목회자 납세논란을 통해 본 교회의 공공성

Abstract

Nowadays, taxation on pastors is one of hot issues in Korea. Some people blame pastors as an immoral man who refuse tax-paying. Moreover, some broadcasting company reported the issue as a scandal of church through their special program. Especially, many Koreans tend to misunderstand pastors and Christians as immoral and egoistic. Of course, there are some moral issues on pastor’s tax, including justice of taxation, international practices of taxation, etc. But, from the perspective of social ethics, the issue is not the personal or moral problem of pastors but the problems of Korean tradition of taxation and social policy. According to Reinhold Niebuhr, social problems must be approached through a social method including policy or system on social issues. So, this paper focused on the problem of social policy and institutional factors around the taxation on pastors. On this base, this paper studied the ethical meaning and task for moral maturity of Korea church. In fact, because of pastor’s tax-free tradition of Korea, there were no questions on pastor’s civic duty, especially on income tax. But social shift to civil society calls into a moral question on civic duties and morality of pastors. And the core demand of Korea civil society is church’s change to be more public. In this context, this paper has deep concerns about ‘public theology’ of Max L. Stackhouse. He proposed the idea of public theology which overcome the privatization of Christian faith. In this context, this paper focused on public theology also.Now, this paper concluded that Korea church and pastors has the possibility of ethical maturity in Korea civil society through public concern. Especially, in public theology, Christian have already the possibility and ability to be public. Therefore, public concern and practice for ethical maturity of Korea church must be the most meaningful solution of moral challenge in critical times.