Helen Jin Kim (Emory University) reflects on her new book. In Race for Revival, I argue that the rise of evangelical America’s empire depended on America’s religious Cold War in Asia.[i] With the outbreak of the Korean War, the first “hot war” of the Cold War, Koreans were indispensable to the transpacific networks that made […]
Kathryn Gin Lum (Stanford University) reflects on her new book. Heathen: Religion and Race in American History is a sweeping account of a religious category that has shaped how race operates in America. As such, the book isn’t primarily or solely focused on Asian American religions, but it did grow out of my formative interest […]
Duncan Ryuken Williams, a religion professor who directs the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California, won the 2022 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for ideas set forth in “American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War,” his 2019 book published by Harvard University […]
Plenty of writers have argued in recent years that work has become a false idol, with the office, not church, the place where many Americans now seek out meaning and purpose. As a sociologist of religion, I think these writers are right: Work is replacing — and in some cases, even taking the form of […]
In her book Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Who You Are No Longer, Janette H. Ok argues that 1 Peter characterizes Christian identity as an ethnic identity, as it holds the potential to engender a powerful sense of solidarity for readers who are experiencing social alienation as a result of their conversion. The epistle […]