Beyond Antagonism and Tolerance: Interreligious Care and Boundary Negotiation in Contemporary Korea

This article examines the practices of ethno-religious boundary negotiation through an ethnographic case study of Baraka Little Library, a Korean Christian NGO supporting Muslim immigrant children. The analysis focuses on the interreligious and interethnic politics of belonging mediated by mundane practices of care, through which ethno-religious positionalities are reconstructed. At Baraka Little Library, Korean Christian volunteers engage in practices of religious neutralisation and embrace interreligious care as an ethical imperative, effectively redrawing intra-Christian and cross-religious boundaries. Muslim immigrant children take on active roles as religious brokers, navigating their hybrid identities as both cultural insiders and religious outsiders in Korean society. The dynamics of distancing and approximating practices observed at Baraka Little Library highlight a complex mode of interreligious sociality that encompasses contradictions and ambivalences. This case study demonstrates that ethno-religious divisions are not merely maintained or tolerated in pluralistic settings, but are negotiated and transformed through everyday interpersonal encounters.