By the way, the Westerner in the background of the Franklin Graham picture is Dr. John Linton, brother of Stephen Linton. Dr. John Linton translated for Franklin’s trip. His regular job is runnning the international health care center at Yonsei’s Severance Hospital.

Good question. I guess I would have said, “Billy Graham, a Baptist, went on to be one of the most popular evangelists in American history while Ruth, a Presbyterian, never left her church (or denomination).

Among my extended family are a lot of Christians who married Christians of a different denomination (including Protestants marrying Catholics). When it was intra-Protestant marriages, they talk(ed) about changing churches, leaving churches, joining churches, but never “converting.” I’ve heard “converting” only when Protestants became Catholics. Among friends, when Christians (Catholics or Protestants) adopted the Jewish faith of their spouse, they also used the word “convert.”

21st century America? Mr Graham and Miss Bell married nearly six decades before the 21st century began. Protestant was a very clear concept to a lot of Christians (WASP, anyone?) in their early-to-mid-20th century world.

In fact, in the half century of missionary proliferation in Korea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the various Protestant denominations actively cooperated to divide up Chos�n/Ch�sen into non-competing territories, since they saw all the Protestant denominations as working toward the same ends.

while some Prebyterians may still define themselves as a Protestant denomination to differentiate themselves from Roman Catholicism, most Baptists refer to themselves as �Christian.�

Your experience seems different from mine. Including close relatives with whom I’ve attended church, I know a lot of Presbyterians and a lot of Baptists, and they all refer to themselves as Christians first, and then their sect second.

But I do agree with you that nowadays the prominence and unity of “Protestant” as a singular concept is eroding. The concept of a Protestant/Catholic dichotomy is being replaced by an evangelical/fundamentalist-versus-non-evangelical dichotomy. (If that’s what you’re getting at.)

You�ll note that fundamentalist Christians reject the entire Catholic-Protestant paradigm. But all that being said, what verb would you prefer instead of convert?

That goes along with the dichotomy I mentioned above. But when the Grahams met in the early 1940s, such was not the case.

By the way, I recall talking about Dr Steven Linton in the last half of this post from 2005, in the context of North Korean aid.

In the sense that they believe that Catholics are not “saved” and hence not Christians and going to Hell. I suppose that is “rejecting a paradigm”. It is fun to go to large Catholic events in Chicago. There are often “Christians” protesting there, telling you that you are not a Christian and you are going to Hell. One guy got right in my face and said “have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior or not!” I said, “yes”, and he screamed “liar!” One guy in Indiana was talking to a bunch of people about his faith, and started to say something, he put his hand right in my face and said, “when you get rid of the Pope, you can talk to me about religion.” There is a lot more where that came from.
.
Just to clarify that “rejecting the entire Catholic-Protestant paradigm” means less, not more, civility and tolerance from “Christians” toward Catholics. With the recent depraved conduct of some of the Catholic clergy, there is the smell of blood in the water, and these guys are hoping they may finally see the Whore of Babylon breathe its last.
.
It will be a long wait.

Part of the equation may be that Kim Il-Sung himself might have had a soft spot for Presbyterians and other Protestants. His grandfather was a minister and his family in general was religious. I’m not so sure he ever personally accepted the ideological fervor against religion that European communists did. He certainly seemed to understand how to mold certain aspects of religion into a personality cult.

Whether the cost-benefit works out as tidily today as it did back in those days is another question entirely, sadly. How many millions must perish before the DPRK is wiped away?

The engagement of the Graham family in East Asia would be a an interesting history to know

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Devil-China-Story-Nelson/dp/0890661413