This paper seeks to analyze Sukhun Ham’s Non-churchism, the instrument through which he expanded beyond general framework of Non-churchism, and the general idea of his resulted ideology. At the initial stage, Ham’s theory was within the framework of Uchimura’s Nonchurch-religion based on the vertical relationship connecting the Almighty and mankind with the universality of grace, upon which equality between man is established, the directness and practice of faith, and the resistance towards historical changes. However, unlike Uchimura who read history through the eyes of citizens of empires, Ham took the perspective as a slave of the colonized, well within the context of world history. And he pursued an ‘universal ideal’ that allowed a world without slavery.
Here, Ham recognized that faith between man and God has to be practised and realized through voluntary love that shares the pain of others, and comes to reinterpret the orthodox faith of redemtion. In other worlds, he avoided inactive faith that simply revered Christ’s passion, but rather tried to restore the actor of faith by emphasizing a faith works through the practices love.
Emphasizing not just a vertical relationship of independence and freedom, but also that such rights should be protected through a horizontal fellowship of love, Ham started to expand beyond Uchimura’s framework of Nonchurch that argued only the vertical relationship between the Almighty and man, and such ideological expansion accelerated with Ham’s experiences of the Korean War and division of the peninsula.
After independence was stolen due to the failure to build a united political front, which brought on the war amongst brothers, Ham believed that creating a political community that guarantees everybody’s freedom, equality, and self-preservation, is the measurement of proving true religious transcendence of oneself. At this point Ham breaks away from the exclusiveness of Christianity’s argument as an absolute truth, and recognizes the necessity for an organization that does not separate church and state, is open, and non-violent; thus entirely escaping Uchimura’s Non-church.
Sukhun Ham’s newly formed religion still bore factors of Non-church- the universality of grace and the conviction about equality among men. In act, the reason why he broke away from the exclusiveness of Non-church and Christianity, was to more thoroughly established the universality of God’s grace, which couldn’t be monopolized by a single religion, Christianity. Also, the idea of equality amongst man was further established and thus universalized regardless of approval for Christianity.