Some churches are employing technology and becoming less hierarchical to try to entice and keep young members.
Seoul, South Korea – On a warm spring Sunday morning, the rows of pews inside Seoul Cathedral Anglican Church were nearly full with congregants singing a traditional hymn accompanied by a blaring organ.
Among the attendees was Park Hyun-jung, a simply dressed woman in her early 30s, currently taking time away from her career to raise her children, aged two and six.
Park comes from a devout Anglican family and attended church regularly while growing up in Seoul. As she entered adulthood and the challenges of completing university, finding a job and marrying came to dominate her schedule, she started going to church less often. She now only goes two or three times a year.
“I’m so busy trying to raise kids and manage our household. I can’t find time to do everything, ” Park said.
Her trajectory of straying from religion in early adulthood is increasingly common among South Koreans, and is reflective of a national trend towards increasing secularism, particularly among young people.
Experts say that young South Koreans are too wrapped up in a demanding education system and job market to spend much time on religious activities.
In many South Korean cities, there are more churches than convenience stores. Around 20 percent of South Koreans identify as Protestant, the largest group in the country, followed by 15 percent who identify as Buddhists, and nearly eight percent as Catholics.
The abundance of churches is a legacy of how people turned to organised religion, mostly brought by US missionaries, for structure and guidance after the 1950-53 Korean War devastated the country and tore apart families. But according to Statistics Korea, a government body, the percentage of South Koreans identifying as having no religion rose from 47 percent in 2005 to 56 percent in 2015. This falling religiosity is especially pronounced among young adults: a poll the same year by Gallup Korea found 31 percent of South Koreans in their 20s identifying as religious, down from 46 percent 10 years earlier.
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When Park does attend service, she goes to Seoul Cathedral, a 126-year-old Anglican church located on a leafy property in the centre of Seoul.
Seoul Cathedral Anglican Church is one of a few houses of worship that, facing down the possibility of a slide into irrelevance, are making efforts to retain their young congregants, updating teachings and holding events modelled on typical TV talk shows, where instead of just discussing scripture, young people can speak openly about personal or spiritual matters and seek support from peers and church leaders.
At Young Nak Presbyterian Church, also located in central Seoul, to help retain congregants, church officials took inspiration from a TV panel discussion show called ” Yoo Hee-yeol’s Sketchbook “. Religious leaders now host informal conversation events with churchgoers, allowing them to discuss personal or theological questions.
Some have pointed to smartphones as one thing distracting young South Koreans from religious observance. With this in mind, some young South Koreans last year organised a joint prayer event they called ” Uprising “, which aimed to get young people off their phones and into an in-person prayer gathering.
Other churches have accepted the primacy of smartphones in how young people access information.
