Dr. William Yoo Lecture at HIU

Bio

William Yoo is Associate Professor of American Religious and Cultural History at Columbia Theological Seminary. He has published books on African American Christianity, Asian American Christianity, Presbyterian history, and the histories of Indigenous rights activism and abolitionism in the United States. His book, What Kind of Christianity: A History of Slavery and Anti-Black Racism in the Presbyterian Church, received the 2023 Award of Excellence from the Religion Communicators Council. His most recent book is Reckoning with History: Settler Colonialism, Slavery, and the Making of American Christianity. He is presently conducting research for a book project on Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.

Summary

Our memories of settler colonialism and slavery often emphasize the American South, such as the unjust expulsion of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia and the numerous rebellions of enslaved people in South Carolina and Virginia. But the making of the United States encompasses more than the Trail of Tears, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner. In this lecture, William Yoo focuses on the history of Christianity in Connecticut to tell a surprising story of courage, faith, oppression, and tragedy as Indigenous peoples and Black Americans worked alongside white Christians in the nineteenth century to fight against settler colonialism, slavery, and racism. William Yoo draws insights from a short-lived mission school for Indigenous students in Cornwall, white churches in Hartford, failed attempts to establish Black schools in Canterbury and New Haven, and the journeys of Connecticut-born Black abolitionists Lemuel Haynes and Maria W. Stewart—all to illustrate how the story of Christianity in Connecticut illumines our ongoing pursuit of racial justice in the United States today.

Join us for the Book Talk at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace at 3 p.m. on Sunday, September 28, 2025

REGISTER HERE

Note: there is an earlier session part of the Freedom Trail on Sunday, September 28th at 10:30 AM at 675 Main Street in downtown Hartford. Rev. Dr. Yoo will deliver the featured sermon for Center Church's Freedom Trail Sunday service. 

Ample street parking for the service is available, as well as parking in the Traveler's garage with an entrance on Prospect Street. For more information about worship at center Church please visit www.centerchurchhartford.org or call 860.249.5631. 

Center Church is proud to be a stop on the Connecticut Freedom Trail and is glad to celebrate September as Connecticut's Freedom Trail Month. For more information about Freedom Trail Month and Connecticut's Freedom Trail, please visit the website https://ctfreedomtrail.org.