Christian Nation or Oppressor Nation?

Is the United States of America built upon the rock of Christianity or the sands of oppression?

Joe A. Feagin, a sociologist, may be America's top expert on white racism and its impact on various minorities; he has written or co-authored 60 books, mostly on the topic of race and racism.  Late in his academic career, he was puzzled by the enduring persistence of white racism in America so he became a historian of sorts and explored the time of our founding fathers.  There he found his answer---slavery and racism were everywhere in the American cultural and historical DNA.  He titled his book Racist America, now in a 2014, 3rd edition.

Significantly, Joe Feagin gives Jennifer Harvey's book Whiteness and Morality high praise:

     Drawing on recent interdisciplinary research and ancient moral imperatives, Harvey courageously probes deep truths of U.S. foundations in genocide and slavery.  If Christian ethicists are serious about social justice, she avers, they must aggressively generate moral crises for self-named 'whites' who have maintained a nation created in extreme racial oppressions.  Such disruptions encompass nation-shaking apologies and massive material reparations---the only ways those racialized as whites can become fully human.  Harvey thereby suggests tough answers to an ultimate question:  Is the United States actually an illegal and morally illegitimate nation?

For Feagin, the question  Is the U.S. an oppressor nation at heart? is not a trivial question.  Both Feagin and Harvey would answer a resounding YES!

After reading both Racist America and Whiteness and Morality, these are my reflections:

* Our historical past haunts our sociological present.
* America was founded on slave trade, slavery, genocide, stolen Native American and Mexican land, all legitimated by a deeply flawed, Americanized Christianity.
* In 2016, white ethnocentrism and white oppression are still widespread.
* The North is a racist as the South.
* Anglo America needs to REPENT:
          Repentance as in fundamental change, not just a verbal apology.
          Restitute---genuine repentance requires restitution, think Zacchaeus; no restitution, no repentance.
          Repair---the people and communities damaged by oppression need to rebuilt.
* Anglos need to create a kingdom of God theology that destroys ethnocentrism and oppression; then replaces them with love and justice.

In the American context, apart from Anglo repentance (which is rare since self-righteous people seldom repent), WASPness is irreparably damaging and demonic.  The incessant American ideological propaganda is that whiteness is divine, that blackness is demonic, dangerous and dysfunctional.  In reality, white Christian is an oxymoron because most Anglos are oppressive and devilish.  Especially when it is combined with perverted religion, the rich and the male, as is the common pattern in American history.

In America, the word white was created to justify and clarify white supremacy, slavery.

I dare to you read the following books in this order:

1.  Inheriting the [Slave] Trade.
2.  Between the World and Me.
3.  Whiteness and Morality.
4.  Dear White Christians.
5.  The New Jim Crow.

And if you are a glutton for punishment, add

6.  W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet.
7.  Reforging the White Republic.

Then go back to the Bible and read Amos and the gospel of Luke.

Then . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .