Transnational Salvations: Christianity Across Korea, US, and Haiti

This talk introduces the basic structure of the current book project, Transnational Salvations. The project interrogates colonialism patterns in both transatlantic and transpacific Protestant networks, focusing on case studies of Korean evangelical missionaries in Haiti. Anchored in the Korean diaspora in the US, Korean and Korean American evangelicals not only emerge as a direct result of the transpacific anti-communist military network between the US and South Korea but also assert their identity as the new Chosen people tasked with evangelizing the secularizing world. On the other hand, Haiti survived the 19th-century international system of anti-blackness after its successful revolution against the French Empire. In the twentieth century, the Roosevelt Corollary, leading to US expansionism in the Caribbean and the Philippines, resulted in the US Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934), significantly damaging Haiti’s economic and political structure. Evangelical Christian institutions and relief organizations from the US began to proliferate in Haiti, alongside the existing majority of Catholics and Vodouisants. These two already saturated religio-political fields of the Korean diaspora and Haiti converge in the contemporary missions of Korean and Korean American evangelicals in Haiti. Analyzing historical and anthropological data through three major categories—race, religion, and gender—Transnational Salvations critiques the persisting structures of colonial regimes while illuminating racialized and gendered norms in transnational religious practices. In the talk, I specifically pay attention to the distinctive but linked racialization processes through the category of religion in Korea and Haiti under the US occupations and their present ramifications.

Minjung Noh Ph.D. is a religious studies scholar with a transnational and interdisciplinary method, specializing in the confluences of religious cultures between South Korea, Haiti, and the United States. Her work to date spans Korean religions, comparative ethnic and gender studies, and transnational Christianity. She has held previous positions at Drew Theological School (Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Transnational Christianity and Gender Studies, 2021-2023), Wartburg College (Visiting Assistant Professor of World Religions, 2019-2020) and Temple University (Instructor of record, 2016-2021). Her research has been published in Journal of Korean Religions, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, and Religion, State & Society. Her current book project Transnational Salvations: Korean Women Missionaries in Haiti is the first monograph that investigates the multidirectional religious dynamics between South Korea, USA, and Haiti through the angle of the evangelical missionary network built between these three nation-states.