다문화 사회에서 기독교의 윤리적 과제

Abstract

Korea rapidly moves to multicultural society: economic globalization brings a huge influx of foreign workers into Korea; a large number of foreign women immigrated through international marriage; and the number of multicultural families is growing now more than ever. These factors diversify the racial, cultural homogeneity of Korean society. This paper is to investigate how the Korean church should respond to the social change in order to reconcile cultural differences and promote cultural diversity. Korea has been a racially and culturally homogeneous society for a long time and has a strong tendency to refuse the heterogeneous cultures. For this reason, today's process to multicultural society accompanies social problems such as cultural conflict, racial discrimination and xenophobia, and also causes economic injustice to foreign workers. The Korean Church have to take the ethical tasks to overcome socio-cultural problems in multicultural society, which would jeopardize and devitalize the country: The church community should develop the value system to pursue unity in diversity and promote the understanding of the cultural differences. Furthermore, positive actions should be taken to care for the unprivileged, cultural minority and welcome the foreign residents. In addition, the church have to develop the multicultural education seeking the coexistence of different cultures represented by the 'salad bowl' model in opposition to the ideology of assimilation. The multicultural education encourages foreign immigrants to retain their own cultural identity and integrity, and can change the diverse cultural resources into the positive energy to enrich the society.