좌옹 윤치호의 종교경험과 종교론 : 종교현상학적 해석

Abstract

This essay examines Yun Chi-ho's religious experience and viewpoint by analyzing his writings in the 1920s and 1930s. In order to understand Yun as a homo religiosus (a religious person), a religious-phenomenology approach is applied in three aspects. First, previous researches on Yun have been biographical, insiders', or outsiders' approaches. ① The biographical approach makes him an apolitical figure or a hero. ② The insiders' approach, especially of Christian scholars, concentrates on Yun's positive contribution to Korean Christianity by defending his collaboration with Japanese colonialists. They mainly describe him as ‘a martyr', or ‘a victim'. ③ The outsiders' approach regards Yun as a political, social, or psychological figure. Therefore, we need a religious-phenomenological approach to understand Yun as a homo religiosus. Second, Yun's religious experiences have been analyzed in chronological order since his conversion to Christianity. His religious views under the influence of Confucian education changed from an exclusive position to an inclusive or pluralistic one. Encountering Eastern and Western civilizations in Korea, China, the United States, France, Yun paid more attention to practical and pragmatic ‘commitment' than to philosophical and theological ‘dogma.' As a lay theologian and Christian educator, he argues for gradual transformation instead of sudden conversion. Third, distinguishing religion from reason, Yun argues that a living faith should be based on common sense. Concerning the relationship between religion and ethnicity, he holds that religion cannot change the nature of ethnicity but the tradition of ethnicity. For example, before Christianity was introduced into Korea, the virtue of love had already existed in the nature of Korean people. In conclusion, Yun's religious viewpoint represents the interpretive creativity of Korean Christians, instead of their uncritical acceptance of the Western form of Christianity. We need both the thick study of Korean Christianity in the context of Korean religious history and the phenomenological study on mission and conversion as religious phenomena.