Dr. Yoo has previously written about the transnational histories of American Protestant world missions in Korea and Korean American immigrant religious communities as well as the histories of Presbyterianism and Protestant theological education in the United States. His latest book covers the history and legacy of slavery and anti-Black racism in American Presbyterianism. His current research interests include tracing the histories of racial injustice, settler colonialism, and slavery in the United States and examining Indigenous, Black, and Asian American theologies of freedom and resistance. He is also a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Select Publications

What Kind of Christianity: A History of Slavery and Anti-Black Racism in the Presbyterian Church. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022, book.

“When Teaching Pivots to Meet the ‘Fierce Urgency of Now,’” The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching 3:1 (February 2022), article.

“The Souls of Yellow Folk: Moving from a Racially Segregated Nineteenth-Century Train toward an Inclusive Twenty-First Century Asian American Christian Witness,” in Theologies of the Multitudes for the Multitude: The Legacy of Kwok Pui-lan, edited by Rita Nakashima Brock and Tat-Siong Benny Liew. Claremont, CA: Claremont Press, 2021, book chapter.

“2 Corinthians 2:8-15,” “2 Corinthians 12:2-10,” and “Ephesians 1:3-14,” in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary Series (Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World, Year B, Volume 3), edited by Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby, and Carolyn J. Sharp. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021, essays.

“‘What, then, is the Church?’: The Perpetuation of Racial Injustice and the Failure of Repair at Columbia Seminary in the Antebellum United States,” in @ This Point: Theological Investigations in Church and Culture 14:1 (Spring 2020), article.

“Revelation 7:9-17,” “Micah 3:5-12 and Joshua 3:7-17,” and “Joshua 24:1-3a and Amos 5:18-24,” in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary Series (Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading to Scripture, Year A, Volume 3), edited by Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby, and Carolyn J. Sharp. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020, essays.

The Presbyterian Experience in the United States: A Sourcebook. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017, book.

“When Talking isn’t Enough: Moving from Conversations about Race to Actions toward Racial Justice,” Presbyterians Today, October/November 2017, article.

American Missionaries, Korean Protestants, and the Changing Shape of World Christianity, 1884-1965. New York and London: Routledge, 2017, book.

“Moving from ‘Foreign Mission’ to “World Mission’ in South Korea and the United States: The Rise of Reverend Kyung-Chik Han and the Uneasy Transitions within the American Presbyterian Missionary Enterprise in Korea after 1945,” Mission Studies 33:3 (November 2016), article.

Dr. David C. Chao is director of the Center for Asian American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. He teaches courses on Asian American theology and organizes academic programming in Asian American theology and ministry. His research and writing focus on Asian American theology, the uses of Christian doctrine for liberation, the convergence and divergence of Protestant and Catholic dogmatics, and the theology of Karl Barth. His first book, titled Concursus and Concept Use in Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Providence, is under contract with Routledge. He is grant co-author and project editor for the $300,000 translation grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Karl Barth Translator’s Seminar. He is co-leader of a $250,000 Henry Luce grant project titled “Religiously-Inspired Asian American Coalitional Justice Work.” He is principal investigator of a Louisville Institute-funded project titled “Stories of Faith, Resilience, and Politics: First-Generation East Asian American Christians.” Chao is a graduate of Yale University (BA), Regent College (MDiv), and Princeton Theological Seminary (ThM, PhD). He is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the Association for Asian American Studies. Chao has a wide range of pastoral experience with Chinese American, Korean American, and Pan-Asian churches and ministries and is an active member of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Read his latest article “Evangelical or Mainline? Doctrinal Similarity and Difference in Asian American Christianity: Sketching a Social-Practical Theory of Christian Doctrine” here.