Chou Sun Ae to be Honored by New York Theological Seminary

Chou, Sun Ae (her family name is also written “Joo”) was 34 years old when she graduated in 1958 from The Biblical Seminary in New York, but she had already a rich lifetime of experience behind her.  Born in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 1924, at an early age she lost most of the members of her immediate family to illness, save for a loving grandmother who raised her.  Every morning before dawn her grandmother would take young Sun Ae with her to a mountain near Pyongyang to pray.  Chou remembers making her way up the hillside through the mystical early morning mist to reach the peak where her grandmother would engage in fervent prayer for an hour or more before returning down the mountain to face the day’s affairs.

She graduated from Jeongeui Girls’ High School in Pyongyang in 1941 and completed two years of study in the Women’s Program at Pyongyang Theological Seminary in North Korea before being forced by communist forces to head south when war broke out in 1950.  Later that year she entered the Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea, and then moved on to Yeungnam University in Daegu, South Korea, where she graduated with a Bachelors of Arts degree in 1953.  After graduation she found there were few options open to a woman for theological education.  Rev. Lee Sang Kun, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Daegu, recommended that she apply to The Biblical Seminary in New York (now New York Theological Seminary) where he had studied.  Biblical Seminary welcomed women and had a sizable number in its student body, he assured her.  Chou applied, was accepted, and in the fall of 1956 moved to New York to begin classes.

Living in New York City on East 49^th Street in The Biblical Seminary presented a major challenge to Chou in her spiritual life.  There were no mountains in New York City for her to climb for early morning prayer.  There was, however, on the roof of the fourteen-story Seminary building a volley ball court with a sports equipment shed.  The shed proved to serve nicely as a chapel for early morning prayer.  Instead of climbing a mountain each morning, Chou began going up on the roof around 5 a.m.  Soon, she says, others from the Seminary were joining her.  Three fellow classmates whom she recalls as being particularly significant partners in this regard were Pat Robertson, Eugene Peterson, and Richard White.

There were several other Korean students at Biblical Seminary during the years that Chou attended.  They began holding a weekly evening prayer meeting that met in Chou’s dormitory room.  Across the hall from her was a Japanese student named Aiko Kitagawa.  Chou recalls Kitagawa one day telling her that she had observed the manner in which the Korean students prayed, and asked if she might join them.  Chou was thrown into a crisis by the request.  The Japanese had been the colonial oppressors of Koreans, and Koreans still felt a great deal of animosity toward the Japanese.  Furthermore Kitagawa did not know Korean, and Chou and the other Koreans were not going to pray in Japanese.  Finally, Chou had observed that the Japanese preferred reciting prayers rather than offering the kind of spontaneous prayers from the heart that Koreans favored.  She did not think they could pray together.  Nevertheless their Japanese classmate had asked to be join them, and she was a fellow Christian.  Chou felt like they had no option but to invite her to their meeting.

The three Korean students planned what they would do.  One of the members of the group, Tuk Yul Andrew Kim, said he knew the Lord’s Prayer in Japanese.  It was decided that he would open the meeting by reciting this with Kitagawa and they would then see where things went from there.  The evening arrived, Kitagawa joined the three Koreans in Chou’s room, and Kim began to say the Lord’s Prayer.  He quickly discovered, however, that he could not fully recall the prayer in Japanese, but kept mixing Japanese and Korean instead. The effect was so comical that Kitagawa and Chou both began to laugh.  The entire group then broke down in laughter.  Chou said it was there that the Spirit of God broke through the hatred in her heart against the Japanese.  “In The Biblical Seminary in New York, far from both Korea and Japan, I learned that God can break down even the bitterest walls of division between us,” Chou recalls.

After graduating from Biblical Seminary with the Masters of Religious Education degree in 1958, Chou returned to Seoul where she served on the staff of Seoul Women’s University, then as Instructor in Soongsill University, in Seoul.  In 1966 she became the first women to hold an appointment on the theological faculty of the Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary in Seoul.  For the next 23 years she taught religious education and spiritual formation to a generation of Korean Presbyterian Church leaders.  From 1984 to 1987 she was also the President of the Graduate School of the institution.  By the time she retired in 1989, Professor Chou had risen to become one of the most outstanding women leaders of the Korean church.  She has served as mentor to several prominent pastors serving some of the largest churches in Korea.  Following retirement she continued to lecture and teach at several institutions, including Torch Trinity Graduate School of Theology in Seoul where she is currently Chair Professor.  She is the recipient of numerous honors and degrees, including an honorary doctorate, and since 2005 has served as the Director of the North Korean Refugees Center in Seoul, an organization that provides assistance to defectors and refugees from the North.  In the fall of 2011 she expects to return to New York and to New York Theological Seminary for part of the semester where she will serve as a Visiting Professor of Religious Education and Spirituality.

On Thursday, May 26, 2011, New York Theological Seminary (which continues The Biblical Seminary in New York) will be honoring Professor Chou Sun Ae with a special mid-day worship service and luncheon at Myung Sung Presbyterian Church, Seoul, Korea.  The Rev. Dr. Kim, Sam Whan, Senior Pastor of Myung Sung and former student of Professor Chou, will be delivering the sermon at the service.  President Dale Irvin along with other members of the Seminary’s Board and Faculty will be on hand to honor Professor Chou for her lifetime of distinguished service and leadership.

A special Chou Sun Ae Fund Raising Committee has been established to raise a permanent endowment fund in Chou’s honor at New York Theological Seminary in advance of this celebration.  For more information on this endowed fund, or on the celebration at Myung Sung Presbyterian Church in Seoul on May 26, please contact the office of the President at New York Theological Seminary at (212) 870-1241 or by email at dirvin@nyts.edu.

Video of Chou Sun Ae in Korean Christian Network Show Salt & Light

Chou Sun Ae in Salt and Light from New York Theological Seminary on Vimeo.