The End of the Blessing Discourse－ The Korean Church Trapped in Prosperity Theology and the Conversion of Theology through Contemporary Korean Poetry

Abstract

This paper critically examines the theology of contemporary Korean Christianity, particularly the widespread internalization of prosperity theology that has developed in tandem with Korea’s rapid economic growth. Prosperity theology in Korea—interwoven with state nationalism, neoliberal capitalism, and industrial expansion—has distorted the gospel into a transactional logic of blessing, success, and upward mobility. In doing so, the Korean church has become an institutional mechanism captured by the ideologies of market capitalism, often endorsing hereditary succession, megachurch centralization, and clerical elitism, while suppressing the voices of the suffering, the poor, and the marginalized. The result is a profound ethical and theological collapse: a church that no longer serves as a moral voice in the public sphere but as a silent accomplice to systems of privilege and exclusion. This study seeks theological alternatives to this hegemonic structure through the lens of theopoetics, turning to modern Korean poetry as a site of theological resistance. Especially, the poems of Park Nohae and Kim Jiha function as theological texts that expose the idolatry of institutionalized religion and reclaim the radical message of the gospel. Kim Jiha’s poetry indicts the church as “an idol with a golden crown,” exposing its alliance with power, wealth, and authoritarianism, while reimagining Christ as a silent companion of the oppressed. Park Nohae’s poetics, rooted in labor, resistance, and the cry of the wounded, constructs a theological ethic grounded not in triumph, but in solidarity with those abandoned by systems of success. Rather than offering a sentimental critique, this paper articulates a theological turn—away from capitalist triumphalism and toward the painful language of suffering, memory, and resistance. Poetry becomes a medium to re-envision theology as confession, lament, and ethical protest. In an age where the church in Korea faces widespread criticism for dynastic succession, commercialized pilgrimage, spiritual commodification, and cultural complicity, this paper argues that a recovery of theopoetic imagination is not optional but urgent. Korean Christianity must rediscover its vocation—not in grandeur, but in the groanings of the broken.