Journal Title: Journal of Religious Leadership
Volume & Issue: Vol. 24, No. 2
DOI:
Year: 2025
Page Range: 90-115
Marking the seventieth anniversary of women’s ordination in South Korea in 2025, this article explores how Korean women pastors are reimagining pastoral leadership amid persistent gender inequality and patriarchal church structures. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and decolonial theological frameworks, and based on qualitative “friendship-talk” interviews with ordained women pastors in the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK), the study identifies three models of alternative leadership: koinonia-centered practice, motherhood as theological leadership, and radical interdependence. These practices challenge dominant paradigms and offer a liberative vision for the church—one grounded in relationality, justice, and the embodied witness of women leading from the margins.