Kil Sun-joo

Life

Kil was born in Anju, Pyeongan Province. Most sources give his year of birth as 1869, though some give 1868. As a boy he studied the Chinese classics. As a young man he passed through several religions: he joined Gwanseonggyo, a religion devoted to the veneration of Guan Yu, and withdrew to the mountains to practice seondo (仙道, a Taoist-derived discipline of spiritual cultivation). In 1897 he became a Christian, receiving baptism from the missionary Graham Lee at Jangdaehyeon Church in Pyongyang.

In 1901 he became an elder of Jangdaehyeon Church. In 1902 he began serving under the missionary Samuel A. Moffett as a josa (助事, a Korean helper who assisted missionaries in overseeing multiple churches), with responsibility for churches in Pyeongan and Hwanghae provinces. In 1903 he entered the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pyongyang, graduating with its first class in 1907. That same year, when the Independent Presbytery (the first presbytery of the Korean Presbyterian Church) was organized, he and six classmates were ordained as ministers. He then became senior pastor of Jangdaehyeon Church.

During the March First Movement of 1919, he signed the Declaration of Independence as one of the Christian leaders among the 33 national representatives. After arriving in Seoul and learning that the other representatives had been arrested, he turned himself in to the authorities. He is reported to have been imprisoned for about a year and seven months before being acquitted and released. According to accounts, he later resigned from Jangdaehyeon Church after facing opposition from younger, socialist-leaning members of the congregation. Thereafter he traveled throughout the country leading sagyeonghoe (査經會, Bible conferences devoted to several days of intensive Bible study and prayer). In November 1935, after leading a meeting at Gochang Church in Gangseo County, South Pyeongan Province, and pronouncing the benediction, he collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage; he died on November 26.

Ministry and Accomplishments

• Dawn prayer meeting: Kil had been in the habit of praying at dawn since his years of spiritual cultivation before his conversion. In 1906 he and Elder Park Chi-rok began meeting regularly for dawn prayer at Jangdaehyeon Church. When attendance grew to several hundred people a day, they obtained the session's permission, and from the fall of 1906 the gathering was held as an official meeting of the church. This is commonly cited as the origin of the Korean church's dawn prayer meeting.
• Great Pyongyang Revival: In January 1907, during a Bible conference at Jangdaehyeon Church, Kil publicly confessed that he had been jealous of his colleagues and had harbored intense hatred toward the missionary William Blair. Many hold that this confession spread into repentance throughout the congregation and sparked the Great Pyongyang Revival.
• Preaching and writings: He was known for having read the Book of Revelation a great many times and for committing it to memory. He wrote Malsehak (The Study of the Last Days), a work on eschatology. By one estimate, he baptized more than 3,000 people over some forty years.

Influence on the Korean Church

The dawn prayer meeting he began had spread nationwide by around 1907, and today it is a hallmark devotional practice of Korean Protestantism across denominational lines. Rev. Bang Ji-il, who served under him as an evangelist, testified that Kil did not allow revival meetings to end in mere experience but guided them into Word-centered Bible conferences. For this reason the Great Pyongyang Revival is described as a movement centered on Bible study. In church circles he is sometimes called "the father of Korean Christianity" or "the father of the Korean church."

Assessment

As a pastor who led the revival movement and as a national representative who took part in the independence movement, Kil is highly regarded across denominational lines. Some commentators, however, offer a different view. They argue that his mystical experiences, such as his body growing hot as fire during prayer, and his severe, ascetic manner of prayer reflect the influence of the seondo practices he followed before his conversion. On this basis, some question whether elements of indigenous religion found their way into Korean church practices such as the dawn prayer meeting. His admirers, on the other hand, point out that he emphasized a Bible-centered faith through his Bible conferences.