The Violence of New Religious Movements and the Entrepreneurial Model: With a Focus on the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Korea

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to introduce a new Korean religious movement, Shincheonji Church of Jesus (SCJ) and to discuss some of its missionary strategies as a type of violence, which I believe the traditional models of new religious movement (NRM) and violence cannot duly explain. The SCJ has recently been singled out as the epicenter of COVID-19 in Korea, as most of the early confirmed cases were linked to its members and as its clandestine proselytizing was blamed as the main cause of the unexpected explosion of new cases. Most NRM theories and discussions have been centered around the two larger explanatory models: characterological and interactional models. While the characterological model addresses common markers that most incidents of violence share, the interactional model focuses on the interrelationship between endogenous and exogenous factors. In this article, I argue that these two models are not capable of clearly identifying and fully explaining the type of violence that the SCJ causes, particularly against the mainstream Korean Christian churches. I suggest a new model, namely, the entrepreneurial/expansionist model. This entrepreneurial model finds the cause of violence in the SCJ’s highly calculative and rational motivation and effort to achieve institutional success rather than pressures from or fear of internal and external crisis. I will present my case by utilizing the three assumptions, which Laurence Iannaccone identifies as the most fundamental for the rational choice theory of religion.