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9781442236189

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Harvey's contribution to the American Ways series is a compact overview of his scholarly specialty, race and religion in America, from the English colonial period to the present. The operating assumption is that race and religion are 'categories invented in the modern world' and used to shape 'social hierarchies, cultural expressions, and political power.' They were earliest applied to deal with the Native Americans of New England and Virginia and, soon after, the black Africans forcibly impressed into slavery and, in time, other non-white and non-northern-European migrants, including Chinese and Japanese, South Asians, and Latinos. Among the products of this application were Christian apologies for slavery; Jim Crow; the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act; legalized segregation; Know-Nothingism; the Ku Klux Klan and its anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic spawn; and denial of First Amendment protection to Native American religion. The reactions included slave uprisings, the NAACP and minority-rights advocacy, the 1950s and '60s civil rights movement, liberation theologies, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and Black Lives Matter. A magisterial precis. Booklist An incredibly timely and accessible work, Bounds of Their Habitation narrates American history in a manner that is concise and expansive. This is a helpful and approachable text not only for scholars and their students, but also for any reader interested in the dynamic power of religion and race in American culture. Prompting readers to consider the implications of history for the present day, Bounds of Their Habitation is an important book for both the public sphere and classrooms. -- Emily Suzanne Clark, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Gonzaga University This sweeping and sensitive survey examines the entanglement of race and religion from the earliest native encounters with missionaries to the rising prominence of the nones in the 21st century. Harvey elegantly unfolds one of history's great paradoxes: how religious ideas and institutions have both nurtured and challenged racism and oppression. This is an essential text for teachers and students of American religion. -- Molly Worthen, author of Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism Paul Harvey's Bounds of Their Habitation is an amazing contribution and distillation concerning two central themes of U.S. history: race and religion. It is a book that will be referred to frequently in thinking and rethinking how race and religion are woven together in the country's political and cultural histories. This book is superbly written and should be read by all kinds of readers-young and old, graduates and undergraduates, and even wizened professors who think they have read it all. -- Randal Maurice Jelks, author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography Paul Harvey's mastery of the historical record and accessible writing style makes Bounds of Their Habitation the first book that people should read about the history of religion and race in North America. It's ideal for anyone who wants to understand how the convergence of religious ideas and racial categories shaped American society from the colonial period to the present. It's also a perfect compliment to any American history class, high school or college, because of its careful attention to people from many ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. -- Michael Pasquier, Louisiana State University

An incredibly timely and accessible work, Bounds of Their Habitation narrates American history in a manner that is concise and expansive. This is a helpful and approachable text not only for scholars and their students, but also for any reader interested in the dynamic power of religion and race in American culture. Prompting readers to consider the implications of history for the present day, Bounds of Their Habitation is an important book for both the public sphere and classrooms. -- Emily Suzanne Clark, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Gonzaga University This sweeping and sensitive survey examines the entanglement of race and religion from the earliest native encounters with missionaries to the rising prominence of the nones in the 21st century. Harvey elegantly unfolds one of history's great paradoxes: how religious ideas and institutions have both nurtured and challenged racism and oppression. This is an essential text for teachers and students of American religion. -- Molly Worthen, author of Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism Paul Harvey's Bounds of Their Habitation is an amazing contribution and distillation concerning two central themes of U.S. history: race and religion. It is a book that will be referred to frequently in thinking and rethinking how race and religion are woven together in the country's political and cultural histories. This book is superbly written and should be read by all kinds of readers-young and old, graduates and undergraduates, and even wizened professors who think they have read it all. -- Randal Maurice Jelks, author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography Paul Harvey's mastery of the historical record and accessible writing style makes Bounds of Their Habitation the first book that people should read about the history of religion and race in North America. It's ideal for anyone who wants to understand how the convergence of religious ideas and racial categories shaped American society from the colonial period to the present. It's also a perfect compliment to any American history class, high school or college, because of its careful attention to people from many ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. -- Michael Pasquier, Louisiana State University

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Paul Harvey is professor of history at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, and the author of Through the Storm, Through the Night: A History of African American Christianity (R&L 2011).

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