Reckoning With History by William Yoo Book Review

About the Book:

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.

My Review:

If we want to understand ourselves today, we need to know what brought us here. That goes for the church as well as our personal development. Sometimes Christians would like to tell a revisionist history of Christianity in America. Yoo contends we must understand settler colonialism (seizing Indigenous lands and displacing Indigenous people) along with slavery were among the greatest forces shaping American Christianity.

Yoo relates the observations of early travelers in the U.S, looks at sermons preached, pamphlets printed, and other documents from history. He explores the merging of Protestant Christianity and American exceptionalism, the latter becoming a form of religion with its own religious documents, symbols and idols.

Yoo writes, “Reckoning with history is not for the faint of heart.” (3516/4685) It may be shocking to some readers how many theologians and preachers were adamant that slavery was God's will. If one wants to develop a more honest opinion of American Christianity, this is a valuable resource. “We cannot understand our present without Knowing our past,” (3599/4685) This book may be a little more academic in style than the layperson is used to but it worth the read.

My rating: 4/5 stars.

You can see the table of contents and read the first chapter here.

About the Author:

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.

Westminster John Knox Press, 260 pages.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

(My star ratings: 5-I love it, 4-I like it, 3-It's OK, 2-I don't like it, 1-I hate it.)