A hard, haunting, and hopeful history that will leave an indelible mark and transform your understanding of both Christianity and the United States.
Reckoning with History confronts the histories of settler colonialism and slavery and illumines how these two devastating realities informed and ultimately deformed Protestant Christianity in the North American colonies and antebellum United States. In this book, William Yoo analyzes primary sources from Indigenous, African, European, and American perspectives to construct a narrative that honors the stories of Indigenous peoples, enslaved and free persons of African descent, Indigenous rights advocates, and abolitionists. The book's broad scope-which covers individuals and movements representing Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and other Christian traditions-provides a timely and telling message for every Christian seeking racial justice today.
This urgently needed book expresses a powerful call for reformation and change within American Christianity that is grounded in precise research and compelling prose. It explains how Christians engaged the sinful realities of Indigenous land dispossession and Black enslavement, shaping American Christianity in distinctive and enduring ways. It further underscores how white Christians justified land theft and racial oppression against Indigenous and Black persons with scriptural interpretations and theological expositions that remade Christianity into an American religion that bolstered economic, political, and social interests. Along the way, Yoo also features inspiring accounts of resistance to the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the westward expansion of slavery. A final chapter draws lessons from these histories for the possibilities of what ministries of racial justice could be in American churches today. Yoo integrates cogent historical analysis with contemporary lessons for Christians that make Reckoning with History a definitive resource for understanding racism and pursuing racial justice in the United States.
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"At a time when too many American Christians believe too many smug and untruthful stories about their history and therefore call for Christian dominion, Yoo tells a truthful story and suggests that repentance might be more appropriate. He reveals the extent to which the white Christian churches have embodied some of the worst impulses in American history: They supported the settler colonialism that destroyed vast Indigenous cultures, and they defended or passively accepted two centuries of enslavement and a further century of racial subjugation. This is a powerful rejoinder to a triumphalist reading of Christian history. It should be read wherever Christians gather."
-E. Brooks Holifield, Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of American Church History, Emory University, and author of Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War
"Reckoning with History is a courageous book that outlines how majority sectors of the white church in the United States were deliberately invested in using Christianity to legitimize settler colonialism, war crimes, land theft, and slavery. William Yoo issues an important call for Christians to honestly confront the dark legacy that underpins much of US history-and the church's complicity in it. Without forgetting the long history of resistance against the powerful forces that (de)formed US Christianity in the image of a colonial state, Reckoning with History challenges readers to embrace hard truths as an indispensable step toward fashioning a collective identity rooted in justice, humility, and love."
-Joao B. Chaves, Assistant Professor of the History of Religion in the Americas, Baylor University, and author of The Global Mission of the Jim Crow South: Southern Baptist Missionaries and the Shaping of Latin American Evangelicalism
"Yoo's Reckoning with History is a transformative exploration of the intertwined histories of faith, power, and oppression. With meticulous research and unflinching honesty, Yoo confronts the often-overlooked legacies of settler colonialism and slavery that have shaped American Christianity. What sets Yoo's scholarship apart is his ability to weave historical analysis with a call to action. He invites majority faith communities to grapple with the moral and ethical implications of their history, urging a collective commitment to repair, repentance, and reconciliation. His compelling prose and careful scholarship make this book an essential resource for theologians, clergy, and lay leaders seeking to understand the deeper roots of their faith traditions. Reckoning with History is not merely a book; it's a moral imperative. Yoo's work is a must-read for anyone committed to justice and truth."
-Damon P. Williams, Senior Pastor, Providence Missionary Baptist Church, Atlanta
"In Reckoning with History, Yoo shines as a church historian with the gaze of a prophet and the soul of a pastor. Yoo serves not only the church's deep desire to know itself as it is already known and felt by others but also the church's great need to taste and see the fruit of its racist settler colonial legacies of compromise and bad faith as one means toward that self-knowledge. In addition to providing much-needed pastoral guidance for the church's critical shift to the responsible repair of historic harms-and away from trendy and counterproductive institutional habits of privilege-shaming and guilt-mongering-Reckoning with History ultimately issues an invitation to practicing Christians in the United States to become the twenty-first century's extension of trans-ethnic decolonial cooperation. I highly recommend Yoo's thoroughly researched and story-filled, clarifying and convicting, Reckoning with History."
-Jermaine Ross-Allam, Ministry Director, Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, Interim Unified Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
"Reckoning with History traces the ways in which territorial displacement and racial violence shaped American Christianity from its inception. Yoo's incisive exploration details how settler colonialism and slavery have distorted theological doctrines and ecclesial practices throughout the centuries. By centering the voices of Black, Indigenous, and dissenting Christians, this book challenges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about how a colonial animus constrains the way contemporary Christians in the United States relate to the earth and to one other. Profound and timely, Yoo's narrative invites us to reckon with our colonial legacy so that, together, we might design a future that enables us to become the beloved community God desires."
-Angel J. Gallardo, Assistant Professor of Church History, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
"Yoo offers an invaluable account of Christian hypocrisy during settlement and enslavement. He combines the professorial and the prophetic to challenge facile recollections of our common history. I pray this book inspires an honest assessment of what it means for the church to be a witness to God's reconciliation in Christ."
-Joseph Scrivner, Dean of Chapel, Stillman College
William Yoo is Associate Professor of American Religious and Cultural History at Columbia Theological Seminary. He has published books on African American Christianity, Asian American Christianity, and Presbyterian history, including What Kind of Christianity: A History of Slavery and Anti-Black Racism in the Presbyterian Church, winner of the 2023 Award of Excellence from the Religion Communicators Council. As a teacher, preacher, and scholar, Yoo focuses on the history of racism in American Christianity. He is a professor and public theologian who interprets the most challenging and urgent issues of racial justice with clarity, depth, honesty, and precision.
