Kim Il-Sung and Christianity in North Korea

Secularisation remains a central but contested topic within the social sciences. The concept dates back to some of the earliest theorists of religion, such as Karl Marx and August Comte, and encompasses a multi-dimensional theoretical approach, described by Phillip Gorski as a “secularisation paradigm” as opposed to a singular thesis.1 At the core of this approach lies the idea that religion is in a (potentially terminal) state of decline. This extends across multiple dimensions of religiosity, such as membership of religious organisations, attendance at places of worship, and personal beliefs in God, and is associated with a range of causal dynamics linked to the onset of modernity. These include the rise of the natural sciences (which have displaced religious explanations about the workings of the natural world), the functional differentiation of the state (which has progressively de-coupled religious organisations from their role as welfare providers), the growth of cultural diversity (undermining religious claims to universal truth), and the role of existential security (with control over the natural and social environment supplanting the need for religious certainties).2

Christianity · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies

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