The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History is a reference work in which thirty-seven leading scholars from the fields of History, Religious Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, and others investigate the complex interdependencies of religion and race through American history. The book covers the religious experience, social realities, theologies, and sociologies of racialized groups in American religious history. It explores how religion contributed to their racialization, and race to perceptions about the validity of their religious expressions. Religion played a significant part in creating race. While Euro-American Christianity was hardly the sole force in this process, Christian myth, originating from interpretations of biblical stories as well as speculations about God’s Providence, necessarily was central to the process of racializing peoples in the Americas––to imposing hierarchies upon groups of humans. But if Christianity fostered racialization, it also undermined it. Sacred passages and practices have been powerful but ambiguous, and arguments about God’s Providence in colonization, proselytization, and slavery have always been contentious. Assumptions about race have also helped to define religion in the United States, and what counts as protectable under the First Amendment. Practitioners of indigenous religions, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, humanism, and others have drawn on their traditions to claim religious freedom, foster group identity, challenge racialization, and participate in race-making. Race and religion have also been created and debated through popular culture, and this volume includes considerations of music, film, sports, and photography in addition to the chapters covering theoretical approaches, traditions, and historical periods.
Gim Lum, Kathryn. y Paul Harvey, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. XI+624 pp.