Monday, November 14, 2022, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST
Helen Jin Kim, Assistant Professor of American Religious History, Candler School of Theology, Affiliate Faculty, Graduate Division of Religion and East Asian Studies Program
“The Transpacific Turn in American Religions: Religious ‘Nones,’ Evangelicalism, and the ‘Prosperity Gospel’”
The field of American religious history has sought to narrate the past in global context. Yet scholars in the field have tended to underutilize a Pacific lens, casting the history of religion in America primarily through an Atlantic lens. Thus, we have often missed the opportunity to highlight a key region in our global story, and by extension, a key group of people in our racial narratives, those of Asian descent. By the same token, transpacific and Asian American historians have tended to underutilize religion as a central category of analysis in their narratives. How does employing a transpacific and Asian American lens change the understanding of American religions? In addressing this question, Helen Jin Kim, already much acknowledged for expertise in this area, will examine such phenomena as the rise of the religious “nones,” the history of evangelicalism, and the development of the so-called “prosperity gospel.”