PANA Institute for Leadership Development

Concurrent Session C3 / Saturday.2008.Aug.9 / 11:00 AM / Mudd 100

Allen Kim, University of California, Irvine:  allenjk@uci.edu

This paper examines how a religious men's movement called Father School promotes the construction of a “godly man” (Bartkowski 2000) identity among first generation Korean men.  Among other qualities, a “godly man,” from the evangelical Christian perspective, is one who embraces Biblical values of fatherly love and caring towards his children. Conceptualized as a “gender project” (Connell 1995), this movement emphasized fatherhood as part of a larger transformative “master identity” (Charmaz 1994) for which participants strive to infuse their role as fathers with new meaning and salience, expressing regret for past fathering transgressions and vowing to be more expressive and caring in the future.  Employing ethnographic methods and content analysis of movement rhetoric and men's written reflections (“homework”), I explore how this gender project is realized.  I find that three mechanisms are central to the movement's project: biographical reconstruction, affective bonds, and demonstration events.  In identifying these mechanisms in the projection of this new godly man identity, I hope to contribute to our understanding of gender identities as contingent and vulnerable to competing projects.  In addition, my research focuses attention on the under explored ethnic realm of gender identity construction among first-generation immigrant men, whose gender work may be even more dramatic due to their Korean Confucian orientation and social adjustment in America.

FATHER SCHOOL MOVEMENT (Supplemental background information)
Founded in 1995, Father School developed in South Korea as a response to South Korean evangelical concerns over fatherless households, moral relativism, divorce, and a liberalized sex culture, all anathema to biblical values.  Much like the Promise Keepers, Father School strongly draws upon the Christian evangelical tradition, seeking, according to their optic, to return men to God and the teachings of Jesus as they relate to the family and in particular, men's familial roles. Their mission according to their advice manual is “to encourage Fathers as family builders of this world to become holy and pure men, shepherds of families and leaders of churches, and help men initiate spiritual movements to transform society in Christ” (Father School manual 2006:1).  Father School members champion the “godly man” (i)  identity by which various other role identities including husband, father, son, brother, worker and others are shaped.

As a self proclaimed “spiritual movement” Father School is organized as a four-day seminar replete with small group formations, testimonies, lectures, rituals, food, writing assignments (homework completed at home), a confessional culture based on men's letters and demonstration events enacted by members.  To borrow a common Christian adage, “walking the walk” is viewed just as if not more important than “talking the talk.”  The organization has expanded to locations worldwide with over 80,000 participants. (ii)  For the first three conference days, women do not attend conferences.  However, unlike the Promise Keepers, women participate on the last day, sharing their experiences with other group members, sharing a meal, and then participating in the dramatic feet washing ceremony as their husbands kneel before their wives and wash their feet, pledging to become godly men. 

As a grassroots supported organization, Father School relies on volunteers-former Father School attendees-to help as small group facilitators, logistic support, providing testimonials, and contributing in various other service roles.   Father School also invite Christian clergy (also former Father School attendees) to speak on one of four thematic meetings outlined by the Father School advice manual: (1) Family Builder and His Legacy (2) Family Builder and Biblical Manhood (3) Family Builder's Role (4) Family Builder and His Spirituality. (iii)   Speaking to their essentialist view of gender, Father School believes men need to “recover” a lost Christian masculinity misguided by sin and apathy.  Through participation in Father School that men appear to socially construct their religious identity.  Father School is particularly critical of men “culturally frozen” (iv) in “old Korean ways” typified by men's orientation to Confucian male privilege and primary focus on breadwinning activities. 

FOOTNOTES: 
(i) While culturally specific to Korean men, Father School and Promise Keepers both share as evangelical men's movements a similar understanding of the godly man identity.  In fact, a video of the Promise Keepers is shown at   conferences as a movement to emulate.  The terms biblical manhood, family builder, godly manhood, etc., are all fundamentally similar in meaning. 
(ii) Men pay a $100 conference fee inclusive of Korean dinners, newsletters, homework stationary and envelopes, t-shirt, towel, an advice manual, cross, and a certificate (bearing completion) all bearing the Father School insignia.
(iii) The term “Family Builder” is synonymous with godly manhood, godly man, and biblical manhood used within evangelicalism
(iv) Term coined by Nadia Kim (2006).