– “Race for Revival” published by Oxford University Press in 2023

How cold war South Korea shaped the American Evangelical Empire

“To retrieve that peace, we must call for an end to the unending Korean War, including the cessation of US empire building as well as the use of race to govern others. Otherwise, we are in a never-ending war, constantly rehearsing a past that continues to haunt , with no resolution. Revival is not a race, and one race does not have a monopoly on revival.” – p. 169

Race for Revival retells the story of modern American evangelicalism through its relationship with South Korea. Employing a bilingual and bi-national approach, Helen Jin Kim reexamines the narrative of modern evangelicalism through an innovative transpacific framework, offering a new lens through which to understand evangelical history from the Korean War to the rise of Ronald Reagan.

Witten by Helen Jin Kim is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Emory University.
She completed her PhD in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University and her BA in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

“With polish and a welcomed fresh purview, Helen Jin Kim reveals the Cold War exchange of activism that linked South Korea and the U.S in a phenomenon of booming Protestant ministry, and gave rise to a Christian Right that could boast transpacific ties while privileging the authority of its white American constituency. This stellar book is essential reading for anyone who wants to grasp the power of modern evangelicalism and its political expressions on a global stage.”
-DARREN DOCHUK, University of Notre Dame, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt:
Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism

“Just when we thought we had examined nearly every facet of contemporary U.S. evangelicalism, Helen Jin Kim swoops in with a thoughtful and fascinating new history that demonstrates that to understand the development of U.S. evangelicalism, one must pay deep attention to evangelical movements in Asia, and Korea, in particular. Kim’s lively and compelling account offers a window into the ‘multiple evangelicalisms’ that we encounter today and demands that we engage more seriously with the role of American empire and race in U.S. religious history.”
-JANELLE WONG, University of Maryland, College Park, author of Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change