The Holy Trinity: God, America, and King Cotton

The story most Americans learned about cotton goes something like this: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, the South grew a lot of cotton, and then we had a Civil War about slavery. It's a sanitized tale that glides over the most important part—how a plant became a theology that reshaped not just the American economy but American Christianity itself.

Long before "In God We Trust" appeared on our currency, Americans had already perfected the art of baptizing economic interests in religious language. And nowhere was this alchemy more transformative than in the cotton fields that stretched across the American South. As cotton became the oil of the 19th century—the commodity that powered global economics and politics—the theological innovations required to justify its production would transform Christianity from a faith centered on a poor, crucified Messiah into something altogether different: a gospel perfectly tailored to economic exploitation.

This isn't merely historical curiosity; it's autobiography. As a descendant of Louisiana enslavers who owned plantations in the notorious Bayou Boeuf region—an area that historian Solomon Northup described as having "no Sabbath in the slave fields"—I bear the direct inheritance of theological stories created to sanctify torture in service to agricultural productivity. The theological framework that justified my ancestors' actions wasn't just abstract doctrine; it was family inheritance passed down alongside silver and land.

The Fiber That Changed the World

Before we explore how cotton transformed theology, we need to understand how it transformed everything else. For most of human history, cotton clothing was a luxury. The process of removing seeds from cotton fiber (ginning) was so labor-intensive that cotton garments were reserved for the wealthy. The historian Yuval Noah Harari notes in Sapiens that before the Industrial Revolution, the average European owned perhaps two shirts in a lifetime. Not two shirts at a time—two shirts, total.

All this changed with two revolutionary developments: First, Eli Whitney's cotton gin multiplied human productivity in separating seeds from fiber by a factor of fifty. Second, British innovations like the spinning jenny, water frame, and power loom created unprecedented demand for raw cotton. Suddenly, an obscure plant became the essential commodity in a new global economy.

This cotton revolution created an economic opportunity of staggering proportions. American soil—particularly land seized from indigenous peoples across the Deep South—proved ideal for cotton cultivation. By 1850, American cotton production had increased over a thousandfold from pre-Revolutionary levels. Cotton exports accounted for 60% of American export value. A global industry employing millions of workers across multiple continents depended on American cotton production.

The parallel to modern global commodities is striking. Cotton transformed global power structures like oil would in the 20th century and like the rare earth minerals essential for smartphones do today. British textile factories needed American cotton like modern tech companies need Congolese cobalt—desperately, non-negotiably, at any human cost.

Importantly, cotton finance ultimately spawned a booming financial and manufacturing industry in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago to finance commodities trade, meaning no American region or generation is innocent of plantation capitalism. As historian Sven Beckert documents in Empire of Cotton, the entire American economy became intertwined with the cotton trade, creating wealth far beyond the plantations themselves.

The First Theological Innovation: Redefining Humanity

But there was a problem. Cotton was extraordinarily labor-intensive. The same gin that made cotton processing efficient made cotton cultivation profitable at scales that demanded vast labor forces. The economics only worked with access to forced labor—enslaved people who could be compelled to work under conditions of extreme brutality.

Here's where theology enters the picture. Christianity, with its troublesome teachings about human equality before God and its emphasis on liberty in Christ, posed potential barriers to the cotton economy. Before cotton could transform the American economy, Christianity itself would need transformation.

This transformation began long before cotton's rise. As Willie James Jennings documents in The Christian Imagination, a profound theological shift happened in the 15th century when papal bulls fundamentally altered Christian understanding of human identity. Human worth, previously grounded in relationship to place and community, was replaced with a new framework based on utility to European commerce.

This theological shift created what Jennings calls a "racial scale of humanity"—a hierarchical system that categorized people according to their perceived proximity to European civilization. One's value was no longer rooted in bearing God's image but in one's usefulness to commerce. This new anthropology wasn't just a distortion of Christianity; it was a complete inversion, transforming a subversive faith founded on the radical equality of all people in Christ into a system that justified profound inequality.

The theological irony is breathtaking. Christianity began with the radical claim that in Christ, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free" (Galatians 3:28). This revolutionary theological assertion appears not only in Galatians but also in similar forms in Colossians 3:11 and is practically demonstrated in Paul's letter to Philemon, where he urges a slave owner to receive his runaway slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (Philemon 1:16). Yet by the time cotton became king, American Christianity had developed elaborate theological frameworks explaining why some image-bearers of God could be legally classified as property rather than persons.

And this wasn't limited just to African Americans. As J. Kameron Carter demonstrates in Race: A Theological Account, American Christianity developed a robust hierarchy of human value that shaped views of all non-Anglo Protestants. This hierarchy affected not only Black Americans but also Indigenous peoples, Asians, Latinos, Catholics, Jews, and even certain European immigrant groups like Italians, who were sometimes subjected to the same racial violence as African Americans in the late 19th century, particularly in the South.

Gods in Our Image: The Theology of Dominance

What happened to Christianity in the cotton states, northern financial centers, and the West's potential cotton lands offers a perfect case study of humanity's persistent tendency to create gods that legitimate our dominative schemes. The biblical writers were keenly aware of this tendency. The prophet Isaiah mockingly describes how people would cut down a tree, use part of it to cook their food, and then "from the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships" (Isaiah 44:15-17). The psalmist observed that those who make idols "become like them" (Psalm 115:8)—a profound insight into how our gods and our social systems mirror and reinforce each other.

Cotton Christianity exemplified this dynamic. Facing economic demands that contradicted Jesus's teachings, cotton-dependent Christians didn't abandon faith—they reshaped it. They created a deity who conveniently blessed their economic arrangements, who sanctified exploitation, who placed white enslavers at the top of a divinely ordained hierarchy.

This pattern extends far beyond cotton fields. Political scientist Ivan Krastev offers a parallel observation about modern states: "Science was as important for the modern state as God was for the monarchical states of the past. The legitimacy of the state was coming from science." Just as cotton Christians created a deity who legitimated plantation economics, modern political ideologies create sources of legitimacy—whether scientific, religious, or cultural—that validate their power arrangements.

This pattern became even more pronounced as Cotton Christianity was transformed by Darwin and theories of natural selection that reinforced the hierarchy of human value as not only God-given but empirically confirmed by Science (and here we must capitalize Science when denoting it as a secular god). The supposed scientific validation of racial hierarchies provided an additional layer of legitimacy to theological frameworks that had already been developed to justify exploitation.

The insight from Cotton Evangelicalism is not merely historical. It reveals a fundamental human tendency: When our desires and practices contradict our professed values, we don't usually abandon our values—we reinterpret them. As John Calvin observed in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, "[M]an's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols." This 16th century theologian recognized what Cotton Evangelicalism would later demonstrate on American shores—we continuously manufacture gods who bless what we've already decided to do. We create sources of authority that validate our predetermined conclusions, transforming our hearts and minds into workshops that endlessly produce idols tailored to our desires.

As theologian Stanley Hauerwas bluntly puts it: "The desperate need to have a god that underwrites our causes rather than a God who judges them" defines much of American religion. This explains why Christians could simultaneously proclaim a faith founded by a torture victim while theologically justifying the torture of others. It wasn't mere hypocrisy—it was the predictable outcome of creating a god in the image of economic necessity.

Supersessionism as Cotton's Theological Engine

This transformation required an additional theological innovation: the repurposing of supersessionism. Originally a dubious doctrine about the European church replacing Israel as God's covenant people, supersessionism was expanded to justify European domination over indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans.

Historian Edward E. Baptist documents in The Half Has Never Been Told how slaveholders developed a reading of scripture that portrayed enslavement as part of God's providential plan to "civilize" and "Christianize" Africans. Biblical narratives of the curse of Ham became central to this framework, providing theological cover for economic exploitation. The story of Canaan being cursed to servitude (Genesis 9:25-27) was transformed from an obscure biblical passage into a foundational text for American economic organization.

The theological gymnastics required here were remarkable. Scripture's isolated mentions of slavery (in vastly different cultural contexts) were elevated to divine endorsement, while Jesus's core teachings about human dignity, justice, and love were systematically marginalized. American Christianity developed what we might call a "cotton hermeneutic"—a method of biblical interpretation that consistently prioritized texts that could justify the cotton economy while downplaying those that challenged it.

Regional Christianities and Cotton's Theology

It's important to note that American Christianity didn't respond uniformly to cotton's demands. As historian David Hackett Fischer explains in Albion's Seed, distinct regional traditions developed divergent theological responses to slavery, largely shaped by their founding cultural values.

The New England Yankee tradition, with its Puritan emphasis on covenant community and moral accountability, produced theological resources for resistance to slavery. They drew on biblical passages like "he who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:16) to oppose enslavement structures and practices. The Midland Quaker tradition, centered on the inner light present in all persons, led to early and principled abolitionist movements. These traditions maintained some degree of prophetic witness against slavery, though both were compromised by economic entanglements with the cotton trade.

By contrast, the Upper South Anglican tradition - predominantly Latitudinarian - adapted more easily to plantation hierarchy, finding theological justifications in biblical passages about servants and masters. But it was in the Deep South and Borderlands where Christianity underwent its most profound transformation, creating what we might call "Cotton Evangelicalism"—a faith perfectly aligned with plantation economics.

Stanley Hauerwas would recognize this pattern immediately: "The primary social task of the church," he writes, "is to be itself—that is, a people who have been formed by a story that provides them with the skills for negotiating the danger of this existence." The regional churches formed by stories of hierarchical order, racial superiority, and divine blessing on commerce developed precisely the "skills" needed to justify participation in cotton's brutal economy. This was not the Church but its regional mutations negotiating plantation capitalism's existence.

What's remarkable isn't just that different regions developed different theological responses, but how predictably these theological positions aligned with economic interests. Northern churches in states with textile factories dependent on Southern cotton found sophisticated theological justifications for maintaining economic relationships with slavery while nominally opposing it. Borderland churches in states transitioning from smallholder agriculture to plantation systems found theological justifications for precisely the economic transitions they were experiencing.

The pattern is striking: Rather than letting theology shape economics, economic necessity shaped theology. This pattern continues today: As Krastev observes about modern states, they have moved from meeting "needs" to validating "desires"—just as our religious frameworks often shift from challenging our desires to legitimating them.

The Plantation Pulpit: Theology in Service to Productivity

How did this cotton theology manifest in practice? Solomon Northup's account of his enslavement on Bayou Boeuf plantations (where my ancestors owned land) describes a Christianity nearly unrecognizable as the faith of Jesus. Worship services on plantations often focused on scriptural passages about servants obeying masters. Plantation preachers would emphasize texts like "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear" (Ephesians 6:5) while conveniently ignoring the reciprocal commands to masters or Jesus's reading from Isaiah about "proclaiming freedom for the prisoners" (Luke 4:18).

Edward Baptist documents how enslavers on Bayou Boeuf plantations developed theological justifications for torture methods designed to increase cotton productivity. The brutal overseer who whipped enslaved people for failing to meet cotton quotas wasn't seen as violating Christian ethics but implementing them—a bizarre inversion of Jesus's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39). Physical brutality was reimagined as spiritual discipline. Cotton production targets were framed as divine expectations. Violence against enslaved people was sanctified as necessary correction rather than condemned as sinful abuse.

This theological framework transformed local forms of Christianity from a faith centered on a God who liberates captives into one that specialized in creating spiritual justifications for captivity. The Jesus who proclaimed "good news to the poor" and "freedom for the prisoners" (Luke 4:18) was effectively replaced by a deity primarily concerned with cotton yields.

It's important to note that Christianity wasn't monolithic during this period. As philosopher Charles Taylor describes in his concept of the 'Nova Effect,' multiple competing versions of Christianity collided with each other, generating communities shaped not by Christianity as a cohesive whole but by variegated mutations. These mutations created theological frameworks that served different economic and social systems, leading to profound differences in how Christianity was understood and practiced.

Frederick Douglass offered one of the most powerful critiques of this theological perversion in his 1845 Narrative, where he distinguishes between "the christianity of this land" with its "revivals of religion" that leave the slave system intact, and the "Christianity of Christ" that would liberate the captives. As Douglass observes, "I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land."

Douglass didn't charge slaveholders with rejecting Christianity entirely, but rather with embracing a corrupted version that served their economic interests. The problem wasn't that slaveholders abandoned religion, but that they transformed it into something that removed its most challenging demands—a Christianity conveniently stripped of Jesus's teachings about human dignity, justice, and love.

Cotton Christianity didn't require rejecting Jesus—just redefining him to serve economic interests.

Theology and Manifest Destiny: Expanding Cotton's Empire

As cotton production depleted soil, constant territorial expansion became economically necessary. Here again, theology proved remarkably adaptable. The concept of Manifest Destiny—the belief that American expansion across the continent was divinely ordained—served cotton's economic demands by sanctifying territorial expansion and the displacement of indigenous peoples.

This theological framework drew selectively on biblical narratives of conquest while ignoring prophetic traditions of justice. The biblical command to "act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8) was overshadowed by misappropriated conquest narratives from Joshua. Jesus's teaching that "blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9) was conveniently set aside in favor of aggressive expansionism.

The Mexican-American War, fundamentally a war to expand cotton territory, was framed in theological terms as a crusade to spread "liberty" and "civilization." Protestant clergy overwhelmingly supported the war, developing theological frameworks that portrayed Catholic Mexico as spiritually inferior and thus rightfully subject to American conquest.

This war had profound consequences for Mexican citizens living in territories seized by the United States. As documented in Carrie Gibson's book El Norte, Californios and Tejanos (Mexican residents of California and Texas) faced systematic disenfranchisement during the antebellum period, when both territories negotiated statehood constitutions that stripped away their long-established property and citizenship rights. These constitutional provisions and early legal restrictions preceded and laid the groundwork for what would later evolve into full 'Juan Crow' laws and anti-Asian exclusion legislation after the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. This legal progression demonstrates how the theological justifications for expansion created enduring structures of discrimination that affected multiple racial groups over generations.

By the time the Civil War erupted, the theological justifications for slavery developed in service to cotton had become so entrenched that they fueled a war framed not merely as an economic necessity but as a spiritual crusade. Confederate leaders explicitly described secession as a defense of divine order. Confederate clergy portrayed the struggle as a holy war to preserve God's intended social hierarchy.

This dynamic extended beyond the war itself into Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. Italian immigrants in the late 19th century often faced racial violence in the South for refusing to abide by Jim Crow segregation laws. In 1891, eleven Italian Americans were lynched by a mob in New Orleans, and throughout the 1890s, a total of twenty Italians were lynched in the South as they navigated a racial status that was initially ambiguous within the Southern racial hierarchy. As Jonathan Tran documents in his work on racial capitalism, other ethnic groups like Asians and even certain European immigrants experienced similar racial categorization. This happened not just in the Jim Crow South but throughout the country, showing how the system of racial hierarchy extended beyond a simple Black-white binary.[10]

From Plantation to Platform: Modern Cotton Theologies

The theological distortions created to justify cotton exploitation didn't disappear after emancipation. Indeed, they hardened in the decades between 1880-1940, peaking in support of onerous 1924 immigration legislation and juriprudence as part of Warren Harding's America First policies. They evolved into new forms that continue to shape American religious and economic life today.

The prosperity gospel—with its emphasis on material blessing as evidence of divine favor—bears striking theological similarities to cotton Christianity's equation of economic success with divine approval. Both systems create theological frameworks that sanctify wealth accumulation while minimizing questions about how that wealth is produced. The apostle Paul warned against those who "think that godliness is a means to financial gain" (1 Timothy 6:5), yet prosperity theology often presents exactly this equation.

Contemporary defenses of extreme economic inequality often employ strikingly similar theological moves to those used by cotton evangelicals. The insistence that poverty results from moral failure rather than systemic injustice, the spiritualization of market forces as quasi-divine, the theological minimizing of Jesus's teachings about wealth—all echo patterns established during cotton's reign. The clear biblical command that "if anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?" (1 John 3:17) becomes reinterpreted through the same hermeneutical gymnastics that cotton Christianity perfected.

This pattern has evolved into what scholars like Ruth Braunstein identify as Colorblind Judeo-Christian Nationalism that absolves citizens of 'racism' by justifying disparity on the basis of non-conformity to the Anglo-Protestant ethnotradition. This framework transforms the hierarchy of human value from overtly racial categories into cultural categories, maintaining the same hierarchical structure while using different language to justify it.[15]

Krastev identifies a parallel pattern in how modern states relate to citizens: "The classical trusted state of the 1930s in America under Roosevelt was based on the idea that it responded to and took care of human needs. But today, it must take care of human desires." Similarly, both Cotton Evangelicalism and its modern descendants transform faith from challenging human desires to legitimating them—creating theological systems that validate what we already want rather than calling us to transformation.

We've moved from Plantation Capitalism to Platform Capitalism, but many of the theological justifications remain remarkably similar. Just as cotton Christianity developed frameworks to explain why some image-bearers of God could be legally classified as property, modern economic theologies explain why some workers can be classified as "independent contractors" rather than employees deserving of benefits and protections.

Quinn Slobodian documents how much of this evolved through Chinese communism's innovation: capitalism stripped of democratic accountability by the force of a powerful state that creates legal "zones" where hierarchies are legally enshrined in the name of capitalism. Dubai has become the master of this model, and the elimination of ontological equality as an ongoing American commitment has emerged as a core tenet of the Trumpian revolution, rendering Anglo-Protestants victims of other citizens, and Americans victims of the world.

The irony is that perhaps the most enduring crop from cotton's golden age wasn't fiber but theology—frameworks for baptizing exploitation in religious language that continue to bear fruit today.

Confession and Repentance: Beyond Cotton's Theology

As a descendant of Louisiana enslavers, I carry both the inheritance of cotton's theology and the responsibility to confront it. The theological frameworks that justified my ancestors' participation in a brutal system were passed down through generations, often in subtle forms that continued to shape understanding of faith, race, and economics long after emancipation.

Confronting this inheritance requires more than historical awareness. It demands theological reckoning—recognizing how economic interests shaped religious understanding and committing to the difficult work of disentangling authentic faith from its cotton-era distortions. The biblical call to "examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith" (2 Corinthians 13:5) requires us to examine not just individual belief but the theological frameworks we've inherited.

Hauerwas reminds us that "the first political task of the church is to be the church"—to embody an alternative community shaped by Jesus's teachings rather than economic expediency. This begins with confession—acknowledging how profoundly cotton reshaped American Christianity into something often unrecognizable as the faith of Jesus. As Psalm 51:6 puts it, "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts."

The theological tensions that shaped cotton Christianity continue today. The fundamental question remains: Will our theology be shaped by the crucified Christ who stands with the exploited, or will it be tailored to justify the economic arrangements that benefit us? Will we follow the Jesus who said "blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20), or will we continue to refashion him to fit our economic interests?

Cotton's gospel promised prosperity through exploitation. The authentic gospel calls us to find abundant life through self-giving love. Jesus stated the choice plainly: "No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve both God and money" (Matthew 6:24). We cannot serve both.

Key Terms

Cotton Evangelicalism: A distinct form of American Christianity that developed theological frameworks to justify and sanctify cotton production dependent on enslaved labor, characterized by selective biblical interpretation and the subordination of Jesus's ethical teachings to economic imperatives. Full entry →

Plantation Capitalism: Economic system that commodified both land and labor to maximize production of export crops like cotton, characterized by violent extraction of wealth, racial hierarchy, and theological justification of exploitation. Full entry →

Platform Capitalism: Contemporary economic system that digitally mediates labor relationships while minimizing worker protections and benefits, often employing similar theological justifications to plantation capitalism despite its technological veneer. Full entry →

Cotton Hermeneutic: Method of biblical interpretation that selectively prioritizes texts that justify economic exploitation while marginalizing passages emphasizing justice, equality, and liberation; developed to reconcile Christian theology with the cotton economy's dependence on slavery. Full entry →

Plantation Preacher: Religious authority figure who developed and propagated theological frameworks justifying slavery and plantation economics, characterized by selective biblical teaching that emphasized submission while ignoring liberation themes in scripture. Full entry →

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Notes

[1] Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 58-59.

[2] David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 410-418.

[3] Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 102-105.

[4] Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1853), 163-165.

[5] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 99-100.

[6] Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015), 328-330.

[7] Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014), 102-105.

[8] J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 157-193.

[9] Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845), 118.

[10] Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 45-67.

[11] Carrie Gibson, El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America (New York: Grove Atlantic, 2019), 245-268.

[12] Ivan Krastev, interview on "The Good Fight" podcast with Yascha Mounk, "Ivan Krastev on American Decline," January 2025.

[13] Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 187-213.

[14] Uffman, Craig, and Kevin Boyle. "How and Why We Birthed Jim Crow," and “Jim Crow: The Yankee Variant”, Conversations: Race on the Rocks. Christian Humanist Mission, 2024.

[15] Braunstein, Ruth. "The 'Right' History: Religion, Race, and Nostalgic Stories of Christian America." Religions 12, no. 2 (January 30, 2021): 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020095.

Introduction

"Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path... Other seed fell on rocky ground... Other seed fell among thorns... Other seed fell into good soil." - Mark 4:3-8

Jesus's parable of the sower reveals how the same seed produces dramatically different results depending on the soil where it lands. This agricultural metaphor illuminates spiritual truth and historical pattern—how religious traditions produce different results when planted in different social "soils." It also helps us understand what Charles Taylor calls the "nova effect"—the explosion of religious and secular options from originally unified traditions.

The English settlement of North America vividly demonstrates this pattern. Rather than representing unified cultural transplantation, British colonization involved at least four distinct cultural migrations from different regions of Britain, each bringing distinctive religious traditions, social customs, political values, and cultural patterns. These different traditions established regional cultures that would shape American development in profoundly different ways despite their common British origins.

This historical pattern is particularly significant for our time because these distinct theological traditions would eventually evolve into the seemingly opposed religious and political movements we see today. Both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism emerged from these distinct theological soils. However, they've mutated in seemingly opposite directions—their opposition masking more profound structural similarities.

The Diverse Theological Seedbed

Before examining each migration separately, we must recognize their distinct theological traditions:

• Puritan Migration: Calvinist with distinctive Ramist interpretive approach

• Cavalier Migration: Latitudinarian Anglican with hierarchical church structure

• Quaker Migration: Radical Reformation with a distinctive pneumatology

• Borderlands Migration: Federal Calvinist with clan-based religious structures

Each of these theological traditions carried its interpretive frameworks, institutional expressions, and cultural practices—which were then shaped by the technological mediations of their time, primarily print culture, which enabled particular kinds of religious imagination to flourish in colonial contexts.

What we witness in contemporary debates between Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism is not a battle between wholly alien traditions but mutations of distinct theological traditions that have evolved in divergent directions while maintaining structural similarities.

The Puritan Migration: East Anglia to Massachusetts

Religious Patterns and Cultural Distinctives

The "Puritan migration" that established New England brought approximately 21,000 settlers between 1629 and 1641, primarily from East Anglia in southeastern England. This region had developed distinctive religious and cultural patterns shaped by proximity to continental Europe, Reformed Protestant influence, and commercial wealth derived from textile manufacturing and trade.

The Puritan settlers brought a distinctly Calvinist theological framework characterized by covenant theology, communal religious accountability, and emphasis on literacy to enable biblical interpretation. Their Ramist approach to scripture—emerging from Pierre Ramus's logical methodology—emphasized systematic categorization and division, creating binary classifications that would profoundly influence New England intellectual traditions.

Their emphasis on literacy and education led to the early establishment of schools and colleges, with Massachusetts requiring public education decades before similar requirements appeared elsewhere. Their communal religious vision established the town as a primary social unit, with community consensus prioritized over individual autonomy in ways that continue to influence New England's political culture.

Technological Mediation and Print Culture

The Puritan migration coincided with the expansion of print culture, and Puritans leveraged this technology extensively. They established the first printing press in British North America at Harvard in 1638, recognizing print's essential role in propagating their religious vision. The emphasis on literacy, catechism, and sermon literature created a distinctive textual community mediating religious authority increasingly through print rather than solely through the clerical hierarchy.

This technological mediation helped shape distinctive New England religious patterns:

• Extensive sermon publication culture

• Religious governance through written covenants

• Formation of interpretive communities through shared texts

• Growing emphasis on education as a religious necessity

We cannot understand the distinctive development of New England Puritanism apart from its relationship with print technology, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation.

Evolution Toward Providential Identitarianism

What's particularly significant is how these Puritan patterns eventually evolved toward elements we now recognize in Providential Identitarianism. This transformation was not a simple secularization but what Charles Taylor calls a "fragilization" and mutation of religious imagination.

Key evolutionary developments include:

• Transformation of Communitarianism: The Puritan emphasis on communal covenant evolved toward institutional reform movements

• Educational Metamorphosis: Religious education emphasis transformed into secular academic authority structures

• Moral Perfectionism: Puritan sanctification theology evolved into progressive perfectionism

• Institutional Authority: Communal religious governance became expert-driven institutional authority

This evolution accelerated dramatically in the late 19th century with the importation of the German research university model, which provided new technological frameworks for religious imagination. As Thomas Kuhn observed about scientific paradigms, these new institutional technologies didn't simply replace religious frameworks but translated them into new forms.

The evolution of the New England intellectual tradition shows how Binary Apocalypticism mutated from a theological framework to secular political dualism and how Authoritarian Spirituality transformed from clerical authority to academic expertise. These mutations maintained structural similarities to their religious origins while adopting new content and institutional forms.

The Cavalier Migration: South of England to Virginia

Latitudinarian Anglicanism, Not Calvinism

The "Cavalier migration" that established Virginia and the Chesapeake brought approximately 45,000 settlers between 1642 and 1675, primarily from southern and western England. This migration accelerated following the English Civil War, as royalist supporters sought refuge from Puritan political dominance in England.

Unlike the Calvinist Puritans, these migrants brought a distinctly Latitudinarian Anglican religious tradition characterized by:

• Hierarchical church governance mirroring social hierarchy

• Emphasis on liturgical conformity rather than doctrinal precision

• Established church framework with significant clerical authority

• Less emphasis on individual religious experience

• Greater tolerance for religious diversity within the established order

The Cavalier settlers brought distinctive cultural patterns that profoundly shaped Southern regional culture. Their hierarchical social vision established clear status distinctions, with great planters at the top, small farmers in the middle, and enslaved and indentured workers at the bottom. Their emphasis on honor, hospitality, and leisure as markers of gentility established a distinctive upper-class culture that contrasted sharply with New England's more austere Puritan ethic.

Technological Mediation: Architecture and Performance

While Puritan culture was profoundly shaped by print technology, Cavalier culture engaged different technological mediations—particularly architecture and performance as religious technologies. The parish church building, not the printed sermon, stood as the central religious technology of Anglican Virginia.

This technological mediation helped shape distinctive Tidewater religious patterns:

• Architecture expressing social hierarchy and divine order

• Liturgical performance reinforcing social distinctions

• Religious governance through the vestry system

• Formation of religious identity through ritual performance

We cannot understand Virginia Anglicanism's distinctive development apart from its relationship with architectural and performance technologies, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation divergent from New England's print-dominated religious culture.

Evolution Toward Dominative Elements

These Anglican patterns would eventually contribute certain elements we now recognize in Dominative Christianism. However, this was not a simple linear development but a complex mutation.

Key evolutionary developments include:

• Transformation of Social Hierarchy: The Anglican emphasis on hierarchical church structure evolved toward the defense of "natural" social order

• Honor Culture Metamorphosis: Cavalier emphasis on personal honor transformed into particular forms of religious authority

• Institutional Deference: Respect for established religious authority evolved into specific forms of charismatic leadership

• Moral Rectitude: Anglican moral frameworks became more individualized while maintaining social control functions

This evolution was accelerated by technological changes, particularly the emergence of radio and television in the 20th century. These provided new platforms for religious performance that resonated with and transformed the performative elements of the Anglican tradition.

The Tidewater tradition's evolution shows how Authoritarian Spirituality mutated from episcopal governance to charismatic leadership and how Disordered Nationalism transformed from an established church to a nationalistic, religious identity. These mutations maintained structural similarities to their spiritual origins while adopting new content and institutional forms.

The Quaker Migration: North Midlands to Delaware Valley

Radical Reformation Pneumatology

The "Quaker migration" that established Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley brought approximately 23,000 settlers between 1675 and 1725, primarily from England's North Midlands and North Wales. Unlike either Calvinist Puritans or Latitudinarian Anglicans, these migrants brought a distinctly Radical Reformation religious tradition with distinctive pneumatology (doctrine of the Holy Spirit).

Key Quaker theological distinctions included:

• Divine Inner Light accessible to all persons

• Spirit-led interpretation unconstrained by clerical authority

• Radical equality of persons before God

• Rejection of hierarchy and outward sacraments

• Emphasis on direct spiritual experience

These Quaker settlers brought distinctive cultural patterns that would profoundly shape Mid-Atlantic regional culture. Their emphasis on religious equality—including women's spiritual authority, plain speech that eliminated status-marking honorifics, and opposition to hierarchical church structures—established social patterns markedly different from those of Puritan New England and Cavalier Virginia.

Technological Mediation: Meeting and Testimony

The Quaker tradition engaged its distinctive technological mediations, particularly the meeting structure and testimony, as religious technologies. With their intentional lack of hierarchy, the meetinghouse design and the practice of communal discernment represented technological innovations that facilitated distinctive religious imagination.

This technological mediation helped shape distinctive Delaware Valley religious patterns:

• Architecture expressing equality and communal discernment

• Silence as spiritual technology

• Formation of religious identity through testimony

• Religious governance through consensus

We cannot understand Pennsylvania Quakerism's distinctive development apart from its relationship with these meeting and testimony technologies, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation divergent from New England's print-dominated and Virginia's architectural-hierarchical religious cultures.

Complex Mutations and Modern Influences

The Quaker tradition has contributed in complex ways to elements of both contemporary Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism, demonstrating the complex mutations religious traditions undergo.

Key evolutionary developments include:

• Individual Conscience: The Quaker emphasis on personal spiritual guidance evolved in divergent directions—toward both individualistic religious expression and progressive moral witness

• Egalitarian Practice: Quaker equality practices influenced both democratic religious forms and identity-based equality frameworks

• Consensus Practices: Meeting consensus methods evolved toward both communal discernment and particular forms of ideological conformity

• Plain Speech: Testimony of plain speech transformed in multiple directions, including both authentic expression and performative language policing

These evolutions accelerated with changing communicative technologies, particularly social media platforms, which have transformed testimony and consensus-building practices in new directions.

The Mid-Atlantic tradition's evolution shows particularly how Primitive Biblicism can mutate from spirit-led interpretation to both individual interpretive authority and experience-based hermeneutics. It also demonstrates how Tribal Epistemology can evolve from Quaker meeting discernment to both identity-based and community-based knowledge claims.

The Borderlands Migration: Northern Britain to Backcountry

Federal Calvinism and Clan Structures

The "Borderlands migration" that settled the American backcountry brought approximately 250,000 settlers between 1717 and 1775, primarily from the border regions of northern Britain—northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Scottish lowlands. These migrants brought a distinctly Federal Calvinist tradition significantly different from New England Puritanism.

Key Borderlands theological distinctions included:

• Federal (covenant) theology structured around familial relationships

• Strong emphasis on divine sovereignty and predestination

• Resistance to centralized ecclesiastical authority

• Clan relationships deeply interweave religious identity

• Skepticism toward institutional hierarchy

These Borderlands settlers—often called Scots-Irish though including multiple ethnic groups from Britain's northern borders—brought distinctive cultural patterns that would profoundly shape Appalachian and backcountry regional culture. Their emphasis on clan loyalty, physical courage, and vigilant self-protection reflected centuries of borderland experience where central authority provided little security against raiding and violence.

Technological Mediation: Oral Tradition and Ritual

The Borderlands tradition engaged distinctive technological mediations—particularly oral tradition and ritual practice as religious technologies. Unlike the print-dominated culture of New England, religious identity was transmitted primarily through spoken word, story, and ritual practice.

This technological mediation helped shape distinctive backcountry religious patterns:

• Oral transmission of religious knowledge

• Communal ritual reinforcing clan identity

• Religious leadership through charismatic authority

• Formation of religious identity through family lineage

We cannot understand the distinctive development of backcountry Presbyterianism apart from its relationship with these oral and ritual technologies, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation divergent from the print, architectural, and meeting-based religious cultures of other regions.

Evolution Toward Dominative Elements

The Borderlands tradition has contributed significant elements to what we now recognize in Dominative Christianism, though again through complex mutation rather than simple linear development.

Key evolutionary developments include:

• Transformation of Clan Loyalty: The Borderland's emphasis on familial loyalty evolved toward particular forms of religious tribalism

• Warrior Culture Metamorphosis: The martial tradition transformed into specific forms of spiritual warfare metaphors

• Resistance to Central Authority: Skepticism toward distant governance evolved into particular forms of anti-institutional religiosity

• Moral Boundary Maintenance: Clan honor frameworks became moral boundary enforcement

Technological changes accelerated these evolutions, particularly the revival circuit, radio evangelism, and later televangelism and digital media, which provided new platforms for charismatic authority and boundary enforcement.

The evolution of the Backcountry tradition shows how Binary Apocalypticism mutated from a theological framework to a cultural warfare framework and how Tribal Epistemology transformed from clan knowledge to particular forms of religious information ecosystems. These mutations maintained structural similarities to their religious origins while adopting new content and institutional forms.

Taylor's Nova Effect: Multiple Trajectories from Common Sources

Charles Taylor's concept of the Nova Effect helps us understand how these distinct theological traditions exploded into multiple mutations over time. Rather than a simple story of secularization, we see a complex pattern of transformation where religious impulses persist while adopting new forms.

Key historical inflection points accelerated these mutations:

• First Great Awakening (1730s-1740s): Religious revival that reconfigured authority structures

• American Revolution (1770s-1780s): Transformation of religious language into political frameworks

• Second Great Awakening (1790s-1840s): Democratization of religious authority

• Civil War (1860s): Fracturing of religious institutional structures

• Rise of Research Universities (1870s-1890s): Introduction of new knowledge technologies

• Electronic Media Revolution (1920s-1950s): New platforms for religious performance

• Digital Revolution (1990s-Present): Transformation of religious community formation

These technological and cultural shifts provided new frameworks for religious imagination, causing the original traditions to mutate in multiple directions. What's particularly important is that these mutations didn't simply erase religious elements but transformed them—maintaining structural patterns while changing content.

Contemporary Mutations: Structural Similarities Beyond Apparent Opposition

Understanding America's multiple theological roots illuminates a critical insight: today's opposed religious and political movements share more profound structural similarities despite their apparent opposition. In contemporary debates between Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism, we witness not a battle between wholly alien traditions but mutations of distinct theological traditions that have evolved in divergent directions.

Let's examine how the seven theological mutations manifest in both movements:

1. Primitive Biblicism

• Dominative Christianism: Claims direct, unmediated access to biblical meaning, often through literal interpretation detached from interpretive tradition.

• Providential Identitarianism: Claims direct, unmediated access to moral truth through an identity-based standpoint, often bypassing traditional interpretive communities.

Both manifest the same structural pattern—claiming unmediated access to truth—while differing in content (biblical text versus experiential standpoint).

2. Practical Atheism

• Dominative Christianism: Functionally replaces Christ's example with pragmatic political effectiveness and power.

• Providential Identitarianism: Functionally replaces the theological center with identity-based frameworks and activism.

Both maintain a similar structural pattern—replacing theological centers with pragmatic concerns—though they differ in which concerns take precedence.

3. Binary Apocalypticism

• Dominative Christianism: Creates rigid good/evil, friend/enemy distinctions based on moral and theological boundaries.

• Providential Identitarianism: Creates rigid oppressor/oppressed, privileged/marginalized distinctions based on identity categories.

Both create binary frameworks that resist complexity, though categorizing differently.

4. Disordered Nationalism

• Dominative Christianism: Explicitly elevates American national identity in theological frameworks, often through covenant language.

• Providential Identitarianism: Implicitly maintains American exceptionalism while critiquing its manifestations, often through progress narratives.

Both maintain forms of national election narrative, though expressing this differently.

5. Prosperity Materialism

• Dominative Christianism: Equates divine blessing with material prosperity and economic success.

• Providential Identitarianism: Translates blessing into cultural capital, academic credentials, and institutional position.

Both maintain Calvinist-derived external markers of election, though materializing these differently.

6. Authoritarian Spirituality

• Dominative Christianism: Replaces communal discernment with charismatic leadership and hierarchical authority.

• Providential Identitarianism: Replaces communal discernment with expert knowledge and credential-based authority.

Both establish hierarchies of spiritual/moral authority, though legitimizing these differently.

7. Tribal Epistemology

• Dominative Christianism: Creates closed information ecosystems based on religious identity and ideological alignment.

• Providential Identitarianism: Creates privileged knowledge claims based on identity categories and experiential standpoints.

Both establish identity-based knowledge structures, though grounding these in different identity formations.

These structural similarities exist despite the apparent opposition of content, revealing deeper patterns of transformation rather than complete divergence.

Technological Acceleration: Digital Transformation of Religious Imagination

The digital revolution has dramatically accelerated religious mutations through new technological mediations:

• Algorithmic Curation: Digital platforms create increasingly tailored information ecosystems that reinforce Tribal Epistemology

• Performative Identity: Social media platforms transform religious expression into performance, accelerating both individualistic interpretation and identity-based authority

• Community Fragmentation: Digital technologies simultaneously connect and isolate, creating new forms of religious community and boundary maintenance

• Accelerated Mutation: The speed of digital communication accelerates religious transformation, creating mutation cycles that would previously have taken generations

These technological developments don't simply secularize religious traditions but transform them in complex ways—often intensifying rather than diminishing religious impulses while changing their expression.

Personal Reflection: Louisiana's Cultural Complexity

Growing up in Louisiana placed me at the intersection of multiple cultural migrations—French Acadian, Spanish colonial, Upland South (primarily borderland), and coastal plantation (primarily Cavalier) influences all shaped regional culture in ways that defied simple categorization as "Southern" or "American." This cultural complexity made visible the limitations of origin stories centered exclusively on English settlement, as my home region's development involved multiple European traditions interacting with African and indigenous influences.

My family background reflected this complexity, with ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Germany arriving through different migration patterns and settling in other American regions before eventually converging in Louisiana. This mixed heritage challenged any simple understanding of religious influence, as my ancestors brought not a singular tradition but multiple, distinct religious frameworks.

What became increasingly evident through personal experience and historical study was that even supposedly unitary traditions represented multiple, distinct cultural systems often in tension with each other. The political and cultural differences between New England, the Tidewater South, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Upland South reflected not just regional adaptation but transplantation of distinct religious cultures from different parts of Britain—which then mutated in multiple directions as they encountered new technological and cultural frameworks.

Implications for Contemporary Debates

Beyond Progressive/Conservative Binaries

Understanding America's multiple theological roots and their complex mutations challenges simplistic progressive/conservative binaries. What appear to be opposed ideological positions often reveal deeper structural similarities, maintaining the same patterns while changing content.

As Stanley Hauerwas observes in his critique of Reinhold Niebuhr, American liberal Christianity didn't reject its religious heritage but translated it—maintaining providential structures while replacing explicit theological content with pragmatic political frameworks. Similarly, contemporary Dominative Christianism maintains religious language while often replacing theological substance with political identity.

Recognizing these deeper patterns allows us to move beyond surface-level political debates toward understanding the theological structures that continue to shape American political imagination across the ideological spectrum.

Multiple Traditions, Multiple Possibilities

This historical perspective also reveals that America has never been characterized by a single religious tradition but by multiple, diverse traditions in constant interaction and mutation. This diversity offers resources for moving beyond current polarizations by recovering alternative theological patterns.

The Quaker emphasis on communal discernment offers resources beyond charismatic leadership and expert authority models. The Puritan commitment to communal covenant provides frameworks beyond individualistic salvation and identity-based fragmentation. The Anglican liturgical tradition offers resources beyond emotional revivalism and rationalistic reductionism.

These diverse theological resources are not simply historical artifacts but living traditions that can be recovered and redeployed to address contemporary challenges—not by returning to some imagined past but by creative reappropriation that addresses present needs.

Conclusion: Understanding Our Common Soil

Jesus's parable of the sower reminds us that the same seed produces different results in different soils. Yet our exploration reveals something more complex—not just different soils but different seeds, which cross-pollinate and mutate over time in response to changing environments.

The simplistic story of America as the product of a single Anglo-American tradition gives way to recognition of multiple, diverse theological traditions that shaped different regions and then mutated in multiple directions. These mutations created the complex religious and political landscape we inhabit today, where apparent oppositions often mask deeper structural similarities.

Recognizing this shared heritage doesn't eliminate our differences but might foster greater understanding across divides. Our current cultural conflicts represent not merely policy disagreements but divergent evolutions of distinct theological traditions that continue to shape American imagination in ways we often fail to recognize. This perspective offers hope that beneath our heated disagreements lies the possibility for more fruitful conversation—not by pretending differences don't exist, but by understanding their origins and purposes more clearly.

Key Terms

Providential Identitarianism: A theological mutation that secularizes reformed protestant frameworks while maintaining their structural logic through identity-based categories.

Social Imaginary: Charles Taylor's concept describing the shared implicit understanding that enables common practices and legitimizes certain arrangements.

Nova Effect: Taylor's term for the explosion of religious and secular options from previously unified traditions, creating multiple mutations rather than simple secularization.

Secularization: Not the elimination of religious impulses but their transformation into new cultural and institutional forms.

Related Content

• Dominative Christianism: The Crisis of Dominative Christianism →

• Providential Identitarianism: Historical Roots →

• Common Life Politics: Country →

• Sermon: Mark 4:1-20 (Parable of the Sower) →

• Lexicon: Nova Effect →

Notes

[1] David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

[2] Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Viking, 2011).

[3] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).

[4] Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001).

[5] Luke Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019).

[6] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

[7] Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap (New York: Penguin Press, 2023).

Introduction

"Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, 'I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!'"

This cry from Mark 9:24 captures the complex reality of human knowing—simultaneously believing and doubting, knowing and questioning. The father's honesty reveals that knowledge, particularly knowledge of God, isn't merely intellectual assent but a relationship of trust amidst uncertainty.

This honest complexity stands in stark contrast to the epistemological frameworks of both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism. Both mutations, though politically opposed, share a fundamental distortion of knowledge that claims certainty while bypassing the vulnerability of genuine relationship. Both seek knowledge as power rather than participation, possession rather than transformation.

Knowing Through Participation: The Biblical Witness

Knowledge as Relationship in Scripture

The biblical understanding of knowledge differs fundamentally from modern conceptions focused on abstract information. The Hebrew word yada, often translated "know," refers to intimate relationship rather than merely intellectual comprehension. When Genesis says Adam "knew" Eve, it refers to intimate relationship, not information about her.

This relational epistemology appears throughout scripture. God tells Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:5), referring not to information about Jeremiah but relationship with him. Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God and Jesus Christ (John 17:3), indicating that salvation comes through relationship rather than merely correct information about God.

KEY INSIGHT: Modern epistemology assumes an observational model where the knowing subject stands apart from the object known, observing with detached objectivity. The biblical model presents knowledge as participation rather than observation.

Participation vs. Observation: Ways of Knowing

Modern epistemology often assumes an observational model where the knowing subject stands apart from the object known, observing it with detached objectivity. This model, dominant since the Enlightenment, treats knowledge as information gained through careful observation without personal involvement.

The biblical model, by contrast, presents knowledge as participation rather than observation. We know as we participate in what we seek to know, becoming involved rather than remaining detached. Moses knows God not by studying from a distance but by entering the cloud of divine presence. The disciples know Jesus by following him, not merely by hearing his teachings.

This participatory knowing challenges both Dominative Christianism's emphasis on propositional certainty detached from transformative engagement and Providential Identitarianism's emphasis on experiential authenticity detached from theological authority. Both maintain the subject-object divide of observational epistemology rather than embracing the subject-subject encounter of participatory knowing.

Knowledge Through Community: Discerning Together

Biblical knowledge emerges through community rather than isolated individuals. Throughout scripture, understanding comes through the community of faith wrestling together with divine revelation rather than lone geniuses discovering truth apart from community.

The Old Testament presents knowledge emerging through Israel's communal engagement with God's revelation, with prophets, priests, and people discerning together what God is saying. The New Testament continues this pattern with the early church "devoted to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship" (Acts 2:42), learning through communal reflection rather than individual study.

This communal formation challenges both Dominative Christianism's individualistic salvation that treats community as optional addition and Providential Identitarianism's political mobilization that treats community as activist coalition rather than formative context. Both miss the crucial insight that we become virtuous only through participation in communities that embody the virtues they seek to cultivate.

Dominative Christianism's Epistemological Distortions

Foundationalism: The Quest for Certainty

Dominative Christianism typically embraces foundationalist epistemology that seeks indubitable foundations for knowledge—truths so certain they can ground all other knowledge claims. This approach reflects the broader conservative desire for certainty amidst cultural change, seeking unshakable foundations that resist relativism and moral drift.

While appearing to honor divine revelation, this approach often imposes modern rationalistic frameworks on scripture, treating it as a foundation for propositional certainty rather than an invitation to transformative relationship. The Bible becomes a collection of provable facts rather than a living word that forms community.

This foundationalism manifests in apologetic approaches that prioritize proving the Bible's historical and scientific accuracy over its transformative purpose, reducing divine revelation to defensible propositions rather than relationship with the living God. Knowledge becomes possession of correct information rather than participation in divine wisdom.

Primitive Biblicism: Bypassing Interpretive Tradition

Dominative Christianism often claims direct, unmediated access to biblical meaning that bypasses historical interpretive traditions. This Primitive Biblicism assumes modern readers can understand scripture exactly as original audiences did without the mediation of church tradition, historical context, or scholarly insight.

This approach reflects what scholar Nathan Hatch calls "the democratization of American Christianity"—the populist emphasis on individual interpretation that emerged during the Second Great Awakening. While challenging elitist gatekeeping, this approach often leads to interpretive chaos with no communal authority to test private interpretations.

The claim to read scripture "plainly" masks the interpretive frameworks that shape all reading. What appears as direct access to "what the Bible clearly says" actually involves unacknowledged interpretive decisions shaped by cultural context, theological presuppositions, and political commitments that remain unexamined precisely because they claim to bypass interpretation.

Tribal Epistemology: Trust Based on Identity

Dominative Christianism increasingly embraces what journalist David Roberts calls "tribal epistemology"—accepting or rejecting information based not on evidence but on whether the source belongs to one's political tribe. This approach trusts information from ideologically aligned sources while dismissing information from perceived opponents regardless of factual accuracy.

This Tribal Epistemology manifests in separate information ecosystems where conservative and progressive Americans consume entirely different news, entertainment, and even scientific information. What counts as a "reliable source" becomes determined not by journalistic standards but by ideological alignment.

While presenting itself as defense against hostile secular media, this approach fundamentally undermines the Christian commitment to truth regardless of its source. It replaces the traditional Christian understanding that all truth is God's truth, regardless of who speaks it, with a tribal framework that accepts only truth spoken by "our people."

Providential Identitarianism's Parallel Distortions

Standpoint Epistemology: Privileged Access Through Identity

Providential Identitarianism often embraces standpoint epistemology that grants privileged access to truth based on social location, particularly marginalized identity. This approach argues that oppressed groups have epistemic advantage through their experience of structural injustice, allowing them to see realities invisible to those in dominant positions.

While offering valuable insights about how social position shapes perspective, this approach sometimes absolutizes experiential knowledge in ways that limit communal discernment. Claims based on marginalized experience become effectively unquestionable, creating new epistemic hierarchies that replace rather than reform traditional ones.

This standpoint approach manifests in language about "centering" particular voices and experiences that, while addressing real power imbalances, sometimes treats social location as determinative of theological authority rather than one factor among many in communal discernment.

Critical Theory as Theological Framework

Providential Identitarianism often adopts critical theory as its primary analytical framework, examining all theological claims through the lens of power dynamics. This approach focuses on how knowledge claims function to maintain or challenge existing power structures rather than their correspondence to divine revelation.

While offering valuable tools for examining how power shapes theological discourse, this framework sometimes reduces theological claims to their sociopolitical function, treating them primarily as expressions of power rather than potential witnesses to transcendent truth. Divine revelation becomes subordinate to ideological critique rather than the standard by which all ideologies are judged.

Therapeutic Epistemology: Feeling as Knowing

Providential Identitarianism sometimes embraces what sociologist Christian Smith calls "therapeutic moral deism"—an approach that identifies divine guidance primarily through emotional wellness and authentic self-expression. This approach treats positive feelings and personal comfort as indicators of truth, equating what "feels right" with what is true.

While recognizing the legitimate role of emotion in knowledge, this approach sometimes absolutizes subjective experience in ways that resist communal testing. Claims based on personal feelings become effectively unquestionable since only the individual can determine what feels authentic to them.

This therapeutic epistemology manifests in religious language about "my truth" and "speaking my truth" that, while addressing real needs for voice and recognition, sometimes treats personal experience as self-authenticating rather than requiring communal discernment and theological reflection.

Participatory Knowing: A Theological Alternative

Knowledge as Communion: The Patristic Vision

The early church fathers and mothers understood knowledge of God as participation in divine life rather than mastery of information about God. As Augustine wrote, "We know God better by not knowing," indicating that genuine knowledge involves acknowledging the mystery that exceeds our comprehension even as we enter into relationship with it.

This participatory epistemology appears in the Orthodox concept of theosis (deification)—knowledge through becoming like what we seek to know. We know God by participating in divine nature through grace (2 Peter 1:4), becoming by grace what God is by nature. Knowledge comes through transformation rather than observation.

This patristic vision challenges both Dominative Christianism's emphasis on propositional certainty and Providential Identitarianism's emphasis on experiential authenticity. Both maintain modern subject-object dualisms rather than embracing the participatory communion where knower and known indwell one another in love.

Special Equity: Context-Sensitive Application

The Anglican theologian Richard Hooker developed the concept of "special equity"—the recognition that general principles require contextual application that considers particular circumstances. This approach maintains commitment to enduring truth while acknowledging that its application varies across different contexts.

This special equity provides an alternative to both legalistic application of rules without contextual sensitivity and relativistic abandonment of principles in favor of situational ethics. It maintains the tension between universal truth and particular application, principles and context, tradition and adaptation.

This approach challenges both Dominative Christianism's tendency toward abstract application of principles without contextual sensitivity and Providential Identitarianism's tendency toward contextualism without enduring principles. Both fail to maintain the tension between universal and particular that characterizes Christian wisdom.

Analogia Fidei: Testing by the Rule of Faith

Karl Barth recovered the ancient concept of analogia fidei (analogy of faith)—testing interpretations by their correspondence to the core Christian confession centered on Christ. This approach differs from both modern rationalism that tests by correspondence to empirical facts and postmodern relativism that abandons testing altogether.

This confessional approach recognizes that all interpretation occurs within frameworks shaped by prior commitments. Rather than claiming neutral objectivity or embracing relativistic subjectivity, it acknowledges interpretive frameworks while testing them by their coherence with Christ's revelation.

This approach challenges both Dominative Christianism's claim to neutral biblical objectivity and Providential Identitarianism's embrace of perspectivalism without shared standards. Both fail to acknowledge how prior commitments shape interpretation while maintaining standards by which interpretations can be tested communally.

Practical Implications: Recovering Faithful Knowing

Epistemic Humility: Knowing Our Limits

Recovering faithful knowing begins with epistemic humility—acknowledging the limits of human understanding and the provisional nature of our knowledge claims. This humility doesn't abandon the pursuit of truth but pursues it with awareness of our finitude, fallenness, and cultural conditioning.

This humility manifests in language that avoids absolute certainty claims, acknowledges interpretive frameworks rather than claiming neutral objectivity, and remains open to correction through communal discernment and ongoing revelation. It speaks with conviction while maintaining openness to growth.

Communal Discernment: Testing the Spirits

Faithful knowing requires communal testing rather than either individual certainty or isolated experience. The biblical instruction to "test the spirits" (1 John 4:1) indicates that claims to divine revelation require communal examination rather than automatic acceptance based on either traditional authority or personal authenticity.

This communal discernment involves bringing diverse perspectives into conversation within the framework of shared commitment to Christ's lordship. It doesn't mean either majority rule or privileging particular voices based on identity, but patient listening across differences while testing all voices by their coherence with Christ's revelation.

Integrative Knowing: Holding Together Apparent Opposites

Faithful knowing integrates apparent opposites that modernity typically separates—faith and reason, tradition and innovation, objective truth and subjective experience, universal principles and contextual application. This integrative approach maintains creative tension rather than resolving it through either/or thinking.

This integration reflects the incarnational pattern where divine and human, eternal and temporal, universal and particular come together without confusion or separation. Just as Christ unites apparent opposites without dissolving their distinction, Christian epistemology holds together what modernity tears apart.

Conclusion: Truth as Person, Not Proposition

The recovery of Christian epistemology centers on Jesus's claim to be "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6)—truth as person rather than mere proposition. This understanding transforms knowledge from mastery of information to relationship with the living Truth who is simultaneously beyond us and within us.

This personal understanding doesn't abandon propositional truth but grounds it in relationship with the Truth who is personal. Doctrinal formulations remain important not as ends in themselves but as guideposts toward deepening communion with the living God who exceeds all formulations.

The father's cry in Mark 9—"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"—captures this relational knowing that acknowledges both faith and doubt, both knowledge and mystery. It reminds us that genuine knowing involves vulnerability rather than certainty, relationship rather than mastery, and ongoing transformation rather than final arrival.

Key Terms

Primitive Biblicism: Claims direct, unmediated access to biblical meaning while bypassing interpretive traditions.

Tribal Epistemology: Accepting or rejecting information based on whether the source belongs to one's political tribe.

Creative Doubt: Understanding doubt as a necessary element of faith rather than its opposite.

Related Content

• Dominative Christianism: The Formation of Virtue →

• Common Life Politics: Truth →

• Lexicon: Theological Integrity →

• Sermon: Mark 9:14-29 (Faith and Doubt) →

Notes

[1] Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
[2] David Roberts, "America is facing an epistemic crisis," Vox, November 2, 2017.
[3] Augustine, De Ordine II.16.44, trans. Robert P. Russell in Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil (New York: Cosmopolitan Science & Art Service Co., 1942).
[4] Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V, 70.

Introduction: Encounters in "Unclean" Territory

"They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him." - Mark 5:1-2

When Jesus crosses to "the other side" in Mark's Gospel, he enters territory deemed unclean by Jewish religious authorities. The Gerasene region, populated by Gentiles who raised pigs (animals considered unclean under Jewish law), represented foreign territory both geographically and spiritually. Yet Jesus deliberately enters this space, challenging assumptions about clean and unclean, insider and outsider, civilized and uncivilized.

This boundary-crossing pattern—Jesus consistently moving into spaces deemed "other" by religious authorities—embodies the participatory freedom at the heart of true Biblical Citizenship. Rather than maintaining rigid barriers, Christ demonstrates citizenship in God's kingdom through deliberate engagement across constructed boundaries. This example challenges both Dominative Christianism and our sanitized historical narratives.

European colonizers approached indigenous North America with similar conceptual boundaries—viewing native lands as "wilderness" despite their sophisticated civilizations, indigenous spirituality as "pagan" despite its deep wisdom, and native governance as "primitive" despite its complex social organization. Like the religious authorities of Jesus's day, European settlers often maintained rigid boundaries between "civilized" European society and "savage" indigenous cultures.

This chapter crosses these conceptual boundaries, examining the sophisticated indigenous civilizations that existed in North America long before European arrival. These weren't primitive societies awaiting European "civilization" but complex cultures with advanced agricultural systems, extensive trade networks, sophisticated governance structures, and rich spiritual traditions. By crossing these boundaries in our historical understanding, we develop more truthful perspective on American origins.

Advanced Civilizations Before Contact

Cahokia: America's First City

When my father was growing up just outside St. Louis in the 1940s and 50s, his teachers barely mentioned that he lived near the ruins of what had once been North America's largest city. Cahokia, which at its peak around 1200 CE housed more residents than London at that time, was dismissed as merely a collection of "Indian mounds" rather than recognized as the sophisticated metropolis archaeological evidence has since revealed.

This pattern of invisibility—grand indigenous achievements rendered unseen while European accomplishments dominate our historical gaze—mirrors the palace-manger contrast in the nativity story. Just as Herod's palace commanded attention while divine presence arrived unnoticed in a feeding trough, so too did European settlements command historical attention while sophisticated indigenous civilizations were overlooked or deliberately erased.

THEOLOGICAL INSIGHT: Just as shepherds—not palace courtiers—received the divine announcement in the nativity story, perhaps the fuller truth of American history is revealed not through imperial monuments but through the marginalized histories European settlers attempted to erase.

This Mississippi civilization constructed massive earthworks requiring sophisticated engineering knowledge and organized labor on unprecedented scale. Monk's Mound, the largest prehistoric earthen structure in the Americas, required an estimated 14 million baskets of soil carefully layered to create stable 100-foot-tall pyramid with multiple terraces and buildings on its summit. This construction demonstrated not only engineering skill but also centralized political authority capable of organizing massive labor projects.

Cahokia featured planned urban layout with central plaza, residential neighborhoods, astronomical observatories, and elaborate burial sites indicating complex social stratification. Archaeological evidence reveals sophisticated craft production, nutritional abundance, and extensive trade networks connecting Cahokia to regions from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. Far from primitive village, Cahokia represented urban civilization comparable to contemporaneous European cities.

Walking the Mounds: My Childhood Connection to Mississippian Civilization

Growing up in Baton Rouge in the 1970s, my brothers and I would regularly trek across what we called "the Indian mounds" on LSU's campus before football games at Tiger Stadium. I had no understanding then that these mounds connected to a sophisticated civilization that once dominated the Mississippi River valley. The casual way we treated these archaeological treasures—running up and down them before games, completely disconnected from their historical significance—reflected the broader cultural erasure of indigenous achievements.

Just thirty miles upriver from my childhood home, at the Poverty Point World Heritage Site, stood another testament to indigenous engineering that predated European arrival by millennia. Yet these achievements remained largely invisible in my education—much like the divine presence in a Bethlehem feeding trough remained invisible to the powerful in Jerusalem's palaces.

HISTORICAL INSIGHT: European settlers consistently misinterpreted North American landscapes as "wilderness" despite their careful management by indigenous peoples over millennia. What appeared to European eyes as untouched nature often represented deliberately cultivated environments—a "feeding trough" that nourished civilizations rendered invisible by imperial narrative.

The Mississippian civilization, centered at Cahokia but extending to my childhood hometown, featured sophisticated agricultural practices, elaborate ceremonial traditions, and extensive trade networks. Though less "visibly imperial" than European cities with their stone cathedrals and castles, these societies achieved comparable population densities, cultural sophistication, and technological innovations adapted to their environmental contexts.

Haudenosaunee: Democratic Confederation in My Finger Lakes Home

The Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy—whose names grace the beautiful lakes of my current home in upstate New York—established sophisticated democratic governance system centuries before the formation of the United States. This confederation united the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later Tuscarora nations into political alliance with representative governance, separation of powers, and balanced authority between centralized and local decision-making.

Living among these lakes named for the Haudenosaunee nations has reinforced for me how indigenous presence becomes simultaneously acknowledged and erased—the names remain while the full acknowledgment of these nations' political sophistication often vanishes. The Cayuga Lake outside my window carries indigenous naming while the Cayuga people themselves were largely driven out—cultural appropriation at geographic scale.

HISTORICAL INSIGHT: The democratic principles we celebrate as uniquely "American" innovations were practiced centuries earlier by the Haudenosaunee, whose political sophistication remains largely unacknowledged in mainstream historical narratives. This invisibility serves the imperial narrative that civilization arrived with European settlement rather than already flourishing here.

The Great Law of Peace (Gayanashagowa) that structured this confederation specified detailed governance procedures including representative councils, mechanisms for removing leaders who violated public trust, and formalized processes for deliberative decision-making. Women held significant political power, with clan mothers selecting male representatives and maintaining authority to remove leaders who failed their duties.

This democratic confederation influenced American constitutional thinking through figures like Benjamin Franklin, who explicitly referenced the Haudenosaunee model during constitutional deliberations. The confederacy's balanced distribution of authority between central government and constituent nations prefigured American federalism, while its deliberative decision-making processes established democratic principles predating European Enlightenment thought.

Hohokam: Hydraulic Engineering

The Hohokam civilization of the American Southwest developed sophisticated irrigation systems that transformed desert environments into productive agricultural landscapes. Between approximately 300 BCE and 1450 CE, they constructed hundreds of miles of precisely engineered canals that distributed water from the Salt and Gila rivers across the arid Phoenix basin.

These canals, up to 30 feet wide and 10 feet deep, required precise mathematical calculation to maintain gentle, consistent gradient that moved water efficiently across flat desert landscape. The irrigation system included headgates to control water flow, distribution canals to deliver water to field systems, and drainage systems to manage excess water—all constructed using stone tools rather than metal implements.

This hydraulic engineering transformed the Sonoran Desert into one of North America's most productive agricultural regions, supporting dense population with minimal environmental degradation. The sustainable water management practices developed by the Hohokam continue to influence southwestern water governance, with modern Phoenix canal systems often following pathways established by these indigenous engineers over a millennium ago.

Three Sisters Agriculture: Sustainable Innovation

Indigenous agricultural innovation created some of world history's most sustainable and productive farming systems. The "Three Sisters" method—planting corn, beans, and squash together in complementary arrangement—represented sophisticated agricultural science that maximized productivity while maintaining soil health.

This polyculture system created symbiotic plant relationships that enhanced overall productivity: corn provided structure for beans to climb, beans fixed nitrogen in soil that nourished corn, and squash's broad leaves suppressed weeds while minimizing water evaporation. This companion planting maintained soil fertility without artificial fertilizers, controlled pests without chemical pesticides, and preserved water resources without mechanical irrigation.

This agricultural system produced complete protein diet with complementary amino acids while requiring less labor and fewer resources than European monoculture farming. The resulting agricultural abundance supported dense, settled populations throughout eastern North America, creating landscape that European settlers often mistook for "wilderness" despite its careful cultivation by indigenous farmers.

Governance and Diplomacy

Complex Political Systems

Indigenous North America featured diverse political systems ranging from relatively egalitarian band societies to hierarchical chiefdoms to complex confederacies with sophisticated governance structures. These political systems developed in response to specific environmental contexts, population densities, and historical circumstances rather than representing uniform "primitive" condition.

Like the imperial palace versus the Bethlehem feeding trough, European governance systems prioritized architectural visibility and centralized power, while indigenous systems often emphasized relationship networks and dispersed authority—differences that European observers consistently misinterpreted as signs of indigenous inferiority rather than alternative governance approaches.

The Southeast featured hierarchical chiefdoms with clear social stratification, monumental architecture, and centralized authority over multiple communities. The Pacific Northwest developed distinctive political systems based on complex gift-giving ceremonies (potlatch) that redistributed wealth while confirming social status. The Great Plains established military societies and inter-tribal councils that managed resources and adjudicated conflicts across vast territories.

These diverse governance systems demonstrated sophisticated political thought responding to specific challenges and opportunities rather than uniform "tribal" organization. Anthropological and archaeological evidence reveals political systems adapting to changing circumstances through constitutional innovation, inter-group diplomacy, and governance experimentation—processes parallel to those occurring in contemporaneous European societies.

Treaty Diplomacy and International Relations

Indigenous nations developed sophisticated diplomatic practices for managing relationships between distinct political communities. These diplomatic traditions included formal protocols for establishing peace, mediating conflicts, regulating trade, and forming alliances that constituted genuine international relations system rather than primitive inter-tribal connections.

Wampum belts served as diplomatic records, with intricate bead patterns recording treaty provisions and alliance terms—functioning similarly to written treaties in European diplomatic tradition. Council meetings followed elaborate protocols ensuring fair representation, thorough deliberation, and mutually beneficial outcomes. Gift exchanges symbolized reciprocal obligations rather than mere present-giving, establishing binding commitments between sovereign entities.

European colonizers initially engaged with this indigenous diplomatic system, recognizing native political communities as sovereign entities through formal treaty-making. The Two Row Wampum treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch settlers symbolized this relationship, with parallel purple lines representing two vessels traveling the same river without interfering with each other—a sophisticated diplomatic concept of mutual recognition between distinct sovereign entities.

Women's Political Power

Many indigenous nations accorded women significant political authority and influence, establishing gender relations that differed markedly from contemporaneous European societies. While specific arrangements varied widely across different indigenous cultures, many featured greater female political participation than found in European governance systems of the same period.

Among the Haudenosaunee, clan mothers selected male representatives to the confederacy council and maintained authority to remove leaders who violated public trust—creating check on male authority absent from European governance. Among many Algonquian peoples, women controlled agricultural production and distribution, giving them significant economic authority that translated into political influence.

These indigenous gender arrangements often shocked European observers accustomed to more patriarchal social structures. European colonial records frequently note with disapproval the "excessive" freedom and authority of indigenous women, revealing how indigenous gender relations challenged European assumptions about "natural" gender hierarchy.

Timeline: Invisible America

Cultural and Intellectual Achievements

Mathematical and Astronomical Knowledge

Indigenous cultures developed sophisticated mathematical and astronomical knowledge systems that enabled everything from architectural precision to agricultural planning to celestial navigation. These knowledge systems, while using different methodologies than European mathematics, demonstrated comparable intellectual sophistication and practical application.

Maya mathematical system (which influenced nations throughout North America through trade networks) included concept of zero centuries before its introduction to Europe, along with place-value notation that enabled complex calculations. Indigenous astronomers throughout North America tracked celestial movements with remarkable precision, creating calendars that coordinated agricultural, ceremonial, and social activities with astronomical cycles.

Physical structures throughout North America incorporated this astronomical knowledge, with buildings and monuments aligned to track solstices, equinoxes, and other celestial events. The Ancestral Puebloan complex at Chaco Canyon functioned partly as astronomical observatory, with structures precisely aligned to mark significant celestial events—demonstrating both mathematical precision and long-term astronomical observation.

Sophisticated Material Technologies

Indigenous cultures developed sophisticated technologies adapted to specific environmental contexts and cultural needs. These technologies represented not primitive approximations of European technologies but distinct innovations optimized for particular contexts—often achieving greater efficiency and sustainability than European alternatives.

Metallurgical traditions in the Great Lakes region created complex copper artifacts without smelting, using sophisticated cold-hammering techniques to create tools, jewelry, and ceremonial objects. Arctic peoples developed insulated housing and sophisticated layered clothing that outperformed European equivalents in extreme conditions—technologies so effective that modern Arctic equipment still incorporates their principles.

Agricultural technologies demonstrated particular sophistication, with tools and techniques carefully adapted to specific crops and environmental conditions. The integrated "Three Sisters" cultivation method represented agricultural science that maintained soil fertility while maximizing nutritional yield—a sustainable system that outperformed European monoculture in both environmental impact and nutritional efficiency.

Literary and Oral Traditions

Indigenous cultures maintained sophisticated literary traditions transmitted through oral rather than written means. These traditions preserved historical knowledge, cultural wisdom, and spiritual insight through carefully structured narrative forms maintained with remarkable fidelity across generations.

Contrary to European assumptions about the unreliability of oral transmission, indigenous cultures developed mnemonic techniques and institutional structures that ensured accurate preservation of knowledge. Specialized knowledge-keepers underwent rigorous training in memorization techniques, with community verification processes providing quality control similar to peer review in written traditions.

These oral traditions preserved not just stories but complex knowledge systems—medicinal properties of hundreds of plants, astronomical observations covering centuries, geographical knowledge spanning vast territories, and historical records of events centuries past. The intellectual sophistication of these traditions rivaled contemporaneous written traditions while maintaining distinctive epistemological approaches centered on relationship rather than abstraction.

Environmental Management and Ecological Knowledge

Managed Landscapes vs. "Wilderness"

European settlers consistently misinterpreted North American landscapes as "wilderness" despite their careful management by indigenous peoples over millennia. What appeared to European eyes as untouched nature often represented deliberately cultivated environments managed through sophisticated ecological knowledge and intentional intervention.

Eastern forests that impressed colonists with their park-like appearance—open understory beneath massive trees—resulted from indigenous burning practices that prevented underbrush accumulation while maintaining mature tree canopy. Prairie ecosystems that supported vast bison herds resulted from deliberate burning regimes that prevented forest encroachment while enhancing grass growth that attracted game animals.

These managed landscapes demonstrated not absence of human influence but different philosophy of environmental relationship—working with natural processes rather than imposing artificial order. Indigenous environmental management created productive landscapes that maintained biodiversity while meeting human needs—achievements that modern ecological restoration often attempts to recreate.

Sustainable Resource Management

Indigenous cultures developed sophisticated resource management systems that maintained environmental health while meeting human needs—achievements particularly relevant as contemporary society confronts environmental degradation resulting from industrial exploitation.

Fishery management systems in the Pacific Northwest maintained salmon abundance through harvest regulations, habitat protection, and ritual practices that embedded ecological knowledge in cultural context. Forest management in eastern North America involved selective harvesting, controlled burning, and cultivation of useful species that enhanced rather than degraded forest ecosystems.

Wildlife management included hunting restrictions that prevented overharvesting, habitat enhancement that supported game populations, and cultural practices that embedded sustainable use within spiritual frameworks emphasizing reciprocal relationship rather than mere extraction. These management systems maintained abundant resources for millennia—until disrupted by European colonization that introduced extractive rather than sustainable resource utilization.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Science

Indigenous environmental knowledge represented not primitive superstition but sophisticated science developed through centuries of careful observation, experimental testing, and practical application. This traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) integrated empirical observation with cultural frameworks that emphasized relationship and reciprocity rather than domination and extraction.

Indigenous botanists identified medicinal properties of thousands of plant species, developing pharmacopoeia that treated everything from pain management to infection control to chronic disease. Indigenous ecologists understood complex relationships between different species, managing ecosystems to enhance beneficial interactions while minimizing harmful ones. Indigenous climatologists tracked weather patterns across decades, developing agricultural calendars adapted to specific regional conditions.

This ecological knowledge continues to inform contemporary environmental science, with indigenous land management practices increasingly recognized as effective conservation strategies and indigenous pharmacological knowledge contributing to modern medicine. The scientific validity of TEK demonstrates the intellectual sophistication of indigenous knowledge systems despite their different methodological approaches than Western science.

Personal Reflection: Imagining the Mississippian Matriarchy

In my late thirties, having left naval service and corporate life, I began research for what became a deeply flawed novel set in Mississippian civilization. This creative effort—my attempt to imagine the matriarchal society that archaeological evidence suggested once flourished along the river valleys of my childhood—led me to visit with members of the United Houma Nation in southern Louisiana.

What began as research became a profound boundary-crossing experience, as I encountered not historical artifacts but living communities with continuing traditions and contemporary challenges. The Houma elders I met spoke not about vanished ancestors but about ongoing struggles for federal recognition, land rights threatened by coastal erosion, and cultural traditions maintained despite centuries of marginalization.

A PERSONAL NOTE: "My encounters with the Houma Nation revealed my own spiritual blindness—like the religious authorities who couldn't see God in their midst, I had learned to overlook indigenous presence and contributions despite growing up on land shaped by their civilization. This recognition requires not just historical correction but spiritual transformation.”

My embarrassingly bad novel attempt (thankfully never published) revealed my own ignorance and presumptions—an outsider imagining a culture from archaeological fragments rather than engaging with its living descendants. Yet this boundary-crossing effort, however flawed, began a process of recognizing indigenous communities not as historical curiosities but as continuing peoples with legitimate claims to both historical acknowledgment and contemporary rights.

The divine revelation came not through my academic research but through relationship with living people—much like Jesus consistently encountered divine truth through marginalized communities rather than religious authorities. This pattern of revelation through the overlooked rather than the powerful stands as theological challenge to how we construct our historical narratives.

Implications for Contemporary Debates

Sovereignty and Self-Determination

Understanding indigenous nations as sophisticated civilizations rather than primitive tribes fundamentally changes the framework for contemporary debates about sovereignty and self-determination. If indigenous peoples represented advanced civilizations with legitimate governance systems, territorial claims, and international relations, then their claims to continuing sovereignty rest not on special pleading but on same foundations as any other nation's sovereignty claims.

This historical understanding challenges frameworks that treat indigenous sovereignty as privilege granted by benevolent government rather than inherent right predating United States formation. The sophisticated governance systems that managed North American territories for millennia before European arrival established legitimate sovereignty claims that colonial displacement did not legitimately extinguish.

This perspective doesn't resolve contemporary debates about specific sovereignty implementation but provides essential historical context. Indigenous claims to self-governance and territorial rights emerge not from special treatment but from same principles of political legitimacy that undergird all governmental authority, including that of the United States itself.

Biblical Citizenship Beyond Imperial Borders

Jesus's consistent boundary-crossing in Mark's Gospel provides theological framework for reimagining American citizenship beyond imperial narratives. If citizenship in God's kingdom requires crossing human-constructed boundaries to recognize shared humanity, then American citizenship similarly requires transcending historical narratives that erase indigenous achievements while celebrating European "civilization."

This Biblical Citizenship demands rejecting both Binary Apocalypticism that divides humanity into civilized/savage categories and Disordered Nationalism that privileges European heritage while marginalizing indigenous contributions. Following Jesus's example means recognizing American history as encounter between civilizations rather than European cultivation of wilderness.

This reimagined citizenship doesn't diminish European-derived traditions but places them alongside indigenous contributions within fuller understanding of American origins. A citizenship grounded in participatory freedom acknowledges both indigenous achievements and European contributions while refusing narratives that justify domination of one by the other.

Conclusion: Reclaiming American Origins

Recognizing that America was "already here" before European arrival fundamentally transforms our understanding of American origins. Rather than beginning with European settlement of empty wilderness, American history emerges as story of encounter between sophisticated civilizations with distinctive technologies, governance systems, and cultural traditions.

This recognition doesn't require either demonizing European settlers or idealizing indigenous societies, but rather truthful acknowledgment that North America hosted complex civilizations long before becoming "America." This truthful remembering acknowledges both the genuine achievements of indigenous civilizations and the real disruptions caused by European colonization without reducing either to simplistic narrative.

Jesus's encounter with the Gerasene demoniac in "unclean" territory reminds us that crossing conceptual boundaries often reveals humanity where we've been taught to see only otherness. Similarly, crossing the boundaries established by traditional American narratives reveals sophisticated civilizations where we've been taught to see only primitive tribes. This boundary-crossing leads toward more truthful understanding not just of America's past but of its continuing identity as multicultural society formed through ongoing encounter rather than simple extension of single cultural tradition.

Key Terms

Boundary-Crossing: The theological practice of deliberately moving across established social, religious, or cultural divisions, following Jesus's example of engaging beyond accepted boundaries.

Binary Apocalypticism: The theological mutation that creates rigid good/evil, us/them distinctions that divide the world into opposing camps.

Tribal Epistemology: Knowledge systems based on group identity rather than shared truth-seeking, creating closed information systems that reject outside evidence.

Disordered Nationalism: Theological mutation that elevates national identity above theological identity, creating idolatrous attachment to national narratives over religious commitments.

Biblical Citizenship: Framework for political engagement grounded in theological commitment rather than national identity, recognizing Christians as "aliens and exiles" whose primary loyalty transcends national boundaries.

Related Content

• Untold America: Beyond the Mayflower →

• Dominative Christianism: Biblical Citizenship →

• Common Life Politics: Country → (Coming Soon)

• Sermon: Mark 5:1-20 (The Gerasene Demoniac) →(Coming Soon)

Notes

[1] Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Knopf, 2005).
[2] Barbara Alice Mann, Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas (New York: Peter Lang, 2000).
[3] M. Kat Anderson, Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
[4] Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 2000).

Chapter 2 of my project on "Overaccepting Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism" explores the Trinitarian foundations of Christian identity in contrast to dominative religious mutations.

Introduction: Divine Identity vs. National Identity

"You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

These words, spoken at Jesus's baptism in Mark 1:11, reveal the Trinitarian nature of divine identity. The Father speaks love to the Son while the Spirit descends like a dove. This moment reveals God not as a solitary power but as relational communion—a community of love without domination.

This Trinitarian revelation stands in stark contrast to the dominant understanding of identity in Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism. Though politically opposed, both mutations share a fundamental distortion of identity that prioritizes national, cultural, or group identity over Christian identity formed through participation in the Trinitarian life of God.

Trinity as Community Without Domination

The doctrine of the Trinity represents Christianity's central claim that God exists eternally as a communion of three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who mutually indwell one another in perfect love without domination. This "perichoresis" understanding presents God not as a solitary power but as a relational communion.

This Trinitarian understanding has profound implications for human identity. If humans are created in the image of this Triune God, then human flourishing likewise comes through communion without domination rather than individual autonomy or tribal belonging. As John Zizioulas writes, "Being is communion"; our existence is relational rather than autonomous.

The biblical foundations of this understanding appear throughout scripture. At Jesus's baptism, the Trinitarian nature of divine identity manifests—the Father speaks blessing, the Son receives identity, and the Spirit mediates this communion. This moment reveals that identity comes through relationships rather than achievement or group membership.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus maintains this relational identity: "The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing" (John 5:19). This mutual indwelling continues in Jesus's promise of the Spirit who will "take from what is mine and make it known to you" (John 16:15). In each case, identity emerges through relationship rather than autonomy.

Dominative Christianism's Distortion of Christian Identity

Nationalist Identity as Primary

Dominative Christianism subordinates Christian identity to nationalist identity, reversing the biblical priority of kingdom citizenship over earthly citizenship. This inversion manifests in subordinating religious symbols to national ones—flags in sanctuaries, patriotic hymns in worship, and nationalistic language in prayers.

This subordination reflects a contractual rather than participatory understanding of our relationship with God. The covenant between God and America becomes primary, with individual salvation understood as participation in this national contract rather than in divine life. Religious adherence becomes a marker of national belonging rather than transformation into Christ's likeness.

When God is understood primarily as a sovereign ruler rather than a communion of love, religious authority naturally mirrors this dominative model.

Contractual Soteriology vs. Participatory Salvation

Dominative Christianism typically embraces a contractual understanding of salvation centered on justification theory. This framework presents salvation as a legal transaction where Christ's death satisfies divine justice, allowing God to forgive while maintaining legal order. While containing biblical elements, this framework often becomes detached from participatory union with Christ.

As Douglas Campbell demonstrates in his analysis of Romans, this contractual understanding represents a misreading of Paul's theology. Paul presents salvation not primarily as legal acquittal but as participation in Christ's death and resurrection—being "in Christ" rather than merely forgiven by Christ. This participation transforms identity from autonomous individual to member of Christ's body.

Functional Unitarianism in Practice

Despite formal Trinitarian orthodoxy, Dominative Christianism often functions as practical unitarianism—focusing exclusively on either Father or Son while minimizing the Spirit's role in communal discernment. This functional unitarianism enables authoritarian leadership models that claim direct divine authority without communal testing.

When God is understood primarily as a sovereign ruler rather than a communion of love, religious authority naturally mirrors this dominative model. Leaders claim to represent divine sovereignty rather than facilitating divine communion, establishing hierarchical structures that reflect imperial rather than Trinitarian models of authority.

Providential Identitarianism's Parallel Distortion

Identity Politics as Theological Framework

Providential Identitarianism similarly subordinates Christian identity to group identity, though focusing on marginalized rather than dominant groups. This inversion manifests in the reinterpretation of theological language through the lens of identity categories—race, gender, sexuality, and social location becoming primary markers of religious authenticity.

Like Dominative Christianism, this approach reflects a contractual rather than participatory understanding of our relationship with God. Salvation becomes a participation in the struggle for the right identity group rather than participation in the divine life. Religious adherence becomes a marker of political commitment rather than transformation into Christ's likeness.

Secularized Trinity as Social Model

Providential Identitarianism often secularizes the Trinity, treating it primarily as a model for social relationships rather than the revelation of God's nature. This approach values Trinitarian language for its political implications while minimizing its theological content, reducing divine communion to a pattern for the human community.

While the Trinity does indeed provide a model for human community, this secularization divorces the model from its source, treating the Trinity as an abstract principle rather than a living reality in which humans participate. The result is a social trinitarianism without a participatory foundation, a model without transformative power.

Functional Unitarianism in Practice

Despite its critique of traditional hierarchy, Providential Identitarianism often functions as practical unitarianism focused exclusively on the Spirit while minimizing the Father's transcendence and the Son's particularity. This functional unitarianism enables an immanentized spirituality that identifies divine action exclusively with progressive social movements.

When we understand God primarily as immanent Spirit rather than transcendent communion, religious authenticity naturally focuses on internal experience rather than external revelation. Spiritual authority comes through intensely felt experience rather than tested discernment, establishing new hierarchies based on experiential rather than positional authority.

Participatory Freedom: A Trinitarian Alternative

Freedom Through Participation

The Trinitarian understanding offers an alternative framework for Christian identity centered on participation in divine communion. This "participatory freedom" differs fundamentally from both autonomous freedom (valued by Dominative Christianism) and collective freedom (valued by Providential Identitarianism).

Participatory freedom emerges from communion without domination—the freedom exhibited within the Trinity where each divine person fully indwells the others without losing distinction. Human freedom similarly comes through participation in this holy communion, becoming most fully ourselves by participating in something beyond ourselves.

This understanding draws on the biblical witness to the freedom found through union with Christ: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). Here, Paul finds authentic selfhood not through autonomy but through participation in Christ's death and resurrection.

Being With: Incarnational Presence

The incarnation reveals God's way of engaging with humanity—not merely doing things "for" us (benevolent provision) or "to" us (sovereign control) but "being with" us in self-giving presence. As Sam Wells articulates, Jesus demonstrates God's purpose is to be with us, dwelling among us rather than merely helping us from a distance.

This "being with" provides a model for Christian engagement that challenges Dominative Christianism's tendency toward dominative control and Providential Identitarianism's tendency toward distanced advocacy. Both doing "for" and doing "to" maintain distance between helper and helped, while "being with" requires genuine communion across differences.

Communion Without Uniformity

The Trinitarian alternative maintains the biblical tension between unity and diversity, offering communion without uniformity. Just as the Father, Son, and Spirit maintain their distinctiveness within perfect communion, human diversity becomes not an obstacle but a prerequisite to genuine community.

This understanding challenges Dominative Christianism's pressure toward cultural uniformity and Providential Identitarianism's tendency to absolutize difference. The Trinitarian vision offers neither a melting pot nor a salad bowl but a communion where distinct persons mutually indwell one another without losing particularity.

Practical Implications: Recovering Trinitarian Identity

Liturgical Formation Beyond Nationalism

Recovering Trinitarian identity begins with liturgical practices prioritizing participation in divine communion over national or group identity. Worship forms us by what it centers on—the Triune God or alternative loyalties that function as practical idols.

Liturgical renewal involves critically examining how national symbols function in worship, how patriotic elements shape religious imagination, and how cultural assumptions influence theological language. This examination isn't about banishing all cultural elements but ensuring they remain secondary to Trinitarian formation.

Communal Discernment Through the Spirit

Trinitarian identity forms through communal discernment that relies on the Spirit's guidance rather than authoritarian leadership or majority opinion. This discernment involves testing competing claims through scripture, tradition, reason, and experience while prioritizing communal wisdom over individual judgment.

This approach challenges the top-down authority structures common in Dominative Christianism and the experiential authority common in Providential Identitarianism. Both mutations often bypass genuine communal discernment—one through appeal to traditional authority, the other through appeal to marginalized experience.

Boundary-Crossing as Christian Vocation

Trinitarian identity manifests in boundary-crossing practices that reflect God's self-giving love. Since God crossed the ultimate boundary in the incarnation, God calls Christians to cross boundaries that divide humanity into "us" and "them," whether national, cultural, racial, or ideological.

This boundary-crossing challenges Dominative Christianism's tendency to reinforce boundaries between insiders and outsiders and Providential Identitarianism's tendency to reify boundaries between oppressed and oppressors. Both maintain rather than transcend the boundaries that divide humanity.

Conclusion: Identity Through Participation

The recovery of Trinitarian identity offers a path beyond the distortions of both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism. Rather than subordinating Christian identity to national or group identity, the Trinitarian vision offers identity through participation in divine communion—becoming most fully ourselves by participating in the life of the Triune God.

This participation doesn't erase other identities but relativizes them, making them secondary to our primary identity "in Christ." National, cultural, racial, and other identities remain real but no longer ultimate, enriching rather than defining the Christian community.

The words spoken at Jesus's baptism—"You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased"—reveal not only Jesus's identity but our own, as we too are adopted into this relationship of love without domination. Our identity comes not through achievement, cultural belonging, or group membership but through participation in this divine communion—the Trinitarian life that is our true home.

Key Terms

Participatory Freedom: Freedom that emerges from communion with God and others rather than the mere absence of constraint or collective identity.

Being With: Incarnational presence that engages through relationships rather than merely doing things "for" or "to" others.

Binary Apocalypticism: The tendency to divide the world into rigid categories of good and evil, friend and enemy.

Notes

[1] John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985).

[2] Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009).

[3] Samuel Wells, Incarnational Ministry: Being with the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).

"When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea."- Mark 5:21

Introduction: The Journey to the Other Side

Mark's Gospel repeatedly shows Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee between Jewish and Gentile territories. These crossings aren't incidental to his ministry but essential, demonstrating his commitment to breaking boundaries that divided his world. Each crossing represents physical movement and theological boundary-crossing that challenged established divisions between "us" and "them."

American history similarly involves boundary-crossings that challenge established narratives. While textbooks traditionally focus on the journey of the Mayflower and English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, an equally crucial American journey began decades earlier and thousands of miles away—the Spanish exploration and settlement that would shape the American Southwest, Florida, and California long before English influence reached these regions.

This chapter delves into the profound significance of the Spanish colonial experience that predates English settlement. It has shaped distinctive American regions, institutions, and cultural patterns. By exploring this boundary, we gain a more profound historical understanding and a more truthful theological vision of American identity formed through cultural encounters rather than cultural dominance.

This Spanish history directly challenges both theological mutations at the heart of our study. Dominative Christianism's emphasis on an English Protestant founding erases the Spanish Catholic reality that preceded it, constructing a false nativist narrative that defines "true Americans" as Anglo-Protestant. Meanwhile, Providential Identitarianism's progressive exceptionalism constructs a seamless narrative of advancing freedom that ignores how Spanish colonial territories developed different approaches to pluralism, governance, and religious integration than the supposedly more enlightened English colonies. Both mutations require historical amnesia about Spanish America to maintain their theological coherence.

Spanish Beginnings: America's First European Settlements

St. Augustine: America's Oldest Continuous European Settlement

The traditional American origin story typically begins in 1620 with the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. Yet nearly six decades earlier, in 1565, the Spanish established St. Augustine in Florida—now the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine as a military outpost and a permanent community with religious, educational, and governance structures. The settlement included the first parish church, the first school, and the first hospital in what would become the United States—all established decades before similar institutions appeared in English colonies.

This historical priority challenges the timeline of American development and its geographical orientation. Rather than beginning on the northeastern seaboard and moving westward, this alternative narrative starts in the southeast and southwest, spreading northward and eastward. This reorientation shifts the center of American identity from New England to a more complex, multicultural South and Southwest.

Walking through St. Augustine today is to enter an American landscape strikingly different from New England villages or Virginian plantation country. The narrow streets and compact central plaza, reflecting Mediterranean urban design, stand in stark contrast to the spacious layouts of English towns. The coquina stone buildings, with their distinctive arches and balconies, create a visual rhythm unlike English colonies' wooden structures. Even the quality of light seems different—overhanging balconies and shaded arcades soften the harsh subtropical brightness and acknowledge the southern climate in ways English architecture rarely attempts.

The Northern Frontier: Spanish New Mexico

While Jamestown settlers were still struggling for survival in Virginia, Spanish explorers and settlers were already establishing permanent communities throughout the American Southwest. In 1598, Juan de Oñate established the first Spanish settlement in New Mexico, decades before the Mayflower landing. This early establishment challenges the timeline of American development and its geographical orientation, offering a more comprehensive view of the country's history.

Santa Fe, founded in 1607 (the same year as Jamestown), became a vibrant administrative and cultural center that would shape southwestern development for centuries. Its distinctive architecture, urban design, and governance structures created patterns that remain visible in southwestern cities today—the central plaza, adobe construction, and integration of indigenous building techniques with European design principles.

This northern frontier of New Spain developed unique and fascinating cultural patterns that differed from Spanish centers in Mexico and English colonies along the Atlantic. Spanish settlers, Franciscan missionaries, and indigenous peoples created distinctive cultural exchange, hybridization, and conflict patterns that would shape American development long before English influence reached these regions.

California Missions: Alternative Colonial Pattern

The Spanish settlement of California, beginning with the establishment of Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1769, created another distinctive pattern of American development that differed significantly from the English colonial model. The mission system—a network of religious communities that combined spiritual, economic, and political functions—established a settlement pattern dissimilar to the town-centered development of New England. This unique system, with its focus on religious, financial, and political functions, starkly contrasts New England's town-centered development, enriching our understanding of the diverse patterns of American growth.

Father Junípero Serra's mission system created a chain of 21 communities from San Diego to Sonoma that established a Spanish presence along the California coast. These missions introduced European agriculture, architecture, governance, and religion while creating new cultural forms through interaction with indigenous peoples.

While deeply problematic in their treatment of indigenous peoples, these missions established patterns of development that would shape California's distinctive cultural landscape long before American annexation in 1848. The Spanish legacy remains visible in California's architecture, place names, agricultural practices, and cultural traditions.

Catholic America: Religious Alternatives

Distinctive Religious Patterns

Spanish America established Catholic rather than Protestant religious patterns, creating a distinctive spiritual landscape that differed from the predominantly Protestant development of English colonies. This Catholic foundation introduced different understandings of church-state relationships, religious authority, and spiritual practice than those from English Protestant colonies.

Spanish Catholicism established a religious landscape with distinctive characteristics: visually rich religious art rather than iconoclastic plainness, sacramental emphasis rather than sermon-centered worship, hierarchical authority structures rather than congregational governance, and integration of indigenous elements rather than rigid boundary maintenance.

These distinctive patterns created an alternative American religious tradition that predated the Puritan emphasis typically centered in American religious history. This Catholic foundation established patterns of religious syncretism, feast day celebrations, saint veneration, and communal rituals that remain vibrant in American southwestern culture.

Franciscan Missionaries and Spiritual Encounter

Franciscan missionaries played a crucial role in Spanish colonial expansion, establishing missions that combined religious conversion with cultural, economic, and political development. Unlike the Puritan emphasis on creating separate communities of visible saints, the Franciscan approach sought to convert and incorporate indigenous peoples into Spanish Catholic society.

This missionary approach, while often coercive and destructive to indigenous cultures, nevertheless created patterns of cultural encounter different from the separation and displacement that characterized much of English colonization. Franciscan missions became sites of cultural hybridization where European and indigenous traditions interacted to create distinctive new religious forms.

The resulting religious landscape featured syncretic practices that incorporated indigenous symbols, rituals, and concepts into a Catholic framework, creating distinctive forms of American Catholicism that differed from both European Catholicism and the Protestantism of English colonies. These syncretic traditions remain visible in southwestern religious art, ritual practices, and sacred celebrations.

Religious Pluralism Before Religious Freedom

Spanish America established religious authority patterns that differed from the state-church model of Anglican England and the congregational model of Puritan New England. The Catholic Church maintained significant independence from civil authority while functioning as an established religion within Spanish territories.

This arrangement created different dynamics around religious dissent than those in English colonies. While Spanish territories generally lacked the religious diversity found in some English colonies, they established different patterns of accommodation and tension between religious and civil authority that would influence later American development.

The Spanish colonial approach to indigenous religions also differed from English patterns. While often suppressive, Spanish practice tended toward incorporating indigenous elements rather than a complete replacement, creating syncretic forms that preserved aspects of indigenous spirituality within Catholic frameworks. This approach contrasted with the more complete separation between European and indigenous religious practices typical in English colonies.

Spanish Colonial vs. English Colonial Governance

Two Models of Authority and Community

Spanish and English colonies developed fundamentally different approaches to governance that reflected their distinct cultural, religious, and institutional foundations. Spanish colonial governance centered on the plaza—the central public space where political, spiritual, and social authority converged. English colonial governance, particularly in New England, centered on the meetinghouse—where religious and civic authority intersected but remained theoretically distinct.

These different architectural centers reflected more profound differences in governance philosophy. Spanish colonial authority derived primarily from royal appointment, with governors exercising direct authority from the crown. English colonial rule, particularly in New England, derived more from community consent (though within strict religious boundaries) through town meetings and elected assemblies.

This distinction created different approaches to community formation—Spanish colonies tended toward centralized authority with a clear hierarchy from appointed officials. In contrast, English colonies (with significant regional variation) developed more localized governance structures emphasizing community participation, albeit often limited to property-owning white men.

Legal Traditions and Institutional Development

The Spanish civil law tradition and English common law tradition established fundamentally different legal frameworks that would shape American development in distinctive ways. Spanish civil law, derived from Roman legal tradition, emphasized codified legal principles applied by trained legal officials. English common law emphasized precedent, jury trials, and judicial interpretation.

These legal differences created ongoing tensions in American development, notably as Anglo-American legal forms expanded into previously Spanish territories. Areas previously under Spanish control maintained distinctive legal concepts around water rights, land grants, and property arrangements that often conflicted with English common law approaches.

Perhaps most significantly, these different legal traditions created different relationships between law and theology—English common law, particularly in Puritan New England, more closely aligned legal codes with Biblical precepts. Spanish civil law maintained a more significant distinction between civil and canonical law while operating within the Catholic framework. These different approaches to the relationship between civil law and religious authority would influence regional approaches to church-state relationships well into American development.

Distinctive Legal and Social Structures

Different Legal Frameworks

Spanish colonization introduced distinctive legal frameworks that differed significantly from English common law. Spanish civil law, derived from Roman legal traditions, established different approaches to property rights, governance structures, and legal procedures than those found in English colonies.

These legal differences impacted American development, particularly in territories that maintained Spanish legal elements after American annexation. Property rights in Spanish territories often derived from community grants rather than individual titles, creating distinctive patterns of land ownership and use that differed from English patterns of personal property.

Water rights provide an obvious example of these differences. Spanish law treated water as a community resource rather than private property, establishing different patterns of water management than those found in English common law. These distinctive legal approaches continue to shape water governance in southwestern states today.

Multiracial Governance Structures

Spanish colonial governance established multiracial structures that, while hierarchical and often oppressive, differed from the starker racial boundaries typical in English colonies. The Spanish colonial concept of caste created a complex racial hierarchy that acknowledged and incorporated mixed ancestry rather than maintaining a rigid black-white binary.

This approach, while still fundamentally racist, created more fluid racial categories and greater legal recognition of mixed ancestry than typically found in English colonies. Individuals of mixed European-indigenous ancestry (mestizos) held recognized legal status. They could achieve positions in colonial governance and society generally unavailable to mixed-race individuals in English colonies.

These governance patterns established different trajectories of race relations that would influence southwestern development even after American annexation. Territories previously under Spanish control maintained distinctive approaches to racial categorization and governance that would create ongoing tensions with Anglo-American approaches after integration into the United States.

Gender Patterns and Women's Legal Status

Spanish colonial law established different legal status patterns for women than English common law. Under Spanish legal tradition, married women maintained greater property rights, including owning property separately from their husbands, engaging in business transactions, and maintaining a legal identity distinct from their husbands.

These differences created distinctive patterns of women's economic and social participation in Spanish territories. Spanish colonial records show women engaging in business ownership, property transactions, and legal proceedings to degrees generally unavailable to women in English colonies operating under common law coverture principles.

These distinctive gender patterns would influence social development in territories previously under Spanish control, creating regional differences in women's status and economic participation that would persist after American annexation. These different legal traditions remain visible in family property patterns in southwestern states today.

Theological Analysis: Spanish Catholicism's Alternatives and Limitations

The Spanish Catholic presence in North America offers a complex theological counterpoint to our identified significant mutations. On the one hand, Spanish Catholicism resisted certain theological distortions that would later characterize Dominative Christianism. Its emphasis on integration rather than separation countered the binary apocalypticism that divides the world into good and evil. Its incorporating indigenous elements resisted the primitive biblicism that claims unmediated access to divine truth without cultural context.

However, Spanish Catholicism also embodied its theological limitations. Its hierarchical authority structures reflected forms of authoritarian spirituality, albeit different from those found in Dominative Christianism. Its missionary approach, while more integrative than English Protestant efforts, still often embodied practical atheism by privileging institutional expansion over Christ-like relationships with indigenous peoples.

What emerges is not a simple contrast between "bad" English Protestantism and "good" Spanish Catholicism but somewhat different theological strengths and weaknesses that shaped distinct regional development. Spanish Catholicism offered alternative approaches to religious pluralism, cultural integration, and social organization that challenged the exclusive focus on the supposedly exceptional English Protestant foundations of American identity.

These theological differences remain visible in the distinctive religious landscapes of regions shaped by Spanish Catholic influence—landscapes characterized by greater integration of sacred imagery into public space, different relationships between religious and civil authority, and more syncretic incorporation of diverse cultural elements into spiritual practice.

Personal Reflection: Crossing Boundaries to San Antonio

Growing up in Louisiana, I inhabited a cultural boundary zone where French, Spanish, and Anglo-American influences created a distinctive regional culture. My first journey to San Antonio, Texas, as a teenager exposed me to an even more dramatic example of this cultural hybridity—a city where Spanish colonial foundations remained visibly present centuries after American annexation. Later trips as an adult deepened that impression.

The Alamo, typically presented in Texas history as a symbol of Anglo-American resistance to Mexican authority, revealed itself as a repurposed Spanish mission—a building constructed by Spanish missionaries and indigenous laborers long before it became a battlefield in the Texas Revolution. This physical structure embodied the historical palimpsest of American development, with each cultural layer built upon rather than erasing what came before.

San Antonio's central plaza, surrounded by Spanish colonial architecture and anchored by San Fernando Cathedral (founded in 1731), presented an urban design fundamentally different from the New England town model featured in my textbooks. This distinctive urban pattern—the plaza rather than the town common—reflected Spanish colonial priorities and cultural assumptions about public space and community organization.

Standing in the cool darkness of San Fernando Cathedral, with its gold leaf retablos and flickering votive candles, I experienced an American sacred space radically distinct from the austere white Protestant churches of my textbooks. The rich sensory experience—the smell of incense, the visual splendor of religious art, the tactile invitation of holy water fonts—presented a form of American religious expression that predated the Puritan meetinghouse by more than a century yet remained marginalized in standard narratives of American religious development.

This journey across cultural boundaries challenged my textbook understanding of American development. It revealed how different European colonial traditions established distinctive patterns that would shape regional cultures long after political control shifted. Despite political changes, the persistence of these cultural patterns demonstrated how American identity formed through cultural encounters and hybridization rather than a simple extension of English colonial patterns.

Implications for Contemporary Debates

Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Beyond Binary Apocalypticism

Contemporary debates about immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border often proceed from historical amnesia about the Spanish origins of American southwestern territories. The narrative that presents Spanish-speaking immigrants as "foreign" to these regions ignores the historical priority of Spanish settlement and the continuing presence of Hispanic communities with centuries-long history in these territories.

This historical perspective directly challenges the binary apocalypticism that characterizes much of the contemporary immigration debate—the rigid division between "American" and "foreign," "us" and "them," "legal" and "illegal." The Spanish colonial roots of the American Southwest reveal how artificial these divisions often are, imposed on regions where cultural continuity across the border preceded the border itself.

Understanding the Spanish colonial foundations of the American Southwest challenges simplistic narratives about immigration and national identity. Rather than representing foreign intrusion, Spanish-speaking immigration often represents a continued cultural connection in regions shaped by Spanish influence long before Anglo-American presence—a connection disrupted by relatively recent political boundaries rather than fundamental cultural differences.

This historical perspective doesn't resolve contemporary policy debates but provides essential context for understanding them. The boundary between the United States and Mexico represents a relatively recent political division of regions previously united by shared Spanish colonial heritage, language, and culture—a complexity often lost in contemporary immigration debates shaped by binary apocalypticism.

Cultural Heritage and American Identity

The Spanish colonial legacy challenges narrow definitions of American cultural heritage based exclusively on English roots. Architectural styles, urban design patterns, agricultural practices, linguistic elements, legal concepts, and religious traditions derived from Spanish colonial heritage represent equally authentic American cultural forms with centuries-long presence in what became the United States.

This broader understanding of American cultural heritage acknowledges multiple European colonial traditions rather than privileging English heritage as exclusively authentic. Spanish architectural elements, agrarian practices, water management approaches, and culinary traditions represent not foreign imports but indigenous American developments with centuries-long history.

This perspective supports neither uncritical celebration of colonial heritage nor wholesale rejection of European influences but rather a more complex understanding of how diverse colonial traditions interacted with indigenous cultures and each other to create distinctive American regional patterns. This complexity challenges both the conservative romanticization of Anglo-American heritage and the progressive dismissal of all colonial influences as equally oppressive.

Religious Pluralism and Public Life

The Spanish colonial legacy provides historical context for understanding America's complex religious landscape beyond the Protestant narrative that often dominates discussions of American religious history. Catholic presence in what became the United States predated Plymouth and Jamestown, establishing alternative patterns of spiritual practice, authority, and church-state relationship.

This historical perspective challenges narratives that present American religious history primarily through a Protestant lens, recognizing Catholic traditions as equally indigenous to American development rather than later immigrant additions. The Spanish missionaries' presence in Florida, the Southwest, and California established Catholic institutions—churches, schools, and hospitals—representing some of the oldest continuous religious institutions in what became the United States.

This broader understanding of American religious heritage supports neither Catholic triumphalism nor Protestant exceptionalism but rather a more complex recognition of religious pluralism embedded in American development from its earliest European settlement. This complexity challenges both conservative narratives of essentially Protestant American identity and progressive secularism that minimizes religion's formative role in American development.

Conclusion: America's Multiple European Roots

Moving beyond the Mayflower requires recognizing America's multiple European roots—not just English but Spanish, French, Dutch, German, and others—that established distinctive colonial patterns leading to regional American cultures rather than unified Anglo-American tradition. This multiplicity challenges the single-origin myth that places English settlement at the center of American identity.

Spanish America is not a peripheral addition to the essentially Anglo-American story but a parallel tradition with equal claim to shaping American development. From St. Augustine to Santa Fe to San Diego, Spanish colonial settlements established urban development patterns, legal frameworks, religious traditions, and cultural practices that would influence American regional cultures regardless of subsequent political control.

Jesus's repeated crossings in Mark's Gospel remind us that boundary-crossing is not peripheral but essential to faithful witness. Similarly, crossing the boundaries established by traditional American narratives is not peripheral but essential to truthful historical understanding. By recognizing the Spanish foundation of significant American regions, we move toward a more truthful remembering that acknowledges the multicultural roots of American identity.

This truthful remembering challenges both major theological mutations we've identified. It undermines Dominative Christianism's nativist narrative by revealing the priority of Spanish Catholic presence in significant American regions. It equally challenges Providential Identitarianism's progressive exceptionalism by revealing how regions shaped by Spanish influence developed different approaches to pluralism, religious integration, and governance than the supposedly more enlightened English colonies.

The theological insight from Jesus's boundary-crossing in Mark's Gospel remains our guiding principle: genuine understanding requires a willingness to cross conceptual boundaries that divide "us" from "them." Only by crossing these boundaries in our historical knowledge can we develop a more truthful vision of American identity formed through cultural encounters and exchange rather than the imposition of a single cultural tradition.

Reflection Questions

1. How has the marginalization of Spanish colonial history in traditional American narratives shaped your understanding of American identity and development?

2. Where do you see evidence of Spanish colonial influence in American architecture, urban design, legal frameworks, or cultural practices today?

3. How might recognizing America's multiple European roots change our approach to contemporary debates about immigration and cultural identity?

4. What cultural boundaries might Jesus compel you to cross in understanding American history and identity?

5. How does the complex religious legacy of Spanish colonization challenge both conservative and progressive narratives about religion's role in American development?

6. What elements of Spanish colonial heritage might contribute to a more inclusive understanding of American identity and development?

7. How might educational institutions better incorporate Spanish colonial history into American historical narratives?

Key Lexicon Terms

Binary Apocalypticism: A theological mutation that divides the world into rigid categories of good and evil, friends and enemies, saved and damned, leaving no room for nuance, reconciliation, or the messy complexity of human experience.

Dominative Christianism: A distortion of Christian faith that privileges cultural power, nationalist identity, and political control over Jesus's example of self-giving love and boundary-crossing ministry. This mutation emphasizes dominance rather than service.

Providential Identitarianism: A theological mutation that constructs a seamless narrative of progressive advancement, claiming divine purpose for specific cultural or political developments while ignoring inconsistencies and injustices that challenge this narrative.

Syncretism: The blending of different religious, cultural, and philosophical traditions into new forms. In Spanish colonial America, this process created distinctive religious expressions that incorporated both European Catholic and indigenous spiritual elements.

In the aftermath of World War II, American Christianity found itself at a crossroads. The triumphant narrative of American exceptionalism, bolstered by victory and emerging global power, created a fertile ground for a new kind of religious-political formation. This was not merely a political alliance, but the beginnings of what would become MAGA Christianism—a theological mutation that would fundamentally reshape how faith intersects with national identity.

A Note on Diversity and Resistance

It is crucial to recognize that MAGA Christianism does not represent the totality of American Christianity. Even as this theological mutation gained power, numerous Christian communities have emerged as vibrant centers of resistance. Black churches, progressive Catholic communities, mainline Protestant denominations, and significant streams within evangelical traditions continue to model alternative forms of Christian witness—communities that reject the fusion of faith with nationalist ideology and instead emphasize love, justice, and genuine discipleship.

The Myth of Christian America

The concept of a "Christian America" is neither new nor monolithic. It represents a complex tapestry of competing narratives about national purpose and divine election. But in the decades following World War II, this mythology took on a particular form that laid the groundwork for our current theological crisis.

The disordered nationalism we've identified as one of the seven theological mutations doesn't emerge from a vacuum. It builds upon decades of civil religious discourse that gradually transformed Christianity from a tradition of prophetic witness to a tool of national self-legitimation.

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has persistently argued that American Christianity repeatedly mistakes national identity for theological identity. This confusion reaches its apex in MAGA Christianism, where national narrative becomes nearly indistinguishable from divine purpose.

Cold War Theological Formations

The Cold War period proved particularly generative for this theological mutation. Anti-communist rhetoric provided a powerful narrative framework that merged religious conviction with national security. Christianity became less about following Christ and more about defending a particular vision of American freedom—a freedom understood primarily as opposition to a perceived enemy.

This period saw the emergence of what sociologist Robert Bellah termed "civil religion"—a quasi-religious national identity that sacralized American political ideals. Churches increasingly became spaces where patriotism was conflated with spiritual devotion. The line between national loyalty and religious commitment grew blurrier with each passing decade.

Economic Transformations and Religious Identity

The economic shifts of the late 20th century played a crucial role in this theological mutation. As traditional economic structures dissolved—particularly in rural and working-class communities—religious identity became a crucial mechanism for maintaining social cohesion and making sense of economic displacement.

The prosperity materialism we've identified as another theological mutation began to take root. Success became not just an economic marker but a spiritual signifier. The "American Dream" was reimagined as a divine promise rather than a social aspiration, creating a theological framework that justified economic inequality as divine selection.

Media and the Formation of Tribal Epistemology

The emergence of partisan media ecosystems in the late 20th and early 21st centuries accelerated these theological mutations. Conservative Christian media created closed information systems that reinforced existing biases, contributing to what we've identified as tribal epistemology.

These media platforms didn't just report news; they constructed entire interpretive frameworks. Biblical passages were increasingly read through the lens of political ideology rather than theological tradition. This primitive biblicism allowed for a hermeneutic that could simultaneously claim biblical authority while fundamentally distorting biblical meaning.

The Practical Atheism of Political Christianity

Perhaps most significantly, this historical context reveals the emergence of what we've termed practical atheism. Despite maintaining Christian language and symbols, the movement increasingly replaced Jesus as a moral exemplar with political effectiveness as the primary value.

The irony is profound: a movement claiming to defend Christian values became increasingly disconnected from the core teachings of Christ. Pragmatic political goals became the primary driver, with theological language serving merely as a legitimizing discourse.

A Crisis of Discipleship

What emerges from this historical analysis is not a simple story of political manipulation, but a deeper theological crisis. MAGA Christianism represents a fundamental transformation in how Christian identity is understood and performed.

The movement doesn't represent a departure from Christianity, but a mutation—a profound reshaping of religious practice that maintains the appearance of continuity while fundamentally altering the substance of faith.

Looking Forward

Understanding this historical context is crucial. It reveals MAGA Christianism not as a sudden aberration, but as the culmination of long-standing tensions within American Christianity. It shows how theological mutations develop slowly, almost imperceptibly, until they fundamentally reshape religious practice.

In next week's installment, we'll dive deeper into how these historical dynamics manifested in specific theological distortions, exploring how biblical interpretation became a tool for political identity formation rather than a pathway to spiritual transformation.

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Next Monday: Theological Distortions and Biblical Interpretation

The Conversation That Changed Everything

"Have you asked Craig if he's racist?"

The question from my wife's older brother Salin hung in the air between them. He was concerned about some of my Facebook posts discussing American history and racism.

When my wife later told me about this conversation, I felt a surge of indignation and outrage that I'm guessing might feel familiar to many of you reading this. How dare he? I thought. I've dedicated my life to bringing people together. I've actively worked against racism. I have close friends from diverse backgrounds. The accusation felt not just wrong but deeply unfair.

This defensive reaction—this immediate sense that I was being unfairly accused—is precisely the same feeling that many white Americans experience when confronted with discussions of systemic racism or our country's racial history. It's a reaction I now understand completely, because I lived it.

What changed for me wasn't being lectured or shamed. What changed was my gradual exposure to historical facts I had never been taught—realities about our shared American story that had been carefully edited out of the textbooks I studied and the historical narratives I'd absorbed.

As I began to discover these hidden chapters of our history, I realized that Salin's question wasn't an attack but an invitation to see beyond the partial history I had inherited. My outrage gave way to curiosity, and eventually, to a more complete understanding of both myself and our nation's past. Like measuring our personal growth or national progress, I had to reconsider what metrics truly matter in understanding our shared story—moving beyond defensive self-perception to embrace a more complete reality.

This series is my attempt to share that journey with you—not to induce guilt or shame, but to offer the same invitation I received: to discover a fuller, more complex, and ultimately more truthful story of America than many of us were taught.

The Myth of a Single Origin

I grew up with what I now recognize as the "single origin myth" of America—the comforting narrative that our nation began with the English Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, expanded through heroic westward settlement, and gradually extended liberty to all.

This story wasn't a complete fabrication. The Mayflower passengers did arrive in 1620. English colonization did form a crucial thread in our national tapestry. But I've come to understand that this narrative functioned like those optical illusions where one picture contains multiple images—once you see the second image, you can never unsee it.

The "single origin" story I was taught didn't merely simplify—it systematically erased entire founding peoples and civilizations from our national consciousness.

The First Discovery: Spanish America

My journey began with Carrie Gibson's book El Norte, which revealed that by the time the Mayflower landed, Spanish America already had established settlements, universities, printing presses, and complex governance systems throughout what is now the American Southwest and Florida.

St. Augustine, Florida—the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the United States—was founded in 1565, more than half a century before Plymouth. Santa Fe, New Mexico followed in 1607, predating both Plymouth and Jamestown.

This wasn't just a matter of "who was first." It represented a fundamentally different understanding of what "America" was and is. Spanish America wasn't a separate history that happened alongside "real American history"—it was American history, just as integral to our national formation as the English colonies.

Why had I never learned this in school? The answer, I discovered, had everything to do with who gets to define what "American" means.

The Americas Before Europeans

The deeper shock came when I began to study indigenous civilizations that existed long before European arrival. These weren't the simplistic caricatures of my childhood education—"primitive" societies that conveniently faded into the background of the European story.

They were sovereign nations with complex systems of governance, extensive trade networks, sophisticated agricultural techniques, and rich cultural traditions. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, with its democratic governance system that influenced our Constitution, had been thriving for centuries before European contact.

In what is now the American Southwest, Pueblo peoples had built multi-story apartment complexes, engineered sophisticated irrigation systems, and established far-reaching trade networks. The Mississippian culture had constructed Cahokia, a city larger than London at the time, with massive earthworks that still stand today.

These weren't peripheral stories to American history—they were foundational chapters that had been deliberately omitted from the narrative I was taught.

Not Just Who, But How Many

Perhaps the most profound shift in my understanding came from learning about population estimates. The textbooks of my youth portrayed a mostly "empty" continent with scattered indigenous inhabitants—a narrative that conveniently justified the idea of manifest destiny.

More recent scholarship suggests that between 50-100 million people lived in the Americas before European contact—with sophisticated civilizations throughout North America. Disease, often moving ahead of actual European settlement, decimated these populations, creating an illusion of emptiness that shaped European perceptions and policies.

This wasn't merely a demographic detail—it fundamentally changed my understanding of what European settlement actually meant. The "wilderness" being "tamed" was often land recently depopulated by pandemic disease, with ecological systems already shaped by thousands of years of human management.

The Disorienting Truth

These discoveries were profoundly disorienting. I felt a sense of betrayal that so much had been hidden from me, anger at the incompleteness of my education, and grief for the rich heritage that had been denied to all Americans through this selective telling.

But I also felt something unexpected: a growing excitement about discovering a more complex, truthful, and ultimately more interesting American story than the one I'd been taught.

This journey hasn't been about rejecting my heritage or embracing some simplistic "anti-American" narrative. Quite the opposite—it's been about claiming a richer, more complete American inheritance that belongs to all of us.

An Invitation, Not an Accusation

So this series is my invitation to you—to join me in discovering this more complete American story. Not as an accusation or an exercise in guilt, but as a journey toward a more honest reckoning with who we are and where we came from.

In the coming weeks, we'll explore:

• The Spanish America that predated Plymouth

• The indigenous nations that shaped our continent

• The distinct regional cultures from Britain that created enduring American divides

• The African civilizations and knowledge systems that built much of our nation

• The Mexican Americans who never crossed a border (the border crossed them)

• The Chinese laborers who connected our continent

• And many more "untold" chapters of our shared heritage

This isn't about replacing one exclusive narrative with another. It's about expanding our understanding to include all the peoples who made America what it is today.

My hope is that like me, you'll find this journey not demoralizing but liberating—an opportunity to embrace a more truthful, more inclusive, and ultimately more hopeful American story than the one many of us were taught.

Next Thursday: "Beyond the Mayflower: The Spanish America That Predated Plymouth"

If you found value in this essay, please consider sharing it with others who might appreciate this journey. Your comments and perspectives are welcome—this is a conversation, not a lecture.

Something profound has happened to American Christianity over the past decade—a transformation so significant that it requires new terminology to describe it. What many observers initially dismissed as a temporary alliance between evangelical Christians and an unlikely political figure has evolved into something far more consequential: a fusion of religious identity and political loyalty that I call "MAGA Christianism."

This phenomenon represents more than a voting bloc or a political strategy. It constitutes a theological mutation—a fundamental reshaping of how faith is understood, practiced, and propagated. These mutations have transformed core Christian concepts like truth, freedom, and love into tools of political identity formation rather than pathways to spiritual transformation.

Beyond the Standard Narratives

The conventional explanations for this phenomenon fall short. Some progressive critics reduce it to simple hypocrisy—religious leaders abandoning moral principles for political power. Conservative defenders, meanwhile, portray it as pragmatic alliance-building to achieve shared goals on issues like abortion or religious liberty.

Both narratives miss what makes MAGA Christianism distinctive: it is neither mere hypocrisy nor mere pragmatism, but a genuine religious innovation that has created a new theological ecosystem with its own internal logic, rituals, and moral framework.

To understand this phenomenon, we need a more nuanced analysis that examines MAGA Christianism as a theological system in its own right—one that has significantly departed from the historic Christian tradition while maintaining its outward forms and language. This analysis must avoid both facile dismissal and uncritical acceptance, instead seeking to understand the internal coherence of MAGA Christianism on its own terms.

A Crisis of Discipleship and Love

At its heart, MAGA Christianism represents a crisis of Christian formation—a profound distortion of love itself. The fundamental question is not why Christians supported a particular political candidate, but how Christian communities that once emphasized character formation, scriptural fidelity, and theological depth could transform so rapidly into vehicles for political mobilization and identity.

This transformation reflects a deeper theological shift in how love is understood. The Christian tradition, at its best, has presented love as interdependent communion—mutual participation in shared life modeled on the Trinity's self-giving relationship. MAGA Christianism, by contrast, transforms love into tribal loyalty—intense affection for those within one's political circle coupled with fear and antagonism toward those outside it.

This transformation didn't happen overnight. It built upon decades of shifting theological emphases, changing church practices, evolving media ecosystems, and economic pressures. What emerged, however, was something qualitatively new: a religio-political identity where partisan allegiance functions as a theological virtue and political opponents are cast not merely as wrong but as existential threats to both faith and nation.

The result is what sociologist Rogers Brubaker might call a "Christianist" identity—one where religious symbols, language, and practices are deployed primarily to mark political boundaries rather than to form disciples in the way of Jesus. This represents a profound shift from Christianity as a formative tradition to Christianism as a political identity marker.

Seven Theological Mutations

Through my research and observation, I've identified seven distinct but interconnected theological mutations that characterize MAGA Christianism. These will be explored in depth throughout this book's twelve chapters, with each chapter addressing aspects of these mutations and their implications for both religious communities and democratic society.

At the core of these mutations is a transformation in how divine love is understood. Rather than the non-dominating, self-giving love revealed in Jesus Christ—a love that creates space for genuine freedom and interdependence—MAGA Christianism emphasizes divine power, sovereignty, and judgment divorced from their roots in divine love. When love is no longer seen as the defining characteristic of God, human communities inevitably reflect this distortion in their political and social arrangements.

These mutations work together to create a self-reinforcing system where religious language, symbols, and practices are repurposed to serve political ends while maintaining the appearance of theological continuity with the Christian tradition.

The Journey Ahead

Over the coming months, I'll be sharing this work in serialized form, exploring MAGA Christianism as a theological phenomenon with profound implications for both religious communities and American democracy. The complete book spans approximately 300 pages and is organized into four major parts:

Part I: Foundations This opening section examines the historical context, theological origins, and media ecosystem that made MAGA Christianism possible. We'll explore how previous religious-political movements laid groundwork for this phenomenon and the specific conditions that enabled its rapid growth.

Part II: Theological Distortions Here we'll analyze several key theological mutations in depth, including how biblical interpretation, Christology, and eschatology have been reshaped to serve political ends rather than spiritual formation. We'll pay particular attention to how interdependent love has been replaced by dominating power as the central theological framework.

Part III: Sociopolitical Manifestations This section explores how these theological mutations manifest in cultural and political life, transforming religious identity, community formation, and approaches to truth and knowledge.

Part IV: Towards Renewal The final section offers constructive alternatives and pathways toward recovery, drawing on deeper streams of the Christian tradition to imagine more faithful forms of public witness. Central to this recovery is the reclamation of love as interdependent communion rather than tribal loyalty.

Each Monday, I'll publish a new installment serializing this work, breaking chapters into manageable sections while maintaining the scholarly depth this topic requires. In next week's post, we'll continue our introduction by examining the historical context and specific religious movements that laid the groundwork for MAGA Christianism's emergence.

The Stakes of Our Moment

Why does this matter beyond the walls of churches or the boundaries of religious communities? Because democratic societies depend on certain civic virtues—truthfulness, empathy, forbearance, and a commitment to the common good that transcends tribal loyalties. When these virtues are undermined in the name of religious commitment, the foundations of democratic life itself are threatened.

Moreover, Christianity has historically provided rich resources for democratic culture through its emphasis on human dignity, its critique of absolute power, and its vision of a common humanity across divisions of race, class, and nationality. When these resources are diminished or distorted, we lose crucial moral language for addressing our most pressing social challenges.

This distortion of love is particularly consequential. When Christian communities no longer model interdependent love—the capacity to flourish together across differences—they cannot contribute to the formation of citizens capable of democratic life. The replacement of mutual care with defensive tribalism erodes both religious integrity and civic possibility.

Perhaps most significantly, MAGA Christianism represents a profound spiritual crisis. By replacing the formative practices of Christian discipleship with the performance of political identity, it offers a diminished vision of human flourishing focused on cultural dominance rather than spiritual transformation.

A Way Forward

This book is not merely a critique but an invitation to recovery and renewal. By understanding the nature of these theological mutations, we can better discern paths toward healing and restoration—not to some imagined golden age, but to a more faithful embodiment of the core insights of the Christian tradition in our particular time and place.

That restoration begins with clarity about what has been lost and honesty about our current condition. It requires us to distinguish between Christianity as a formative tradition centered on the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and Christianism as a political movement that deploys religious symbols for partisan ends.

At its heart, this renewal calls for a recovery of love as interdependent communion—a way of being with God and neighbor that stands in stark contrast to both dominating power and defensive tribalism. This love is not mere sentiment or tolerance, but the demanding practice of seeing our flourishing as bound up with the flourishing of others, including those who differ from us politically, religiously, and culturally.

The path forward is neither uncritical embrace nor wholesale rejection of the relationship between faith and politics. Rather, it involves the patient work of theological discernment, the recovery of formative practices, and the cultivation of civic virtues that can sustain both genuine faith and healthy democracy.

That work begins with understanding the challenge we face—not merely as a political problem to be solved but as a theological crisis that requires spiritual renewal. In next week's installment, we'll continue our introduction by examining the historical context that made MAGA Christianism possible and the specific ways it departs from historic Christian orthodoxy.

Next Monday: Introduction, Part 2 - The Historical Context of MAGA Christianism

Comments are open for subscribers. I welcome your thoughts and questions on this introduction.

My destination is a serious conversation about our use of 'race' in everyday and official discourse. In this post, I focus on how I've evolved in my conception of 'nation.' That journey led me to think deeply about race. I'll save 'race' for later since that's much more complicated.

My starting point was to understand nationalism so I could clarify why its Christian form is so pernicious. But it turns out nationalism is itself a contested term. We know what it is, but as conversations progress, we discover various definitions, some inspired by political agendas. We must clarify such terms because their confusion enflames conflicts between groups competing for dominance.

Recognizing 'nationalism' as a contested term prepared me to discover that I naively use words in its constellation—like nation, race, people, ethnic group, society, and community—without recognizing that they shape how I perceive the world. Their definitions matter more than I realized.

I am usually casual in my usage of' nation.' Its meaning is evident and the same for all of us. When we pledge allegiance to a "one nation under God" republic, we commit to a vision of acting as indivisible people who embody "liberty and justice" for all. I always thought "one nation" described what we are rather than what we are becoming. 

But now I understand the nuance I missed. Our republic is not an aspiration. It's an inheritance - a concrete constitution and sets of laws and relationships our forebearers charged us with stewarding.

"One nation" names our aspirational project, the grand experiment we now lead, of becoming a more perfect union of many peoples with a single sovereignty authorizing our shared strivings for the common good.

We pledge to be "indivisible" because we were once divided. The Civil War led to our pledge of allegiance because our republic of many peoples fractured into two republics. Indeed, just before Fort Sumter, we almost split into four republics. Schism is always a temptation precisely because we were "conceived in liberty." with the hope that we would nonetheless bind our many peoples into one. 

I always used "nation" as a shorthand for "nation-state." That usually works because distinguishing between the citizenry and the agent we authorize to act on our behalf is only sometimes necessary. Once we begin to contemplate things like Christian nationalism, such distinctions will matter.

"Nation" denotes our body politic, the people who strive to create a more perfect union. The United States is our agent, the State we, acting as one nation, create to pursue the common good. 

"Nation" works as shorthand for the United States insofar as we understand it to be an agent whose mission is to act for the good of all citizens. In other words, it works when the set of people who are members of a people are identical to those who are citizens of the State that governs them. When that's not true - as in the case of disordered nationalisms, that shorthand fails. So, we must be more precise about what we mean when speaking of nations. 

The best way to arrive at a precise definition of 'nation' is first to consider the distinction between two related things: a people and a society. 

A people (or community) is a group identity based on shared attributes like habitat, region, origin, language, socioeconomic class, and caste. It's pre-rational and pre-voluntary in that it exists independently of individual persons. It's a cooperative social consciousness generated by heredity or geographic and historical context. To be part of a people, I don't need to think about it or volunteer to be a member. It's a social identity that I receive as a given. 

Downstream, I will discuss Yankees, Borderlanders, Midlanders, el Norte, and other peoples who settled in North America. Their tensions and collaborations generated our national identity and continue to drive its dynamism today. Each of them is a distinct people.

In contrast, a society is a group identity based on shared ideas, visions, missions, or ends. It's also a cooperative social consciousness, but it's personal and generated by the group's shared commitment to an idea or cause. To be part of a society, I need to think, experience a spiritual connection to the shared cause, and volunteer.

Society membership is not something we receive as a given. We deliberatively create society itself, and our free consent precedes our cooperation. Although we don't often concern ourselves with this distinction, our affinity groups, such as businesses, labor unions, scholarly guilds, and political associations, are societies.

We correctly understand a nation as a people or community, not a society. "People" is a less contested synonym for a nation I increasingly prefer. A nation or people is a web of autonomous communities united, usually by a treasured land, history, tradition, or collective consciousness. We receive a social identity as a given by being a part of one or more communities based on our habitat, region, origin, language, socioeconomic class, and caste.

Hopefully, I've hinted at how terms like nation, people, and community are slippery. How do we know who counts as members? Is their membership voluntary, negotiable, bestowed, or an inalienable right?

Usually, we don't have to consider such questions. But when movements like MAGA Christianism and Christian Nationalism gain traction, they claim that their people are the authentic people from whom our sovereignty flows. Other people are like house guests at best, whose welcome is contingent on embracing the house rules.

Suddenly, such questions become pivotal.

I've thought deeply about the terms and shared my best answers.

Which leads me to 'race.' I'll share what I've learned so far in my next post.

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Some may believe that the civil rights legislation of the 1960s already healed those wounds. As a friend of mine once said, "Yes, Americans enslaved Africans, but we fought a Civil War over 160 years ago that ended that, and the Civil Rights Act made everyone equal. And my generation is not responsible for any of it. The only racists are those who keep talking about it."

But the truth is that the spiritual, economic, and political impacts of racial divisions are ongoing. It's a mistake to think that we made things right when we outlawed Jim Crow practices and naive to think oppression's wounds no longer hobble us. In this article, I want to stress the importance of understanding how our enslavement practices transformed both the enslaved and the enslaver in ways that persist in the American soul, like genetic cancer passed from generation to generation. We cannot truly "achieve our country" until we conquer this cancer. (Cite Baldwin)

To explain what I mean, let's talk about some history that most people don't know.

The English and French nobility were embroiled in the Hundred Years' War at the dawn of Europe's Early Modern era. At the same time, the Holy Roman Empire faced threats from Muslim military successes—the Turks on its eastern flank and the Moors on its western flank. During the 15th century, the decisions made by the popes in response to these forces profoundly shaped 21st-century life.

We often mistake these decisions as part of the natural order. They initiated a significant shift in Christian theology that created contradictory hierarchies of human value within our contemporary peoplehood narratives. This shift, which was a departure from the teachings of Christ and the early Christian church, is often invisible to us until we reflect on the destruction it has caused.

When the modern nation-state emerged, this transformation in Christian theology was poised to spread across continents. The first carriers were papal bulls transported to African shores on Portuguese caravels, where sailors loaded seized Black and Brown lives—lives whose suffering and sacrifice were sanctioned by these bulls in the name of God.

Many scholars have highlighted that the papal bulls Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493) granted Portugal and Spain exclusive rights to trade in Africa and the New World. These documents also permitted the seizure and enslavement of the inhabitants of the lands they invaded in the name of Christ.

The wealth—especially gold and silver—gained by the Portuguese and Spanish attracted the attention of English, French, and Dutch nobles. These nations quickly found ways to finance nation-state building through colonization and capitalism.

While other scholars focus on the Age of Discovery that followed, a period marked by European exploration and expansion, an old professor of mine, Willie Jennings, urges us to reflect on the transformation in our Christian understanding that these papal bulls caused and how they influenced the actions and justifications of the colonizing powers.^⁠1

Jennings describes the sacramental actions of Prince Henry of Portugal on August 8, 1444, during the liturgical debarkation and auction of 235 enslaved Africans at Lagos. A religious ceremony was deemed fitting because the Portuguese present believed, as Pope Nicholas IV had stated, that their actions of enslavement were part of God's work. In gratitude for this affirmation of Portugal's mission to save the souls of the so-called heathens through kidnapping and enslavement, Prince Henry offered a tithe to God. He donated one enslaved boy to the Church at Lagos and another to the local Franciscan convent.^⁠2

Jennings highlights the crucial question of Prince Henry's chronicler: "How should I understand the suffering of these Africans?" This question loomed over every future colonizer's interpretation of the doctrine of Providence.^⁠3  Colonizing powers responded to this dilemma by constructing justifying narratives: "African captivity leads to African salvation, and to black bodies that exemplify the disciplining power of the faith.”^⁠4

This negligence of the 15th-century popes is striking, and numerous theological errors are present. Jennings points out the irony in the fact that the Portuguese liturgical rituals concerning the debarkation of enslaved people resemble a passion narrative, placing the pope and the prince in the culpable roles of the Jewish oligarchs and Pilate. He also highlights the profound error of a pope who translates Jesus' kingship over the world into the authority of a bishop to divide the world into zones of exploitation for his allies.

Additionally, Jennings critiques the pope's heretical assertion that enslavers act as the providential hand of God, claiming they save the enslaved through the seizure of their lives in Jesus' name. However, Jennings does not dwell on this for long. He encourages us to move forward to examine the devastating shift in the Christian imagination that such sanctioned seizure has produced. This shift is the primary thing I invite my readers to ponder.

From that moment on, Christianity accepted the practice of displacing enslaved individuals from their place-centered identities, allowing enslavers to sell them in the market as part of a supposed divine order. This 'divine order' was a theological concept that justified the enslavement and displacement of individuals as part of God's plan.

This belief was both heretical and blasphemous.^⁠5 However, enslavement itself was not a new phenomenon on that day. What was new was the identification of Europeans as God's agents of salvific displacement, positioned providentially between the enslaved and their homeland, serving as both deliverers and teachers.

This pivot in European self-identity continues to have profound downstream effects on us. There is much to unpack. In my next letter, I will turn to those effects on the American soul.

¹ Jennings, Willie James. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. Yale University Press, 2010.

² Jennings,15-16.

³ Jennings, 17.

⁴ Jennings, 19.

⁵ Jennings, 22.

The issue of racism has become a real hot potato and political football this year, and Dr. Douglas Campbell returns from the last episode to help us break through the fog of the bipartisan rhetoric that we are currently experiencing so that we can begin to better understand the belief systems that perpetuate our struggles to ensure equal justice and equal opportunity for all citizens. In the last episode of the podcast, we began to talk about something that both sides of the argument say that there is much too little of – that being freedom. We talked about what it is and what it is not, and, along the way, came across an interconnected question – what is justice, and what is not justice? Dr. Campbell continues to touch upon and explore these questions from a Biblical perspective.

As a reminder, Dr. Campbell is a professor at Duke Divinity School where he has become, since 2003, one of the most respected and innovative New Testament scholars in the world. He specializes in the history and theology of the Apostle Paul, having published five incredibly influential books that have changed the way we Christians understand Paul's writings and large portions of the New Testament itself, and he also directs Duke's Prison Studies program. His latest book is titled Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love, a truly interesting and helpful book that I can't recommend highly enough!

He continues to discuss freedom and what he calls in Pauline Dogmatics quasi-freedom, or phony freedom that often masks itself as actual freedom. He also touches upon freedom in relationships such as marriage, what it means to regard someone as a neighbor and how to do so even if that person is very different from us, and why Christians should be more inclusive and accepting of differences. He also offers some insight regarding what next steps we as Americans should take to move closer toward achieving our country, a topic touched upon in the last episode, and he points toward grounds for hope.

Dr. Campbell has taught us so about freedom, love, and justice and what they mean and don't mean from a Biblical perspective, and he has given us a great Biblical account of these values. In our next episode, we are going to pivot to build on this discussion of love, justice, and freedom but will be applying these values to a discussion of our criminal justice processes. Returning guest Dr. Derek Woodard-Lehman will discuss what he has learned about this topic from teaching a course about it from a Christian ethics perspective. I hope that you'll join us, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!

Show Notes:

[3:53] – Dr. Campbell helps us understand how some people misunderstand what real freedom is.

[6:02] – Dr. Campbell gives an example of freedom in relationships.

[8:52] – Dr. Campbell discusses the freedom of obedience.

[10:04] – We receive an example of freedom around the world in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and being asked to wear masks.

[12:02] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Campbell return the conversation toward marriage in connection to Biblical freedom.

[15:02] – Dr. Uffman offers some summarizing insight on Dr. Campbell's discussion of freedom thus far.

[17:18] – Dr. Uffman shifts the conversation toward Dr. Campbell's discussion of structures in his book, Pauline Dogmatics.

[19:09] – Dr. Campbell reveals how he would respond to someone saying that they should have the freedom to choose who their neighbor is.

[21:40] – We learn how to regard people who are different from us as neighbors as Dr. Campbell encourages us to stop seeing people under categories but rather networks.

[24:45] – Dr. Campbell reflects on the Civil Rights Movement and how it was driven by deep friendships.

[26:05] – Dr. Campbell comments on how the military understands forming bonds over shared struggle.

[28:13] – Differences, Dr. Campbell asserts, create possibilities for new things to be learned.

[31:22] – Dr. Uffman directs the conversation toward the hierarchies of human value and Othering and what Dr. Campbell says about these topics in Pauline Dogmatics.

[32:16] – Dr. Campbell offers more insight regarding how God is at work in all of humanity.

[35:12] – We hear Dr. Campbell make an analogy between substance abusers and sinners.

[38:12] – Far too many people think that their problem is other people rather than themselves.

[40:22] – Dr. Uffman compares our differences to playing different notes in a symphony, with God being the conductor.

[41:27] – Paul wanted to foster the diversity within the communities that he founded, who were not strictly Christians.

[43:40] – We learn what next steps Americans should take to achieve our country, explaining how to put peace into action rather than just theory.

[45:56] – Dr. Campbell points toward grounds for hope and signs that peace is possible.

Links and Resources:

Dr. Campbell’s Website

Duke Divinity School - Our Faculty: Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell – Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

Dr. Campbell is a professor at Duke Divinity School where he has become, since 2003, one of the most respected and innovative New Testament scholars in the world. He specializes in the life and history of the Apostle Paul, having published five books that have changed the way we Christians understand Paul's writings and large portions of the New Testament itself, and he also directs Duke's Prison Studies program. His latest book is titled Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love, and I highly recommend that you pick it up and read it!

He is here to discuss values that we tend to take for granted - values like love, justice, and freedom – especially within the framework of racial tensions. He believes that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to think about these values that can actually contribute to and perpetuate our racial tensions. He talks about the teachings of men like Martin Luther King and James Baldwin and how their perspectives can be tied to God's love, and he addresses what love means from a Christian standpoint and how we need to unlearn what we've been told love is and relearn what it actually means, which could very well include learning from others who are practicing it. He also talks about what happens in society when there is inequality and refers to what he calls social mobility being affected as a result.

Dr. Campbell has given us such a great Biblical account of values such as love, justice, and freedom. Join us next time as we continue this conversation, when Dr. Campbell will dig deeper into this issue and will explain terms such as quasi Christian freedom, a variant that masquerades as freedom but ultimately does more harm than good. He will also help us recognize some of the unhealthy ways that some of us sometimes think about freedom. This conversation has been so helpful, and I can't wait to have him back on to continue this talk! I hope that you'll join us, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested about the podcast!

Show Notes:

[2:41] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation with a quote from James Baldwin from Baldwin's book The Fire Next Time.

[4:17] – People like Martin Luther King and James Baldwin, as pointed out by Dr. Uffman, believed that a lack of love was what was impeding us from achieving our country.

[5:18] – Dr. Campbell explains what he means in his book Pauline Dogmatics when he argues that we need to learn how to love.

[7:40] – Former President Trump, Dr. Uffman reflects, once stated that he couldn't understand why military personnel would lay down their lives in sacrifice – a form of love that is being discussed in this podcast episode.

[9:25] – Dr. Campbell makes the argument that we sometimes play justice off against love even though being loving is being just.

[12:20] – Dr. Campbell discusses the difference between the law and justice, using the Jim Crow laws as an example of the distinction.

[15:16] – Dr. Campbell argues that the only place where we can see a perfect reflection of God's love is in Christ.

[17:32] – We learn that true justice is transformational, reconciling, and restorative.

[20:13] – Dr. Campbell makes the case that justice is doing the right thing even if that isn't congruent with the law.

[22:34] – Dr. Campbell explains how love through sacrifice relates to our struggles here in the United States.

[25:31] – Dr. Campbell believes that Christians need to help democracy strive for love.

[26:40] – We discover what Dr. Campbell means by first having to unlearn love before learning it.

[29:54] – Dr. Campbell reveals how he defines freedom according to his book Pauline Dogmatics.

[32:10] – Dr. Campbell explains his distinction between positive freedom and negative freedom.

[34:54] – People who are being harmed, Dr. Campbell shares, need to be liberated.

[37:02] – Dr. Campbell makes a connection between structure and freedom.

[40:22] – Dr. Uffman offers insight on Dr. Campbell's emphasis on structures, nodding toward the Civil Rights Movement of 1963.

[41:27] – Dr. Campbell brings his home country of New Zealand into the conversation and refers to inequality as a zero sum game.

[44:05] – It's not our laws that make us free, Dr. Uffman summarizes, because there are too many other factors that impede freedom.

Links and Resources:

Dr. Campbell’s Website

Duke Divinity School - Our Faculty: Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell – Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love

Douglas Campbell – The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul

James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time

Richard Rorty – Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

Isaiah Berlin – The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

As a reminder, Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh is the eighth and current bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, NY. He was born in the larger state of Tamil Nadu in South India where he served many congregations as an Anglican priest before coming to the United States. While earning his PhD in New Jersey, he served multiple parishes and became such a powerful spiritual force that the people of Rochester called him to be their bishop. He has spent decades leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he is here to help us reflect on caste and to share his experiences of wrestling with racism here in the United States.

Bishop Prince shares what it was like to move here to the United States as a man of color, where he was now a minority. He reminds us of two of the main components of caste – purity and pollution – and how those components also play a role in racism here in the United States as White is often socially regarded as pure. Bishop Prince also acknowledges his privilege as a man and discusses how he goes about remaining aware of that privilege, and he offers some incredibly inspirational and moving grounds for hope for the future – such as humanity's move toward beloved community (a term that he explains and exemplifies) and how the COVID-19 pandemic has made some of us realize how divided we were even before the virus made us quarantine and be literally divided.

Speaking with Bishop Prince was such an uplifting experience as it always is, and I thank him for coming on the podcast to help us think about caste from the perspective of someone from India who is now living as a leader here in the United States. In our next two episodes, we will pivot from our historical descriptions of the realities of our racial tensions to do a deep dive into the habitual thoughts that cause and sustain said racial tensions. New Testament scholar Dr. Douglas Campbell of Duke will be joining us to help us think about the values that we tend to take for granted – values like love, justice, and freedom. Dr. Campbell believes that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to think about these values that can actually contribute to and perpetuate our racial tensions. Join us next time to learn more, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested in the podcast about us!

Show Notes:

[4:26] – Bishop Prince reflects on what it was like moving to the United States where he was now a minority as a man of color.

[5:56] – Bishop Prince frames New Jersey as more progressive than Virginia but also more complex.

[7:43] – The South and the North, Bishop Prince argues, have the same iterations of racism that are just manifested differently.

[10:00] – Bishop Prince reminds us of how caste involves perceived purity and impurity.

[12:05] – Bishop Prince addresses his privilege as a man and how he works to become more aware of that privilege.

[14:57] – Dr. Uffman offers insight on the hierarchical worldview described by Bishop Prince.

[16:17] – We learn what it is like for Bishop Prince being a parent of boys of color in Rochester.

[18:54] – Bishop Prince reveals what benefits resulted from one of his sons finding a school that embraced how he learned.

[21:16] – Bishop Prince reflects on what he has observed and processed in Rochester regarding race.

[22:38] – We learn about the antidote to internalized racism.

[25:28] – The only hope to fight structural and internalized racism is to embrace community and break down the walls that separate us.

[26:50] – We discover what Bishop Prince means when he refers to beloved community.

[29:30] – We cannot have dreams without reparations, Bishop Prince argues.

[32:35] – It's not about being colorblind, Dr. Uffman interprets, but is rather about being color-sensitive.

[33:30] – Bishop Prince shares what pockets of the beloved community that he has observed.

Links and Resources:

Episcopal Diocese of Rochester – About the Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh

Isabel Wilkerson – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Program - Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, inc.

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

I met Prince ten years ago when I came to lead a parish here a year after he became the bishop. Bishop Prince has spent quite a long while leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he is here today to help us reflect on something that has been discussed several times in previous episodes of the podcast – caste. He reflects on his childhood and where he grew up, revealing that he grew up in a Christian family and that, as a young adult, he got his undergraduate degree in Zoology and his graduate degree in Public Administration.

Interestingly, Prince grew up as a boy not seeing the world through the perspective of caste. In fact, as he narrates in detail, he didn't have a great awareness of it and didn't really learn about it until later on when he encountered it for the first time. He theorizes as to why that is and admits to having been privileged because of his family's socioeconomic status and his parents having been college educated, describing his lack of awareness of the caste system as a child as a blessing but also problematic.

Prince also addresses the multifaceted nature of colonialism and how, from his perspective, it isn't all about domination and has actually had some positive impacts as well. He discusses the two components of caste and the intersectionality between caste and gender, ultimately ending here by pointing to the huge differences that he and his wife Roja Singh have helped make reality for many young girls who were otherwise victims of the caste system. In our next episode, Bishop Prince will be returning, and we will be continuing this conversation. We will follow his story to the United States and will learn how he experienced some of what we have been talking about in previous episodes of the podcast. Please join us, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested in the podcast about us!

Show Notes:

[1:09] – Dr. Uffman announces Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh as this episode’s guest and briefly touches upon his credentials.

[3:27] – Bishop Prince helps us visualize where he grew up.

[5:14] – We learn about Bishop Prince's educational background.

[7:38] – Bishop Prince talks about his family's economic status while he was growing up.

[8:31] – Bishop Prince describes what the weather was like where he grew up, sharing that it was very hot and humid.

[11:17] – Dr. Uffman alludes to caste and recognizes it as a tool that we can use to help understand our current racial tensions.

[12:49] – Bishop Prince reflects on his childhood and what his experience was like as a Christian boy in his state.

[14:05] – We hear Bishop Prince recount one specific encounter when he observed caste play a role via someone's behavior.

[16:12] – Bishop Prince discusses his observations of villages having two parts because of caste.

[18:08] – Bishop Prince reveals that he encountered the concept of caste the most after becoming a priest, and he explains why.

[20:06] – Bishop Prince posits theories as to why he didn't grow up with much awareness of caste division.

[22:47] – Bishop Prince discusses colonialism and how it is a multifaceted system with many layers.

[25:42] – Bishop Prince credits the missionary movement as having had positive influences within India.

[28:06] – We learn a little bit about Bishop Prince's time as an Anglican priest in India.

[31:00] – Bishop Prince describes his early engagement as a priest in South India as adventurous.

[33:51] – Bishop Prince points out the problematic nature of state-enforced prevention of people choosing their own religion.

[36:51] – We hear about the flaws within Christianity because of how caste is sometimes followed even within the Christian faith.

[38:57] – Bishop Prince addresses the intersectionality between caste and gender.

[40:45] – We learn what the term manual scavenger means.

[43:48] – Some children would drop out of school because of being treated as manual scavengers, even by teachers.

[45:23] – Dr. Uffman reflects on how the differences that Bishop Prince and his wife Roja Singh have begun to make for young girls make for grounds for hope.

Links and Resources:

Episcopal Diocese of Rochester – About the Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh

Program - Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, inc.

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

We concluded with a brief discussion of how land use and habitat choice are great examples that denote what we mean when we use phrases such as structural racism. We therefore finally dug into defining what structural racism means with some evidence and examples that are really hard to deny. We will be picking up where we left off in this episode, digging even more deeply into some persistent racial inequities in the domain of spatial justice.

As a reminder, Dr. Kurt Culbertson is a scholar and a practitioner in the field of urban renewal where he uses his expertise as a landscape architect to help cities imagine how to design landscapes that consider environmental, social, and economic factors so that they can best optimize spatial justice in the urban renewal efforts. Dr. Culbertson is chair and C.E.O. of Design Workshop, an international design studio out of Aspen, Colorado but with offices all over the world. They are most famous for their twelve projects that were selected as performance based case studies by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. In 2016, Kurt was awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal which is the highest possible honor in his profession, and he is also the pastor of the ASLA Council of Fellows and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Kurt returns today to continue discussing inequities in the design of our communities today. Dr. Culbertson provides us with countless examples throughout history of Blacks and non-Whites being displaced and relocated out of their habitats to make room for architecture, interstates and highways, and so on – examples of egregious disturbances within the world of spatial justice. He touches upon pollution and health and safety hazards and their links to spatial justice and also offers some hope for the future, pointing toward an eminent quote from Theodore Parker as inspiration. He even offers some tips on what actions that we as average citizens can take to help equity progress and continue to arc forward.

These past two episodes with Kurt have been such a blessing because they have made it very clear what some folks mean when they refer to structural racism, a reality that we still need to wrestle with today. He has given us concrete examples as someone who is actually observing things on the ground, examples that point toward how historic policies and practices continue to shape our present. We covered so much ground, and I thank Kurt for joining us.

In our next episode, we will pivot from this practical deep dive into spatial justice in order to hear the personal experience and wisdom of Bishop Prince Singh, a man who has wrestled with racism as a person of color both in India and here in the United States. Prince spent a long time leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he will be joining us to help us reflect on phrases like caste and hierarchies of value. Until next time, thanks for tuning in, and be sure to invite your friends to listen as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

1. How does exposure to toxic pollution correlate with class and race? Why?

2. How did St. Louis realtors in the 1960s and 1970s use blockbusting to generate profits and transformed entire neighborhoods they knew had environmental time bombs from white to black in a matter of years?

3. How did the East Bank/West Bank vote on taxes to support flood insurance in the New Orleans metro area impact non-whites after the floods of 1980?

4. Why do hurricanes impact non-whites disproportionately more than whites? 

Show Notes:

[3:48] – Dr. Culbertson offers some egregious examples of disturbances in the domain of spatial justice.

[5:02] – Dr. Culbertson provides examples of population displacements and slum clearances in cities.

[8:02] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss Robert Moses and his move to intentionally design projects to exclude non-Whites and the poor.

[10:20] – Dr. Culbertson expands on how extensive the impact of the interstate highway system relocating Blacks and non-Whites has been.

[12:40] – Dr. Culbertson comments on how urban renewal legislation through the 1970s negatively impacted non-Whites.

[15:28] – Air quality and water quality affect public health which is another disturbance.

[18:25] – The projects in New Orleans leading to de facto segregation around the same time as Civil Rights legislation, Dr. Culbertson explains, was an unintended consequence.

[20:43] – Exposure to toxic pollution is correlated with class and race, and Dr. Culbertson elaborates upon that correlation.

[24:07] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss the phenomenon of flooding in cities and how it disproportionately affects non-Whites.

[26:30] – Dr. Culbertson expounds upon why natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina tend to disproportionately impact non-Whites.

[29:25] – Dr. Culbertson reflects upon management decisions made to address shrinking cities and what that portends for non-Whites.

[31:47] – Dr. Culbertson points to a parks and open space plan that he just finished in Vancouver.

[34:23] – We discover how fragmented metropolitan governance has negatively impacted our ability to deal with spatial equity.

[37:33] – Dr. Culbertson points to some locations as grounds for hope.

[40:22] – Dr. Culbertson explains why taking formerly polluted lands and converting them into open space gives him hope and offers more examples of reasons for hope.

[42:40] – We learn how we can get involved in moving equity forward.

[44:23] – Dr. Culbertson analyzes the meaning behind a famous quote by Theodore Parker.

Links and Resources:

Design Workshop - Website

Landscape Architecture Foundation - Website

ASLA Council of Fellows - Website

The Cultural Landscape Foundation – Website

Robert A. Caro - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

Environmental Protection Agency - EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool

NPR – “Theodore Parker and the 'Moral Universe'”

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

Dr. Culbertson is chair and C.E.O. of Design Workshop, an international design studio out of Aspen, Colorado but with offices all over the world. They are most famous for their twelve projects that were selected as performance based case studies by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. In 2016, Kurt was awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal which is the highest possible honor in his profession, and he is also the pastor of the ASLA Council of Fellows and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Kurt was awarded a PhD in Landscape Architecture from Edinburgh College of Art for his research that helps us in thinking about how we ought to use - as a society - our vacant lands. Kurt is here on the podcast to help us understand the inequities that we see in the design of our communities today. The Great Recession of 2008 led to Dr. Culbertson moving a bit away from commercial work and balancing a bit with public renewal projects.

The argument that structural and systemic racism is a myth is an argument that is not new; it has been being made for years, but Dr. Culbertson presents us with physical evidence of its reality – how human value has a hierarchy culturally attached to it is literally manifested in physical structures such as buildings and bridges. He touches upon various topics such as redlining and how physical evidence can be presented that proves that systemic racism and spatial injustice are still major problems even today.

We cover so much ground in terms of management decisions and the economic impact on issues of inequity. In our next episode, Dr. Culbertson will return to talk about what he refers to as disturbances and how we have actually taken actions that have made some things worse. He will share with us what approaches that have been taken that appear to be working to help mitigate this problem. Thanks for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to tune in as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

1. What is ‘vacant land’ and what does Dr. Culbertson denote when he speaks of spatial justice?

2. To what extent have non-whites been limited in the choices and range of actions for the choice of habitat?

3. Where did most non-whites live in our cities prior to the 1920s, and what habitat choices did they have during and after that period?

4. How did  government policy in the forms of SCOTUS decisions and legislative actions contributed to our current reality of ‘hollowed out cities’?

5. How do we see the residual impact of redlining on our communities today? 

6. How has the fact that the average net worth for Black is a small fraction of that for Whites historically impacted Blacks’ ability to buy homes in safer neighborhoods, provide education for children, and withstand hardships?

Show Notes:

[3:40] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation by talking about structural racism and points to the recent massacre of Asian women in Atlanta.

[5:12] – Dr. Culbertson defines the terms vacant land and spatial justice.

[8:18] – Dr. Culbertson explains why we are concerned about vacant land.

[10:30] – Dr. Culbertson describes what he is able to influence and change in his field.

[12:35] – Dr. Culbertson provides us with a potential reason why non Whites don't have the same choices as to where to live as Whites do.

[15:11] – Cities began to implement racial zoning, which Dr. Culbertson defines and explains.

[17:16] – Dr. Uffman shifts the conversation toward management decisions made by the executive branch and refers specifically to Herbert Hoover as an example.

[19:24] – Dr. Culbertson describes what life might have been like for non Whites in cities and what habitat choices that they had following the Emancipation Proclamation.

[22:27] – Dr. Uffman provides insight about his own observations in his hometown in Baton Rouge.

[24:27] – Dr. Culbertson expounds upon mortgage lending and suburbanization, returning to the subject of Herbert Hoover.

[26:55] – The process of redlining, Dr. Culbertson details, excluded the flow of resources especially for low income neighborhoods where a lot of people of color resided.

[29:08] – Dr. Culbertson asserts that redlining caused impacts that still linger today, almost a century later.

[31:39] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss the inequities around wealth creation.

[34:23] – Dr. Culbertson touches further upon management decisions and executive decisions impacting spatial justice.

[36:25] – Dr. Culbertson reflects upon how he would respond to someone who would argue that structural racism isn't real or is no longer a problem.

Links and Resources:

Design Workshop - Website

Landscape Architecture Foundation - Website

ASLA Council of Fellows - Website

The Cultural Landscape Foundation - Website

Edward W. Soja - Seeking Spatial Justice (Volume 16) (Globalization and Community)

Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “How and Why We Birthed Jim Crow”

Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Jim Crow: The Yankee Variant”

Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Redline Reasoning: Why We Built Segregated Cities”

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

As a reminder, Salin is a man with many hats but is probably best known for being a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama and his administration. He is currently one of the world's foremost experts in the art of bringing opposing groups together to transform racially polarized pockets of urban blight into sustainably inclusive cities and communities.

Salin's credentials make him the perfect guest to help us with our exploration of the stories that have shaped the racial landscape with which we currently wrestle, and this episode dives further into what we talked about last time about inequity within the housing domain. We discuss how getting rid of the Jim Crow Laws and implementing the 14th Amendment might have been progressive movements but did not solve all problems and certainly did not put an end to structural racism. Salin shares with us what the situation is like where he lives and how there is a shocking 15-20 year gap in life expectancy depending on what part of town you live, but he also lays down ground for hope and how even though we still have a long way to go, there are already signs of progress.

We have been so privileged to have an expert in this field come onto the podcast and help us understand so much of what many of us might not have been aware of. I hope that you will join us in our next episode when we meet another expert in a related field, Dr. Kurt Culbertson. Dr. Culbertson is a prominent landscape architect who has built some places that you would probably even recognize. We will dig deep into these issues of racial inequity from the perspective of landscaping and architecture. Thanks for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to tune in as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

1. To what extent have Fair Housing laws since 1968 remedied and prevented discriminatory land use and housing-related policies in the 2020s?

2. What about inequitable community development practices?

3. What about racial bias in mortgage lending and rental housing? 

4. What other racially biased policies and practices that have fostered pervasive negative impacts on non-whites that should concern us today?

5. Describe the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. How does it help us gather around a measure for weighing our success in correcting racial inequities in the housing and community development domain?

Show Notes:

[2:22] – Salin reveals why he began walking the path that he is on now and how he hopes more people will be inspired to work toward building a more inclusive nation.

[4:06] – Salin links our current discriminatory land use policies to the Jim Crow Laws and the Civil Rights Movement.

[6:52] – Dr. Uffman has a close friend who doesn't believe that structural racism exists because of the 14th Amendment having been passed.

[8:58] – Salin expounds upon the difference between law and practice within inequitable community development practices.

[9:40] – Salin explains how urban density is an indicator of structural racism.

[11:42] – You can hear people using both covert and overt language that speaks of trying to avoid living near people with less means or who look different than they do.

[14:11] – Salin explains how we are doing concerning racial bias within mortgage lending.

[15:54] – Communities need various types of housing in order to thrive.

[18:30] – Dr. Uffman and Salin discuss maps that show data supporting Salin's argument and how listeners can access them.

[21:48] – Salin provides other examples of pervasive policies and practices that have led to negative impacts on people of color.

[24:00] – Dr. Uffman gives an example of the post office serving as a bank to many who use money orders due to inequity.

[26:11] – The hierarchy of human value is something that permeates society all the time through social signals that are sent.

[28:30] – Salin worked during the Obama administration on a tool to help us build diverse and inclusive communities.

[31:18] – The Trump administration, as Salin describes, immediately delayed implementing Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and ultimately rescinded it entirely.

[34:37] – Salin shares what he is currently seeing that seems to be promising.

[36:27] – It is important that we do something about the inequity of neighborhoods while also allowing people who don't want to move to stay where they are, and Salin details why that is.

[38:20] – Salin moves the conversation toward more concrete examples rather than abstract examples.

[40:38] – Salin reflects on the current state of the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore.

[44:05] – There is grounds for hope, and we can be a part of the solution. There are already signs of progress.

[47:03] – Salin encourages listeners to be open and willing to understand that society's sense of hierarchy of human value is prevalent everywhere.

Links and Resources:

Raj Chetty

Opportunity Insights

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

Salin's credentials make him the perfect guest to help us start our exploration of the stories that have shaped the racial landscape with which we currently wrestle, and this episode particularly dives into discrimination and inequities in the world of housing and how we can begin to hopefully find solutions to such problems. Although we will talk more about the hope and the possible solutions in our next episode, Salin begins to touch upon that near the end of this episode, sharing that new coalitions pushing for progress and the celebration of diversity gives him hope.

Salin gives us such a great introduction into the racial inequities that persist even today in the domain of housing. I hope that you will join us in our next episode as we continue this conversation, drilling more deeply into the challenges that have been brought about by our history of discriminatory policies. We will also begin to talk more deeply about hope and promising solutions. Thank you for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

1. As we seek to create diverse, inclusive communities in which all have a sense of belonging, what would success look like?

2. Why are distressed neighborhoods so hard to turn around?

3. What kind of progress can we celebrate in healing housing inequities since the 1960s civil rights legislation?

4. How does bias remain a factor in where we live in such a way that, even in the 2020s, it determines the life chances of whites and non-whites differently? 

Show Notes:

[4:18] – Salin begins by giving us an update on some of the challenges that still need to be confronted today when it comes to inequities in housing.

[7:16] – Salin comments on what goals that we should set and what success would look like, starting with physical transformation.

[8:55] – The second stage of success is the ability for new neighborhoods to attract and hold on to diverse residents.

[10:57] – Salin explains what the last stage of success is – addressing the unfinished business that we still actually have and questioning who is benefitting from what we are seeing.

[12:40] – We learn why it tends to be so difficult to reverse the situation for distressed neighborhoods.

[15:54] – Craig and Salin discuss hierarchies of human value and how Salin defines it.

[18:44] – Salin discusses what progress that we can celebrate that we have seen over the last several decades.

[20:22] – We have seen a rise in wealth in the United States, but the problem is that the wealth is concentrated.

[21:48] – Salin confidently asserts that implicit bias definitely plays a role in the problem of racially disparate housing.

[23:21] – Salin assures Dr. Uffman that implicit bias still plays a role a century after the 1920s and gives concrete examples.

[25:54] – Segregation continues to persist today, and the country is, in fact, resegregating.

[27:58] – Dr. Raj Chetty, the youngest professor to receive tenure at Harvard, has given us hard data that both sides of politics can agree on.

[30:17] – Where you grow up has a major impact on what opportunities that you have throughout life.

[31:53] – Salin encourages listeners to look at Dr. Chetty's research on Opportunity Insights.

[34:16] – Salin talks about his hope that we will see progress and change in our lifetimes due to progress that has already been made and unfinished business that we have yet to do.

[37:08] – Hope is very necessary right now because solidarity is constantly under attack.

Links and Resources:

Raj Chetty

Opportunity Insights

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

• Threads: @craiguffman

• Facebook: @craiguffman

• Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

As a reminder, Dr. Woodard-Lehman teaches at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, specializing in Christian Ethics. He is focused particularly on how Christian commitments have mobilized political resistance to racial injustice. We have been talking about situations on the podcast such as the American Civil Rights Movement, which is definitely one such instance of this having happened.

I hope that you will join us as we continue this conversation, discussing topics such as the also controversial phrase critical race theory and political commentator David French's take on it, lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw's take on intersectionality, white privilege and what it means, the distinction between guilt and responsibility in terms of white privilege and how we share that responsibility, and so much more!

I owe Dr. Woodard-Lehman so much gratitude for once again giving us so much to think about. I hope that you will join us in our next episode as we begin to look deeply at whether or not our racial disparities actually exist and whether or not they are systemic. Thank you for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

1. What is generally referred to when scholars speak of ‘whiteness’ as a way of analyzing our racial tensions and conceiving of solutions?

2. What is critical race theory?

3. What is intersectionality?

4. How is it helpful to distinguish between guilt and responsibility in talking together about our racial tensions.

Show Notes:

[3:07] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides us with a reminder of the geological metaphor that he used in the last episode, comparing the formation of the Finger Lakes and the water that they supply to people to racism and inequity.

[6:10] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman adds that his metaphor applies to not only social problems of historical times but to social problems of today as well, even if such problems are not immediately visible to us.

[8:29] – People on both sides of this argument generally agree that there are statistical disparities.

[10:15] – Dr. Uffman recalls a conversation between Chris Wallace and Donald Trump about systemic racism and why Trump ended the racial sensitivity training that addresses white privilege.

[12:31] – Dr. Uffman switches gears to the executive order dictating that we are not allowed to teach the idea that the United States is inherently racist or sexist.

[15:42] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman defines critical race theory and what it entails.

[17:08] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman defines intersectionality – a central facet of critical race theory – and gives examples of it provided by lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw.

[19:27] – Intersectionality is a tactic used to dismiss cases of discrimination based on one facet of a person's identity.

[22:38] – White privilege, as Dr. Woodard-Lehman expounds upon, has a broad spectrum of different meanings but does have an especially helpful and useful meaning.

[24:59] – White privilege oppresses not just Blacks but persons of color in general.

[25:29] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides us with an example of a time in college when something about him was wrongly assumed because of his race.

[28:16] – Dr. Uffman provides us with an example of a time in Times Square when he inadvertently benefitted from white privilege.

[31:03] – Dr. Uffman came to realize that white privilege, when it comes to how people are treated by police, is in part because of convict leasing in the south in the 1880s.

[32:42] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman emphasizes that experiences with law enforcement is one of the most important aspects of white privilege and provides further examples.

[35:45] – Dr. Uffman returns to the concept of inequity and racial sensitivity training.

[36:28] – One component of racial sensitivity training is sharing stories like Dr. Woodard-Lehman and Dr. Uffman have been doing and acknowledging white privilege as real.

[39:22] – An instructor crafting their syllabus with texts from white male scholars is not usually doing so out of ill intent.

[40:39] – Dr. Uffman reiterates how easy it is to see racial inequity and disparity as natural rather than socially constructed, something that he himself has done.

[43:02] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman stresses how white privilege can be blatant and obvious but can also be more subtle.

[45:57] – Dr. Uffman once again returns to Dr. Woodard-Lehman's water metaphor and emphasizes a distinction between guilt and responsibility.

[46:50] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman further explains the difference between guilt and responsibility and how we should be discussing responsibility rather than guilt.

[47:27] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides an example of responsibility over guilt coming into play when action needs to be taken to correct something that is wrong.

[50:10] – There are situations, such as in the example that Dr. Woodard-Lehman provides, when we must take responsibility for correcting wrongs even if we are not at fault.

[52:27] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman discusses our shared responsibility over social arrangements, responsibility that is ours even though we had little to no part in initially arranging them.

[53:45] – The difficulty that we have over having fruitful conversations about race and racism is partially because of how we wrestle with wondering who to blame.

[54:37] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman predicts what obstacles exist other than an inability to look past guilt.

[57:15] – Dr. Woodard-Lehman offers a potential explanation as to why some people might be inclined to disagree with antiracist ideology.

Links and Resources:

Isabel Wilkerson – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent

Ibram X. Kendi – How to Be an Antiracist

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to The Christian Humanist at www.christianhumanistmission.org/subscribe