Self-Deification and Mammon: A Weberian Theological Insight into Church Decline Trends in Protestant South Korea and the Occident

Abstract

In this work, Max Weber’s social analysis is employed to demonstrate that human self-deification is the cardinal reason for church decline. Weber’s social analytical tool unearths the various sources of human self-deification in the church respectively as secular humanism as well the traditional religions. For example, Korean Shamanism, Buddhism and Confucian hierarchical culture may instigate or reinforce human self-deification. This is achieved through the intuitive agreement with an observed cultural value (human self-deification) known as Ideal Type and its logical explication. The paper shows that postmodern ethic tends to deify the human personality which self-deification also is promoted by scientific materialism. Hence the church declines because it loses its object and focus of worship thereby losing her relevance in postmodernism.