When God Became White: Dismantling Whiteness for a More Just Christianity

Presbyterian minister Kim (theology, Earlham Sch. of Religion; Spirit Life) takes aim at the legacies of discrimination within the metaphors and structures of Christianity. Her book traces ways that the image of God as a white man and the concurrent elevation of whiteness as an ideal has shaped the religious experience of Christians worldwide. She interweaves stories of her childhood as a Korean immigrant and personal encounters with racial and gender-based discrimination with wide-ranging commentary on subjects such as Christian symbolism, missionaries, enslavement, syncretism, and colonialism. Her writing style is sermonic, moving rapidly from topic to topic. But sometimes deep subjects are mentioned in only a paragraph or two, which may make some readers conclude that a massive amount of ideological terrain is covered too quickly. But the author does a good job of injecting personal stories and circling back to main themes, such as the interconnection of race, gender, sexuality, and class within systems of oppression.