It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, September 03, 2023
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Vatican financial scandals: Corruption, stupidity or both?
A deeply tangled tale must be followed by systemic reform and effective oversight.
A Vatican trial of 10 people accused of financial crimes, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, has gone on for two years. File photo from Nov. 17, 2021, by Vatican Media
(RNS) — For Americans, making sense of the Vatican trial of 10 defendants charged with financial crimes is nearly impossible.
The charges are a tangle of alleged corruption and misconduct. At the heart of the trial is a London luxury property investment that lost the Vatican almost $200 million. Then there are payments to a woman who was supposed to help free some nuns from kidnappers but allegedly spent the money on luxury goods, holidays and other extravagancies.
Finally, there were loans and other payments made to a charity run by a cardinal’s brother. Investigators found forged invoices and receipts introducing doubt as to whether the money was used for charitable purposes.
Next, there is the legal process that is foreign to American audiences raised on watching legal TV shows featuring juries, judges who act as referees and the right to a speedy trial. The Vatican trial does not have a jury; instead it has three judges who can direct probing questions at the prosecution and defense. The judges will rule on the guilt or innocence of the accused at the end of a proceeding that has gone on for two years.
But at its heart are the complexities of any trial. What are the facts? How does the law apply? And which figures in the trial are credible?
One thing is clear. Those involved in the scandal were either corrupt, stupid or both.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, left, and Cecilia Marogna. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, left. Image via social media, right)
The central defendant in the trial is Cardinal Angelo Becciu, formerly sostituto, or chief of staff, in the Vatican Secretariat of State, and traditionally the third most powerful post in the church. He was involved in the London real estate deal and made payments to his brother’s charity and to Cecilia Marogna, a self-styled diplomacy and national security consultant who, they say, was hired by Becciu to save the nuns.
As the trial began, Pope Francis removed Becciu from his Vatican job and from the College of Cardinals.
Others accused include Vatican officials, Italian businessmen and lawyers with whom the Vatican made deals or paid commissions. The charges include fraud, money laundering, extortion, embezzlement and abuse of office. Some of the accused outsiders are refusing to show up for the trial.
Becciu denies all wrongdoing, but neither a 125,000-euro donation to his brother’s charity nor the more than half a million euros paid to Marogna pass the smell test: There is an obvious conflict of interest when an official gives money to his brother. Prosecutors say Marogna lacked the qualifications for the work she was supposed to perform for Becciu.
The London real estate fiasco, with its multiple deals and contracts of dubious value to the Vatican, raises the most pertinent question: Did the businessmen outside the Vatican take advantage of foolish and incompetent officials, or were the Vatican officials conspiring with the outsiders? Did the scandal start with stupidity but transition into criminality as the players attempted to cover up their mistakes?
The London property at the heart of the Vatican financial scandal. Image via Google Maps
For example, when the Vatican attempted to exit from the London deal it decided to first buy out its partner. The contract that the Vatican signed allowed the Italian investors to retain control over the fate of the London property. As a result, the Vatican had to pay more money to finally get control of the investment in order to sell it.
Why did no legal expert spot the problem before the contract was signed?
The prosecution has not been without its problems. Until recently, the prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, has been saying that the money for the London real estate deal came exclusively from Peter’s Pence, the pope’s collection for the poor. Just last week, as closing arguments began, the lead prosecutor finally acknowledged that money came from other Vatican sources.
The prosecution has made some odd choices in its indictments, particularly that of René Bruelhart, a Swiss lawyer with a stellar reputation, whose watchdog authority only extends to the Vatican Bank, not the London investment.
When the prosecution rests it case and the defense has had its opportunity to respond, the judges will have until December to pass judgment.
There is a silver lining to the scandal. In the past, all of this would have been swept under the rug. The money would have been lost, but it would have been kept quiet to avoid scandal. In 2019, when the Vatican bank refused a bailout loan to the Secretariat of State, the current cover-up began to unravel. The bank reported the problem to the appropriate Vatican authorities, who then began an investigation that led to the prosecutions.
An exterior view of the offices of the Vatican bank in Vatican City, Jan. 28, 2014. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
The Vatican bank, thanks to reforms begun by Pope Benedict XVI, is now the most reputable financial agency in the Vatican. There is a lesson here.
The Vatican bank was cleaned up by submitting it to outside supervision from Moneyval, the international monitoring body created by the Council of Europe to crack down on money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Cleaning up the bank involved bringing in outside auditors and experts. Since forensic accountants are not cheap, this was an expensive process.
Francis has not been willing to spend the equivalent amount of money to clean up other aspects of Vatican finances. This is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
The pope needs to appoint and adequately pay a lay finance czar with the authority and sufficient staff to manage Vatican finances. This includes the power to investigate every office and person in the Vatican, including the Secretariat of State and the cardinals. Anyone who does not cooperate must be fired.
This is not rocket science. Governments, as well as for-profit and nonprofit corporations, have been doing this for decades. But it will not be cheap if the Vatican hires, as it must, financial experts at competitive salaries. This is the only way to clean up the Vatican and restore confidence in its financial management.
The Vatican response to financial scandal must not be one-off dealing with the symptoms. Systemic reform is called for so that scandals do not continue.
Richard Dawkins displays Helen Joyce’s book “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality” while interviewing Joyce during an episode of Dawkins’ podcast called “The Poetry of Reality.” Video screen grab
(RNS) — For decades, the renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins urged his readers to use science and reason to counter religious misinformation. Now Dawkins is abandoning both to spread anti-transgender rhetoric embraced by religious conservatives.
During a recent episode of his podcast “The Poetry of Reality,” Dawkins spoke with author Helen Joyce about the “influence of gender ideology on society.” There was no mention of how Joyce has previously said transgender people who have transitioned are “damaged” and “a huge problem to a sane world.” Nor did Dawkins bring up how she believes “reducing” the number of people who transition is a moral imperative.
Dawkins not only agreed with many of her points, he added that “sex really is binary” and that kids are choosing to be trans under pressure from both their peers and teachers. He also insisted that people like him were the real victims of abuse, wondering why “all the bullying (goes) one way.” (In fact, a study from 2021 found that trans people are four times more likely than cisgender people to “experience violent victimization.”)
The podcast episode dropped days after Dawkins wrote an essay for the British magazine The New Statesman answering the question, “What is a woman?” Dawkins’ reductive response boiled down to “A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes,” as if the absence of a single chromosome answers the question. That flies in the face of what many scientists have said about the subject.
“There are cisgender women who have XY sex chromosomes, and many other exceptions to binary sex. Around 1 in 1,000 people are intersex,” said Jey McCreight, a science communicator with a Ph.D. in genomics who has consulted on trans inclusivity for biotech companies. McCreight added in an email: “That’s pretty common as far as biology goes. A study may treat sex as binary out of practicality, but scientists understand that reality is more nuanced.”
Despite acknowledging those exceptions exist, Dawkins casually dismisses them, just as he dismisses the genetic influences many experts believe contribute to the development of trans identities. Those exceptions and influences are reasons the American Medical Association and other major medical organizations have supported gender-affirming care.
Dawkins also rejects definitions of womanhood that extend beyond chromosomes. In 2021, he went even further, comparing trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who famously (and controversially) identified as Black. Suggesting trans people were making a similar choice, he tweeted, “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men.” He insisted he wasn’t disparaging trans people — most of whom say their gender identity is not a choice at all, but rather just who they are — and said he used their names and pronouns as a “courtesy.”
But that didn’t smooth things over. The American Humanist Association, which gave Dawkins its 1996 Humanist of the Year award, rescinded the honor in response.
At a time when 76% of atheists accept the existence of trans people, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, while only 38% of all American adults feel the same, it’s jarring to see the world’s most famous atheist use his massive platform to downplay or deny trans identities. That’s especially true when trans people in the U.S. are under attack from conservative media outlets and legislators eager to label them predators or “groomers.” The advocacy group GLAAD said 2023 was “on pace to be a record-setting year for state legislation targeting LGBTQ adults and youth,” including laws banning or limiting trans individuals’ access to health care and participation in sports.
For decades, the most vocal opponents of LGBTQ rights were religious conservatives making the argument that acceptance violated God’s wishes. Lately, though, as the lines between politics and religion have blurred, conservatives have been citing science, rather than religion, to justify their positions. In response to a trans-supporting colleague, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene hung a sign outside her office saying “There are TWO genders … Trust The Science!” A recent anti-trans film by conservative provocateur Matt Walsh attempted to make a scientific rather than religious case against trans people. And author J.K. Rowling, whom Dawkins called “very brave” in his podcast, has couched her inflammatory rhetoric in biological terms.
What’s most frustrating about Dawkins’ shift in focus is that his otherwise excellent science writing is being tarnished by his bizarre obsession.
Much as fans of the Harry Potter series are now conflicted about the book and movie franchise and its creator, I can no longer recommend Dawkins’ books to people who want to educate themselves about evolution.
It’s also maddening because Dawkins remains the go-to atheist for reporters and media outlets. There are more atheists who are LGBTQ, women and people of color than ever before, yet it’s Dawkins who often takes center stage whenever there are public conversations about atheism. That’s not his fault, of course: He literally wrote the most popular book on the subject. But it’s irresponsible to use his platforms to spread ignorance on a topic that critics have repeatedly said he doesn’t understand and often gets flat-out wrong.
His words also have the effect of further alienating LGBTQ people when they’re already marginalized by many powerful religious leaders. Why would they want to become atheists when supposedly “reasonable” people are spreading the same lies they hear in churches?
Trans people are currently subject to political attacks and dehumanizing laws. Dawkins should spend less time acting like this issue boils down to basic biology and more time advocating for LGBTQ people who have been harmed by religious — and now supposedly scientific — bigotry.
(Hemant Mehta is a writer, podcaster and atheist activist. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
Why Christian Nationalism makes American Christians less Christlike
What if the greatest danger to the witness of Christianity in the United States wasn't an outside threat? What if the danger was closer to home and looked so familiar that it was able to evade detection?
In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, a man holds a Bible as Trump supporters gather outside the Capitol in Washington. The Christian imagery and rhetoric on view during the Capitol insurrection sparked renewed debate about the societal effects of melding Christian faith with an exclusionary breed of nationalism. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
(RNS) — Growing up in a primarily white, conservative Christian community, I repeatedly heard warnings concerning what was going to destroy our Christian faith and the United States with it — feminism, divorce, homosexuality, Secularism or non-Christian faiths.
In presidential election years, these threats became even more acute.
Leaders instructed us to “vote our values” and ensure God’s blessing on the United States by placing the right people in positions of power to turn our nation back to God. Many well-meaning and earnest Christians, like myself, fell in line and did what we felt we had to do in order to return the United States to its Christian roots.
It was in this context I was taught to love Jesus, love my neighbor and seek to do God’s will. Being a good American meant being a good Christian. And being a good Christian meant accepting the correct beliefs, caring for those around you, standing up for what is right and advocating for our Christian convictions in the public square.
By doing these things, we could keep the dangers threatening America at bay.
But what if we were wrong? Not about the importance of living our faith out every day, at home and in the public square, but about the nature of the threats facing the country.
What if the greatest danger to the witness of Christianity in the United States wasn’t any of these outside threats? What if the danger was closer to home and looked so familiar that it was able to evade detection?
After years of examining Christian nationalism as a social scientist, I’m convinced the greatest threat to Christianity in the United States is not outside forces.
Instead, it is white Christian nationalism. Over and over, I find evidence that the practical fruit of Christian nationalism is not love; it is power, control, domination, fear and violence.
Christian nationalism makes American Christians less Christlike.
Here’s what I mean.
White Christian nationalism is a cultural framework asserting that civic life in the United States should be organized according to a particular form of conservative Christianity. In addition to the standard Christian religious and theological beliefs, Christian nationalism brings with it a host of cultural assumptions about who really matters and who should be in charge of life in the United States — primarily white Christian citizens.
Christian nationalism is not interested in a government for the people by the people, but rather for a particular people, by a particular people. Christian nationalism weakens the church by demanding it seek earthly, self-interested power, rather than seeking to support and serve the marginalized.
Central to Christian nationalism are three idols that make promises of protection and provision to American Christians and require allegiance: Power, Fear and Violence. These three idols co-opt our theological imaginations and distort our knowledge of God and neighbor. They lead us to betray our loyalty to Jesus and the gospel.
Power is the ability to get others to do what you want, despite their resistance.
Wielding power to serve one’s own group is tempting, especially when facing the political realities of living in a pluralistic, democratic society where collaboration and compromise are vital.
But when it comes down to democracy or power, white Christian nationalism chooses power every time.
Fear and a sense of threat, the second idol of Christian nationalism, focuses on a perceived loss of privileged access to power. It seeks to protect the people like us against “them.” It urges Christians to fear their neighbors — those with different skin colors, nationalities or religious beliefs — rather than love them.
Violence is a third idol of Christian nationalism. It is intimately intertwined with worshipping power and demonizing others through fear. When the fires of fear and threat are constantly stoked because “they” are out to steal “our” rightful power, violence is a natural result.
But the use of violence against our neighbors signals a distrust of the work of God in the world and seeing the image of God in all people. This weakens the church by building up dividing walls of hostility, rather than breaking them down.
Two clear examples of these three idols are our country’s continued struggle with racism and xenophobia. Christian nationalism weakens the church and threatens democracy by blinding us to the cries of those speaking out against social inequality. It obscures the structural and systemic causes of racial inequality. And because it claims that the United States has a special relationship with the Christian God, any criticism of America is seen as an attack on God and the Christian faith.
Ironically, the Bible itself is filled with criticism of God’s people when they fail to live up to God’s commands, and especially when they mistreat their neighbors.
I am convinced that we can all — whether Christian or not — recognize that Christian nationalism only leads to harm for our neighbors and betrays more loving expressions of the Christian gospel.
As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. showed us, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Injustice experienced by one community is injustice experienced by all.
When Jesus came he preached the Kingdom of God and a gospel that was good news to the poor, oppressed and imprisoned (Luke 4:16-21).
He was not only talking about our personal salvation but about abundant life for everyone.
Once we see the gospel as good news for the present, good news for the marginalized, good news for the prisoner, good news for the poor, good news for the blind and good news for the oppressed, we can begin to take the evidence that social science hands us about Christian nationalism and recognize that this ideology limits — and in many cases outright opposes — the work Jesus claimed he came to do and commanded us to do likewise (Matt. 22:37–40) — love the Lord your God, love your neighbor as yourself.
I have long wrestled with the implications of Christian nationalism for Christianity, both professionally and in my own faith journey. I hope the American church can move toward expressions of Christianity that allow it to regain its prophetic voice and no longer make it the servant of one particular vision for this nation.
By confronting Christian nationalism in our midst we can journey toward a future where everyone is allowed to flourish.
(Andrew Whitehead is associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where he codirects the Association of Religion Data Archives at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He is the author of “American Idolatry:How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
A United States and Christian flag are sandwiched together (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
This weekend, a racist shooter – Ryan Palmeter – murdered three Black people – Angela Carr, Anolt Laguerre, Jr., and Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion. This is the latest example of overt, growing, and gruesome anti-Black violence in our nation.
We've heard from our leaders time and time again that we need to end racism. But we can't just keep giving the issue lip service. To create true change, we need to peel back the layers, understand how we got here, and defeat the forces that have allowed violence against Black bodies to proliferate.
For us, as people of faith, that means acknowledging the perverse role of a distorted Christianity in fueling rampant racism.
This distorted Christianity is at the core of our nation's deep history of racism. Starting from the very beginning of European settlement, colonists used the Bible to claim Christian explorers had a divine right to seize lands that were not inhabited by Christians. They also argued that they had a godly duty to bring the Bible to native lands. These "Biblical" missions left fields of blood and fire behind them.
Then, as colonists took over the South, Christianity became a lynchpin of slavery. Faith leaders and policymakers professed that the Bible contained passages that clearly supported enslavement. For example, they claimed that Noah's curse on Ham in Genesis 9:20-27 justified the subjugation of Black people. In some areas, slaveholders also distributed tainted Bibles that removed mentions of freedom and equality.
It is these types of distorted uses of the Bible that allowed many Christians to leave church on Sunday morning, and then attend a lynching on Sunday afternoon.
Keep moving through our history, and you'll see endless examples of purported Christians using the Bible for racist ends: Enforcing segregation, blocking civil rights movements, forbidding interracial marriage, creating a racist incarceration system, committing yet more acts of violence, and more.
Fast-forward to today, and far-right Christians continue their hateful crusade. They have supercharged their white supremacist rhetoric and pushed for policies that uplift white communities and denigrate Black and Brown ones. For instance, many far-right Christians have fought tooth and nail to redact our nation's history of brutally enslaving human beings. They have also demonized Black Lives Matter, denied systemic racism at every turn, and conjured fear that white people are in danger. And all of this is imbued with the language of a white supremacist Christian piety.
And the violence continues. In 2015, a white supremacist influenced by Christian nationalism entered a predominantly Black church in Charleston and killed nine people during a Bible study. Last year, a shooter with ties to white Christian nationalism stormed into a grocery store in Buffalo and killed 10 Black people. These are but two of too many instances to date in our country.
Crucially, while the Jackson shooter hasn't yet been overtly connected to Christianity, the racist propaganda that fueled his hatred is grounded in far-right Christian forces. Virtually every white supremacist post, video, meme, and social media group can be traced to our nation's religious history.
It's particularly alarming how far-right Christianity can quietly infiltrate people's lives. A small cohort of white Supremacists has become particularly adept at using online platforms to gently draw in new followers and espouse hateful ideas. Those carefully chosen words quickly translate into discrimination and violence.
We simply can't dismantle racism unless we understand and unearth its far-right Christian roots. It's up to all of us to speak truth to power in a way that ensures every life matters. From individuals who can say something if they see something, to faith leaders who can speak and preach messages of love, to lawmakers who can ensure justice rolls down, we all have a responsibility to engage.
Every moment we delay puts more Black and Brown lives in danger. It's time to own up to our nation's history and use the Bible for good.
By SERENE JONES Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is president of Union Theological Seminary, a globally recognized graduate school of religion devoted to putting faith into practice for the common good.
MORE FROM SERENE JONES By REV. DR. LAKEESHA WALROND Rev. Dr. LaKeesha Walrond is president of New York Theological Seminary.
Robert Jones’ new book roots white supremacy in 500-year-old papal decree
The Doctrine of Discovery shaped the way America’s white, European Christian settlers saw themselves and their mission and gave rise to uncontrollable outbursts of violence.
"The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy And the Path to a Shared American Future" and author Robert P. Jones.
(RNS) — Many Americans have long accepted that slavery was America’s original sin.
But what if it wasn’t? What if that original sin stretches back 500 years to the forced removal and, in many cases, extermination of Native Americans by America’s white European settlers?
And what if there’s a religious decree, dating back to the late 15th century, that gave divine sanction to the robbery, enslavement and violent oppression of nonwhites?
That’s the argument pollster Robert P. Jones makes in his new book, “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.”
The book, which releases Sept. 5, locates the origin of America’s race problem in the Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Discovery. In that 1493 edict, Pope Alexander VI provided a blueprint for seizing “undiscovered lands” that were “not previously possessed by any Christian owner” and subduing the people on that land.
Jones makes the case that the doctrine’s underlying worldview of divine entitlement shaped the way America’s white, European Christian settlers saw themselves and their mission and justified outbursts of violence, dispossession of Indigenous people and the enslavement of Blacks.
In his book, Jones focuses on three sites where the scars of white supremacy are, as he says, “carved across the land” and where earlier violence begot more violence: the Mississippi Delta, where Choctaw Indians were forcibly removed from the land and where, in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered; Minnesota, site of the mass deportation of the Dakota people and the execution of 38 Dakota men, followed in 1920 by the lynching of three Black circus workers; and finally, Oklahoma, where the Osage people suffered theft and forced assimilation and where the Tulsa race massacre took place in 1921.
“If we do the hard work of pushing upriver, we find that the same waters that produced the Negro problem also spawned the Indian problem,” Jones writes. “If we dare to go further, at the headwaters is the white Christian problem.”
Religion News Service spoke to Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, about his book and how a 500-year-old church doctrine — recently repudiated by the Vatican — persists in the rise of today’s anti-democratic defense of white Christian nationalism. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
When did you first come across the Doctrine of Discovery?
It wasn’t until I was really digging in and reading Native American scholars who were writing about the origins of the country. People like Vine Deloria Jr., for example, had a piece called “An Open Letter to the Heads of the Christian Churches in America,” that he wrote in the early 1970s, where he talked about the Doctrine of Discovery and the centrality of that doctrine to the way white Christian people treated Indigenous people in this country from its inception. Over the last 50 years it’s been a common theme, particularly among Indigenous authors and authors of color. But, you know, I went to a Southern Baptist seminary, and even in my Ph.D. program at Emory, it just never figured prominently in the history to which I was exposed.
Tell me why you chose the three sites that you did.
For different reasons. I’m from Mississippi. So that was a story close to home. On the ground in Tallahatchie County — where events happened — there were no markers telling the story of Emmett Till prior to 20 years ago. So if you had driven through the Delta in the year 2000, you would have seen literally nothing there. Tulsa, Oklahoma, had been on the national radar because we had just passed the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. I thought there was more of a story to tell there, particularly how it connects with Native American history in Oklahoma. And then, I didn’t want to be accused of cherry-picking stories from red states or the South. I wanted to write also about something in the far north. I had come across the story of this lynching in Duluth, and in my last book, “White Too Long,” I wrote just a couple of pages about it, and I realized it was a much bigger story to tell there. And so I went back to that story again.
You mention The New York Times’ 1619 Project and your own realization of its limitations — that it doesn’t tell Native American history. Was that what led you to this book?
I think the root of it is bigger than that. The 1619 Project has been vitally important for resetting the way we think about American history. But I think we need to push back even further. We have more than a century of European contact with Indigenous people. That history is really important. The 1619 Project expanded the aperture beyond what we see on postage stamps and patriotic paintings of a bunch of white men gathered in Philadelphia around the table with their quill pens. Getting us beyond that picture of the beginnings of America was a herculean effort and vitally important. It’s just that I think we need to kind of keep moving to tell the story on a little bit of a bigger canvas.
So, is the Doctrine of Discovery America’s new origin story?
I want to be careful here not to commit my own sin of overreach — to say this is the date that we should declare as our nation’s beginning point because there are certainly things that led up to that point. But there are these kinds of watershed moments and, among them, 1493 is certainly an important one. Many of us learned that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, as the poem says. But it’s really the year he goes back to Spain and gets this permission and stamp of approval from the sitting pope at the time, Alexander VI, that puts the kind of full imprint of the church on conquering any lands that are possessed by non-Christians. If you were not Christian, then you didn’t have any inherent human rights.
How do you hope to change the conversation with this book?
We’re at a moment where we are arguing over history. We’ve seen Arkansas not counting AP African American history and fights in Florida over the status of AP American history. These are all about our origin stories. We’re caught in this moment because of the changing demographics of the country. What I’m hoping the book does is tell a bigger story.
What we often get — and I say as someone who was educated in Mississippi public schools — are words like “pioneers,” “settlers,” these kind of innocent words that I think don’t do any sort of justice to the violence that was wielded. Facing that history squarely is important if we’re going to be honest with ourselves about how we arrive to the place we’re at.
Frankly, everywhere you go in the country, the place names testify to this history. In the Mississippi Delta, there’s Tallahatchie County, a Native American name. There is DeSoto County right next door, which is named for Hernando de Soto, the Spanish conquistador who comes and claims all of that Mississippi watershed for Spain using the logic of the Doctrine of Discovery. If we’re going to get to a shared American future, we have to have a shared American story. And I think that is vitally important and white Christians have to be more honest about what that history is.
You strike a note of hopefulness about these three places for grappling with the tragedies that took place there. Are you more hopeful about America’s future?
Part of what I did for the book is I interviewed people who have been involved in these very local efforts and not in easy places. The Mississippi Delta is a tough place to do this kind of work. There’s not a lot of resources, it’s rural and fairly poor. And yet here, this intrepid group of citizens got together — white descendants of plantation owners, organizing alongside descendants of enslaved people and sharecroppers. I think that’s a real mending of the fabric at the very local level. Just a few weeks ago, we had President Joe Biden declare a new national monument to Emmett Till to be permanently funded, maintained and part of the National Park system.
You’re a public pollster. What’s the relationship between what you do at PRRI and your books about American history?
These books are written in my name. They’re not PRRI books. But there’s a question that we’ve asked for a couple of years now that really is at the heart of the matter: Are we a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians, or are we a pluralistic democracy where we are multireligious, multiracial and everybody stands on equal footing as citizens?
We have been struggling between these two questions our entire history and they’ve been fairly unresolved. About 30% of the country will say, for example, the United States was intended by God to be a promised land where European Christians could set an example for the rest of the world. But that means that by a margin of 2-to-1, Americans reject that vision of the country. You would think that might mean, OK, well, debate over. Let’s move on. On the other hand, it’s captured a majority of one of our two political parties. So it means we’re fighting over the way we are.
We are at this hinge point where this question is getting asked in a very forthright way. We’ve been there at other times: Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement. But now the demographics have changed so there’s no longer the supermajority of white Christian people in the country. So now the answer to that question matters in a way it didn’t for past generations. The books add social, historical and cultural context to the kind of things we’re capturing in public opinion polls today. When you understand the longer sweep of history, those things become less mysterious.
(This story was was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.)
Taking the story of white supremacy in America back to 1493, and examining contemporary communities in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma for models of racial repair, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy helps chart a new course toward a genuinely pluralistic democracy.
“Through its linking of narratives typically considered separately, the book provides a revelatory view of U.S. history and its guiding assumptions. . . . . A searing, stirring outline of the historical and contemporary significance of white Christian nationalism.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“Arresting and deeply researched, this unique account brings to the fore the deep-rooted sense of ‘divine entitlement, of European chosenness’ that has shaped so much of American history. It’s a rigorous and forceful feat of scholarship.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Blistering, bracing and brave . . . This book couldn’t be more timely in the courageous effort to close the gap between what we as a nation say we are and what we truly have been.” —Michael Eric Dyson, author of Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America
“In this elegantly crafted book, Robert P. Jones unearths harrowing and long forgotten stories of the racial violence inscribed on our nation’s past. Yet it is not a book without hope, for only by confronting our collective history can we begin to heal our nation’s wounds.” —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Professor of History and Gender Studies, Calvin University; author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
“Robert P. Jones is an extraordinary moral force in this country. The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy is his latest effort to help the nation imagine itself apart from the distorting effects of racism and the violent genocide of Indigenous people at its root. This book is the latest in his own personal journey as a white southerner from Mississippi, and I am thankful that he has shared it with all of us.” —Eddie S. Glaude Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University; author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lesson for Our Own
“An essential journey into the origins of America’s current identity crisis, told through the voices of people working across lines of race to create a truer vision of our shared history, and our future.” —Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
“Finally, a book that addresses white supremacy as more than a Black/white binary. Jones artfully moves from the colonial devastation, murder and displacement of American Indian to the degradation, and murder of African Americans in America after emancipation. White supremacy is rooted both legally and socially in the fifteenth-century canon law of Catholic papal bulls. And he demonstrates that this sentiment continues in the subliminal thinking and acting of Americans yet today.” —Tink Tinker (wazhazhe/Osage Nation), Professor Emeritus of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions, Iliff School of Theology
“Robert P. Jones has deepened our understanding of how Americans think about religion, justice and oppression. . . . This eloquent volume, by turns personal and analytical, calls us to face up to the past in order to build a more just and democratic future.” —E. J. Dionne Jr., senior fellow, the Brookings Institution; author of Our Divided Political Heart and co-author of 100% Democracy
“With brilliant research, rediscovery, and writing, Robert P. Jones once again demonstrates that it is time for ‘white’ Americans to uncover the history we have for so long purposefully and shamefully hidden. As Jesus said, and Jones shows, only truth telling can set us free. The work to which Jones calls us—a struggle for the very soul of the nation—will test our commitments to democracy and our faith.” —Jim Wallis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice, Georgetown University; author of America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege and the Bridge to America
