Mark Whitaker on the Three Salvations

Source: draft 'creed and testament' from Mark Whitaker, environmental sociologist based in Seoul, South Korea. Tonghak refers to a Korean religious movement.

Discussion

Mark Whitaker:

"Creed and Testament, v11, By Mark D. Whitaker

“I don’t want to build socialization on the web, I want to build socialization in the physical world, worldwide off the web, using the web or whatever means are required.”

‘my religion or testament or creed’

“I don’t belong to a particular established religion though am establishing one. [that is, in a phrase: both inverted Buddhism and inverted Baha’ism, which basically is inverted Sabbateanism basically, meaning that there is a good in all religions and in good attachments and that it requires doing public good acts of material and class/cultural compromises being done in public instead of in secret; somewhat like Tonghak as well in its three salvations: personal, political, and ecumenical that the salvations are different for different people though all the same.]"

Original quote:

"There were three salvations. There was a collective salvation via political action to improve one’s social and material context. All believers’ salvation depended upon action for improvement of material conditions and removal of political impediments, to make the heavenly paradise on earth. Second, there was an individual salvation to improve one’s ‘animal’ consciousness into a divine moral being, similar to a Buddhist bodhisattva motivated by compassion to work for removing suffering in the world after self-enlightenment toward the enlightenment of all beings instead of withdrawing from suffering. Since all humans have the same god-energy infused in them, all humans are equal. “All men are equal” was the secret password to get into Tonghak meetings after they were proscribed. The leadership though hierarchical was elected democratically from material contributors to the meeting. Tonghak became an individualistic, humanistic, democratic, collective, and socialistic religious movement. Third, in the context of foreign invasions and occupation, it developed a third level of salvation: the national salvation requires removing alien domination, worldwide. In this ecumenical and pantheistic way, Tonghak accepts that different nations have different nationalist salvations. Tonghak, Choi argued, was the Korean way."