America’s Unholy Ghosts
The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics
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- 77,99 zł
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- 77,99 zł
Publisher Description
America's Unholy Ghosts examines the DNA of the ideologies that shape our nation, ideologies that are as American as apple pie but that too often justify and perpetuate racist ideas and racial inequalities. MLK challenged us to investigate the "ideational roots of race hate" and Ghosts does just that by examining a philosophical "trinity"--Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith--whose works collectively helped to institutionalize, imagine, and ingrain racist ideologies into the hearts and minds of the American people.
As time passed, America's racial imagination evolved to form people incapable of recognizing their addiction to racist ideas. Thus, Ghosts comes to a close with the brilliant faith and politics of Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to write the conscience of the Prophetic Black Church onto American hearts, minds, and laws. If our nation's racist instincts still haunt our land, so too do our hopes and desires for a faith and politics marked by mercy, justice, and equity--and there is no better guide to that land than the Prophetic Black Church and the one who saw such a land from the mountaintop.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his sharp debut, Goza, former pastor at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, Tex., writes with passion about the racist and classist roots of America's political and religious institutions. Grounding his work in the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith, Goza convincingly argues that America's Founding Fathers deliberately designed a racist and inequitable society. In his estimation, America's founders, basing their thinking on the ideas of Locke, structured government around protecting property rights rather than promoting the common good. Goza goes on to illustrate how the founders also, influenced by Hobbess, concluded that equality did not rest in economic equity. And, finally, Smith (unintentionally) created a potent image for justifying inequality with his idea of an economic "invisible hand" that would eventually balance out wealth. With this new economic paradigm, Goza asserts, justice became an exercise in punishing those who challenged the status quo, rather than a system for ensuring a more just society. Goza also argues that Christianity, around the time of the Renaissance, began rooting itself in individual salvation, which created a break from its historic pursuit of the common good. Within these frameworks, Goza concludes, it became possible to justify ignoring racism and economic inequity. Goza's ability to sharply discern and clearly explain ideas underlying American thinking will open important conversations about the nature of equality.