THE TEXT AS THE PROJECTED WORLD AND THE IDENTITY OF KOREAN-AMERICAN COLLEGE GROUP

The purpose of this article is to explore the dialectic, meaningful connection between the second-generation Korean-American college student experience and teachings in Bible study, which from the perspective of Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) are both helpful and unhelpful in building and strengthening their identity. By examining two members of the college group of U Church and their interpretive activities of meaning provided by the Bible as well as by their culture through Ricoeur s hermeneutical notion of the “text as the projected world,” this paper seeks to investigate the making and re-making of the meaning of being Korean-American Christians. In this interpretive process, Ricoeur provides a useful tool by which texts, biblical texts included, present to the readers a possible way of being-in-the-world: a new way of living in the world. That is, he shows an example of how in the Bible a possible world is opened and a mode-of-being in the world (faith) is nurtured and deepened. This article presents how the two biblical passages the two interviewees (Samuel and Jennifer) chose come to project a meaningful world for them by respecting both sides of their identity - Korean and American - but at the same time, their ultimate identities are as disciples and as part of the body of Jesus Christ as Korean-American Christians. In discovering and uncovering a way to link their faith/life experiences with the Bible, this paper also suggest five key educational and practical dimensions the U Church college group pastor should pursue: (1) guidance for being an interpretive community, (2) a link between life story and the Bible Story, (3) discovery and intensification of identity, (4) contextual interpretive process, and (5) proper curriculum and teaching approach. The findings from these interviews open the way to understanding the identity of the second-generation Korean-American college group in general, to exploring various needs and issues of Christian college students, and to developing Christian education for the second-generation college-aged people and further later-generations.