Reckoning with History

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>A hard haunting and hopeful history that will leave an indelible mark and transform your understanding of both Christianity and the United States.</strong></p><p></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Reckoning with History</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> 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.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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 </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Reckoning with History</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> a definitive resource for understanding racism and pursuing racial justice in the United States.</span></p><p></p>