Forum Discussion of Heathen: Religion and Race in American History, Kathryn Gin Lum: Introduction

The question of how Christians perceived and related to non-Christians - heathens - is of pressing historical importance in every era of the history of Christianity. It lies at the core of the historical category of "religion," particularly as it developed through European colonial expansion in the early modern era, and it plays important roles in the globalizing processes of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Kathryn Gin Lum's book, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History, winner of the ASCH's 2023 Philip Schaff Prize, chronicles that history. Through her narrative, she queries the ways historians engage categories of difference and the role of religion in creating social and political hierarchies.