Recent estimates suggest that up to 80 percent of the one and a half million ethnic Koreans in the United States are affiliated with Christianity. This simple statistic brings to light the strength of the Korean church in America and leads one to wonder about its history, its characteristics and place in the American religious milieu, and its relationship with the Christian church in Korea. David K. Yoo's Contentious Spirits, a historical monograph with a strong thematic structure, is an attempt to map the early history of Korean churches in the United States. The narrative begins with the Hawaiian sugarcane plantations of the early twentieth century, and ends in downtown Los Angeles at the end of World War II.
Through three sets of interpretative themes, Yoo argues that “religion provides the most important entry point to Korean America history” (4). His interrelated themes capture the fundamental nature of Korean-American churches, and portray with particular accuracy these churches' borderline status between Korea and the United States. The theme of religion and race reminds the reader of the racialization of the American religious landscape, shedding light on how race relations exerted a decisive influence on the stories of Korean-American Christians. Religious connections enabled many Korean Christians to arrive on American shores, find jobs, and establish communities; they nonetheless were subject to the workings of race in American society. The theme of migration and exile underscores the diaspora-like dimension of Korean-American experience. During most of the period Yoo writes of, Korea was a colony of Japan. Therefore, Korean Americans, according to Yoo, looked at themselves as the remnants of the occupied motherland and strove for Korean independence. The third theme of colonialism and independence reveals the double-edged function of American Protestantism. Yoo claims that American Protestantism served as the source of Korean-Americans' intense religious nationalism even as the underpinnings of Korean missions in Korea, Hawaii, and Southern California went hand-in-hand with American colonialism at home and abroad.
The chief strength of Contentious Spirits rests in its thematic structure. The aforementioned three themes nicely place the Korean-American Protestant experience in the broader landscape of non-white immigrant communities. So the book serves well as a case study of a relatively obscure segment of American society. Many of the book's findings reinforce the importance of religion in immigrant experience, the ambiguity of immigrant identity, and the role of race in American religion. The themes also guide readers safely through the complex paths of Korean-American religious experience, working almost like a guided tour to help readers visit some of the essential events and places.
The monograph might have been improved by comparing the experience of Korean Americans with that of other groups in whom the same themes have had resonance. Another thing to note is that the themes cause many of the monograph's narrative weaknesses. Interpretive frameworks are tools that allow generalization; the question then becomes how to make a good generalization (which is the art of any good historiography). When the interpretive themes overpower the historical narrative, this is not a sign of commendable generalization. Considering the limited scope and length of the book's narratives, the three themes of Contentious Spirits are almost compulsive; they emerge so often in the narrative that they become increasingly annoying, somewhat like the bossy voice of a GPS car navigation device. Participants of a tightly guided tour, like drivers using a GPS system, are destined to lose many details of the places they pass through. Therefore, the major strength of the book is also one of its serious problems.
David Yoo is no expert on Korean Protestantism. He shines when he deals with Korean America. But he falters as he recounts the situation in Korea, and is incorrect with many of his facts and assertions. For instance, the Nevius Plan, adopted only by the Presbyterian missionaries, was not a general cause of the advance of Protestantism in Korea, as Yoo suggests (24–25). Yoo apparently does not recognize that Cho Wan See (41) is the Korean name of George Heber Jones (36, 54, 86). The Independence Club, an umbrella organ of Korean progressives that included Neo-Confucianists and non-religious intellectuals as well as Christians, was not established by the students and graduates of a Christian school, and did not serve as a forum for religious nationalism (64). Syngman Rhee was not a Christian convert when he was active in the Independence Club (68); he also rarely expressed his religious convictions in public, and the evidence is insufficient to firmly assert that he was an embodiment of “religious nationalism” (79).
In many cases the author's difficulty comes from his use of secondary sources. He almost exclusively uses English-language materials written by Korean and American scholars. Many of these, of course, are fine studies. However, English-language materials contain many factual errors, primarily from the lack of cross-checking, and tend to appease the appetites and viewpoints of English-speaking readers. One of the most important claims of the book—that American Protestantism elicited Korean nationalism, and that Protestant Christianity was an unrivaled driving force of Korean nationalism—typically whets the appetite of the West. Yoo extensively quotes such sweeping assertions as “[almost] all national activities occurred in and around the Protestant religious community” (28) and “[national] identity formed the core of the history of the Protestant church in Korea” (29). These statements will be ridiculed by scholars in Korea. The dangerous impact of unsophisticated sources is also present in some of Yoo's own statements, in passages such as “the fight for Korea's independence relied on those in the United States” (105).
It is disappointing that a prestigious publisher like Stanford University Press was careless enough to leave several typos in the text. All in all, however, Contentious Spirits is a systematically framed, well-written, and clearly (albeit repetitively) argued monograph. Anybody interested in Korean American history and religion, immigrant religious communities, and religion and politics will find it informative and interesting.
