...this work is an important and unique contribution to the literature on the confluence of race and religion, which has been growing as scholars increasingly merge the interests of religious studies and race studies. This handbook adds to this growing body of scholarship by providing a timely commentary that succeeds in readability and in its scope and chronology. This handbook would prove helpful for undergraduate classes taught on the subject and scholars interested in tracing these concepts across time.
Grant M. Sutherland, McMaster University, Religious Studies Review
A provocative reference volume that capaciously surveys the broadening landscape of scholarship on the American religious experience, serving as a primer on the most recent work on race and religion in the United States. The book challenges traditional accounts to integrate its analytical framework and narrative content, arguing for a substantive rethinking of what constitutes the American religious experience by decentering the dominant white narratives that have too often excluded or marginalized non-white faith traditions. The increased diversity of the experiences of Asian Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, Latino/a Americans, and the vast range of immigrant populations require a reassessment of what American religion is and what its multiple components are. In providing scholars with this timely volume, the writing of a new American religious history can now accelerate.
Church History
The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History is a monumental achievement. Edited by Kathryn Gin Lum, a leading light in the subfield of race and religion, and Paul Harvey, the subfield's elder statesman, the work is much more than a "handbook" ... Together, its thirty-four essays -- authored by well-known scholars and rising stars (twenty-four are women) -- approach comprehensiveness in chronology, methodology, and content. Despite the book's size, its editorial framing makes it useful for the most seasoned scholar and accessible to undergraduates initially exploring race and religion
Max Perry Mueller, American History
To my mind, the editors should be congratulated for pulling together a capacious, challenging, and fair group of essays that deliver on the volume's promise to consider race and religion in American history in a comprehensive manner...[T]his book is a provocative and exciting resource for the study of race and religion in the United States.
Brett Hendrickson, Reading Religion