Food and Missionaries Post World War II
Here’s a question I have been pondering. For much of history, missionaries were potent agents of culinary change. When people converted to Buddhism or Islam or Christianity (which usually meant a missionary somewhere in the background), they changed their food habits. If you became Christian, for example, you might be expected to give up meat on certain days, or to drink wine and eat bread (or something close to them) at communion and so on.
So post World War II, are missionaries still agents of culinary change. Do Pentacostalists in Africa (one of the fastest growing religions, I understand) suggest certain dietary changes. Do Protestants and Catholics (perhaps with aid agencies) introduce changes. Do they do so in the name of religion or in the name of modern nutritional theory? What about Muslims of various stripes?
- A Hawaii Story for the Inauguration. Part III of IV
- A Hawaii Story for the Inauguration. Part IV of IV
http://www.asiaquarterly.com/content/view/167/1/
Islam Struggles for a Toehold in Korea
Written by Don Baker
One reason given is the difficulty of following Islamic dietary restrictions in South Korean culture.
“Muslims also have restrictions on what they can eat and drink. They cannot eat pork, for example, a rule extremely hard to observe in a country where pork dishes are plentiful. Ramadan, with its month-long daytime fast, is particularly difficult, since eating in Korea is a communal activity and classmates or fellow-workers will ask a Muslim colleague to join them for lunch. Drinking alcohol is also a communal activity that officemates often indulge in on a regular basis.”
I have to look for it, but I’m pretty sure I read a paper about Christianity in South Korea and modernization that also mentioned dietary changes.
I do know that some upper class or yangban converted to Christianity (especially Protestant denominations) as a way into modernity and that both sides of my family ate “Western” foodstuffs well before they were readily available in the country. Christian beliefs and traditional Korean holidays/celebrations don’t always jibe either. So this has been ongoing thing in my family, yet to be resolved one way or another.
That’s fascinating Ji-Young. The story in the Primary Chronicle about Vladimir accepting Christianity as the religion of the Rus around 1000 AD after surveying the dietary alternatives in Islam and Judaism is often take to be, shall we say, quaint. But adopting a religion that requires dramatic changes in eating habits is no easy matter as your example shows.
Are debates about celebrations explicit in your family or just something lying there under the surface?
In the past the debates were more explicit, sometimes vigorously so. Again, an on again off again thing, some years we were just too tired or busy to argue and continued to celebrate disparate traditions without worrying about inconsistencies or contradictions across “belief systems”.
These days, it’s under the surface and seems to getting buried deeper and deeper under.
Many Korean holidays have a traditional table setting, sometimes involving homage to ancestors or outright ancestor worship. A no, no in Presbyterianism? Is it a form of idolatry? We’d have civil to heated discussions about this sort of thing.
A culture’s dominant religious or philosophical beliefs are impossible to contain within a house of worship or the occasional holiday. They seep into so many aspects of daily life. So it wasn’t always about specifically about religious holidays either. It was sometimes about maintaining old social hierarchies (Confucian) at the table or taking a more egalitarian (Presbyterian) approach.
One lingering, aching thing that my parents still seem to worry about is the eldest son’s role in not only mourning the death of a parent, but acting as a kind of liaison. There are food related rituals that ensure parents/ancestors are well cared for and don’t go hungry in the afterlife.
For the yangban class especially, food=ritual.