Shamanistic Influences In Korean Pentecostal Christianity: An Analysis

Conclusions

Spring 2000

By Jeremy Reynalds

Based upon his research, the author has concluded that there is a definite relationship between shamanism and the success enjoyed by Paul Yonggi-Cho in his Yoido Full Gospel Church.

While those who are unfavorably predisposed toward Cho think of him as being nothing more than a Korean shamanist, even those who are sympathetic toward his work acknowledge shamanistic elements.

What it (indigenization of shamanistic elements) has enabled him to do is to speak to a broader constituency and in a sense reel them in ... What he is doing is connecting with these people and helping them to move from that conjuring culture in which divination takes place apart from God and brings them into a charismatic experience which is very directly in relation to God (Robeck, interview with the author, 2000).

Young Hoon Lee, (whose scholarly work this researcher has referred to earlier in this paper) says that Cho attempts to be on guard against Shamanistic infiltration into his ministry; especially in relationship to healing.

However, Lee adds that if there is any Shamanistic element in Cho's influence on the availability of healing, it is not his fault. He says the blame should be laid where it belongs - at the feet of the people. "Many people are not interested in whether healing is Biblical or not - they are only concerned about healing itself" (Lee 1996).

Lee does point out that with such an alleged propensity to seek healing than there is an additional responsibility placed upon Pentecostal churches to properly guide and educate their people with correct doctrine (Lee 1996).

Based upon the material contained in his book The Fourth Dimension, Cho does not appear to be doing that. In a section specifically discussing the "fourth dimension" Cho discusses why devotees of many other belief systems outside Christianity are healed of physical diseases.

God gave power to human beings to control the material world and to have dominion over material things, a responsibility they can carry out through the fourth dimension [their inner spiritual being]. Now unbelievers, by developing their inner spiritual being in such a way can carry out dominion upon their third dimension, which includes their physical sicknesses and diseases ... Jesus is bound to what you speak forth ... As well as you can release Jesus' power through your spoken word, you can also create the presence of Christ. If you do not speak the word of faith clearly, Christ can never be released ... You create the presence of Jesus with your mouth. If you speak about salvation, the saving Jesus appears. If you speak about divine healing, then you will have the healing Christ in your congregation. If you speak the miracle performing Jesus, then the presence of the miracle performing Jesus is released. He is bound by your lips and your words. He is depending on you ... (Cho 1979: 40, 81-82).

Understandably in light of material like that quoted above, one scholar questions whether Cho is guiding his people with correct doctrine. In his doctoral dissertation for Bob Jones University, Christian Wei, says there are serious problems with Cho's doctrine of Christ, his doctrine of sin, his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, his doctrine of man, and his doctrine of angels. In fairness to Cho, it is important to point out that as a graduate of Bob Jones University, Wei is a dogmatic cessasionist and many times writes in more of a polemic fashion against Cho than as a scholar trying to investigate a hypothesis.

However, Wei does have some concerns which appear to be validated by the material contained in Cho's book The Fourth Dimension. Wei writes: When he (Cho) insists that God's will for His children is prosperity and health, he disregards the clear Scriptural teaching regarding Christian suffering and contentment. By emphasizing health, he overlooks three factors: first, reality shows that many good Christians do suffer sicknesses; second, church history supports the view that God's will for His people is not always health; and finally, Scripture teaches the fact that God does not always heal. Cho organizes his teaching around a man-centered theology when he asserts that man cannot do anything unless God cooperates with Him. Thus, he seriously undermines God's sovereign will, power and position.

It appears beyond dispute that in an attempt to introduce a heavily shamanistic culture to the claims of Christ that Cho has attempted to "redeem" some of the elements of Shamanism. Because Yonggi Cho's prosperity gospel of prosperity, health and a problem-free life is so similar to Shamanism, it has made Christianity easy to accept - some might say, too easy.

Many Korean professing Christians still consider the gods of shamanism and the God of Christianity kindred spirits. The religious disposition of the Koreans is both harnessed and exploited by the "Christianity" of Paul Yonggi-Cho in his blatant mix of sorcery, mind-over-matter and self-interest ... But to mix pagan ideas and practices with the pure religion of Christ is condemned in Scripture as the heinous sin of idolatry. It is a marriage of Christianity and the occult, and is forbidden (in Scripture).

So is the situation with Cho as bad as some allege? In an interview the author conducted some years ago with Dr. Paul Martin, the founder and director of Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center in Albany Ohio, Martin said that he was concerned about the similarities he was observing between the prosperity gospel (of which Cho is a practitioner) and the New Age movement. Both, Martin said, contain elements of magic and both believe we have the power to create our own reality (Reynalds 1996).

These thoughts overlap with New Age thinking, and sooner or later if we don't watch it there's going to be a blending with the New Age movement. There's a whole paradigm shift. We have lived in the Judeo-Christian paradigm for two thousand years. With the event of Star Wars, the power and the force, and all the concepts you see with Shirley McLaine ... (we have) quasi-spiritual warriors (who) are into New Age philosophy that are now the heroes of some of our shows. You're beginning to see emerging a kind of global paganism, where Jesus Christ is just a source of power (Reynalds 1996: 95).

Attempting to bring a Christological focus to pagan practices is a time honored practice and is not wrong. It is of course dangerous if Christ is left out. With statements such as those contained in the passages excerpted above, some concerned believers feel that Christ and His Sovereignty have been left out of Cho's theology and that Jesus has been reduced to just some sort of heavenly power source akin to that experienced by practitioners of the New Age, Buddhism, yoga and Japanese Sokagakkai.

Followers of these belief systems are wrong because their devotees have dropped Jesus Christ out of their religious practices and beliefs (and in so doing embraced Satan's tactics) and replaced Him with a belief in spirits or their own inherent ability.

The evidence appears to show that while Cho has indeed attempted to bring a Christological focus to his country's shamanistic practices, that in his almost exclusionary focus on financial and physical prosperity he has narrowed the differences between Christianity and shamanism and inadvertently opened himself to charges of being a Christian shaman.

While the "indigenization of shamanistic elements has enabled him ... to speak to a broader constituency and in a sense reel them in" (Robeck, interview with the author, 2000) it is now time for Cho to step back and take stock of where he is headed spiritually before those very shamanistic elements that Cho is attempting to Christianize take over and paganize the Christian gospel that Cho says he proclaims.