Han Ju Hui Judy The Queer Thresholds of

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4 The Queer Thresholds of Heresy
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6 Ju Hui Judy Han
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Disputes over heresy are not new or uncommon, as mainline Protestant denomina-
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tions in South Korea have historically deemed numerous minor sects and radical the-
17 ologies to be heretical to the Christian faith. However, when the largest evangelical
18 denomination in the country, the Presbyterian Church in Korea (Hapdong), began
19 investigating Reverend Lim Borah (Im Pora) of the Sumdol Hyanglin Church in
20 2017 and subsequently ruled her ministry to be heretical, they charted new grounds
21 by denouncing LGBTI-affirming theology and ministry as heresy. This article traces
22 the semantic ambiguity and politics of the term for heresy, idan, and highlights the
23 intersection of heretical Christianity, gender and sexual nonconformity, and ideolog-
24 ical dissidence. The argument is that growing interests in queer theology and calls for
25 LGBTI-affirming ministry stoked the flames of efforts by beleaguered Protestant
26 denominations to use heresy to discredit and stigmatize dissident practices, and
that rather than simply stifle dissent, the subsequent controversy also exposed the lim-
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its of dominant power and the contours of vital resistance.
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29 Keywords: gender and sexuality, queer theology, Presbyterianism, heretical Chris-
30 tianity, idan
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33 On June 15, 2017, Reverend Lim Borah of the Sumdol Hyanglin Church in Seoul
34 received an unexpected registered letter from the Hapdong denomination of the
35 Presbyterian Church in Korea (PCK).1 Sent by a committee charged with
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37
Ju Hui Judy Han is a cultural geographer and assistant professor of gender studies at the University
38 of California, Los Angeles. Her work on Korean/American evangelical missions, global travel, and
39 queer politics has been published in the Immanent Frame, Critical Asian Studies, Geoforum, and posi-
40 tions: asia critique, as well as in edited books, including Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and
South (2015) and Ethnographies of US Empire (2018). She is currently working on a book on queer
41 political temporalities.
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43 Journal of Korean Studies 25, no. 2 (October 2020)
DOI 10.1215/07311613-8552058
© 2020 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
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1 investigating heresy allegations, the letter from Hapdong asked Reverend Lim to
2 submit a number of evidentiary materials—books, articles, sermons, and audiovi-
3 sual recordings, especially concerning her work on the Korean-language transla-
4 tion of an edited book titled The Queer Bible Commentary (2006).2 This was
5 peculiar; not only was the communiqué asking her to submit self-incriminating
6 evidence, but it was also issued by an evangelical denomination with which
7 she has no formal affiliation. Reverend Lim is a pastor ordained in the more liberal
8 and ecumenical Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea, commonly known
9 as Kijang. Since neither she nor her ministry falls under the institutional purview
10 of the more conservative and evangelical Hapdong denomination, Reverend Lim
11 was under no obligation to comply with the heresy investigation. As a result, there
12 was also no formal procedural recourse for her to defend herself against the charge
13 that, by ministering to LGBTI communities and “promoting homosexuality,” she
14 was committing heresy. The investigation, in other words, marked the end rather
15 than the start of any discussion concerning the place of nonnormative genders and
16 sexualities in the church.
17 The letter from Hapdong soon spiraled into a multidenominational effort to
18 condemn Lim as a heretic (idan), a remarkably ambiguous and pliable charge,
19 as I show in this article. To be sure, heresies are not declared hastily or without
20 a process of rationalization. Though the decisions may be controversial, idan deci-
21 sions do typically involve purposeful self-legitimation and public-facing decla-
22 rations. Protestant denominations like Hapdong periodically issue decrees and
23 advisories concerning the threat factor of minor sects and radical theologies,
24 updating heresy determinations on an ongoing basis. New groups, individuals,
25 and practices are declared to be idan every year, and sometimes a previously
26 heretical group is exonerated or forgiven after issuing apologies or undergoing
27 change, or simply because new authorities in power see the matter differently.
28 In this way, the threshold of heresy can be recognized as a liminal site of multiple
29 contradictions and transgressions, a location where numerous lines meet and part
30 ways.
31 The heresy controversy over Lim requires both a close look and a wide-angle
32 view of the historical geography of Korean Protestantism and the institutional
33 arrangements of religious power. In addition to the cries of condemnation from
34 conservative “anti-homosexuality” (pandongsŏngae) Protestant formations,3 we
35 can find at the threshold a multiplicity of voices from progressive reformers
36 and critics of Christianity, as well as LGBTI-identified Christians and their allies
37 inside and beyond the church. Denominations, churches, hospitals, schools, net-
38 works, and media outlets, as well as retreat and training facilities, for-profit busi-
39 nesses, and charitable foundations affiliated with Christianity, all take part in a
40 vast, far-reaching religious political economy. Religious infrastructure can be
41 so expansive and its influence so powerful that in 2010 an affluent megachurch
42 in Seoul was even permitted to take over the space under a public road to
43 build a chapel underground, with a direct exit from the nearby subway station.4
The Queer Thresholds of Heresy 409
1 Protestants are also among the most vocal critics of religious power, calling for
2 reform in church policies and leadership.
3 Heresy rulings are not merely symbolic; they have material consequences.
4 Once gender and sexual nonconformity is condemned and codified as heretical
5 at the denomination level, ordained clergy and affiliated faculty can be disciplined
6 for even suggesting that gender and sexual minorities might need protection from
7 harm. Seminary students in South Korea can be—and have been—blocked from
8 advancing in their pastoral career, barred from ordination and placement as pas-
9 tors in the denomination they are affiliated with.5 These corporeal consequences
10 take place today in an overwhelmingly heteropatriarchal world of cisgender male
11 pastors in their fifties and sixties, men who occupy nearly every position of power
12 and institutional leadership.6 Protestant denominations across the ideological
13 spectrum are even more male dominated than the male-majority sphere of secular
14 political leadership in government, schools, and businesses. While the overall
15 number of churchgoers is declining, the clergy is getting bigger; an unprecedented
16 number of pastors are being produced by the Presbyterian Church in Korea,
17 though denominations like Hapdong do not ordain women pastors at all. This pic-
18 ture of gender imbalance and inequality should be kept in mind as this article dis-
19 cusses the threshold of heresy as a contested site, a power-laden terrain where
20 dogmatic orthodoxy, cisgender heteropatriarchy, and religious rule of law meet
21 opposition and resistance.
22 To put it simply, Reverend Lim is a Kijang pastor of a small community-
23 oriented ecumenical church, who was singled out by the largest and most power-
24 ful evangelical denomination in the country. Hapdong accused her of affirming
25 and promoting LGBTI identities and practices—not by herself being an
26 LGBTI-identified person or engaging in LGBTI sexual activities but by acting
27 on her belief that there is nothing wrong or wicked with gender and sexual non-
28 conformity. The heresy here lies not in being an LGBTI person, in other words;
29 the problem apparently lies in allyship and advocacy that include speaking pos-
30 itively about LGBTI individuals, holding events and creating spaces to support
31 and worship with LGBTI-identified Christians, and espousing the message of
32 acceptance and antidiscrimination.
33 The question I am most interested in pursuing in this article is not whether Lim
34 is actually idan but, rather, what political work the idan discourse performs. On
35 the one hand, it is clear that idan declarations spur religious censure and social
36 stigma in order to discredit and stifle dissent. Heresy charges mobilize a variety
37 of institutional apparatuses to apply pressure and create public disrepute. On the
38 other hand, the case involving Lim demonstrates that heresy determinations are
39 not simply a top-down institutional mechanism that enforces doctrinal borders;
40 they in fact make legible in the process the struggle between orthodoxy and her-
41 esy. It has been argued that “heresy is socially constructed in the midst of social
42 conflict” and that “the heresy hunt, in which heresy is labeled and heretics sup-
43 pressed, serves as an anxiety-relieving ritual for institutional elites and facilitates
410 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 their dominance within the institution.”7 Heresy declarations serve several polit-
2 ical functions: solidify authority, define institutional boundaries, enhance group
3 identity, and offer a ritual outlet for collective anxiety. To put it another way,
4 the activity of “naming and removing heretics is a predictable aspect of rhetorical
5 ‘power-maintenance.’”8
6 This certainly resonates with heresy and South Korean queer religious politics.
7 There is growing visibility of conservative Protestant-led activism against gender
8 equality policies and human rights ordinances, against decriminalization of abor-
9 tion, and against antidiscrimination measures. These efforts converge often with
10 the political right wing that holds fast to the pro-US and anticommunist legacies of
11 presidents Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee, but among the various conserva-
12 tive camps there are intra-Protestant chasms and competition for power and influ-
13 ence that lead to a variety of fissures and fractures.9 Behind the public spectacles
14 of mass rallies and mobilization capacity of megachurches, the Korean Protestant
15 church has in fact been experiencing a crisis in leadership and declining member-
16 ship, as well as a diminished status in public opinion.10 Given the crisis of moral
17 illegitimacy and unfavorable public opinion, “heresy hunts” would be politically
18 efficacious for supplying a “common enemy,” the heretic as a “deviant insider”
19 who must be disciplined.11 The idea of a heretic as a deviant insider alludes to
20 Georg Simmel’s discussion of strangers: those who are outsiders but inside, both
21 near and far. Different from infidels, who are outside the faith, heretics are like
22 strangers within the bounds of faith, “close enough to be threatening but distant
23 enough to be considered in error.”12 To be in error means to be in need of correc-
24 tion. To be heretical means to be disciplined on the verge of belonging.
25 I thus argue in this article that the subversive threat that queer theology and
26 LGBTI-affirming ministry pose to the conservative church status quo hails from
27 within the Protestant Church. They constitute “the perversion within the norma-
28 tive,” as Carolyn Dinshaw might describe it.13 Heresy rulings attempt to push dis-
29 sent to the margins and keep the critics within striking reach.14 As Michel Foucault
30 writes, “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently,
31 this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.”15 I likewise
32 suggest that resistance here is not located outside institutional power but, rather,
33 tethered to it. As such, heresy helps illuminate the complex dynamics of power
34 and resistance without resorting to an easy inside/outside distinction.
35 This article focuses on the thresholds of heresy concerning Lim and also what it
36 might say about queer religious politics. First, I trace the semantics and politics of
37 the term for heresy, idan, and highlight the intersection of heretical Christianity,
38 gender and sexual nonconformity, and ideological dissidence. I then explain how
39 queer (iban) became heretical (idan) as interests in queer theology and calls for
40 LGBTI-affirming ministry stoked the flames of heresy allegations.16 Rather than
41 simply stifle dissent, as I will show, the heresy controversy has exposed the limits
42 of dominant power and revealed the contours of what I suggest are emerging “new
43 queer vitalities.”17
1 THE SEMANTIC AMBIGUITY OF IDAN

2
3 What becomes evident in a survey of heretical Christianity in modern Korea is
4 that not only can the delineations of heresy be politically pliant, but also, to
5 begin with, there is an enormous semantic ambiguity over the very word for her-
6 esy, idan (이단 異端), which is used to denote a wide range of unorthodox posi-
7 tions. Heterodoxy, heresy, heretical sects, cultish movements, and new religions
8 that are located quite far from mainline Protestantism are all swept under the cat-
9 egory of idan.18 For example, the 2018 heresy list released by the International
10 Korean Christian Coalition against Heresy (IKCCAH; 세이연) condemns as
11 heretical long-established minor Christian sects, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses
12 and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, as well as the fast-growing new religious
13 movements like Sinch’ŏnji and Jesus Morning Star (JMS) that have caused seri-
14 ous concern in recent years.19 Sinch’ŏnji is widely considered to be an extremely
15 aggressive and persuasive heretical Christian group that has grown rapidly in re-
16 cent years. It is considered to be one of the most dangerous idan by mainline Prot-
17 estants, so much so that often found on the doors of Protestant churches in Seoul
18 are notices that proclaim “Sinch’ŏnji not welcome.” Given the well-known het-
19 erodoxy of the Mormon Church and the Unification Church, it is perhaps not sur-
20 prising to find them on the mainline Protestants’ list of idan, but Hapdong, the
21 second largest Presbyterian denomination caused a stir—and critics’ ridicule—
22 by claiming in 2017 that not only is Roman Catholicism heretical but so were
23 the practice of magic tricks and yoga.
24 Unlike the Catholic Church, Protestant churches do not have a singular central-
25 ized governing body that determines who or what constitutes idan. Instead, each
26 denomination makes these decisions, sometimes conferring with one another but
27 sometimes contradicting one other as well. Occasionally fingers are pointed at for-
28 mer friends. Hapdong’s heresy list in 2019 included the leader of IKCCAH, the
29 US-based Christian watchdog against heresy, for deviating from key theological
30 doctrines. In a strongly worded report, Hapdong authorities pointed out that the
31 IKCCAH’s leader was not an ordained pastor with seminary training and stated,
32 “This goes to show how important but dangerous it is for (untrained) lay person to
33 conduct research on idan.”20 Consequently, all churches, pastors, and congrega-
34 tion members within the Hapdong Presbyterian denomination are now prohibited
35 from contributing to, subscribing to, advertising in, or supporting in any way
36 activities associated with the IKCCAH.
37 Often used interchangeably and concurrently in these discussions are the words
38 sagyo (사교 邪敎) and especially saibi (사이비 似而非), a more explicitly pejo-
39 rative term that implies cultishness. In religious contexts and beyond, saibi de-
40 notes things that are fake, false, or fraudulent. The words idan and saibi are
41 often used together—idan saibi—to indicate shadowy, fringe locations on the heret-
42 ical margin, far from a normative center. In this sense, the semantic ambiguity of
43
412 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 idan insinuates both religious illegitimacy and secular stigma and marginality. It is
2 one thing for Christians to expel something as idan based on doctrinal issues, but
3 when non-Christians also use the idiom of idan saibi to disparage a religious
4 group or individual, they are deploying terms of censure that span the religious
5 and secular divide.
6 The idan controversy over queer theology and Lim’s LGBTI-affirming ministry
7 diverges in important ways from these heresy contentions. For one, previous her-
8 esy debates are concerned mostly with doctrinal challenges, controversial radical
9 theologies, or doomsday groups with cultish leaders. New religious movements
10 gaining widespread popularity under charismatic leaders have been an especially
11 popular target for idan advisories and excommunication decrees.21 According to
12 the influential theologian and expert on idan T’ak Chiil (Tark Ji-il), there are four
13 telltale signs of heretical Christianity: the sanctification or deification of religious
14 leaders; religious leaders who seek to rule rather than serve their members; apoc-
15 alyptic end-time prophecies; and “mind control” of behavior, information,
16 thoughts, and emotions.22 The online inventory published by T’ak and a monthly
17 publication he directs, Hyŏndae chonggyo (Modern Religion Monthly), detail
18 many cases of heresy that meet these criteria including, for example, religious
19 leaders who clearly contradict doctrinal orthodoxy by denying the holy trinity
20 or claiming to be prophets themselves, as well as figures who claim to possess
21 supernatural or superhuman powers.
22 Lim does not fit this typology. She is neither a charismatic leader of a popular
23 religious cult nor a self-proclaimed messiah. Her theological claims and activities
24 place her squarely in left-leaning social justice activism and social gospel minis-
25 try. She is recognizable as a figure in the genealogy of Korea’s liberation theology
26 known as minjung theology, updated with feminist and queer intersectional inflec-
27 tions. It is telling that homosexuality and queer theology did not come up in any of
28 the major idan scholarship until 2017, when Hapdong turned its attention to Lim.
29 In other words, gender variance and nonnormative sexualities denoted by the
30 word queer were not heretical until then.
31
32
33 HOW QUEER (IBAN) BECAME HERETICAL (IDAN)
34
35 Writing in 2016, a year before the heresy label first surfaced, Lim described the
36 work of translating The Queer Bible Commentary as part of the emergent
37 Christian-centered movement seeking to counter anti-LGBTI politics.23 She pre-
38 sciently mentions the word heresy (idan) twice in this article: first when she points
39 out that diverse theological frameworks that pose a challenge to the dominant
40 authority often get denounced as “false, fraudulent, or idan,” and a second
41 time when she writes specifically about The Queer Bible Commentary and the
42 promise of queer theology:
43
1 [The Queer Bible Commentary] confirms the interconnected links between LGBTI
2 folks and religion, Christianity, and the Bible not only in Korean society but even
3 in societies where same-sex marriage has been legalized. The bleak reality is that
4 in Korea even feminist theology has a difficult time getting established. It is a
total wasteland when it comes to queer theology. . . . Those who are leading anti-
5
LGBTI movements issue warnings against queer theology and try to devalue it as
6
a substandard theology. Or they treat it like idan, not sound [Christian] theology.
7 But in foreign seminaries outside of Korea, queer theology is part of a regular and
8 legitimate theological curriculum.24
9
10 In this passage, Lim rejects the normalization of anti-LGBTI sentiments in South
11 Korea and points out that another world is possible, and that indeed it already ex-
12 ists. She places the subordinated position of feminist theology alongside queer
13 theology to illustrate the dominant heteropatriarchy and parochialism of the
14 South Korean church. This, of course, is a common rhetorical strategy—to claim
15 that the case would unfold differently elsewhere—that draws legitimacy through
16 a global comparison. By pointing to the ostensibly more LGBTI-friendly climate
17 outside of Korea—presumably in liberal seminaries in North America and
18 Europe—Lim flips the minoritizing gaze and turns it around against the anti-
19 LGBTI movements in South Korea. She describes the conservative leaders as
20 myopic and unwilling to change, failing to recognize feminist and queer theology
21 as legitimate theological fields, the way they ought to be.
22 Nonetheless, considering its dissident and rebellious approach to interpreting
23 the Bible, it is no surprise that the Korean translation of the 2006 The Queer
24 Bible Commentary (2006), with publication forthcoming in 2020, provided a
25 key spark for the heresy allegations against Lim. A groundbreaking publication
26 and a collaborative undertaking that involved twenty-seven South Korean theolo-
27 gians, clergy, and scholars working at the intersection of religion, gender, and sex-
28 uality studies, the translation would serve the much-needed purpose of advancing
29 queer theology and demonstrating that the Bible need not be “texts of terror.”25 By
30 rejecting oppressive heterosexist teachings and putting forth interpretations that
31 elevate the dignity of queer lives, the book seeks in part to “disarm Biblically
32 based gay-bashing.”26 The Queer Bible Commentary suggests that, rather than
33 a source of oppression, the Bible has “the capacity to be disruptive, unsettling
34 and unexpectedly but delightfully queer” and deploys a range of hermeneutical
35 approaches to highlight aspects of the scriptural text that are relevant to
36 LGBTI issues.27 Given the feverish pitch of anti-LGBTI rhetoric among funda-
37 mentalists in South Korea, the translators felt that this book would be an especially
38 invaluable tool for deepening the conversation.
39 On May 17, 2017, at a public forum celebrating the completion of the transla-
40 tion, the emcee described the Korean translation as part of an emergent LGBTI-
41 affirming movement.28 Yeong Mee Lee (Yi Yŏngmi), professor of the Old Testa-
42 ment at the Kijang-affiliated Hanshin Graduate School of Theology and a
43
414 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 contributing translator to the edited volume, described that in Korea queer theol-
2 ogy must necessarily take shape as a social movement in order to foster critical
3 public discourse, much like the way the original Queer Bible Commentary came
4 about as the product of a diverse range of minoritized scholars who worked tire-
5 lessly to establish queer theology as a dynamic field of study in the United States.
6 By saying this, Lee made it clear that The Queer Bible Commentary was not just a
7 book but part of a movement. It was not just a product of activism, either; it was a
8 provocation for a counterhegemonic praxis, a critical building block in a long-
9 rising and ongoing movement.29
10
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12 MINJUNG PRECEDENTS AND QUEER THEOLOGIES
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14 What Lee points to is an important movement context for The Queer Bible Com-
15 mentary in South Korea, one that involves the legacies of liberation theology and
16 Korea’s own minjung theology and the social critique and solidarity activism that
17 emerge from these theological traditions. Liberation theology, which originated in
18 the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, arose in response to
19 poverty and social injustice. It was a moral and religious reaction to what it iden-
20 tified as immoral secular socioeconomic conditions, namely, capitalism and impe-
21 rialism. In South Korea, pro-democracy activists and critical scholars similarly
22 developed minjung theology, a contextual theology of liberation, during Park
23 Chung Hee’s eighteen-year authoritarian dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s. In-
24 spired by Latin American and North American liberation theology and in concert
25 with anticolonial independence and democratization movements throughout the
26 Third World, minjung theology took hold as an important and critical minority
27 voice that prioritized defiance and radical inclusion of the poor, the oppressed,
28 and the marginalized. At the heart of minjung theology is “a concern for those
29 who suffer exploitation, poverty, and sociopolitical and cultural repression.”30
30 Lee herself, an expert on minjung theology, writes: “At its inception, minjung
31 theology focused on the deplorable economic and cultural conditions of minjung
32 [the masses]. As it developed, and as the context changed, later minjung theology
33 expanded to address political and social concerns that emerged from the minjung
34 movement for democracy in the early 1980s.”31 As the context changed, theolog-
35 ical communities also changed. Many minjung-theology–inflected networks of
36 scholars, activists, and churches in South Korea subsequently became involved
37 in supporting human rights (inkwŏn) activism, in which gender and sexual minor-
38 ity politics have emerged as a key concern.
39 This is not to say, of course, that queer theology in Korea can be traced entirely
40 or solely to minjung theology or that minjung theology necessarily leads to
41 LGBTI-affirming ministry. Multiple queer theological traditions give context to
42 the recent identification of queer as idan, just one of which is represented by
43 the group that came together to translate The Queer Bible Commentary. Minjung
1 theology is one counterhegemonic tradition; queer theory, feminist theory, and

2 even some corners from evangelical theological traditions have developed ap-
3 proaches to diversify our understanding of religion, faith, and gender and sexual
4 nonconformity.32 It is nonetheless noteworthy to find South Korean LGBTI pol-
5 itics and queer theology taking root at the progressive and social-change–oriented
6 intersection of minjung and minority politics, with a recognition of “the need to
7 stand in solidarity in a shared struggle against repression and injustice,” a familiar
8 idea from minjung theology as well as a progressive minority politics.33
9 Hyanglin churches stand as a good example of a progressive minority politics
10 embraced as a continuation of minjung theology. Lim’s Sumdol Hyanglin was
11 founded in 2013 as an offshoot from its famous and historic parent church, Hy-
12 anglin Church (founded in 1953), which is part of the liberal, ecumenical Kijang
13 Presbyterian denomination. Hyanglin has an explicit antigrowth strategy that was
14 proposed in 1993 by the church’s cofounder, the well-known left-leaning minjung
15 theologian Reverend Ahn Byung Mu (An Pyŏngmu). The policy meant the
16 church size would remain relatively small, with the congregation size capped
17 at around five hundred adult members. The church would not pursue unfettered
18 growth the way megachurches have famously done. Ahn’s organizational model
19 involving pun’ga (분가 分家), the cultivation of an offshoot household as a grown
20 child might branch out in a family tree, meant that when the need arose, self-
21 selected congregants would break out and form another church with the blessing
22 of the “parent” church. Still connected to one another through shared values and
23 nonhierarchical genealogy, the Hyanglin church and its offshoots—Kangnam Hy-
24 anglin, Tŭlkkot Hyanglin, and Sumdol Hyanglin—exemplify a model of commu-
25 nity building that rejects the pitfalls of growth-preoccupied strategies. They share
26 a critique of the megachurch model, avoiding the downsides of church growth,
27 such as exorbitant construction and maintenance expenses for larger church build-
28 ings; a diminished sense of intimacy and fellowship that comes with larger con-
29 gregation sizes; an increasing conflation of pastoral work with corporate executive
30 management, with the pastor as a CEO; and the potential for financial corruption
31 and abuse of power that comes with managing a large organization.34
32 Whereas the radical antigrowth approach reflects minjung theology’s anticap-
33 italist critique of the prosperity gospel and growth-oriented development model,
34 antinormativity is a defining feature of queer theory’s influence on queer theology.
35 Patrick S. Cheng, author of Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology,
36 succinctly describes queer theory as marked by “(1) identity without essence;
37 (2) transgression; (3) resisting binaries; and (4) social construction.”35 These
38 four “marks” of queer theory together construe “queerness as strangeness or trans-
39 gressivity” and create a “fluid body of ideas that is constantly in the process of
40 becoming.”36 Queer theology builds on these marks from queer theory. Cheng ar-
41 gues that these notions not only subvert the normative constructions of gender and
42 sexuality but also potentially unsettle the Christian polity and orthodox theology
43 at large. Defining queer theology as no less than “queer talk about God,” Cheng
416 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 posits that queer theology is not a narrow, minoritizing, identarian topic of interest
2 exclusively to LGBTI-identified theologians alone—an arcane subfield, perhaps,
3 or a self-legitimating political inquiry—but rather a universalizing orientation
4 with wide-ranging critical implications.37
5 Like Cheng, queer theologians often make a distinction between recupera-
6 tive and radical strategies. Positive recuperations that rely on identity categories
7 to affirm LGBTI-identified individuals within the faith are distinguished from
8 transgressive reinscriptions that seek to transform society and achieve political lib-
9 eration.38 The first kind yields LGBTI-affirming ministries and gay and lesbian
10 theologies that call for the inclusion of sexual and gender minorities in Christian
11 communities. In contrast, the more transgressive queer theologies extend beyond
12 LGBTI individuals and identities and pose epistemological and structural empha-
13 sis on nonnormativity and transformation. It is in this way that some conceive
14 queer theology as a “branch of liberation theology . . . intimately connected to
15 utopian visions of equality, justice, and compassionate care” and “grounded in
16 prophetic traditions of personal and social transformation.”39 And it is in this
17 way that this article locates queer theological traditions in Korea as being shaped
18 by the entangled genealogies of minjung and other liberation theologies, as well as
19 feminist and queer theories, enabling pro-democracy human rights activists and
20 church reformers who are collectively engaged in transforming structures of
21 power.
22
23
24 WITCH HUNT
25
26 The four churches that make up the Hyanglin community came together to hold a
27 press conference on July 7, 2017, in defense of Lim. They are all part of Rainbow
28 Jesus, a coalition of LGBTI-affirming ministries and groups that have been build-
29 ing a national network. Held at the historic parent Hyanglin Church in Myŏng-
30 dong, near the frenetic city center of Seoul, the solemn press conference featured
31 a panel of clergy and activists who defended Lim’s record as a compassionate and
32 courageous religious leader and praised her dedication to social justice activism.
33 The panel speakers stressed that the heresy disputes were part of an ongoing his-
34 torical contestation between traditions that had diverged long ago—evangelical
35 and fundamentalist tendencies in Yejang and ecumenical and liberal Kijang—
36 and that the label of heresy has been used previously in political efforts to legit-
37 imate denominational dogmatism.
38 A representative from a queer Methodist group said at the press conference:
39 “This is a modern-day witch hunt. This creates a scapegoat to cover up the
40 clear and evident crisis—the crumbling church authority and declining church
41 membership.”40 The gendered language of “witch hunt” appears repeatedly in
42 media coverage and rebuttal documents, including the July 3 response from the
43 Kijang Presbyterian women’s group.41 The sharply worded statement pointedly
1 places the modern-day heresy controversy in the long historical context of women
2 and heresy and states, “We remember in medieval history that the medieval church
3 accused countless women of being witches and burned them at the stake as sac-
4 rificial lambs when in fact their authority was in crisis due to a famine and the
5 plague.”42 They stressed that, even with controversial positions, differences in
6 theological interpretation should lead to open discussion and debate, not condem-
7 nation and purge.
8 The modern history of heresy in South Korea does feature several controversial
9 women, though none were burned at the stake. In his 2016 book, Han’guk ŭi idan
10 Kidokkyo, theologian Hŏ Hoik (Heo Ho-Ik) traces the genealogy of modern Ko-
11 rean Christian heterodoxy as beginning essentially with three female heretics.43
12 The first heretic he lists is a woman named Yi Sunhwa (이순화) who in 1917
13 founded Chŏngdogyo (정도교 正道敎), and the second heretic he lists is an anon-
14 ymous woman known only as Nambang Yŏwang, or Queen of the South, who is
15 said to have traveled widely throughout Korea in the 1920s. Hŏ posits that these
16 two heretical women were relatively inconsequential in reach and influence, but
17 he allocates an entire chapter to discuss the third heretic, Deaconess Kim Sŏngdo
18 (김성도 권사, 1882–1944), who gained notoriety in the 1920s and 1930s as the
19 founder of a new religion called Saejugyo (새주교).
20 Women’s religious leadership seems to elicit scorn and suspicion, especially if
21 they are successful. Arguing that nascent religious movements become more es-
22 tablished only when they successfully manage the leadership transition from the
23 founder’s generation to the next, heresy and cult expert T’ak Chiil implies that
24 women leaders are essentially a sign of failure. He suggests that in many well-
25 known cases of idan, women are named as de facto or temporary successors to
26 the founding patriarchs when there is no suitable male heir.44 His examples in-
27 clude Han Hakcha (한학자, 1943–), widow of Reverend Moon Sun Myung
28 and the current head or “True Mother” of the Unification Church; Chang Kilcha
29 (장길자, 1943–), “God the Mother” of the World Mission Society Church of God;
30 and Chŏng Choŭn (정조은/김지선, birth date unknown), who has emerged as the
31 de facto leader of the infamous Christian Gospel Mission (aka JMS) while its
32 founder and leader, Chŏng Myŏngsŏk (정명석, 1945–), was imprisoned to
33 serve ten years for sexual assault. Interestingly, T’ak singles out these women fig-
34 ures not as cases of successful leaders but as examples of a legitimacy crisis that
35 inevitably befalls idan organizations.
36 Not surprisingly, the statement from the Kijang Presbyterian women leaders
37 does not try to position Lim’s heresy dispute in the historical lineage of these
38 heretical women. As mainline Protestants, albeit marginalized by conservative
39 evangelicals, the Kijang women would not have claimed affinity with groups
40 like JMS or Sinch’ŏnji, or other radical sects located far from mainline Protestant-
41 ism. In a way, the Kijang women leaders do not dispute that there are “real” her-
42 etics out there; they just deny that Lim is one of them.
43
418 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 While sexism and misogyny are an important part of the witch hunt discourse,
2 gender is not the only axis of difference in heresy politics. The Kijang Presbyte-
3 rian women leaders also situate the heresy controversy over Lim in the old feud
4 between conservative fundamentalists and progressive ecumenicals, tracing the
5 conflict back to the 1950s, when Korean Presbyterians split into two camps:
6 the ecumenical National Council of Churches in Korea and the World Council
7 of Churches (WCC) on the one hand, and on the other, the fundamentalist evan-
8 gelicals and affluent megachurches that have taken an anti-WCC position. In fact,
9 when the WCC held its assembly in Korea in 2013, thousands of conservative
10 Protestants protested outside in what was described as the most “well-organized
11 and vehement opposition” against the WCC since its founding in 1948.45 The con-
12 servative formation against WCC marked the start of escalated campaigns against
13 LGBTI rights.
14 Specifically, the Kijang Presbyterian women leaders reference the historic fig-
15 ure of Reverend Kim Chaejun (1901–87), a liberal theologian who was excom-
16 municated from the Presbyterian Church in 1952 and later became the founder of
17 the Kijang Presbyterian denomination. He also helped establish Amnesty Interna-
18 tional in South Korea and served as its first chairperson in 1972.46 Kim’s reputa-
19 tion as a minjung theologian and a pro-democracy activist in the 1960s and 1970s
20 against Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship has earned him a place in church history as
21 an esteemed elder figure and a respected teacher who mentored a generation of
22 prominent religious leaders, including Reverend Moon Ik-whan (Mun Ikhwan;
23 1918–94), a longtime leader in Protestant activism for democracy and South-
24 North Korea reunification, and Reverend Ahn Byung Mu (1922–96), known as
25 a pro-democracy movement leader and a principal architect of minjung theology,
26 as well as the founder of the Hyanglin Church, as mentioned above. But for sixty-
27 three years, in the eyes of the conservative Yejang Presbyterians, Reverend Kim
28 Chaejun remained officially a heretic—until 2016, when his excommunication in
29 1952 was finally voided.
30 Reminding the readers of this religiopolitical history, the Kijang Presbyterian
31 women leaders’ statement asks, why heresy now, and why heresy again. Why
32 now does the Hapdong Presbyterian denomination stir up another heresy dispute
33 with Lim, a Kijang pastor? “If there is an issue with [Lim],” they retort, “we will
34 investigate it ourselves. We must make it very clear that this is not a matter that
35 another denomination should trouble itself with.” Here is a longer excerpt from
36 this remarkable statement that directs our attention again to the intersection of
37 gender and power:
38
39 [The Hapdong Presbyterian denomination] have willfully misinterpreted the Bible
40 verse, “Women should remain silent in the churches,” and have tolerated ludicrous
41 statements like “Women wearing diapers should not stand at the pulpit.” Their anach-
42 ronistic acts include refusing to ordain women pastors and continuing to engage in
43 gender discrimination. They should attend to addressing their own internal issues.
1 They should stop discriminating against women and stop punishing neighbors who
2 are in pain. We encourage them to see the plank in their own eye before looking
3 for a speck in another’s eye.
4
5 The letter suggests that the Hapdong Presbyterian denomination is conducting the
6 heresy hunt as a diversion because it is mired in internal criticism and surrounded
7 by voices asking for reform. It points to Hapdong’s dismal record on gender
8 equality and critiques the low status of women in the denomination’s leadership
9 as anachronistic and indefensible, and urges change. The heresy allegations have
10 to do with much more than a theological position on homosexuality.
11
12
13 CONCLUSION
14
15 Given the fractured and decentralized landscape of Protestants—especially
16 Presbyterians—in Korea, there appeared to be unusually swift force of support
17 behind the heresy charges against Lim. Hapdong’s initial standing committee
18 on heresy was joined by seven other major denominations, with the notable ab-
19 sence of Lim’s own Kijang denomination, which denounced the heresy charge.
20 On September 1, 2017, the joint heresy committee of the eight denominations
21 spoke in rare unison and found Lim’s ministry guilty of heretical tendencies.47
22 Based on this report, several Presbyterian denominations subsequently put the
23 matter to a vote in their annual general assembly. In 2017, Hapdong became
24 the first to officially declare Lim as idan. The next year, two other Presbyterian
25 denominations would base their idan declarations entirely on the 2017 joint re-
26 port, without taking into consideration the objections from Kijang or opening
27 up space for further discussion.48
28 The joint report by the heresy committee in 2017 organized the allegations
29 against Lim in six sections that addressed what the committee considered to be
30 theological transgressions and political concerns. They criticized Lim’s embrace
31 of gender and sexual diversity and acceptance of nonnormative family forms and
32 denounced her refusal to weaponize the Bible against LGBTI-identified individ-
33 uals and communities. Presented as evidence for this was Lim’s visible participa-
34 tion in the annual Queer Korean Culture Festival in Seoul, in which she “prayed
35 for and blessed homosexuals”; they considered this as going against the teaching
36 of the Bible and committing apostasy. In a particularly interesting section concern-
37 ing Lim’s promotion of diverse family forms, the joint report cited a radio inter-
38 view that took place in 2014 as her attempt to justify same-sex marriage, polyg-
39 amy, and incest. The report also found fault with Lim’s writing from 2012:
40
41 People who have not had access to higher education, people who are not in a patri-
42 archal heterosexual family form, people who are ill, migrant workers, people who for
43 a variety of reasons came to have criminal records, and sexual minorities—these are
420 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 the most powerless people among those who are powerless in this society. They are a
2 minority among minorities, without guaranteed basic human rights that are afforded
3 to all people. People who were treated as minorities throughout the Bible are still,
4 thousands of years later, excluded as minorities and yet this is still not object for
our concern.49
5
6
7 The heresy committee expressed concern over Reverend Lim’s use of the term
8 basic human rights to refer to sexual minorities and stated that this was tanta-
9 mount to promoting the “legalization of homosexuality” and same-sex marriage.
10 They cited the book Hanŭnim kwa mannan tongsŏngae (Homosexuality Meets
11 God; 2010), in which Lim urges repentance for Christians who are “busy saying
12 malicious things against homosexuals as if they are true and using this to conceal
13 their own flaws.”50 In another article where she criticizes orthodox biblical inter-
14 pretation as literalism with no concern for human rights, Lim describes queer the-
15 ology as “a cry against the majority of Christians who consistently respond with
16 prejudice and ignorance.”51 The heresy committee states in the joint report that
17 Lim has waged an attack against the church’s orthodoxy, that she has shown defi-
18 ance, and that she continues to insist that she is right and her claims are biblical.
19 “This is no different from what other heretics always assert,” the report concludes,
20 “and such heretical claims made by Rev. Lim are rapidly spreading among homo-
21 sexuals and those who support homosexuality. The Korean Church must protect
22 the church and the faithful and let it be known that Rev. Lim Borah’s ideas are
23 heretical ideas.”52
24 The heresy charges in 2017 point to queer theology and LGBTI-affirming min-
25 istry as a threat to the heteropatriarchal normativity and theological orthodoxy.
26 But the heresy controversy also exposed in part the long-standing contestations
27 between the Left and the Right, and the split between the progressive and the con-
28 servative currents in the Protestant church, rendering visible in the process numer-
29 ous Christians who do not agree with these anti-LGBTI politics or heresy charges.
30 The heresy decision ironically made the critique of heteropatriarchy and gender
31 and sexual normativity more legible in church history.
32 History suggests that the heresy controversy concerning Reverend Lim Borah
33 and queer theology has more to do with internal crises and long-standing political
34 struggle than some sort of consensus on gender and sexual diversity. The question
35 of heresy reflects the shifting alignments among conservative factions in a galaxy
36 of competing denominations and political interests.53 As I have argued in this arti-
37 cle, heresy declarations are an exercise of power that defines and articulates the
38 contours of right and wrong, an effort to clarify the border between inside and
39 outside. Heresy designations work by hardening the edges of orthodoxy, locking
40 heresy and orthodoxy into a symbiotic relationship, “two sides of a social process
41 through which a belief system is . . . formed via negativa.”54 In fact, the heresy
42 controversy surrounding Lim spurred an occasion for anti-LGBTI Protestant
43 groups to articulate their views and flex their institutional muscles. Ironically,
1 however, in declaring Lim and LGBTI-affirming ministry to be idan, the process

2 also revealed the defiant contours of new queer vitalities, minority solidarities that
3 extend beyond exclusive religious or sexual identity boundaries. The threshold of
4 heresy ends up creating visibility for nonnormative ideas and contradictions rather
5 than entirely silencing discussions or stifling dissent. Strewn all over the threshold
6 of heresy, then, are transgressions of not only gender and sexuality (iban) but also
7 ideological differences and historical fissures, minority publics in religious and
8 secular politics.
9 Heresy decisions delineate a threshold between permissible dissent and danger-
10 ous deviance. To establish the threshold for heresy, authorities must first acknowl-
11 edge the presence of the dissent, recognize its shape, iterate the nature of its threat,
12 and determine how much dissent to permit and how much to reject. As such, her-
13 esy decisions fundamentally shape both heresy and orthodoxy, two sides of an
14 interactive process by which institutional identities are forged and sharpened.55
15 Put differently, the definition of heresy is also an attempt at defining orthodoxy.
16 The heightened effort to root out heresy is tied to an effort to bolster internal
17 coherence and strengthen hegemony. I suggest in this article, though, that heresy
18 declarations are not simply a hegemonic group’s attempt to delegitimize a minor-
19 ity. They are both an acknowledgment of dissent and a provocation that spurs reli-
20 gious censure and secular stigma, the political implications of which reverberate
21 far and wide. Especially given the decentralized and fractured landscape of Prot-
22 estant Christianity in South Korea and the multiple vantage points from which the
23 label of heresy can be deployed, heresy cannot be situated solely in the realm of
24 religious dogma; heresy declarations conjure a great deal of secular affect.56 What
25 heresy declarations reveal is a multivocal account of complex boundary work and
26 the dialogic threshold of power and resistance.57
27
28
29 NOTES
30
31 I thank Hyaeweol Choi, Jooyeon Kim, and two anonymous reviewers for their critical feed-
32 back. Earlier versions and parts of this article were presented at the “Religion, Protest, and
33 Social Upheaval” conference organized by Tat-siong Benny Liew at the College of the
34 Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2017; the “Asia Theory Visuality” conference
35 organized by Steven Chung, Erin Huang, and Franz Prichard at Princeton University in
2018; and the Journal of Korean Studies manuscript workshop organized by Hyaeweol
36
Choi and hosted by the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University in 2018.
37 The research behind this article was supported by an Academy of Korean Studies grant
38 funded by the Korean Government (MEST; AKS-2011-AAA-2104) and an Insight
39 Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (PI: Jennifer
40 Jihye Chun).
41
42 1. In this article I use the McCune-Reischauer romanization system, except in cases of
43 personal and place names that are already known in English, e.g., Lim Borah (Im Pora),
Sumdol (Sŏmdol), and Seoul (Sŏul).
422 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 2. Hapdong is short for Taehan Yesukyo Changnohoe (Presbyterian Church in Korea),

2 or Yejang Hapdong. The complex denominational landscape of Presbyterians in Korea is
3 characterized by the existence of the smaller and ecumenical Kijang (Presbyterian Church
4 in the Republic of Korea) denomination, and other Presbyterian denominations that have
branched out from the evangelical and more conservative Yejang (PCK) tradition. The
5
Presbyterians have shown remarkable disunity: of 374 Protestant denominations in
6
South Korea in 2018, over two-thirds (286) had the phrase “Presbyterian Church” in
7 their title. While Presbyterians collectively make up the majority of Protestants in
8 Korea, Hapdong is widely considered to be the largest. It is also notorious for refusing
9 to ordain women and mired in controversy for standing by male pastors accused of sexual
10 misconduct. See Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, “2018-yŏn Han’guk ŭi chong-
11 gyo hyŏnhwang”; and Kang, “Yejang Haptong.”
12 3. I translate pandongsŏngae in this article not narrowly and literally as “anti-homo-
13 sexuality” but as “anti-LGBTI.” Though pandongsŏngae Protestant rhetoric simplifies
14 “homosexuality” as the primary locus of sin, this discourse usually conflates an objection
15 to male homosexuality, repulsion to nonbinary or variant gender bodies, and consternation
over nonnormative family forms. Pandongsŏngae should therefore be understood in a
16
capacious sense to include objections and opposition to a variety of nonnormative gender
17
and sexual identities and practices, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, asexual,
18 nonbinary, and agender. Nonetheless, that the primary target of this pandongsŏngae or anti-
19 LGBTI imagination remains fixated on cisgender gay men and transgender women can be
20 seen in the prevalent use of the rhetoric that “homosexuality” will condone anal sex and
21 invite “men dressed as women” into the family as monstrous daughters-in-law. I use
22 anti-LGBTI in this article not to imply that it stands in mirror opposition to something
23 that might be construed as simply “pro-LGBTI” but, rather, to describe a constellation
24 of political actors and social forces that have stressed the rhetoric of “opposing homosex-
25 uality,” which is the literal meaning of pandongsŏngae. For a discussion of the range of
26 views regarding homosexuality, see Moon, “Beyond the Dichotomy.”
4. SaRang Community Church undertook a $186 million construction project to build
27
the SaRang Global Ministry Center in 2010, amidst controversy that has been ongoing ever
28
since. See Han, “Urban Megachurches and Contentious Religious Politics in Seoul.”
29 5. See Yi P., “‘Mujigae p’ŏp’omŏnsŭ’ haksaengdŭl tasi chinggye hara moksori”; Yi Y.,
30 “Mujigae p’ŏp’omŏnsŭ chinggye padŭn Changsindae sinhaksaeng ‘chat’oesŏ’ chech’ul”;
31 and Yi Ŭ., “Yejang T’onghap Kosiwi.”
32 6. While heteropatriarchy refers to “social systems in which heterosexuality and patri-
33 archy are perceived as normal and natural, and in which other configurations are perceived
34 as abnormal, aberrant, and abhorrent,” cisgenderism refers to cultural and ideological sys-
35 tems that deny, denigrate, or pathologize “self-identified gender identities that do not align
36 with assigned gender at birth as well as resulting behavior, expression, and community.”
37 See Lennon and Mistler, “Cisgenderism,” 63; and Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill, “Decolonizing
Feminism,” 13.
38
7. Kurtz, “Politics of Heresy,” 1085.
39
8. Lessl, “Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Politics of Science,” 19.
40 9. Han, “Politics of Homophobia in South Korea.” Some of these competitions involve
41 questions of who has the authority to make and unmake heresy declarations. In 2012, the
42 two largest Presbyterian denominations, Hapdong and T’onghap, led an exodus of several
43 major denominations to leave the Christian Council of Korea (Han’gich’ong), formerly the
1 national flagship organization for evangelical Christians. This took place in part after a rift
2 over new council leadership’s reversal of heresy rulings and embrace of leaders formerly
3 deemed heretical. The Hapdong and T’onghap denominations subsequently formed a rival
4 national group, the Communion of Churches in Korea (Han’gyoyŏn), which now surpasses
Han’gich’ong in number of member denominations and churches, and arguably in political
5
power as well. Hapdong Presbyterian declared in 2016 that it would take the lead in the
6
fight against heresy. In the meantime, the beleaguered leaders of Han’gich’ong attempted
7 to restore its legitimacy by launching its own competing committee on heresy. Ku, “Yejang
8 Haptong ch’onghoe,”; Song, “8-kae Kyodan Idan Taech’aegwi.”
9 10. For example, in a 2017 opinion survey of individuals without religious affiliation,
10 most respondents expressed a high degree of distrust toward the Protestant Church. Con-
11 ducted by the reform-minded Christian Ethics Movement of Korea, the survey found that
12 only 20 percent of individuals without religious affiliation expressed that they trust the Prot-
13 estant Church, while 51 percent responded that they do not. Critics usually point to the
14 excess of affluent megachurches and the numerous scandals of financial corruption and sex-
15 ual misconduct among Protestant leaders as contributing to the negative opinion of Chris-
tianity. See Christian Ethics Movement of Korea, “2017-yŏn Han’guk kyohoe.”
16
11. Kurtz, “Politics of Heresy,” 1085.
17
12. Ibid., 1087, 1088; Simmel, “Stranger.”
18 13. Dinshaw, Getting Medieval, 99.
19 14. See also Qadir, “When Heterodoxy Becomes Heresy”; Qadir, “How Heresy Makes
20 Orthodoxy.”
21 15. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 95.
22 16. While idan denotes heresy, the word iban is a neologism first coined in the 1990s as
23 a Korean equivalent to “queer” in that it stresses nonnormativity. Though it is not the most
24 common or preferred term currently in use, iban represents an important sociolinguistic
25 effort to articulate a non-English idiom of difference.
26 17. New queer vitalities is a phrase used in Haritaworn, Kuntsman, and Posocco, intro-
duction, 19.
27
18. Chŏng, Hanʼguk kyohoesa e natʻanan idan nonjaeng; Suh, “Understanding of Or-
28
thodoxy and Heresy in Korean Church History”; Han’guk Kidokkyo Ch’ongyŏnhaphoe,
29 Hanʼguk kyohoe idan nonjaeng kŭ silchʻe rŭl palkʻinda; Hŏ, Han’guk ŭi idan Kidokkyo.
30 19. The International Korean Christian Coalition against Heresy is a group founded in
31 2011 by South Korean and diasporic Korean Christians. At their annual meeting in 2018,
32 they announced that the top eight heretical groups in South Korea are Sinch’ŏnji, also
33 known as the Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (신천지);
34 World Mission Society Church of God (하나님의교회 세계복음선교협회); Salvation
35 Sect (구원파); Seventh-Day Adventist Church (안식교); the Church of Jesus Christ of
36 Latter-Day Saints (Mormon Church, 몰몬교); Jehovah’s Witnesses (여호와의 증인); Chris-
37 tian Gospel Mission (기독교복음선교회), more commonly known as Jesus Morning Star
(JMS); and Manmin Central Church (만민중앙교회). The coalition’s website (ikccah.org)
38
also lists Catholicism, Islam, the Unification Church, and Christian Science as heretical.
39
20. Yi In’gyu of IKCCAH was essentially accused of making heresy determinations
40 without formal training or license. Kim, Ch’ŏryŏng, “Yejang Hapdong.”
41 21. Chŏng, Hanʼguk kyohoesa e natʻanan idan nonjaeng; Suh, “Understanding of Or-
42 thodoxy and Heresy in Korean Church History”; Han’guk Kidokkyo Ch’ongyŏnhaphoe,
43 Hanʼguk kyohoe idan nonjaeng kŭ silchʻe rŭl palkʻinda; Hŏ, Han’guk ŭi idan Kidokkyo.
424 Ju Hui Judy Han
1 22. The so-called BITE model, referring to behavior, information, thoughts, and emo-
2 tions, draws mostly from anticultist activism in the United States. T’ak, Kyohoe wa idan;
3 Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control.
4 23. This article was published on the blog of Chingusai, a long-established gay men’s
organization. Lim, “Sŏng sosuja wa hamkke kŏnnŭn kil.”
5
24. Ibid.
6
25. Tonstad, Queer Theology, 17.
7 26. Guest et al., Queer Bible Commentary, 1; Tonstad, Queer Theology, 17.
8 27. Guest et al., Queer Bible Commentary, xiii.
9 28. The forum was held at the Hyanglin Church on May 17, 2017, which was the annual
10 International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia.
11 29. The Christian-led movement to counter anti-LGBTI politics within the church and
12 beyond includes the constellation of advocacy groups and LGBTI-affirming ministries that
13 have gathered under the banner of Rainbow Jesus. This includes Lim’s Sumdol Hyanglin
14 Church (founded in 2013) and the other Hyanglin churches and affiliates; the Pilgrimage
15 Church (Kil Ch’annŭn Kyohoe, founded in 2013) and the Yongsan House of Sharing
(Nanum Ŭi Chip, founded in 1986), with their community-activism antipoverty mission
16
led by the young outspoken Anglican priest Min-Kim Jong Hun (aka Father Zacchaeus);
17
the Rodem Church (founded in 1996); and the Open Doors Metropolitan Community
18 Church (founded in 2011), a congregation of the Metropolitan Community Churches
19 and the Progressive Christian Alliance. The Metropolitan Community Churches is an inter-
20 national Protestant Christian denomination with over two hundred member congregations
21 in thirty-seven countries that specifically reach out to LGBT families and communities.
22 Also part of Rainbow Jesus are a queer (iban) women’s Catholic group, a Methodist
23 group, and feminist and other human rights advocacy groups.
24 30. Benedetto, Guder, and McKim, Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches,
25 199–200.
26 31. Lee, “Political Reception of the Bible.”
32. See Siu, K’wiŏ ap’ok’allipsŭ; and Syum P’ŭrojekt’ŭ, Hanŭnim kwa mannan tong-
27
sŏngae.
28
33. Han, “Becoming Visible, Becoming Political.”
29 34. Han, “Urban Megachurches and Contentious Religious Politics in Seoul”; Yi Y.,
30 “Hyangnin Kyohoe.”
31 35. Cheng, “Contributions from Queer Theory,” 1, 11. Cheng’s idea of “radical love”
32 concerns both queerness and Christian theology, constituting a “love so extreme that it dis-
33 solves our existing boundaries” (11). Radical Love was translated into Korean by Im Yu-
34 gyŏng and Kang Chuwŏn and published in 2019 by the Korea Institute of Rainbow Theol-
35 ogy as Kŭpchinjŏgin sarang: Kwiŏ sinhak kaeron.
36 36. Cheng, “Contributions from Queer Theory,” 3–4.
37 37. Cheng, Radical Love, 2.
38. See Stuart, Gay and Lesbian Theologies; and Tonstad, Queer Theology.
38
39. Shore-Goss, “Gay and Lesbian Theologies,” 189, 200.
39
40. Author’s field notes. Also see Yi Ŭ., “Im Pora idan sibi.”
40 41. Chŏn’guk Yŏ Kyoyŏkchahoe, “Im Pora Moksa e taehan idansŏng.”
41 42. Ibid.
42 43. Hŏ, Han’guk ŭi idan Kidokkyo.
43
1 44. T’ak, Kyohoe wa idan, 179.

2 45. Han, “Becoming Visible, Becoming Political”; Ro, “WCC General Assembly After-
3 math.”
4 46. Benedetto, Guder, and McKim, Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches,
158–59.
5
47. Five Presbyterian denominations (Hapdong, T’onghap, Kosin, Hapsin, and Paeksŏk
6
Taesin) were joined by three other Protestant denominations (the Korean Methodist
7 Church, the Korea Baptist Convention, and the Baptist Korea Evangelical Holiness
8 Church). Kwŏn, “Kyodanbyŏl ch’onghoe rŭl tora pomyŏ”; 8-kae Kyodan Idanwi, “Im
9 Pora Moksa ŭi idanjŏk kyŏnghyang e kwanhan pogosŏ.”
10 48. Ch’oe, “Im Pora Moksa ‘idan’ mandŭn kŭn’gŏ nŭn?”
11 49. Lim, “Kŭrŏtch’i mothal ttae enŭn yŏrŏbun,” 48.
12 50. Syum P’ŭrojekt’ŭ, Hanŭnim kwa mannan tongsŏngae.
13 51. 8-kae Kyodan Idanwi, “Im Pora Moksa ŭi idanjŏk kyŏnghyang e kwanhan pogosŏ.”
14 52. Ibid.
15 53. Lim and Kim, “Che 204-ch’a WŏllyeP’orŏm.” Particularly illuminating is the well-
informed and nuanced discussion of contradictions and internal differences among antiqu-
16
eer forces in Siu, K’wiŏ ap’ok’allipsŭ.
17
54. Lessl, “Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Politics of Science,” 20.
18 55. Qadir, “How Heresy Makes Orthodoxy.”
19 56. Mahmood, “Religious Reason and Secular Affect.”
20 57. I am grateful to Steven Chung, Erin Huang, and Franz Prichard at Princeton Uni-
21 versity for organizing the “Asia Theory Visuality” conference in May 2018 featuring the
22 term thresholds. They invited inquiry into “the intervals, pathways, and openings that illu-
23 minate new aesthetic-political configurations” (from the conference program text). Going
24 beyond the idea of thresholds as the logic of a line or a discrete boundary, the conference
25 organizers suggested an imagination of a threshold as dynamic and three-dimensional, as
26 “pathway, opening, and framing, one that discloses ways of seeing, relating, or traversing
such boundaries and limits.” I have found this conceptualization to be immensely generative.
27
28
29
30 WORKS CITED
31
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10 board1&wr_id=6514.
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JKS252_07Han_1pp.

3d 07/07/20 11:26am Page 407

408 Ju Hui Judy Han

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410 Ju Hui Judy Han

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1 THE SEMANTIC AMBIGUITY OF IDAN

412 Ju Hui Judy Han

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414 Ju Hui Judy Han

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1 theology is one counterhegemonic tradition; queer theory, feminist theory, and

416 Ju Hui Judy Han

The Queer Thresholds of Heresy 417

418 Ju Hui Judy Han

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420 Ju Hui Judy Han

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1 however, in declaring Lim and LGBTI-afﬁrming ministry to be idan, the process

422 Ju Hui Judy Han

1 2. Hapdong is short for Taehan Yesukyo Changnohoe (Presbyterian Church in Korea),

The Queer Thresholds of Heresy 423

424 Ju Hui Judy Han

The Queer Thresholds of Heresy 425

1 44. T’ak, Kyohoe wa idan, 179.

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428 Ju Hui Judy Han

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