Kathryn Gin Lum

Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church History S-USIH Book Award, Society for U.S. Intellectual History Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History, Organization of American Historians "A fascinating book… Gin Lum suggests that, in many times and places, the divide between Christian and 'heathen' was the central divide in American life." - Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker "Offers a dazzling range...

An innovative history that shows how the religious idea of the heathen in need of salvation undergirds American conceptions of race. If an eighteenth-century parson told you that the difference between "civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far," the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by an American missionary in 1971. In a sweeping...