Publisher Description
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 Rivers Before Us helps chart a new course toward a genuinely pluralistic democracy.
Beginning with contemporary efforts to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in America, Jones returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. Along the way, he shows us the connections between Emmett Till and the Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto in the Mississippi Delta, between the lynching of three Black circus workers and the mass execution of thirty-eight Lakota men in Duluth, and between the murder of 300 African Americans during the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa and the Trail of Tears.
From this vantage point, Jones shows how the enslavement of Africans was not America’s original sin but, rather, the continuation of acts of genocide and dispossession flowing from the first European contact with Native Americans. These deeds were justified by people who embraced the 15th century Doctrine of Discovery: the belief that God had designated all territory not inhabited or controlled by Christians as their new promised land.
This reframing of American origins explains how the founders of the United States could build the philosophical framework for a democratic society on a foundation of mass racial violence—and why this paradox survives today in the form of white Christian nationalism. Through stories of people navigating these contradictions in three communities, Jones illuminates the possibility of a new American future in which we finally fulfill the promise of a pluralistic democracy.
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“Revelatory…A searing, stirring outline of the historical and contemporary significance of white Christian nationalism.”
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Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About Robert P. Jones
Robert P. Jones is the founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and a leading scholar and commentator on religion and politics. Jones writes a column for The Atlantic online on politics, culture, and religion and appears regularly in a “Faith by the Numbers” segment on Interfaith Voices, the nation’s leading religion news magazine on public radio. He is frequently featured in major national media such as CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others.
About Holter Graham
Holter Graham, winner of three of AudioFile magazine’s Best Voice of the Year awards, is a stage, television, and screen actor. He has recorded numerous audiobooks and earned multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. As an actor, his film credits include Fly Away Home, Maximum Overdrive, Hairspray, and The Diversion, a short film which he acted in and produced. On television, he has appeared in Army Wives, Damages, As the World Turns, Rescue Me, Law & Order, and New York Undercover. He received a BA degree from Skidmore College and an MFA from Vermont College.