韓国系キリスト教会における国際結婚夫婦の信仰 - 宗教的プログラムの影響に注目して -

Abstract

This study explains the effect of religious organizations’ programs of active Christian churches in Japan operated mainly by people originally from the Korean Peninsula(Korean Churches) on the faith of international marriage couples. Previous studies on Korean Churches, they have been focused on religious programs and followers of the relationship between Korean Churches, however international marriage couples have been overlooked. Initially, the wives in the surveyed couples(Korean newcomer wife and Japanese husband) diligently practiced their religion at a church that was familiar with their language and customs while the husbands took part in the same church as peripheral believers accompanying their wives. However, after 2008, as the number of followers at the church decreased and the proportion of the group of permanent resident followers of Japan grew in comparison, the number of religious programs to fix Japanese speakers at the church increased. Under such circumstances, the husbands began participating in church activities of their own accord and began to target the way of faith of their wives. While some International marriage couples became central members of the church in this way, some couples switched to another church after prioritizing their marital relationship and religious hierarchical relationship over the sense of identification with a specific church. This study posits that while the church’s religious programs to fix Japanese speakers at the church seemed to activated participating in church among Japanese husbands and re-perceive the differences in religious practice between International marriage couples who follow Christianity in the point of view of faith, it can actually become a cause for both the husband and wife to leave the church.