DOCSLIB.ORG

Written in Black, White, and Red: an Exploration of Civilizer Theology in American History

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Written in Black, White, and Red: an Exploration of Civilizer Theology in American History Salve Regina University Digital Commons @ Salve Regina Master's Theses Salve's Dissertations and Theses 11-2019 Written in Black, White, and Red: An Exploration of Civilizer Theology in American History Jeremy McGinniss Salve Regina University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/masters_theses Part of the American Studies Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Religion Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, and the Sociology of Religion Commons McGinniss, Jeremy, "Written in Black, White, and Red: An Exploration of Civilizer Theology in American History" (2019). Master's Theses. 6. https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/masters_theses/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Salve's Dissertations and Theses at Digital Commons @ Salve Regina. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Salve Regina. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Written in Black, White, and Red: An Exploration of Civilizer Theology in American History Jeremy McGinniss Salve Regina University HUM590: Humanities Thesis November 2019 McGinniss 2 Chapter One: Introduction & Methodology 3 Chapter Two: Cultural Decay 27 Chapter Three: Authority 47 Chapter Four: Violence 72 Chapter Five: Towards an Equitable Theology 96 Bibliography 103 McGinniss 3 Chapter One: Introduction & Methodology Introduction Howard Thurman published his evocative and challenging work Jesus and the Disinherited in 1949 wherein he posed the question to which he would seek an answer throughout his entire life. “Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion and national origin?” (Thurman 1996, 7) Thurman, born in 1899, lived the vast majority of his life in a segregated America, within “a climate of separateness” which Thurman recognized as extending to, and maintained by religious life and practice. (Thurman 1959, 121) Thurman actively challenged this separateness through his writing and work including the establishment of The Church for the Fellowship of All People in San Francisco in 1944 as a tangible demonstration of “an interracial church….a racially integrated organization…” (Thurman 1959, 109) Thurman referred to this work as “The Religion of Jesus and challenged the normative vision of Christianity, one that propelled and glorified whiteness.” (McCray 2019, 48) Thurman’s life and work were focused on the creation and sustaining of an equitable vision of Christianity as a means towards remaking the social, theological and political frameworks shaping American society. In his autobiography, published in 1979 four years before his death, Thurman, bookending his question first posed in Jesus and the Disinherited, asked “What adjustment could be made to accommodate the ethic of a religion like Christianity to the political and economic demands of imperialism? What is the anatomy of the process by which the powerful and the powerless and draw their support and inspiration from the worship of the same God and the teaching from the identical source?” (Thurman 1979, 116) McGinniss 4 In 2017, Dr. Ibram Kendi captured the essence of Thurman’s questions with the term “civilizer theology” defined as “…[the process of] civiliz[ing] away the wayward behaviors of people, particularly the really bad people [who have been]…racialized as black.” (Greer 2017) In 2016 Dr. Kendi was recognized as a substantial and erudite national voice when his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America won the National Book Award. In 2019, he published the searching How to be Anti-Racist and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that same year. Amid a rigorous writing, speaking and teaching schedule, Kendi also works as the Founding Director of The Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University. Like Thurman, Kendi’s work and writing engages the “climate of separateness” that has characterized American life, seeking to understand how American life can hold the ideals of liberty and equality while simultaneously reinforcing a climate of separateness through practices, systems and structures. Thurman and Kendi are linked in a scholar-activist tradition, connected to the work of Cornel West, James Cone, W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and others which recognizes the importance of religion in the history and construction of American society while seeking to challenge the practice of religion that is interested in its own power. Thurman and Kendi are representative of a scholar-activist tradition that challenges the idealization of two foundational American ideals, liberty and equality, in their relationship to the horrors of slavery, systems of segregation and traditions of oppression that exist alongside those same ideals. Additionally, Kendi and Thurman are active participants in an intellectual tradition that challenges the expectations and perceptions of society through writing and public speaking applying these to lived experience. Their challenge of civilizer theology is not limited to the academic realm but extends to the spiritual and lived. Hypothesis Following Kendi and Thurman, this paper proposes an extended definition and discusses examples of civilizer theology within the perceptions and practices of white Protestant American Christianity faith traditions. This paper will be searching for patterns to provide insight into the ways that these faith traditions have been interpolated with racially biased social norms and political ideologies. Specifically, how have the Christian scriptures and theological questions been interpreted, mediated and received to have been subsequently enmeshed rhetorically within McGinniss 5 a larger shared political and social community? The process of researching for this paper indicates there is not a shared term that theologians, scholars and other writers have agreed upon to refer to the use of the language of theology or religion that reinforces racist systems and practices. In part the argument presented in this paper proposes that civilizer theology is a term well-qualified to fill the role. Examples are selected guided by the following theoretical construct which identifies three significant dispositions characterizing civilizer theology: first, cultural decay/moral decline; secondly, authority; thirdly, violence. The following sections, rationale, structure and literature review, provide reasoning and arguement for why this construct was chosen. These dispositions are deployed in defending absolutist claims to power, as well as a support for using racial bias to perpetuate beliefs regarding group superiority and are typically expressed as organizing themes and/or focal concerns. In turn, this paper will examine how the theological language of justification is employed by members of faith traditions and shaped by the dispositions of civilizer theology. This is not simply a case of religion being exploited as a political tool. The political sphere is a place where believers can support specific socio-economic policies that they believe echo scriptural interpretation and exegesis, specifically in the context of white Protestant theological practice. This paper’s hypothesis is that theological interpretation, application and exegesis, mediated by the three dispositions, are deliberately applied to support socio-economic, cultural and political ends with the goal of maintaining power structures to the benefit of a particular group. Conceptually, theological interpretation frames the application and purpose of violence (state-sponsored or extra-legal), identifies instances or points of cultural decay/moral decline (the resolution or prevention of which may require violence), and, provides justification for considering state-sponsored violence or extra-legal violent acts as appropriate or legal. This interpretive practice serves to set boundaries of authority while simultaneously preserving that authority in referring the theological framework for support of claims to authority. Rationale The examples provided in this paper in support of the stated hypothesis demonstrate how each of the three dispositions works as a starting point in the maintenance of power structures while also showing the interdependence of the three dispositions. The tracing of the dispositions McGinniss 6 through the provided examples connect past with present to demonstrate how Protestant faith traditions motivated by civilizer theology maintain a societal framework with the goal of retaining power in order to shape culture, civilization and religious practice. This paper posits civilizer theology as a self-referential, self-fulfilling framework which actively shapes the expectations, behaviors and practices of societal norms that drive cultural practices. Subsequently this understanding actively shapes, and is shaped by, theological practice, interpretation and justification.1 The examples employed focus on the intersections of society, culture, race and theology to examine the multiple responses to the question “what meanings do religious beliefs and practices give to life?” (Asad 2011, 37) as those meanings have interpreted American ideals of equality and liberty based on the color of a person’s skin. Civilizer theology is “an argument about competing claims to Christian orthodoxy…”; which voices and elements are defining practice and establishing tradition. (Dailey
Load more

Recommended publications
  • African American Perspectives with Emphasis on the Perspective of Black Liberation Theology
    D. PROVIDENCE AND HISTORIES: AFRICAN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES WITH EMPHASIS ON THE PERSPECTIVE OF BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY Introduction Black theology as a particular perspective and method in the field of theology is a relatively new phenomenon which has roots in the religious history of the slave ancestors of today's African-Americans.1 Black theology, like most theology, is essentially an attempt to understand the meaning and purpose of human life in the context of a community which believes in God. Black theologies, though diverse, all seek to understand the meaning and pur- pose of Black humanity in the context of a society which is inimical and oppres- sive to its existence. Recent news report would suggests that assertions that African- Americans are the victims of systemic genocide may not be too radical. The infant mortality rate of African-American babies in major United States cities is equal to that of some third world countries; the life expectancy of Blacks decreased in the last six months; suicide rates have increased; the major threat to life for Black males between the ages of 22 and 45 is murder; Black males and females experience a higher rate of incarceration in prisons; deaths by aids and drugs is steadily increas- ing; etc. The development "life statistics" have complex histories but the envi- ronmental stresses of high unemployment, homelessness, miseducation, poor medical care, general poverty, and racism are contributing factors. These condi- tions have a systemic origin and require systemic solutions. John W. Fleming suggests that in its initial stages of development, Black the- ology was united in its goal but diverse in its response in addressing the reality of the "color-caste system" and oppression which characterize the social reality of African-Americans.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Women, Educational Philosophies, and Community Service, 1865-1965/ Stephanie Y
    University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2003 Living legacies : Black women, educational philosophies, and community service, 1865-1965/ Stephanie Y. Evans University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Evans, Stephanie Y., "Living legacies : Black women, educational philosophies, and community service, 1865-1965/" (2003). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 915. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/915 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. M UMASS. DATE DUE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST LIVING LEGACIES: BLACK WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES, AND COMMUNITY SERVICE, 1865-1965 A Dissertation Presented by STEPHANIE YVETTE EVANS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2003 Afro-American Studies © Copyright by Stephanie Yvette Evans 2003 All Rights Reserved BLACK WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOHIES, AND COMMUNITY SERVICE, 1865-1964 A Dissertation Presented by STEPHANIE YVETTE EVANS Approved as to style and content by: Jo Bracey Jr., Chair William Strickland,
    [Show full text]
  • 1 After Slavery & Reconstruction: the Black Struggle in the U.S. for Freedom, Equality, and Self-Realization* —A Bibliogr
    After Slavery & Reconstruction: The Black Struggle in the U.S. for Freedom, Equality, and Self-Realization* —A Bibliography Patrick S. O’Donnell (2020) Jacob Lawrence, Library, 1966 Apologia— Several exceptions notwithstanding (e.g., some titles treating the Reconstruction Era), this bibliography begins, roughly, with the twentieth century. I have not attempted to comprehensively cover works of nonfiction or the arts generally but, once more, I have made— and this time, a fair number of—exceptions by way of providing a taste of the requisite material. So, apart from the constraints of most of my other bibliographies: books, in English, these particular constraints are intended to keep the bibliography to a fairly modest length (around one hundred pages). This compilation is far from exhaustive, although it endeavors to be representative of the available literature, whatever the influence of my idiosyncratic beliefs and 1 preferences. I trust the diligent researcher will find titles on particular topics or subject areas by browsing carefully through the list. I welcome notice of titles by way of remedying any deficiencies. Finally, I have a separate bibliography on slavery, although its scope is well beyond U.S. history. * Or, if you prefer, “self-fulfillment and human flourishing (eudaimonia).” I’m not here interested in the question of philosophical and psychological differences between these concepts (i.e., self- realization and eudaimonia) and the existing and possible conceptions thereof, but more simply and broadly in their indispensable significance in reference to human nature and the pivotal metaphysical and moral purposes they serve in our critical and evaluative exercises (e.g., and after Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, in employing criteria derived from the notion of ‘human capabilities and functionings’) as part of our individual and collective historical quest for “the Good.” However, I might note that all of these concepts assume a capacity for self- determination.
    [Show full text]
  • More Than Mrs Robinson: Citizenship Schools in Lowcountry South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, 1957-1970
    More Than Mrs Robinson: Citizenship Schools in Lowcountry South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, 1957-1970 (A Dissertation submitted in requirement for the Degree of Doctor in Philosophy, The University of Nottingham, October 2009) Clare Russell 1 Abstract The first ―citizenship school‖ (a literacy class that taught adults to read and write in order that they could register to vote) was established by Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee on Johns Island, South Carolina in 1957. Within three years, the schools were extended across the neighboring Sea Islands, to mainland Charleston and to Savannah, Georgia. In 1961, after Highlander faced legal challenges to its future, it transferred the schools to the fledgling Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who extended the program across the South. Historians have made far-reaching claims for the successes and benefits of the schools. For example, they claim that they recruited inexperienced but committed people and raised them to the status of community leaders; that they encouraged civic cooperation and political activism and formed the ―foundation on which the civil rights movement‖ was built and they argue that the schools were an unprecedented opportunity for women to develop as activists and as leaders. Yet, they base these claims on certain myths about the schools: that the first teacher Bernice Robinson was an inexperienced and uneducated teacher, that her class was a blueprint for similar ones and that Highlander bequeathed its educational philosophy to the SCLC program. They make claims about female participation without analyzing the gender composition of classes. This dissertation challenges these assumptions by comparing and contrasting programs established in Lowcountry South Carolina and in Savannah.
    [Show full text]
  • The Complex Relationship Between Jews and African Americans in the Context of the Civil Rights Movement
    The Gettysburg Historical Journal Volume 20 Article 8 May 2021 The Complex Relationship between Jews and African Americans in the Context of the Civil Rights Movement Hannah Labovitz Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ghj Part of the History Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Recommended Citation Labovitz, Hannah (2021) "The Complex Relationship between Jews and African Americans in the Context of the Civil Rights Movement," The Gettysburg Historical Journal: Vol. 20 , Article 8. Available at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ghj/vol20/iss1/8 This open access article is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Complex Relationship between Jews and African Americans in the Context of the Civil Rights Movement Abstract The Civil Rights Movement occurred throughout a substantial portion of the twentieth century, dedicated to fighting for equal rights for African Americans through various forms of activism. The movement had a profound impact on a number of different communities in the United States and around the world as demonstrated by the continued international attention marked by recent iterations of the Black Lives Matter and ‘Never Again’ movements. One community that had a complex reaction to the movement, played a major role within it, and was impacted by it was the American Jewish community. The African American community and the Jewish community were bonded by a similar exclusion from mainstream American society and a historic empathetic connection that would carry on into the mid-20th century; however, beginning in the late 1960s, the partnership between the groups eventually faced challenges and began to dissolve, only to resurface again in the twenty-first century.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae
    Curriculum Vita ROSETTA E. ROSS, Ph.D. Spelman College 350 Spelman Lane, SW Atlanta, GA 30314 (404) 270-5527/270-5523 (fax) Education 1995 Ph.D., Religion (Religious Ethics), concentration in Christian Ethics with a focus on religion and Civil Rights activism, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. 1989 M.Div., Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. 1979 M.A., English (American Literature), with a focus on the fiction of American author Joseph Heller, Howard University, Washington, District of Columbia. 1975 B.A., English, The College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina Teaching Posts 2003-present Professor of Religion, Spelman College. Associate Professor of Religion, Spelman College (2003-2011). 1999-2003 McVay Associate Professor of Ethics, United Theological Seminary. 1994-1999 Assistant Professor of Ethics, Interdenominational Theological Center. Other Experience 2008-2009 Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Howard University Divinity School. Spring, 2006 Visiting Scholar, Africa University, Mutare, Zimbabwe. Fall, 2002 Exchange Faculty, Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota. 1996-1997 Acting Director, Black Church Studies, Candler School of Theology, Emory University. Scholarly Foci Disciplinary Studies: Religious Studies, Christian Ethics. Sub-disciplinary Topics: Ethics and Social Justice The Civil Rights Movement; Religion and Black Women’s Activism; Womanist Religious Thought; Black Women Civil Rights Activists. Black Religions and Identity Religion and African American Identity; Continental and Diasporan African Women’s Religious Identities and Engagement. Religious Studies The Academic Study of Religions; Theory and Methods in Religious Studies. Research and Publications Books and Monographs Academic African American Women in the NAACP: Religion, Social Advocacy, and Self-Regard, in preparation. Black Women and Religious Cultures, New Journal Founder and Editor, first issue, Volume 1, Issue 1, November 2020, hosted by Manifold at the University of Minnesota Press.
    [Show full text]
  • A Theo-Ethical Analysis of Black Identity in Black Theological Discourse
    University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2018 "Traditioning" Blackness: A Theo-Ethical Analysis of Black Identity in Black Theological Discourse Ben Sanders III University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Ethics in Religion Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Sanders, Ben III, ""Traditioning" Blackness: A Theo-Ethical Analysis of Black Identity in Black Theological Discourse" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1442. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1442 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. “Traditioning” Blackness: A Theo-Ethical Analysis of Black Identity in Black Theological Discourse __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Ben Sanders III June 2018 Advisor: Dr. Theodore M. Vial ©Copyright by Ben Sanders III 2018 All Rights Reserved Author: Ben Sanders III Title: “Traditioning” Blackness: A Theo-Ethical Analysis of Black Identity in Black Theological Discourse Advisor: Dr. Theodore M. Vial Degree Date: June 2018 ABSTRACT The emergence of James Cone’s black liberation theology in the late-1960s and early 1970s marked both a radical challenge to and a historical transformation of the fields of religious and theological studies.
    [Show full text]
  • American Book Awards 2004
    BEFORE COLUMBUS FOUNDATION PRESENTS THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS 2004 America was intended to be a place where freedom from discrimination was the means by which equality was achieved. Today, American culture THE is the most diverse ever on the face of this earth. Recognizing literary excel- lence demands a panoramic perspective. A narrow view strictly to the mainstream ignores all the tributaries that feed it. American literature is AMERICAN not one tradition but all traditions. From those who have been here for thousands of years to the most recent immigrants, we are all contributing to American culture. We are all being translated into a new language. BOOK Everyone should know by now that Columbus did not “discover” America. Rather, we are all still discovering America—and we must continue to do AWARDS so. The Before Columbus Foundation was founded in 1976 as a nonprofit educational and service organization dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature. The goals of BCF are to provide recognition and a wider audience for the wealth of cultural and ethnic diversity that constitutes American writing. BCF has always employed the term “multicultural” not as a description of an aspect of American literature, but as a definition of all American litera- ture. BCF believes that the ingredients of America’s so-called “melting pot” are not only distinct, but integral to the unique constitution of American Culture—the whole comprises the parts. In 1978, the Board of Directors of BCF (authors, editors, and publishers representing the multicultural diversity of American Literature) decided that one of its programs should be a book award that would, for the first time, respect and honor excellence in American literature without restric- tion or bias with regard to race, sex, creed, cultural origin, size of press or ad budget, or even genre.
    [Show full text]
  • Jeanne Theoharis a Life History of Being Rebellious
    Want to Start a Revolution? Gore, Dayo, Theoharis, Jeanne, Woodard, Komozi Published by NYU Press Gore, Dayo & Theoharis, Jeanne & Woodard, Komozi. Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle. New York: NYU Press, 2009. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/10942 Access provided by The College Of Wooster (14 Jan 2019 17:21 GMT) 5 “A Life History of Being Rebellious” The Radicalism of Rosa Parks Jeanne Theoharis In all these years . it’s strange . but maybe not . nobody asks . about my life . if I have children . why I moved to Detroit . what I think . about what we tried . to do. Something needs to be said . about Rosa Parks . other than her feet . were tired. Lots of people . on that bus . and many before . and since . had tired feet . lots of people . still do . they just don’t know . where to plant them. Nikki Giovanni, “Harvest for Rosa Parks”1 On October 30, 2005, Rosa Parks became the first woman and second African American to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. Forty thou- sand Americans—including President and Mrs. Bush—came to pay their respects. Thousands more packed her seven-hour funeral celebration at the Greater Grace Temple of Detroit and waited outside to see a horse- drawn carriage carry Mrs. Parks’s coffin to the cemetery.2 Yet what is com- monly known—and much of what was widely eulogized—about Parks is a troubling distortion of what actually makes her fitting for such a national tribute.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Theology and a Legacy of Oppression
    Black theology and a legacy of oppression M. Shawn Copeland June 24, 2014 For white people living in the United States, the entanglement of Christianity with chattel slavery and antiblack racism forms a set of deep and confusing paradoxes. As a nation, we understand ourselves in terms of freedom, but we have been unable to grapple with our depriving blacks of freedom in the name of white prosperity and with our tolerance of legalized racial segregation and discrimination. As a nation, we have been shaped by racism, habituated to its presence, indifferent to its lethal capacity to inflict lingering human damage. Too often, Christians not only failed to defy slavery and condemn tolerance of racism; they supported it and benefited from these evils and ignored the very Gospel they had pledged to preach. Not surprisingly, 11 a.m. on Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour in Christian America, yet most white Christian theologians have given little attention to slavery or racism. In the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the black liberation theologian James H. Cone denounced the lukewarm responses of mainline Protestant and Catholic Christians to the plight of black Americans as well as the willful blindness of Christian theologians. He declared racism to be America’s original sin and proposed the concept of black theology. 1 When confronted with this unseemly history, many Catholics argue the “immigrant thesis,” which dates the bulk of Catholic European immigration from the 19th century, thereby exempting Catholics from earlier slaveholding and active participation in racism.
    [Show full text]
  • Presidential Address CONFESSIONS of a WHITE RACIST CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN
    • CTSA PROCEEDINGS 58 (2003): 64-82 • Presidential Address CONFESSIONS OF A WHITE RACIST CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN INTRODUCTION In the following remarks, I am trying to respond to three challenges. The first one comes from our soon-to-be president, Shawn Copeland. She asks: How are we theologians to speak God's word in these times? How are we to understand our theological vocation? How are we to offer what we have to the struggle for authentic human liberation from within our culture? How shall the next generation of theologians remember us and the age in which we have come of age? Shall we be shamed into confessing that our shoulders sagged in recognition of the cost of truth? Shall we surrender our most cherished principles and values to expediency? Shall we be forced to admit that the cost of our own religious, moral, and intellectual conversion was too steep? What do our times call on theologians to become?1 The second challenge is a question from James H. Cone. Its barb is even sharper. Cone says: Racism is one of the great contradictions of the gospel in modern times. White theologians who do not oppose racism publicly and rigorously engage it in their writings are part of the problem and must be exposed as the enemies of justice. No one, therefore, can be neutral or silent in the face of this great evil.2 We Catholics are among these silent White theologians and Cone summons us in particular to account for ourselves. "What is it," he asks, "that renders White Catholic .
    [Show full text]
  • Modernism A1id Its Discontents E:Xplorations Contested Terradi Classics of Democracy
    ·,·.,._ Fall 1983 A JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RENEWAL AND RADICAL CHANGE Editorial I 2 Theme Note I 7 MODERNISM A1ID ITS DISCONTENTS Sheldon S. Wolin I From Progress to Modernization: The Conservative Turn I 9 William E. Connolly I Progress, Growth, and Pessimism in America I 22 Fran~ois Partant I Development: End of An Era? I 32 George Shulman I The Pastoral Idyll of democracy I 43 Michael S. Roth I Opening a Dialogue between Cultural Conservatism and Modernism I 55 E:XPLORATIONS Richard Stith I A Critique of Abortion Rights I 60 David F. Noble I Present Tense Technology: Part Three l 7l Maximilien Rubel I Marx's Concept of Democracy I 94 CONTESTED TERRADI Michael Rogin I In Defense of the New Left I 106 Frederick C. Stem I The "Seriousness" of Simone Weil I 117 . ··.·.~··: Leslie W. Dunbar I Meiklejohn's Commitment to Freedom I 128 CLASSICS OF DEMOCRACY Joyce Appleby I Jefferson: A Political Reappraisal I 139 Contributors I 146 Index to Volume Three I 149 EDITORIAL ost Americans do not observe or experience politics firsthand. Under a M system of representative government they depend upon their elected rep­ resentatives to convey, by words and symbolic gestures, what conditions are like in the political world: how the republic is faring, what we need reasonably fear and what we may reasonably hope. We expect that politicans will not only act but interpret reality for us, tell us what it is and what it means. Acknowledging that certain circumstances may compel a politician to lie or to be less than candid or that often he or she may lack information or have failed to think carefully, there remains a responsibility for truthfulness in the public realm that transcends the exceptions and is prior to them.
    [Show full text]