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75

A Ref lection on Nominal Christians 
in Contemporary England
A Non-Diasporic Korean Missionary 
Perspective

Sinwoong Kim
The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham, UK 
Contact: sp.kim@yahoo.com 

Abstract

This article attends to the religious landscape in contempo-
rary England, particularly those who display some Christian be-
liefs and practices loosely, while their church attendance is slight, 
occasional or non-existent. In Western society and churches, they 
are predominantly characterised as “nominal Christians.” From a 
missiological perspective, I examine the adequacy of this charac-
terisation, drawing upon my empirical findings of non-diasporic 
Korean missionaries’ engagement with the phenomenon of inter-
est. Firstly, I show how nominalism is addressed in the two major 
sociological approaches that attempt to characterise the religious 
trend in the contemporary Western culture, namely, secularization 
theories and de-institutionalization theories. Secondly, I present 



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76

empirical findings of Korean missionaries’ reflection on nominal-
ism in the light of such a sociological debate. Finally, I examine 
the missiological implication of their reflection for nominalism in 
reference to the concept of missio Dei. I argue that Korean mis-
sionaries’ accounts disclose what I call “religious nominals” who 
have some valid elements of Christian faith in an increasingly de-
institutionalized ecclesial context. They represent a distinctive re-
ligious constituency among whom God carries out the redemptive 
work of Christ, the manner of which is as yet to be explored. This 
disclosure invites us to review our understanding of nominalism 
with a serious theological exploration of such a redemptive inter-
vention of God. This exploration also invites further reflection on 
our current discourse of missional church in this particular theo-
logical context.

Introduction

This article draws on research conducted over the course of my 
doctoral project which investigated non-diasporic Korean mis-
sionaries. As missionaries, they focus on doing mission among 
local people outside their migrant communities in England (Fres-
ton, 2010: 162–163). The project explored the sociological and 
theological meaning of their missionary experience through in-
depth interviews with nine missionaries whom I selected out of 
44 questionnaire participants across England. One of the major 
findings from this exploration was about their encounter with a 
unique religious landscape in England: it consists of those who 
display some Christian beliefs and practices loosely, while their 
church attendance is slight, occasional or non-existent.

Two statistics can be used to illustrate this constituency in a 
tangible way. First, the latest UK National Census (2011) shows 
that 59.4 percent of the English population identified as Christian.1 
Secondly, it is estimated that less than 5 percent of the population 

1. While the 2021 UK National Census is on the way, the National Centre 
for Social Research (Curtice et al., 2019: 4–5) suggests that 38 percent of the 
British Public identified as Christian in its survey of 3,879 Britons in 2018.



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

77

would attend the church by 2025 (Brierley, 2014). The apparent 
gap between these two figures captures the number of those who 
have an unconventional Christian attachment (see Drane, 2008: 
75–76). This gap suggests that more than a third of the national 
population has such a Christian connection in contemporary Eng-
lish society.

In Western society and churches, this Christian adherence is 
predominantly characterised as “nominalism” (Glock and Wuth-
now, 1979). At the heart of nominalism is “lack of a strong belief 
in a higher power, and indifference towards churches, but an ir-
regular adherence to religion as a significant cultural, familial, 
and moral marker” (Day, 2012: 440). In other words, nominal 
Christians engage with Christianity for various reasons other than 
for faith matter per se. Eddie Gibbs (2002: 239) asserts that such 
a Christian adherence represents a serious “deviation between the 
identity claimed by persons and the actual commitment to that 
identity” (see also Dyck et al., 2014). This view of nominalism is 
also popularised within the Korean churches in their discussion on 
doing mission in the West (Nam, 2010: 48–52; Han, 2014: 51–53).

Such a view, however, seems to be insufficient to address the 
empirical findings from my research into Korean missionaries’ 
engagement with the phenomenon in England. They have encoun-
tered not only those who show a loose Christian attachment on 
little or no religious grounds, but also those who do so with some 
valid elements of faith experience, the nature of which they do not 
fully understand. The encounter with this latter group has led Ko-
rean missionaries to review their understanding of nominalism.

In this article, I will address this review by Korean missionar-
ies from a sociological and missiological perspective. Sociologi-
cally, this review draws our attention to nominalism in the context 
of the ongoing sociological discussion on the religious trend in the 
contemporary Western culture. Missiologically, Korean mission-
aries’ review involves theological reflection on God’s relationship 
with nominal Christians. This has an impact on both doing mis-
sion and being church among them.



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I will start with a brief sketch of two sociological approaches 
that address the religious validity of nominal Christians’ at-
tachment to Christianity. This will be followed by my empirical 
findings that highlight how Korean missionaries understand the 
nominal Christians they encountered and in what ways they re-
flect on their view of nominalism in such an encounter. Finally, 
I will examine their reflection missiologically in the light of the 
concept of missio Dei.

Two sociological approaches to nominalism

A range of sociological discussions is available to highlight how 
Western society approaches the religious elements of nominal 
Christians. Among the most relevant approaches are “invisible re-
ligion” (Luckmann, 1967), “believing without belonging” (Davie, 
1994), “vicarious religion” (Davie, 2000), “fuzzy fidelity” (Voas, 
2009), and a contemporary account of secularization theories by 
Charles Taylor (2007) and Steve Bruce (2011). While these ap-
proaches adopt a variety of perspectives that overlap or contrast 
with one another, they are divided into two strands. A leading point 
of contention is whether Christian nominalism represents a loss of 
interest in religion itself or a change in religious commitment.

Nominalism as an insignificant and decreasing religiosity 

The first sociological strand, which suggests that nominalism 
represents a loss of people’s interest in religion, is based on secu-
larization theories. While discussions on secularization are ongo-
ing and being modified (Dawson, 2011: 57–75), they are all built 
upon one premise: the decline of religion is inevitable in modern 
societies (Berger, 1969: 108). Drawing on such a view, Steve Bruce 
and David Voas argue that nominal Christians’ engagement with 
Christianity reflects an insignificant and disappearing religiosity.

Voas (2009) identifies nominal Christians in his study of re-
ligious change in Europe, which draws upon the European Social 



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

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Survey (ESS).2 Voas finds that, while the level of religious measures 
continues to decline across Europe, still a half of the population in 
each country shows a level of those measures that is neither as high 
as that of the patently religious nor as low as that of the patently 
unreligious. He refers to this intermediate constituency as “fuzzy 
Christians,” given that Christianity has been the dominant religion 
for centuries in Europe (Voas, 2009: 164). The religious life of this 
cohort reflects that of nominal Christians.

Voas characterises nominal Christians’ attachment to Chris-
tianity in two ways: insignificant and decreasing. First, it is insig-
nificant given that their Christian connections only play “a very 
minor role (if any) in their lives” (Voas, 2009: 164). In his view, 
their attachment to Christianity can be explained by their Chris-
tian upbringing, tradition or ethnicity. While Day (2012: 449–453) 
considers such a natal or ethnic nominalism as sufficiently “reli-
gious” in the sense of the Durkheimian tradition (i.e. religion is a 
social function to help people form a sense of shared identity and 
morality), she also points out that this fashion of religion does not 
necessarily draw people into beliefs in transcendent or sacred can-
opy. Secondly, Voas argues that nominal Christians’ engagement 
with Christianity represents a decreasing practice. Given that the 
ESS shows a constant decline in the level of religious measures over 
time across Europe, Voas (2009: 167) asserts that the numbers of 
fuzzy Christians will be eventually overtaken by the numbers of 
the areligious (see also Voas and Chaves, 2016: 1525–1534).

Bruce stands in line with Voas’ characterisation of nominal-
ism. First, Bruce suggests that the religious decline in Europe is a 
process of generational change “from seriously religious to inter-
mediate to secular” (Bruce, 2011: 19). In other words, the mani-
festation of nominal Christians is only a temporary phenomenon. 
Secondly, Bruce (2011: 99) compares nominal Christians with 
football supporters who do not watch games or are not interested 

2. The ESS data were collected from 22 European nations in 2002 and 
2003. The survey asked people questions about three religious elements: affili-
ation, practice, and beliefs. Voas combined their responses into a single scale 
of religiosity and then analysed the average level of religiosity by five-year age 
cohort for each country. For details, see Voas, 2009: 156–160.



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in the game results. Just as we may doubt how significant football 
is to such supporters, Bruce questions how significant Christianity 
is for nominal Christians.

Voas and Bruce’s accounts, however, offer us only a partial 
reading of nominal Christians’ religious life. Underlying their 
analysis is a sociological attempt to examine one’s religiosity 
through institutionalized measures of religion. For instance, the 
key variables for the measure of religiosity in the ESS predomi-
nantly reflect institutionalized religious expressions (see Voas, 
2009: 156). Voas and Bruce’s assessment thus involves little or no 
investigation of nominal Christians’ religiosity beyond their insti-
tutionalized expressions. The two following methodological issues 
are largely responsible for this limited approach.

First, Voas and Bruce’s approach involves an analytic as-
sumption that religion is defined in terms of institutionalized 
forms. Their approach to religiosity is thus limited to “scien-
tific analysis only to the extent that it becomes organized and 
institutionalized’”(Luckmann, 1967: 22). Secondly, their approach 
assumes a strong correlation between self and society. This assump-
tion implies that the decline of religiosity at a macro-structural 
level (e.g. the separation of state and church) and a meso-institu-
tional level (e.g. the decline of religious organisations for educa-
tion and health) inevitably results in the demise of religiosity at 
a micro-individual level (e.g. the decline in time and energy that 
individuals devote to religious activities) (Dawson, 2011: 27–32). 
However, a simple equation between self and society is highly con-
tested in sociological studies (see Martin, 1990: 295; Davie et al., 
2016: 555–557).

Nominalism as an increasingly de-institutionalized 
religiosity

The second sociological strand in theorising nominalism is built 
upon the critiques of secularization theories. As those critiques 
investigate the religious persistence beyond institutionalized 
manifestations in contemporary culture, they are often labelled as 



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

81

“de-institutionalization” theories (Harrison, 2007: 32). Drawing 
on an alternative reading of the self-society linkage, proponents of 
de-institutionalization theories suggest that religion at a micro-in-
dividual level survives in modern societies despite the decline at its 
macro-structural and meso-institutional levels (Davie et al., 2016: 
552–557). While there are a number of scholars who support this 
view, I will discuss the works of Grace Davie, Thomas Luckmann 
and Charles Taylor, given their relevance to this article.3

Davie takes nominalism as a sign of religiosity in an increas-
ingly de-institutionalized context. Her argument is based on two 
concepts: “believing without belonging” and “vicarious religion.”

Davie suggests that there are people who “want to believe 
but do not want to involve themselves in religious practice” (1994: 
107). She interprets this phenomenon as a development of indi-
vidualised forms of religion, which are shaped by the surrounding 
culture (1994: 75–84). Given that Christianity has remained the 
key surrounding culture to such a development in Western society, 
she asserts that nominal Christians still hold “many of their deep-
seated religious aspirations” in their own ways (2000: 8).

In an attempt to probe further the connection between nomi-
nal Christians’ religiosity and their intermittent institutionalized 
religious expressions, Davie develops the idea of vicarious religion 
(2000: 38–81). She construes nominal Christians’ institutional-
ized engagement as an explicit exhibition of their individualised 
religiosity. She thus asserts that nominal Christians profess “the 
notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf 
of a much larger number who (implicitly at least) not only under-
stand, but, quite clearly, approve of what the minority is doing” 
(Davie, 2007: 22). In other words, under the visual tip of nominal 

3. My use of the term “Nominal Christian” may include those who main-
tain loose Christian connections, while engaging with other religions or 
spiritualities. However, they are excluded in my discussion. They are in “the 
interstices of ‘blurred’ religious affiliations and borderless (spi)ritual practices 
that are concomitant to multiple religious belonging” (Rajkumar and Dayam, 
2016: 1). Their religious life thus deserves separate academic attention. In this 
respect, the works of sociologists such as Paul Heelas, Linda Woodhead and 
Meredith McGuire go beyond the concerns of this paper.



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Christians’ institutionalized religious expressions lies hidden the 
significant mass of their individualised religiosity. The key to the 
examination of their religious life is therefore to understand such 
an invisible mass of religiosity, “without which the visible part 
would not be there at all” (2010: 264).

Davie’s attempt to uncover a latent level of religiosity reso-
nates with Luckmann’s discussion of “invisible religion” (1967). 
Luckmann argues that religious engagement in contemporary so-
cieties is not necessarily associated with the systems and practices 
of organised religion and thus is not always visible (Luckmann, 
2003: 276–277; see also Knoblauch, 2003: 268). Accordingly, an 
investigation of such invisible religiosity requires a differentiation 
between religion and institutionalized religion (Luckmann, 1967: 
50).

Luckmann thus offers an important sociological framework: 
the crisis of institutional religion represents, not its demise, but 
a shift to a more individualised form of religion (1967: 90–91). 
Luckmann asserts that this shift implies individuals’ reliance on 
their own personal resources for religion rather than on those 
provided by religious institutions or authorities (1967: 104–105).

This sociological shift closely relates to Taylor’s view of reli-
gion in modern society. Having critically examined the existing 
concept of “secularit” in secularization theories, he suggests that 
de-institutionalization is an important characteristic of religion 
in modern society and thus that “the fate of belief depends much 
more than before on powerful intuitions of individuals” (Taylor, 
2007: 531). In other words, secularity has not completely removed 
the room for religion. Instead, it has created different rooms for 
our modern religious life. Importantly, these rooms are to be var-
ied, multiple and thus contentious.

Davie, Luckmann and Taylor’s approach has methodological 
significance for the investigation of nominal Christians’ religious 
life. It allows us to avoid limiting our examination to the analysis 
of their institutionalized religious engagement. Instead, it leads us 
to focus on what is going on underneath such an engagement and 
what it means for them to continue to do so.



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

83

Davie, Luckmann and Taylor’s approach, however, is not 
without an analytic challenge. According to them, what is to be ac-
cessed is a “subtle, many-layered, shifting, and constantly evolving 
entity, which cannot easily be broken down into straightforward, 
testable hypotheses” (Davie, 2010: 265). The challenge is thus to 
consider the extent to which nominal Christians’ beliefs and be-
haviours could be taken as evidence of religiosity. Even their “sub-
jective valorization” of anything that is special to them could be 
uncritically labelled as religious experience (Dawson, 2011: 93). 
In short, Davie, Luckmann and Taylor’s approach needs further 
analytic development despite its methodological significance.

Korean missionaries’ view of Christian 
nominalism

The above two sociological views, namely, secularization theories 
and de-institutionalization theories, show how scholars address 
nominalism in their discussion of religion in the contemporary 
Western culture. It is revealed that while the proponents of the 
first view such as Bruce and Voas fail to delve into nominalism in 
an increasingly de-institutionalized context, the exponents of the 
second view such as Davie, Luckmann and Taylor make attempts 
to do so. This second view thus draws our attention to the religious 
vitality of nominalism and the need for further exploration.

This sociological review has an implication on our mission-
ary approach to nominal Christians. Underlying their Christian 
engagement may lie some valid faith elements that are highly 
heterogeneous and idiosyncratic. In other words, nominal Chris-
tians may represent a missionary constituency who engage with 
Christianity in a way that has been neither fully explored nor ap-
propriately accounted for.

In this respect, my empirical findings are relevant to this cur-
rent discussion. They uncover Korean missionaries’ reflection on 
nominalism, which emerged out of their long-term and relational 
interactions with nominal Christians. In other words, my find-
ings involve Korean missionaries’ attempt to look into the faith 



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84

experience of nominal Christians at a micro-individual level. A 
qualitative research approach has also enabled my investigation to 
access Korean missionaries’ account from their own perspective 
(Bryman, 2012: 470).

It is worth reiterating here that these findings are from a 
study of “non-diasporic” Korean missionaries in England. Al-
though there is a growing academic attention to Korean mission 
in the West along with other non-Western missionary movements 
(Kim, 2015: 49–51; Kim, 2019: 2–3), researching into non-dia-
sporic Korean mission is a relatively new area. The Korea World 
Missions Association (2020) reports that there were 1,228 Korean 
missionaries officially sent to Western Europe in 2019. However, 
no statistics are available for how numerous non-diasporic Korean 
missionaries are in England.4

Evidently, my findings bring to the surface the presence and 
voice of non-diasporic Korean missionaries, particularly con-
cerning their perspective of nominalism in England. While these 
findings cannot be generalised as the representative view of all 
non-diasporic Korean missionaries in England, they allow us to 
see what is meaningful and significant for those who participated 
in my study (see Denzin and Lincoln, 2008: 4). Here I highlight 
some of the findings that are related to the purpose of this article.

Observing nominal Christians

Korean missionaries have encountered nominal Christians in 
various contexts, including parks, supermarkets, universities, 
local festivals, church services and events. Just as sociologists of 
religion identify nominal Christians’ unconventional Christian 
connections, Korean missionaries also recognise such connections 
among the nominal Christians they encountered. Their accounts 
suggest that nominal Christians tend to show a combination of the 
two particular patterns of Christian elements: a) familiarity with 
church or Christianity, and b) some Christian practice.

4. I contacted at least 44 non-diasporic Korean missionaries through a 
snowball sampling method during my data collection from 2014 to 2016.



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

85

The first pattern indicates that despite their low church at-
tendance, nominal Christians are familiar with church or Chris-
tianity in various ways. For example, some have had a Christian 
upbringing or education. They are familiar with biblical stories or 
Christian principles. Korean missionaries’ accounts often show 
that most nominal Christians do not hesitate to describe them-
selves as Christian when they are asked about their religion. Some 
of them also talk about their beliefs in Jesus or God, displaying 
a stronger attachment to their Christian faith than Korean mis-
sionaries expect.

The second pattern is that nominal Christians continue to 
have some forms of Christian practice albeit intermittently and in 
varying degrees from person to person. For instance, they occa-
sionally go to church for various reasons (e.g. in the event of rites 
of passage or Christian festivity). To Korean missionaries’ surprise, 
the majority of the nominal Christians they encountered were also 
baptised. Some have maintained a positive view of christening or 
had their children christened.

For Korean missionaries, the combination of these two pat-
terns is an important indicator that distinguishes nominal Chris-
tians from other missionary constituencies. For example, Korean 
missionaries’ accounts reveal that they tend to exclude people of 
other faiths (e.g. Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs) from the category of 
nominal Christians due to their lack of the second pattern. For 
the same reason, Korean missionaries exclude those who are not 
related to church or Christianity in any way as they hardly display 
any of the two patterns.

 Identifying cultural and religious nominals

Korean missionaries’ accounts show that they make another im-
portant distinction about the individual nominal Christians they 
encounter. At the heart of this distinction is Korean missionaries’ 
own reflection on the question whether those nominal Christians 
have any genuine faith commitment to Christianity. According to 



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86

their accounts, Korean missionaries display at least three different 
views of the nominal Christian engagement.

The first view emerges from the Korean missionary inter-
views which highlight that some of the nominal Christians they 
encounter have only a cultural familiarity or attachment to Chris-
tianity. For example, Philip (pseudonym)5, a Korean missionary 
participant, said that some nominal Christians “do not really have 
any faith commitment . . . I think they just know some verses from 
the Bible, that’s all.” The interviews show a second view regard-
ing other nominal Christians whose attachment to Christianity 
involves some valid elements of Christian faith. For instance, Luke 
said that some of the nominal Christians he encountered “are born 
again. I can tell they have definitely established a relationship with 
God.” A third view surfaces when the missionaries spoke of nomi-
nal Christians whose Christian connections seem to be more than 
just cultural expressions while finding it difficult to evaluate those 
connections in terms of their faithfulness to Christian teachings 
or beliefs. A good example is found from Chris’ account when he 
said that some nominal Christians seemed to have “fragmentary 
experience of the gospel and Christ.”

These three views suggest that Korean missionaries catego-
rise the nominal Christians they encounter into three groups: a) 
those who have no faith at all, b) those who have faith and c) those 
who may have some faith. More importantly, this identification 
of these three subgroups suggests that Korean missionaries’ views 
involve both of the two aforementioned sociological accounts of 
nominalism.

For example, those interviewed who spoke of the first sub-
group of nominal Christians suggest that their Christian con-
nections involve no religious concerns, motivation or interest in 
any sense. This suggestion goes to the heart of Voas and Bruce’s 
view. As highlighted, Voas’ key argument about fuzzy Christians 
is that their Christian engagement largely reflects their culture 
and tradition, but not religion (Voas, 2009: 164). Bruce (2011: 19) 
also asserts that this Christian engagement lacks serious religious 

5. The names of Korean missionaries in this article are pseudonymised.



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

87

commitment. In my view, the Korean missionaries’ accounts of 
the first subgroup provide empirical evidence for Voas and Bruce’s 
sociological argument. Hence this subgroup can be called “cultural 
nominals.”

By contrast, Korean missionaries’ accounts of the second 
and third subgroups highlight the perception that these nominal 
Christians have some religious elements albeit not fully explicable. 
This perception follows the view of Davie, Luckmann and Taylor, 
who argue that underneath each nominal Christian connection 
lies a religiosity which needs a further sociological exploration. 
Accordingly, Korean missionaries’ accounts of the second and 
third subgroups provide empirical evidence for Davie, Luckmann 
and Taylor’s argument. Hence both these subgroups can be called 
“religious nominals.”

Religious nominals and missionary uncertainty

It is not surprising that the Korean missionaries interviewed 
for my study have encountered cultural nominals in England. 
As David Bosch (1991: 476–477) highlights, people of a secular 
worldview, including atheists and secular humanists, have been 
a challenge to Western churches in their contemporary culture. 
Cultural nominals have been part of such a challenge, given that 
they engage with Christianity on non-religious grounds (Voas, 
2009: 164). Moreover, the epithet “nominal Christian” has already 
shaped the Korean churches’ perceptions of cultural nominals in 
the West (Choi, 2011: 208–210; Han, 2014: 75–79).

An encounter with religious nominals, however, is a relatively 
new experience to Korean missionaries. My analysis of the Korean 
missionary movement and its historical development (Kim, 2019: 
20–54) shows that the concepts of Korean overseas mission are 
predominantly church-centric. They stress a Christian journey 
shaped by the gatherings and activities of the church. Underlying 
those concepts is what Michael McClymond (2010: 344) calls the 
“ecclesiological” dimension of mission, according to which the 
“church is a sign of God’s mission in the world and an anticipation 



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of the fulfilment of God’s final purposes” (see also Ahn, 2011: 
82). Such a church-centric approach to mission has left Korean 
churches with an ecclesiological assumption that one’s church 
commitment largely equates with one’s faithfulness to God (Han, 
2012: 94–95). Hence Korean missionaries are likely to treat reli-
gious nominals as cultural nominals because of their insufficient 
church commitment (Kim, 2019: 181–187).

In this respect, my empirical findings are an indicator that 
some Korean missionaries in England show a different pattern 
in their approach to religious nominals. More interestingly, this 
pattern surfaces out of those missionaries’ awareness that there 
may be a lot more in religious nominals’ faith experience than 
they could see and understand. In other words, this new pattern is 
grounded upon their uncertainty about religious nominals’ Chris-
tian connection. In my view, the emergence of this missionary pat-
tern suggests that Korean missionaries pay attention to religious 
nominals from the perspective of de-institutionalization theories, 
which involve a methodological uncertainty in the examination of 
one’s religious experience at a micro-individual level.

Beyond the principle of excluded middle

The significance of Korean missionaries’ attention to religious 
nominals from the view of de-institutionalization theories is that 
it represents a review of the understanding of nominalism that is 
widespread in the Korean church. More precisely, it challenges 
the binary classification underlying the idea of nominalism, in 
which people are considered as either Christian or non-Christian 
with little attention given to those who do not fall in either of the 
categories.
This classification deeply relates to “the principle of excluded 
middle” (tertium non datur in Latin). This principle presupposes 
that every proposition or statement indicates either one thing or 
its negation (Da Silva, 2011: 333). The key assumption underly-
ing the principle is that the two contradictories (one thing and its 
negation) are mutually exclusive. Thus there is no middle ground 



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

89

between the two. Hugh Chandler (1967: 807–809) critiques the 
legitimacy of this principle with regard to its approach to the 
negative or contradictory form of a proposition or statement. He 
argues that it neglects the significant difference between “partial” 
and “total” negation. Any signs of partial negation, such as defi-
ciency or indeterminateness, are forced to be the condition for 
total negation.
In this sense, Chandler’s criticism reflects the critique of what Ed-
ward Dutton (2010: 197) calls “dictionary definition.” By diction-
ary definition, Dutton indicates an attempt to define things by a 
clear set of essential attributes, by virtue of which, something is 
regarded as what it is. However, as Dutton points out, this diction-
ary definition emphasises the hard boundaries of those essential 
attributes to such a degree that it leads to a dichotomous categori-
sation. Things are thus categorised only into two great opposite 
blocs (“what it is” and “what it is not”) depending on whether 
those essential attributes are involved. Inevitably, any deficiency in 
such essential attributes, whether partially or totally, leads some-
thing to be put under the category of “what it is not” as against the 
category of “what it is.” Consequently, other distinctive attributes 
are given little or no adequate consideration.
It is this dichotomous characteristic that Korean missionaries 
question with regard to the idea of nominalism. Korean mission-
aries’ accounts suggest that such a dichotomy does little justice to 
religious nominals’ unique faith experience. They show that while 
this dichotomy leads us to label those religious nominals as “non-
Christian,” it hinders us from paying proper attention to all the 
faith attributes that they may hold other than their church com-
mitment. Korean missionaries’ accounts thus highlight the need 
to attend to religious nominals as a constituency that stands in 
the middle ground between the completely areligious and those 
Christians with church commitment.



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A missiological reflection on Korean 
missionaries’ view of religious nominals

What might the Korean missionaries’ accounts of religious nomi-
nals mean missiologically? At the heart of their accounts is the sug-
gestion that those religious nominals may have a Christian faith 
journey in a way that we do not fully understand in an increasingly 
de-institutionalized context. Such a suggestion raises a theologi-
cal question about God’s relationship with religious nominals. It 
invites us to consider whether and how God is related to them in 
their unorthodox Christian engagement.

This theological consideration is missiological in nature. An 
exploration of God’s interaction with religious nominals relates to 
a faithful participation in the mission of God among them. Korean 
missionaries’ accounts of religious nominal thus stimulates a dis-
tinctive missiological reflection in reference to missio Dei. More 
specifically, they raise key theological and ecclesiological ques-
tions about a Christocentric-Trinitarian approach to missio Dei in 
the context of religious nominals. In short, Korean missionaries’ 
accounts suggest the need for a critical review of a Christocentric-
Trinitarian way of understanding those religious nominals.

Korean missionaries’ view of religious nominals from a 
Christocentric-Trinitarian approach to missio Dei

In an attempt to reflect on the theological meaning of Korean 
missionaries’ accounts of religious nominals, missio Dei offers a 
useful framework. In mission studies, missio Dei has contributed 
to the development of a key characterisation of mission, that mis-
sion originates from the triune God (Bosch, 1991: 389–390). This 
characterisation has invited ongoing theological debate about the 
kingdom of God into missiology. As mission is conceived in refer-
ence to the triune God, how can one speak of mission without con-
sidering the existing discussion of God’s purpose for establishing 
the kingdom in the world and thus the role of the Father, Son and 
Spirit for such a purpose (see Flett, 2010: 53–61)? Consequently, 



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91

missio Dei offers a range of understandings of mission drawing 
upon different theological views of God’s kingdom.

A Christocentric-Trinitarian approach to missio Dei is devel-
oped by mission theologians and practitioners who understand 
that the kingdom of God is the realm where God reigns over the 
creation through the salvation offered in Christ (Arthur, 2010: 53). 
They apply this Christocentric view of the kingdom to the Trinitar-
ian framework of mission and suggest that mission is to establish 
and expand God’s kingdom through the redemptive work of the 
Son, which is initiated by the Father and empowered by the Spirit 
(Engelsviken, 2003: 483; Flett, 2010: 53–61). Mission is a continu-
ation of the redemptive act of the triune God.

The proponents of this approach to missio Dei suggest a 
particular ecclesiological interpretation, according to which the 
church is the indispensable vehicle for God’s redemptive work 
(Arthur, 2010: 54). Newbigin (1953: 147–148), one of the most 
formative voices for this stance, emphasised that the church is a 
provisional embodiment of what God is establishing through such 
work of Christ. God is calling out the church as a community of 
people who belong to God’s kingdom and witness to the redemp-
tive work of the Son in the world (Goheen, 2000: 115–117).

In my view, this approach to missio Dei provides two theo-
logical affirmations about how God relates to nominal Christians. 
First, they are either redeemed or unredeemed depending on their 
engagement with God’s redemptive work through Christ. Second, 
God invites them to this redemption by means of the witnessing 
activities of the church. These affirmations imply that, without en-
gaging with the church, they cannot be involved in the work of the 
Son. Given that both cultural and religious nominals hardly relate 
to God’s redemptive work because of their insufficient engagement 
with the church, they are unredeemed creations.

On the one hand, Korean missionaries’ accounts of cultural 
nominals reflect this theological stance. They perceive that cultural 
nominals, in their intermittent church commitment, have hardly 
any valid faith elements. Hence cultural nominals do not engage 
with the redemptive work of the Son. On the other hand, Korean 



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missionaries’ accounts of religious nominals are not entirely in 
line with such a theological stance. As highlighted earlier, Korean 
missionaries acknowledge that religious nominals may have some 
valid elements of Christian faith. This acknowledgement suggests 
that those religious nominals may engage with God’s redemp-
tive work despite their insufficient church involvement. Those 
interviewed were uncertain about whether to consider religious 
nominals’ faith engagement as sufficient for their full redemption. 
Nonetheless, Korean missionaries’ attention to such a unique re-
demptive engagement highlights the need to address another way 
of understanding a Christocentric-Trinitarian approach to missio 
Dei for religious nominals.

A critical Christocentric-Trinitarian way of understanding 
religious nominals

Korean missionaries’ attention to this redemptive engagement 
provides a distinctive theological reflection on religious nominals’ 
relation to God. Can religious nominals be related to the redemp-
tive work of God in ways that Korean missionaries do not fully 
comprehend? Put differently, religious nominals are neither unre-
lated to God’s redemptive work nor fully related to it in the existing 
ways that Korean missionaries understand. This theological view 
points to a Christocentric interpretation of God’s missionary work 
among religious nominals, the manner of which is yet to be ex-
plored and thus calls for our attention.

What is required is the emergence of a critical Christocentric-
Trinitarian way of understanding religious nominals. At its heart 
remains the Christocentric-Trinitarian assertion that the mission 
of God is construed in terms of the redemptive work of Christ. At 
the same time, this assertion accompanies a lack of complete un-
derstanding of how God continues such a work among those who 
engage with Christianity in an increasingly de-institutionalized 
context.

Unfortunately, Korean missionaries’ accounts do not of-
fer insights about this emerging theological view. Their accounts 



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

93

predominantly show they continue to reflect on God’s redemptive 
work in the lives of religious nominals as they are constantly exam-
ining those religious nominals’ faith experience. The disclosure of 
this ongoing reflection, however, is sufficient to draw our attention 
to a critical need to explore a distinctive theological understanding 
for those who are in the middle ground in the current dichotomy 
of Christian and non-Christian.

The significance of this theological exploration is that it 
reminds us of the fundamental insight that missio Dei offers for 
missionary engagement with religious nominals. The original 
intention of missio Dei was to elevate God to the position of the 
subject of mission and relegate us to the position of participants 
(Arthur, 2010: 50). Necessarily, missio Dei is designed to conceptu-
alise our missionary engagement as a participation in what God is 
doing. Such a conceptualisation, however, does not automatically 
guarantee that our participation is always informed by what God 
is up to. Quite opposingly, as shown in and after the International 
Missionary Council Conference in Willingen in 1952, mission 
theologians and practitioners have often incorporated into missio 
Dei their favourite views on “the nature of God himself and of his 
act in the world” (Flett, 2010: 43). In other words, the material 
content of God’s missionary activity is susceptible to theological 
affirmations of those who practice missio Dei.

This danger can be particularly the case in our approach to 
religious nominals when one depends on theological affirmations 
of a Christocentric-Trinitarian view to the extent of assuming that 
all of them are universally valid in every context. However, even if 
these affirmations were insightful and profound in many contexts, 
whether they would be applicable to other contexts, in this case 
engagement with religious nominals should be determined by 
what God was doing in their unorthodox Christian involvement. 
Otherwise, such affirmations might distract one from what God 
was up to in that context and thus override God’s mission.

In short, a critical Christocentric-Trinitarian approach to 
missio Dei in the context of religious nominals implies an attempt 
to ground a Christocentric-Trinitarian view of mission in one’s 



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constant search of a relevant theological view for them. With this 
approach, our participation in God’s mission does not represent 
“our” missionary outreach to those religious nominals but that of 
God. This approach enables us to reinforce God’s agency in our 
missionary engagement with religious nominals. In other words, it 
leads us to practice missio Dei among them.

An ecclesiological implication of a critical Christocentric-
Trinitarian approach to religious nominals

A critical Christocentric-Trinitarian approach to religious nomi-
nals also invites us to reflect on the church’s nature and shape for 
her faithful participation in God’s redemptive engagement with 
those religious nominals.

In reference to missio Dei, the absence of this reflection seri-
ously jeopardises the meaning of the church in the context of doing 
mission among religious nominals. More precisely, without such 
a reflection, an ecclesiological framework of missio Dei, namely, 
the church’s ontological position in God’s mission (Guder et al., 
1998: 11–12; Pugh, 2017: 60) is endangered in relation to religious 
nominals. In this particular context, such an ecclesiological ontol-
ogy implies that the church is called out to be a community that 
attends to those religious nominals for their engagement with the 
redemptive work of Christ (Goheen, 2000: 115–117).

How then can the church justify her ontological position 
for religious nominals? This justification requires an innovative 
imagination of the church that engages with God’s redemptive 
mission in an increasingly de-institutionalized religious context. 
This imagination invites our current discussion of what is called 
“missional church” into a particular sociological and theological 
context where religious nominals are found. This invitation is not 
based on the intention of “piggybacking” them for their little or no 
commitment to institutionalized Christian practice. Rather, it is to 
articulate the church in light of a relevant theological exploration 
for God’s redemptive interaction with religious nominals.



Sinwoong Kim—A Reflection on Nominal Christians

95

This point needs to be particularly emphasised since no valid 
missional church can be expressed for religious nominals without 
a proper theological consideration of missio Dei in its given con-
text. Further studies on theological insights for God’s redemptive 
engagement with those religious nominals are required to advance 
the discourse of missional church for them. In so doing, I would 
like to make two suggestions in relation to Korean missionaries’ 
accounts of religious nominals.

First, a proper theological reflection on God’s relation-
ship with religious nominals needs to start with our attempt to 
engage with the faith journey of those religious nominals where 
it takes place. While missio Dei clearly reveals that mission starts 
from God, we can only approach such a mission from where it 
takes place and thus where we can engage (see Thangaraj, 1999: 
58; Sebastian, 2011: 211–213). Religious nominals’ increasingly 
de-institutionalized faith experience is an essential context for a 
relevant theological reflection.
Second, our uncertainty about how God is active among religious 
nominals is not unavoidable but is actually desirable. As shown 
in the Korean missionaries’ accounts, religious nominals’ faith 
experience is a ground for Korean missionaries’ uncertainty about 
God’s relationship with those religious nominals. This uncertainty 
leads Korean missionaries to be open to the unknown and unfa-
miliar ways of God’s interaction with religious nominals. This un-
certainty is thus a necessary impetus for our attempts to disclose 
such a work of God (Sivalon, 2012: 17).

Conclusion

With the decline in the significance and presence of Christianity, 
the concept of nominalism has been used to characterise the reli-
gious landscape of England. From the perspective of seculariza-
tion theories, this concept is useful to highlight that England is 
full of those who lack any religious concerns or interest in Chris-
tianity despite their loose Christian connections. However, my 
empirical investigation of non-diasporic Korean missionaries in 



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96

England suggests the need for a revision of such a view of Eng-
land. Their understanding of nominalism from the perspective 
of de-institutionalization theories shows that while some English 
nominals are undoubtedly atheists or secular humanists, others, 
namely religious nominals, are in a middle ground between the 
completely areligious and those Christians with institutionalized 
commitments.

In reference to the concept of missio Dei, such an understand-
ing implies that religious nominals are neither completely unre-
lated to God’s redemptive work nor fully related to it in the way 
Korean missionaries understand. This view invites a serious theo-
logical exploration of the redemptive intervention of God in the 
lives of religious nominals. From a missiological perspective, this 
exploration further invites us to reflect on our current discourse of 
missional church for them. Korean missionaries’ accounts remind 
us that our attempt to look at, understand and engage with religious 
nominals’ increasingly de-institutionalized faith experience is an 
essential context for this ecclesiological reflection. Their accounts 
also suggest that our uncertainty about God’s redemptive interac-
tion with religious nominals is not avoidable but is desirable as it 
becomes a great impetus for our contemplation and discernment 
of such a work of God.

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