barth-reception. Protestant liberalism has never taken root in Korea, and this fact alone has a decisive influence on the way Barth’s work is read and received. It helps to explain why Barth’s avowedly anti-liberal theology could be condemned as a “liberal” threat by so many Korean theologians and institutions. (For a fascinating study of this, see the online dissertation by Jung Suck Rhee, which focuses on Barth’s polarising effects in Korean theology.) It also helps to explain the importance of Sung-Bum Yun’s insistence on indigenisation: where the questions and problems that Barth himself was addressing are simply absent from an entire cultural milieu, it becomes impossible to adhere to Barth’s intentions or to the letter of his text. Instead one can only wrest his work from its original setting, in order to use it selectively as part of one's own cultural and theological excavations.

But this interpretive freedom comes with its own considerable risks: one sees this in Japan, where an ostensibly Barthian theology of revelation was used not to critique but to justify nationalism and the imperial cult (see Thomas Hastings, Practical Theology and the One Body of Christ). And one also sees the risk when Yun's philosophico-cultural theology seems to eliminate any need for a saving event in history – or, to put it another way, to eliminate the theological significance of Jesus' Jewishness.

OK, since I'm rounding up my own recent reading, here's a few more quick notes on Korean theology:

I haven’t said much here about minjung theology, surely the most celebrated development in recent Korean theology. But it’s worth noting in passing that minjung theology also takes Barthian theology as one of its points of departure. Paul S. Chung has done a lot of good work in this area. In his recent book, Karl Barth: God's Word in Action (James Clarke, 2008), Chung closes with a valuable chapter on Barth’s “unfinished project for religious pluralism”, including a discussion of Barth’s relation to Buddhism and to Korean minjung theology. And there’s plenty more to be learned about minjung theology in Volker Küster’s new book, A Protestant Theology of Passion: Korean Minjung Theology Revisited (Brill 2010).

For some recent developments in the indigenisation of theology, I’d also recommend Jung Sun Oh’s book, A Korean Theology of Human Nature: With Special Attention to the Works of Robert Cummings Neville and Tu Wei-ming (2005), which develops a Confucian theology of filial piety – it's not as arresting or original as Sung-Bum Yun's theology, but an interesting proposal nonethelesss. And Andrew Sung Park’s new book, Triune Atonement: Christ’s Healing for Sinners, Victims, and the Whole Creation (WJK 2009) weaves together classical atonement theology with the Korean concept of han, arguing that Christ’s atonement also includes the redemption of nature and animals from human oppression.

On a broader note, I also enjoyed Mark Noll’s broad sketch of Korean evangelical history in The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (IVP 2009). Noll draws attention to a number of striking parallels between American and Korean church history. Amidst many similarities (revivalism, individualism, openness to modernisation, involvement in mission, etc.), he observes in passing that “the American churches have never known a diaspora such as the Korean churches have experienced over the last fifty years” (p. 162). It's a good point – and I wonder whether this difference is far more crucial, more formative of Korean Christian identity, than Noll seems to credit.

Church Dogmatics in Korean

A quick question: Do any of you learned readers know about the Korean edition of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics? I want to get the full set for our college library, but so far we’ve only been able to track down a handful of volumes. I’m assuming the full work has been translated into Korean – does anyone know about this? And does anyone know where the full set can be ordered?

Three books on global theology

William A. Dyrness and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, eds. Global Dictionary of Theology (IVP 2008), 996 pp.

Vinoth Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World (IVP 2008), 296 pp.

Douglas A. Hicks and Mark Valeri, eds. Global Neighbors: Christian Faith and Moral Obligation in Today’s Economy (Eerdmans 2008), 276 pp.

For several years now, IVP has been raising the bar for theological and biblical reference works – most notably with their remarkable series of black dictionaries. Their latest offering, the Global Dictionary of Theology, is another exemplary reference work and a first-rate resource for students and teachers of theology. The book provides an up-to-date picture of how theology is being practised today on every continent and in numerous different national and ethnic contexts.

Generally speaking, the editors have avoided smaller entries, and have devoted the volume to extended, substantive articles on major themes. In many cases, there are multiple authors for a single entry, so that the volume represents some lively debate and discussion. For example, the entry on “Capitalism” (pp. 127-33) includes a critical section written by a Spanish theologian (and it’s good stuff too: “capitalism does not merely represent a structural sin, but the global and imperial configuration of the basic structures of Adamic sin…. This then means that all authentic proclamation of the gospel is always a direct challenge to capitalism”), coupled with a somewhat more sympathetic treatment written by an American. Again, the excellent entry on “Christology” (pp. 167-86) features an wide-ranging introductory section by Kärkkäinen, followed by an extended account of the new contextual christologies by J. Levison and P. Pope-Levison. And although most African nations are grouped together as “African theologies,” there are excellent separate entries on evangelical, Protestant and Catholic African theologies, as well as on traditional African religions.

In addition to the many national and ethnic entries, one also finds fascinating perspectives on themes as diverse as aesthetics, human rights, healing and deliverance, music, missionary movements, theological education, theology of work, and relief and development.

Of course, “global theology” is an unwieldy topic, and the book reflects some interesting methodological decisions about what counts as “global.” For example, the entry on “Australian theology” (written by a very promising young Pentecostal theologian) discusses the theological importance of Aboriginal history and spirituality in Australia, as well as the function of (mythical) Aussie identity-markers like “mateship” and “the fair go.” It may be true that “various scholars have sought to theologize … the broader metaphorical meanings” of such identity-markers – but such theologising would hardly represent the daily concerns of most practising Australian theologians; and this focus on the idiosyncratic features of Australian theology hardly gives the reader an impression of the broad landscape of theological work in this country, or of the main lines of division between the country’s dominant theological styles.

Don’t misunderstand me: the entry on Australia is interesting and informative, and I’m drawing attention to it only because of my own familiarity with this particular “global” context. But I think the questions raised here are important methodological questions for any account of global theology. Even if such an account is motivated by postcolonial sensitivities and by a desire to move beyond the narrow dominance of European theologies, one might also ask whether a certain (more refined) imperialism is at work in the endeavour to isolate and analyse the most exotic and idiosyncratic features of a particular theological context. 

I once heard of a Karl Barth conference that was held in Germany several years ago. The conference organisers had invited a Japanese theologian to participate, but they were somewhat dismayed to find that their Japanese scholar had no interest in theologising his own national context – he was entirely preoccupied with the questions and problems of modern German thought! Presumably the conference organisers had expected their guest to provide a more exotic “oriental” perspective.

The editors of this volume report a similar problem, where contributors had failed to provide adequately idiosyncratic accounts of their particular contexts: “A further challenge that was in some ways surprising was the number of scholars from the Global South who tended to do theology in the manner of their Northern teachers. Occasionally, entries drafted by theologians from Asia, Africa and Latin America did not differ significantly from entries that would have been written by their European or North American counterparts…. Who is going to do authentically Asian, African or Hispanic theology if not theologians from those particular locations?” (p. xi). Here, the norm of theological “authenticity” has apparently already been settled in advance; an African theologian who wants to talk about European intellectual problems is simply not African enough!

These observations are intended more as broad methodological questions than as a critique of the Global Dictionary of Theology. On the whole, the volume is in fact exemplary in this respect: the editors have tried to avoid an imperialistic tyranny of the exotic, especially by representing not only liberal/progressive voices, but also evangelical, Pentecostal and conservative Catholic perspectives. For example, the entry on Korean theology rightly emphasises the central importance of Calvinist and Reformed traditions, so that a Princeton theologian like Sang Hyan Lee should be viewed as a major representative of contemporary Korean theology.

The broader methodological questions which I’ve been raising are taken up very ably in Subverting Global Myths, by the Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra. The book offers a series of critical theological interventions in a range of contemporary public issues, such as terrorism, religious violence, human rights and multiculturalism. Underpinning the book is an analysis of the function of myth and idolatry in contemporary public life: “What frightens a people serves as a reliable guide to their idolatries. Idols are sustained by myths – public, large-scale narratives that engage our imaginations and shape the way we experience the world” (p. 12). The chapters on multiculturalism and postcolonialism are especially good; since it connects with my earlier remarks, let me just focus here on Ramachandra’s analysis of postcolonialism.

Ramachandra notes that, ironically, postcolonial criticism often mirrors the hermeneutical violence of colonialism: the scholar exercises theological judgment according to a set of preconceived liberal norms, and then “paradoxically wields the secularist liberal worldview of the academy (itself part of the colonial legacy) to outlaw all other theological voices” (p. 256). Further, he notes the “curious selectivity” with which “Third World theology” is represented in scholarly work – here’s an extended quote:

“Asian theologies are taken to be theologies addressing what is called, in typical Orientalist fashion, the Asian context; and the latter is reduced to poverty, women’s empowerment and the presence of ancient world religions…. Western theologians feel free to write on such ‘Asian issues,’ but Asian theologians who address other issues within their churches (e.g. healing, ethnic fragmentation, ecclesiastical politics, responding to persecution) or global issues (e.g. postmodernism, genetic technology, evolutionism, the internet) tend to be marginalized…. Moreover, only if one were to espouse the typical Western secular liberal agenda … can one acquire the status of being a ‘progressive’ theologian. Hence the huge gulf between those who profess to speak for the Third World church and the Third World church itself” (pp. 255-56).

Ramachandra’s incisive critique deserves sober reflection. His book is a serious and passionate piece of public theology, and it makes for gripping and compelling reading.

Finally, let me also point out Eerdmans’ new collection of essays, Global Neighbours. The essays here offer theological and ethical reflections on the shape of Christian life within a global economy. One of the book’s central points is
that a free-market economy is not a morally neutral system; it is itself underpinned by a cluster of moral and theological assumptions. That’s not to say that the authors provide any deep critique of capitalist economy – their aim is to contribute to public debate, so the result is a very practical and pragmatic book about the complexity of moral decisions in a global economy. 

The contributors even include business experts: this immediately raised my suspicions, but I’m happy to report that one of the book’s most interesting and engaging essays (Chapter 6, “Free Markets and the Reign of God”) is by a business expert rather than a theologian. (Unlike some theologians, this author is very honest about the moral conflicts involved in seemingly simple business decisions.)

I suppose it is the book’s “public” and pragmatic tone that leaves me finally feeling unsatisfied with its proposals. For example, I scarcely feel that the theological critique runs deep enough when an essay on U2’s activism concludes: “Bono as celebrity leader makes a notable contribution that stands as a challenge to citizens to press our political leaders into doing their part” (p. 62); or when another author remarks: “If our government is failing us, it is because we are failing as citizens to shape a government that expresses these values” (p. 247).

It seems to me that both these quotes point to a significant gap in the volume’s theological agenda: the absence of ecclesiology, of a Christian community whose own practices might open up an alternative economic space. Such a community would function not as a political lobby aiming to implement particular moral-economic “values”, but as a public witness to the economy of grace that has appeared in Jesus Christ and that is given in the eucharist.

So on that note, I should end this long and meandering review by pointing you to still one more book – William Cavanaugh’s delightful work, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Eerdmans, 2008). Although I think some of Cavanaugh’s practical suggestions are too simple, his book nevertheless models the best kind of response to our global free-market economy: not an attempt to lobby or influence existing political structures, but an exercise in theological imagination, in which the world and the church are re-imagined together under the light of the gospel.

Censoring F&T

Speaking of politics and democracy, a friend of mine was in China a couple of weeks ago, and he informed me that F&T is a blocked site within the People’s Republic of China. I was flattered, of course. But perhaps the Chinese government is unaware of the numerous practical and material benefits of F&T – as illustrated below:

Meehyun Chung: Breaking Silence

Meehyun Chung, ed., Breaking Silence: Theology from Asian Women (Delhi: ISPCK/EATWOT, 2006), 171 pp.

The Korean theologian Meehyun Chung (whom I have posted about here and here) kindy sent me a copy of her new book, Breaking Silence (jointly published by ISPCK and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians). The volume brings together ten new essays by feminist theologians from India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Thailand.

There are some interesting and insightful essays here. In a challenging paper entitled “Beyond Right and Wrong: An Alternative Path to Liberation” (chapter 9), Rose Wu discusses sexual ethics in Hong Kong, and argues (against conservative ethics) that we must “see a different image of God who is strange and new to us as Christians” (p. 151). Pauline Chakkalakal’s discussion, “Mary of Nazareth: An Indian Feminist Theological Perspective” (chapter 2), offers an Indian woman’s perspective on the traditional portrait of Mary “as a pious, docile maiden, symbol of passivity and humility” (p. 30). And Satoko Yamaguchi’s “Christian Feminist Theology in Japan” (chapter 3) discusses the biblical depiction of the “Fatherhood” of God, and observes that “Jesus expresses [God] as ‘Father’ in such a way that would undermine patriarchal social structures from the bottom” (p. 55).

The most important point, however, is raised by Meehyun Chung, in her essay on Korean feminist theology (chapter 5). Here, she offers a timely caution to feminist theology – and the caution applies equally to other contemporary theological approaches: “The experiences of women … must be acknowledged and recognized, but not made into something absolute or advanced as a yardstick for good theology. When human … experiences and feelings are idealized in theology, or made absolute, then the happenings of the cross and resurrection of Christ are weakened and made relative…. This is what happened with the cultural Protestantism of the nineteenth century, which was the ideological background of the expansion of Protestantism and the colonial domination of the West in the name of mission. It was the experience of Western men that was idealized and made into something absolute” (pp. 87-88).

Meehyun Chung’s point here is an urgent one: contemporary theologies need to be more radical – more alert to the function of ideologies – if they are to avoid falling into precisely the kind of ideological absolutism that they are trying to overcome. Theology can and should be carried out from a diversity of social and cultural perspectives – but it is the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection, not these perspectives as such, that constitutes the ground and theme of theological reflection.

Interview with Meehyun Chung, recipient of the Karl Barth Prize

As mentioned earlier, the Korean pastor and theologian Meehyun Chung recently became the first woman to receive the Karl Barth Prize. Meehyun Chung did her doctoral work in Basel on the relationship between Barth and Korean theology, and her dissertation was published as Karl Barth, Josef Lukl Hromádka, Korea (1995). She now works as head of the Women and Gender Division at Mission 21 in Basel.

I caught up with her for an interview (translated here from German) about Barth, Korea, and women in the church.

BM: Meehyun Chung, congratulations on receiving the prestigious Karl Barth Prize this year.

MC: Thank you very much.

BM: In your doctoral work, what were your own conclusions about the relationship between Karl Barth and Korean theology?

MC: Most of the Protestant churches in Korea are Presbyterian. In reviewing the Swiss Reformation, Reformed identity and the development of Reformed tradition in Barth’s theology, I adopted the Barthian approach in the context of Korean theology. In this way, I underlined the social component of theology (over against both fundamentalism and nineteenth-century liberalism). In addition, in Barth’s position during the cold war period I found an impulse for the theology of reunification in Korea.

BM: And how did you get involved with Mission 21 in Switzerland?

MC: Since I had studied in Basel, I already knew about Basel Mission (reorganised in 2001 as Mission 21). At that time, Basel Mission had shown solidarity with the Korean church during the politically difficult time in Korea. So I was already in contact with Basel Mission. Later, I was kindly informed of the Mission’s advertised position, and I was encouraged to bring a woman’s voice from the south to attention here in Europe. And so I came to Basel for the second time in my life.

BM: What does your current work at Mission 21 involve?

MC: Three main things: (1) To strengthen theology from a woman’s perspective in our partner countries, and to bring the voice of women to attention here. (2) To promote women’s networks in our partner churches and organisations, especially by providing information in the Women’s Letter and by providing a special fund for the promotion of women. (3) Gender mainstreaming: to support gender as a transversal subject in all of Mission 21’s programmes and projects.

BM: Do you think Karl Barth’s theology offers resources for the contemporary struggle to improve the place of women in the church?

MC: Not directly. But nor does feminist theology help directly in this struggle. The important thing is the way Barth’s theology took the church so seriously (cf. his change in 1931 from Christian Dogmatics to Church Dogmatics). Feminist theology could and should also take seriously this aspect and impulse of Barth’s theology. In my opinion, contemporary feminist theology around the world has tended to neglect ecclesial things. Feminist theology has achieved various things in the academic sphere, but the voice of women in the church has not actually been accepted – or rather, feminist theology has neglected the everyday voice of women in the church. So I think there are different aspects of Barth’s theology that could be taken into consideration in the discourse of feminist theology. Above all, gender equality in the church could be developed further.

BM: Meehyun Chung, thank you very much for your time. I wish you all the best for your continuing work and ministry.

MC: Many thanks. It was my great pleasure.

Karl Barth Prize: Meehyun Chung

Meehyun Chung, a Korean theologian and pastor, has become the first woman to win the prestigious Karl Barth Prize. Established by the German Evangelical Church in 1986, the Prize (including 10,000 Euro) is normally awarded every two years.

Meehyun Chung did her doctorate in Basel on the relationship between Barth and Korean theology, and her dissertation was later published as Karl Barth, Josef Lukl Hromádka, Korea (Berlin: Alektor-Verlag, 1995). An ordained Presbyterian minister, she now works for Mission 21 in Basel, as head of the Women and Gender Project. This Project aims to improve the position of women in the church and to increase awareness of gender equality.

Other recipients of the Karl Barth Prize have included Eberhard Jüngel (1988), Hans Küng (1992), Karl Cardinal Lehmann (1994), Bruce McCormack (1998), John de Gruchy (2000), Kurt Marti (2002), and Johannes Rau (2005).

A Korean shijo poem

A shadow is reflected in the water:
a monk is crossing the bridge.
Monk, stay a moment; let me ask you where
you're going?
Stick pointed
at white clouds, he passes without a backward glance.

—A poem by Chong Ch'ol (1536-93), in Shijo Rhythms, trans. Kevin O'Rourke (Seoul: Eastward, 2001), p. 57.

Quote of the day

behind summer
behind the evening sun
behind sadness,
there must surely
be angels

—Kuriki Kyoko, "Behind Summer," in Natsu No Ushiro / Behind Summer: Japanese Tanka Poems (Charnwood: Ginninderra Press, 2005), p. 60.