The rapid modernization of Korean society has brought many changes in the form and perception of the family. For about 100 years from a pre-modern family that emphasized vertical hierarchies between genders to a modern family that emphasized intimacy ...
The rapid modernization of Korean society has brought many changes in the form and perception of the family. For about 100 years from a pre-modern family that emphasized vertical hierarchies between genders to a modern family that emphasized intimacy and relationships, conflicts arose due to differences in perceptions of patriarchalism between the older generation with traditional family views and the younger generation with modern family views. In particular, this difference in perception is more evident in some Korean Protestant churches. This can be confirmed through the antipathy of the older generation Protestants who advocate traditional family views and patriarchy and some young believers (19-39 years old) to the education of 'marriage preparatory schools', where their consciousness is concentrated. Several examples of this have already been reported several times through the Protestant media. Due to this background, this study aims to prove that the Korean church's perception of love-marriage-birth and family is concentrated in the curriculum called "marriage preparatory school" and to explain how it is ‘Family-centrism’ and ‘Neo-Patriarchy’. To this end, we would like to examine the process of transforming the family view in Korean history and see how it was reflected in Protestantism and continues to this day. We will also check how married young believers (19-39 years old) perceive marriage preparatory schools, the representative curriculum of the Korean church, and how their antipathy or response strategies appear. Research questions on this are as follows. First, what values and meanings does the 'marriage preparatory school', one of the Protestant curriculums, provide for families and marriage views (in the semantic dimension of doctrine)? Second, how is the patriarchy or normal family discourse suggested by the 'marriage preparatory school' reflected and reinterpreted to young believers (groups)? Third, how do Protestant married young people accept the system of 'marriage preparatory school' (individually), and how does it affect their religious life? Also, how does it respond to this? To this end, 25 textbooks written by professional instructors at marriage preparatory schools were collected and analyzed in literature. It was divided into six areas: "relationship formation and promotion," "communication and conflict resolution," "secular life," "self-image and healing," "family-centrism," and "gender-sex." In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 study participants who had taken or encountered marriage preparatory schools to confirm the perceptions of married young believers. Married young believers' perceptions of "marriage preparatory schools" differed greatly depending on their "childcare experience," and believers with "childcare experience" were found to be the main cause of the change in perception due to the church's resistance to the "Neo- Patriarchy" and "Family-centrism" character at the love-marriage-family hall and wedding preparatory schools. In addition, the detailed response methods for each type of perception accordingly could be classified into "positive," "compliance," "compromise," "resistance," and "ignorance." This study is meaningful in that it critically approached through literature and qualitative research on the love-marriage-family of Protestant churches as the cause of the decline in the number of young believers, one of the crises of Protestant churches that came with modernization, through regard to love- marriage-family as being on a continuous line, and on the neoclassical and familialism inherent in marriage preparatory schools, where discourse is concentrated. It is also different from previous studies that dealt with feminist perspectives in that it analyzed that this was a phenomenon revealed through "experience in parenting" regardless of gender.