Dr. Helen Jin Kim is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. She studies U.S. religions and history in global context, focusing on U.S. religious connections to Asia-Pacific and transnational histories of Asian American religions. In 2023, she became the first woman of Asian descent to be tenured at Candler School of Theology since its founding in 1914.
Kim is the author of Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022), which won the 2024 Outstanding Achievement in History award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Race for Revival will serve as the basis of a new podcast series with Axis Mundi Media. Kim is also a co-author of Family Sacrifices: The Worldviews and Ethics of Chinese Americans (Oxford University Press, 2019) with Russell Jeung and Seanan Fong, and she is co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Asian American Religions with Melissa Borja and Justin Tse.
In 2020 Kim was awarded both the Emory Provost’s Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education and Candler School of Theology’s On Eagle’s Wings Excellence in Teaching Award. She was selected as a “Young Scholar in American Religion” by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (2022-24). Kim’s commentary appears in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, NBC News and Christianity Today.
Kim completed her MDiv and PhD at Harvard as a William R. Hutchison Presidential Fellow. She began her research at Stanford where she completed her BA in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and English. She has been a member of the Asian Pacific American Religions and Research Initiative (APARRI) since 2006 and serves as a member of their Board. Kim grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quad Cities of Iowa, Boston, MA and Seoul, Korea. She is a member of the United Methodist Church, enjoys yoga, and loves dogs. Prior to graduate studies, Kim worked at Google, Inc.
