Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:35:12.896Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building a City on a Hill in Korea: The Work of Henry G. Appenzeller

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Daniel M. Davies
Daniel M. Davies
Affiliation:
professor of history and philosophy in the University of Maryland: Korea Branch and adjunct professor of religious studies in Sung Hwa University, Chun an, Korea.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Henry Gerhard Appenzeller (1858–1902)—along with Horace N. Allen, Horace G. Underwood, William B. Scranton, and Marion F. Scranton— pioneered Protestantism in Korea at the turn of the nineteenth century from about 1885 to 1902. Appenzeller intended to convert Koreans to Methodism, to establish Methodist societies, to reform Korean society in agreement with American Protestant evangelical teachings, and, finally, to help Korea become independent, democratic, and modernized, using the United States as a model. Appenzeller's commitment to “convert the heathen” and to reform Korean society along American Protestant Evangelical lines is easy to understand. But why the commitment to Korean independence, democratic reform, and modernization? Why did a pietistic, evangelical Protestant missionary place political concerns on a par with evangelical concerns in Korea? Appenzeller, and the rest of the small American community in Korea during the late nineteenth century, brought along the partially articulated, partially unconscious agenda to build the late nineteenth-century American evangelical Protestant vision of the City on a Hill. Appenzeller attempted to create a Christian Korea in a manner similar to late nineteenthcentury Protestant efforts to create a Christian America. Appenzeller's concept of a City on a Hill provides the key to understanding his commitment to independence, democracy, and modernization in Korea. Citizens had to hold the evangelical Protestant faith. They had to have Anglo-Saxon manners and customs. They had to live morally. The nation had to maintain independence from foreign powers, maintain a democratic form of government, and enjoy the benefits of modernization. We will consider the development of that vision in American history below.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 422 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Hunt, Everett N. Jr, Protestant Pioneers in Korea (Maryknoll, N.Y., 1980);Google ScholarDavies, Daniel M., The Thought and Life of Henry Gerhard Appenzeller (1858–1902): Missionary to Korea (Lewiston, N.Y., 1988).Google Scholar

2. Marsden, George M., Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1991);Google ScholarJordan, Philip D., The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, 1847–1900 (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

3. I am indebted to Handy, Robert T. for his ideas presented in A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York, 1971), and for critically reading a preliminary draft of this paper.Google Scholar

4. In Korea, Appenzeller pursued goals of the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, set forth in the minutes of the 1879 Philadelphia Annual Conference. Davies, , Appenzeller, pp. 27–31.Google Scholar

5. May, Henry F., Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1949);Google ScholarCarter, Paul, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (Dekalb, Ill., 1972).Google ScholarThe name, Gilded Age, came from a book by Twain, Mark and Warner, Charles D., The Gilded Age (1876), ridiculing the era of President Ulysses Grant.Google Scholar

6. McLoughlin, William G., Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (Chicago, 1978).Google Scholar

7. Miller, Perry, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).Google Scholar

8. Mead, Sidney E., The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

9. Hutchison, William R., Errand to the World (Chicago, 1987).Google Scholar

10. Latourette, K. S., The Great Century, 1800–1914, vols. 4–6 of A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 vols. (New York, 1938–1946).Google Scholar

11. Appenzeller, Henry G. (hereafter cited HGA), “The Power of the Cross” (Sermon first preached at the Grace Reformed Church, Philadelphia, Pa., 1 10 1883), Union Theological Seminary Archives, The Henry G. Appenzeller Papers, #109. Unless otherwise noted, all references to Appenzeller's documents are to papers in the Union collection.Google Scholar

12. Hutchison, William R., The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

13. HGA, “The Treasure in Earthen Vessels” (Sermon first preached, Union Church, Paichai Chapel, Seoul, 3 February 1889), #127.Google Scholar

14. HGA, “The Gathering of the Saints” (Sermon first preached, Union Church, Paichai Chapel, Seoul, 1890), #130.Google Scholar

15. Miller, Perry, The Mew England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York, 1939);Google Scholaridem., Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1933);Google Scholaridem. and Johnson, Thomas H., eds., The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings, rev. ed. (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

16. I am indebted to DrRuth, John, Fox, Jack (president of the Hilltown Historical Society), and Gerhart, Ross for cultural and political background on Hilltownship, HGA's hometown region.Google Scholar

17. Lew, Young-ick, Studies on the Kabo Reform Movement, 1894–1896 (Seoul, 1990);Google ScholarLee, Ki-baik et al. , Korea Old and New: A History (Seoul, 1990).Google Scholar

18. I am grateful to DrLeim, Channing, author of The First Korean-American—A Forgotten Hero: Philip Jaisohn (Seoul, 1984) for information on Philip Jaisohn.Google Scholar

19. Kojong proclaimed himself emperor in 08 1897.Google Scholar

20. I am grateful to DrRhee, In-soo, the adopted son of Rhee, Syngman, for generously providing information on his father. Syngman Rhee, Japan Inside Out (New York, 1941);Google ScholarOliver, Robert T., Syngman Rhee: The Man Behind the Myth (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

21. HGA, “The King at the Russian Legation,” Korean Repository (1896): 81 (hereafter cited as KR).Google Scholar

22. HGA, “Reaction,” KR 3 (1896): 334–336.Google Scholar

23. HGA, KR 4 (1897): 468–471.Google Scholar

24. HGA to Allen, Horace N., 5 and 6 January 1898, #3:85–89.Google Scholar

25. HGA, “The Deer Island Episode,” KR 6 (1898): 109–113;Google ScholarHGA, “Right About Face,” KR 6 (1898): 113–117.Google Scholar

26. Liem, , Jaisohn, pp. 180–204.Google Scholar

27. Scranton, William B., Superintendent's Report, 14th Annual Meeting of the Korea Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church 1898 (Seoul, 1898), p. 24;Google ScholarHGA to Scranton, William, 10 May 1898, #13:457.Google Scholar

28. For correspondence dealing with the sale of the Independent Press see Letter copybooks #11 and #14.Google Scholar

29. May, Henry F., The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

30. The division of Korea occurred with the entry of Soviet forces into the Korean peninsula from the north on 12 August 1945 and United States forces from the south 8 September 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union arbitrarily divided Korea at the thirty-eighth parallel, each nation responsible for accepting surrender of the Japanese within their region. Tragically, that line of division continues today. The division occurred from the Soviet Union's decision to communize above the thirty-eighth parallel rather than from an agreement at Yalta or Potsdam. Burns, James MacGregor, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York, 1970), pp. 573–575.Google Scholar

31. Kojong gained important information about the United States from the first Korean embassy to America in 1883. Noble, Harold J., “The Korean Mission to the United States in 1883,” Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch Transaction 18 (1929): 2–21.Google Scholar

32. Historians have termed the drive to settle the North American continent “Manifest Destiny.” The United States struggled with the Native Americans, Britain, Canada, France, Mexico, Spain, and Russia in the New World to fulfill that “divine commission.” Josiah Strong, author of Our Country, spoke to an eager audience about the divine commission of the United States to settle the North American continent and bring the Kingdom of God to the world. The fundamental notion of the United States destined to serve as a beacon, a light, a City on a Hill for the rest of the world drove the Progressives, consciously and unconsciously. Some notable American Progressives were Lodge, Henry Cabot, Roosevelt, Theodore, Hay, John, Beveridge, Senator Albert J., Reid, Whitelaw (editor of the New York Tribune), and naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan. Josiah Strong, Expansion Under New World Conditions (New York, 1900);Google ScholarHutchison, William R., “A Moral Equivalent for Imperialism: Americans and the Promotion of ‘Christian Civilization,’” in Cristensen, Torben and Hutchison, William R., eds., Missionary Ideologies in the Imperialist Era: 1880–1920 (Denmark, 1982) pp. 167–178;Google ScholarMackenzie, Kenneth M., the Robe and the Sword: The Methodist Church and the Rise of American Imperialism (Washington, D.C., 1961).Google Scholar