"‘A church is a building, too’ : multiple affordances of religious structures for (non)migrant activities in Seoul, South Korea" / Bubbles Beverly Asor

Published in the International Journal of Asian Christianity: Vol. 8 (2025): Iss. 2 :
Special Issue: Asian Catholic Materials and Space

Abstract:
The physicality and materiality of churches are largely understudied because of the popular notion that a church is more than a building but a symbolic carrier of faith and community. As this article demonstrates, however, churches and religious buildings are also material phenomena whose architectural, physical, and spatial configurations have a structuring role by providing affordances or multiple possibilities and limitations (dis)allowing for religious and social activities by migrant congregants, non-migrant congregants, and outsiders. Using J. Gibson’s notion of affordances, Glaeser’s activity concept and drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in Hyehwa Catholic Church in Seoul, South Korea, I explore what the physicality of a church could offer to (non)migrants at the individual and community levels with regard to religious and secular activities. Within the context of migration, the church building that includes various spaces and objects within and outside its premise has multiple affordances for one or more activities – religious affordances for sacred activities and quotidian affordances for placemaking activities. By identifying these multiple affordances of church buildings and surrounding vernacular streetscape, I endeavor to present an approach to studying religion’s materiality and physical environment within the sociological discussion of agency and structure.

Architectural theology in Korea / Jeong-Ku Lee.

Originally a Ph. D. Thesis. "Architectural Anglicanism: a missiological interpretation of Kanghwa Church and Seoul Anglican Cathedral". University of Birmingham, Sept. 1998.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 379-398) and glossary of Korean terms.

The Korean context. Introduction ; The idea of p'ungsu ; A conception of Korean traditional architecture: the dwelling house -- The mission policies in relation to church architecture. The policies of Bishops Corfe and Turner ; The policies of Bishop M.N. Trollope, and the Kanghwa Anglican Church ; The policies of Bishop M.N. Trollope and the Seoul Anglican Cathedral -- Korean architectural anglicanism today. The architectural experience of congregations in the Anglican Church of Korea -- Conclusion: architectural anglicanism in Korea.

Colophon in Korean.