Misunderstanding Equality, Power, and Vulnerability: Elevating the Individual over Cohesion in Hierarchy as a Value

Abstract

This article explores dominant ideas of value at play in a critical incident experienced by international mission candidates on a team placement, in an Anglican community of the United Kingdom. The ethnographic analysis will compare different perspectives on how misunderstanding cultural values and social relations as theological obligations can lead to suffering. Thus, the study shows how qualitative differences in cultural values and social relations determine contrary ways of understanding theological conceptualizations of equality as a Christian idea in contact zones of international mission communities. The analysis challenges two Christian assumptions: firstly, that extending equal value to people before God is universally understood in the same way, and secondly, that individual well-being is inherently superior to ensuring social cohesion, exemplified by Korean hierarchy. Although people realize hierarchy and individualism the world over, the nuances of meaning dominating their relations to other values determine why and how people experience suffering.