The Holy Trinity: God, America, and King Cotton

The story most Americans learned about cotton goes something like this: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, the South grew a lot of cotton, and then we had a Civil War about slavery. It's a sanitized tale that glides over the most important part—how a plant became a theology that reshaped not just the American economy but American Christianity itself.

Long before "In God We Trust" appeared on our currency, Americans had already perfected the art of baptizing economic interests in religious language. And nowhere was this alchemy more transformative than in the cotton fields that stretched across the American South. As cotton became the oil of the 19th century—the commodity that powered global economics and politics—the theological innovations required to justify its production would transform Christianity from a faith centered on a poor, crucified Messiah into something altogether different: a gospel perfectly tailored to economic exploitation.

This isn't merely historical curiosity; it's autobiography. As a descendant of Louisiana enslavers who owned plantations in the notorious Bayou Boeuf region—an area that historian Solomon Northup described as having "no Sabbath in the slave fields"—I bear the direct inheritance of theological stories created to sanctify torture in service to agricultural productivity. The theological framework that justified my ancestors' actions wasn't just abstract doctrine; it was family inheritance passed down alongside silver and land.

The Fiber That Changed the World

Before we explore how cotton transformed theology, we need to understand how it transformed everything else. For most of human history, cotton clothing was a luxury. The process of removing seeds from cotton fiber (ginning) was so labor-intensive that cotton garments were reserved for the wealthy. The historian Yuval Noah Harari notes in Sapiens that before the Industrial Revolution, the average European owned perhaps two shirts in a lifetime. Not two shirts at a time—two shirts, total.

All this changed with two revolutionary developments: First, Eli Whitney's cotton gin multiplied human productivity in separating seeds from fiber by a factor of fifty. Second, British innovations like the spinning jenny, water frame, and power loom created unprecedented demand for raw cotton. Suddenly, an obscure plant became the essential commodity in a new global economy.

This cotton revolution created an economic opportunity of staggering proportions. American soil—particularly land seized from indigenous peoples across the Deep South—proved ideal for cotton cultivation. By 1850, American cotton production had increased over a thousandfold from pre-Revolutionary levels. Cotton exports accounted for 60% of American export value. A global industry employing millions of workers across multiple continents depended on American cotton production.

The parallel to modern global commodities is striking. Cotton transformed global power structures like oil would in the 20th century and like the rare earth minerals essential for smartphones do today. British textile factories needed American cotton like modern tech companies need Congolese cobalt—desperately, non-negotiably, at any human cost.

Importantly, cotton finance ultimately spawned a booming financial and manufacturing industry in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago to finance commodities trade, meaning no American region or generation is innocent of plantation capitalism. As historian Sven Beckert documents in Empire of Cotton, the entire American economy became intertwined with the cotton trade, creating wealth far beyond the plantations themselves.

The First Theological Innovation: Redefining Humanity

But there was a problem. Cotton was extraordinarily labor-intensive. The same gin that made cotton processing efficient made cotton cultivation profitable at scales that demanded vast labor forces. The economics only worked with access to forced labor—enslaved people who could be compelled to work under conditions of extreme brutality.

Here's where theology enters the picture. Christianity, with its troublesome teachings about human equality before God and its emphasis on liberty in Christ, posed potential barriers to the cotton economy. Before cotton could transform the American economy, Christianity itself would need transformation.

This transformation began long before cotton's rise. As Willie James Jennings documents in The Christian Imagination, a profound theological shift happened in the 15th century when papal bulls fundamentally altered Christian understanding of human identity. Human worth, previously grounded in relationship to place and community, was replaced with a new framework based on utility to European commerce.

This theological shift created what Jennings calls a "racial scale of humanity"—a hierarchical system that categorized people according to their perceived proximity to European civilization. One's value was no longer rooted in bearing God's image but in one's usefulness to commerce. This new anthropology wasn't just a distortion of Christianity; it was a complete inversion, transforming a subversive faith founded on the radical equality of all people in Christ into a system that justified profound inequality.

The theological irony is breathtaking. Christianity began with the radical claim that in Christ, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free" (Galatians 3:28). This revolutionary theological assertion appears not only in Galatians but also in similar forms in Colossians 3:11 and is practically demonstrated in Paul's letter to Philemon, where he urges a slave owner to receive his runaway slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (Philemon 1:16). Yet by the time cotton became king, American Christianity had developed elaborate theological frameworks explaining why some image-bearers of God could be legally classified as property rather than persons.

And this wasn't limited just to African Americans. As J. Kameron Carter demonstrates in Race: A Theological Account, American Christianity developed a robust hierarchy of human value that shaped views of all non-Anglo Protestants. This hierarchy affected not only Black Americans but also Indigenous peoples, Asians, Latinos, Catholics, Jews, and even certain European immigrant groups like Italians, who were sometimes subjected to the same racial violence as African Americans in the late 19th century, particularly in the South.

Gods in Our Image: The Theology of Dominance

What happened to Christianity in the cotton states, northern financial centers, and the West's potential cotton lands offers a perfect case study of humanity's persistent tendency to create gods that legitimate our dominative schemes. The biblical writers were keenly aware of this tendency. The prophet Isaiah mockingly describes how people would cut down a tree, use part of it to cook their food, and then "from the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships" (Isaiah 44:15-17). The psalmist observed that those who make idols "become like them" (Psalm 115:8)—a profound insight into how our gods and our social systems mirror and reinforce each other.

Cotton Christianity exemplified this dynamic. Facing economic demands that contradicted Jesus's teachings, cotton-dependent Christians didn't abandon faith—they reshaped it. They created a deity who conveniently blessed their economic arrangements, who sanctified exploitation, who placed white enslavers at the top of a divinely ordained hierarchy.

This pattern extends far beyond cotton fields. Political scientist Ivan Krastev offers a parallel observation about modern states: "Science was as important for the modern state as God was for the monarchical states of the past. The legitimacy of the state was coming from science." Just as cotton Christians created a deity who legitimated plantation economics, modern political ideologies create sources of legitimacy—whether scientific, religious, or cultural—that validate their power arrangements.

This pattern became even more pronounced as Cotton Christianity was transformed by Darwin and theories of natural selection that reinforced the hierarchy of human value as not only God-given but empirically confirmed by Science (and here we must capitalize Science when denoting it as a secular god). The supposed scientific validation of racial hierarchies provided an additional layer of legitimacy to theological frameworks that had already been developed to justify exploitation.

The insight from Cotton Evangelicalism is not merely historical. It reveals a fundamental human tendency: When our desires and practices contradict our professed values, we don't usually abandon our values—we reinterpret them. As John Calvin observed in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, "[M]an's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols." This 16th century theologian recognized what Cotton Evangelicalism would later demonstrate on American shores—we continuously manufacture gods who bless what we've already decided to do. We create sources of authority that validate our predetermined conclusions, transforming our hearts and minds into workshops that endlessly produce idols tailored to our desires.

As theologian Stanley Hauerwas bluntly puts it: "The desperate need to have a god that underwrites our causes rather than a God who judges them" defines much of American religion. This explains why Christians could simultaneously proclaim a faith founded by a torture victim while theologically justifying the torture of others. It wasn't mere hypocrisy—it was the predictable outcome of creating a god in the image of economic necessity.

Supersessionism as Cotton's Theological Engine

This transformation required an additional theological innovation: the repurposing of supersessionism. Originally a dubious doctrine about the European church replacing Israel as God's covenant people, supersessionism was expanded to justify European domination over indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans.

Historian Edward E. Baptist documents in The Half Has Never Been Told how slaveholders developed a reading of scripture that portrayed enslavement as part of God's providential plan to "civilize" and "Christianize" Africans. Biblical narratives of the curse of Ham became central to this framework, providing theological cover for economic exploitation. The story of Canaan being cursed to servitude (Genesis 9:25-27) was transformed from an obscure biblical passage into a foundational text for American economic organization.

The theological gymnastics required here were remarkable. Scripture's isolated mentions of slavery (in vastly different cultural contexts) were elevated to divine endorsement, while Jesus's core teachings about human dignity, justice, and love were systematically marginalized. American Christianity developed what we might call a "cotton hermeneutic"—a method of biblical interpretation that consistently prioritized texts that could justify the cotton economy while downplaying those that challenged it.

Regional Christianities and Cotton's Theology

It's important to note that American Christianity didn't respond uniformly to cotton's demands. As historian David Hackett Fischer explains in Albion's Seed, distinct regional traditions developed divergent theological responses to slavery, largely shaped by their founding cultural values.

The New England Yankee tradition, with its Puritan emphasis on covenant community and moral accountability, produced theological resources for resistance to slavery. They drew on biblical passages like "he who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:16) to oppose enslavement structures and practices. The Midland Quaker tradition, centered on the inner light present in all persons, led to early and principled abolitionist movements. These traditions maintained some degree of prophetic witness against slavery, though both were compromised by economic entanglements with the cotton trade.

By contrast, the Upper South Anglican tradition - predominantly Latitudinarian - adapted more easily to plantation hierarchy, finding theological justifications in biblical passages about servants and masters. But it was in the Deep South and Borderlands where Christianity underwent its most profound transformation, creating what we might call "Cotton Evangelicalism"—a faith perfectly aligned with plantation economics.

Stanley Hauerwas would recognize this pattern immediately: "The primary social task of the church," he writes, "is to be itself—that is, a people who have been formed by a story that provides them with the skills for negotiating the danger of this existence." The regional churches formed by stories of hierarchical order, racial superiority, and divine blessing on commerce developed precisely the "skills" needed to justify participation in cotton's brutal economy. This was not the Church but its regional mutations negotiating plantation capitalism's existence.

What's remarkable isn't just that different regions developed different theological responses, but how predictably these theological positions aligned with economic interests. Northern churches in states with textile factories dependent on Southern cotton found sophisticated theological justifications for maintaining economic relationships with slavery while nominally opposing it. Borderland churches in states transitioning from smallholder agriculture to plantation systems found theological justifications for precisely the economic transitions they were experiencing.

The pattern is striking: Rather than letting theology shape economics, economic necessity shaped theology. This pattern continues today: As Krastev observes about modern states, they have moved from meeting "needs" to validating "desires"—just as our religious frameworks often shift from challenging our desires to legitimating them.

The Plantation Pulpit: Theology in Service to Productivity

How did this cotton theology manifest in practice? Solomon Northup's account of his enslavement on Bayou Boeuf plantations (where my ancestors owned land) describes a Christianity nearly unrecognizable as the faith of Jesus. Worship services on plantations often focused on scriptural passages about servants obeying masters. Plantation preachers would emphasize texts like "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear" (Ephesians 6:5) while conveniently ignoring the reciprocal commands to masters or Jesus's reading from Isaiah about "proclaiming freedom for the prisoners" (Luke 4:18).

Edward Baptist documents how enslavers on Bayou Boeuf plantations developed theological justifications for torture methods designed to increase cotton productivity. The brutal overseer who whipped enslaved people for failing to meet cotton quotas wasn't seen as violating Christian ethics but implementing them—a bizarre inversion of Jesus's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39). Physical brutality was reimagined as spiritual discipline. Cotton production targets were framed as divine expectations. Violence against enslaved people was sanctified as necessary correction rather than condemned as sinful abuse.

This theological framework transformed local forms of Christianity from a faith centered on a God who liberates captives into one that specialized in creating spiritual justifications for captivity. The Jesus who proclaimed "good news to the poor" and "freedom for the prisoners" (Luke 4:18) was effectively replaced by a deity primarily concerned with cotton yields.

It's important to note that Christianity wasn't monolithic during this period. As philosopher Charles Taylor describes in his concept of the 'Nova Effect,' multiple competing versions of Christianity collided with each other, generating communities shaped not by Christianity as a cohesive whole but by variegated mutations. These mutations created theological frameworks that served different economic and social systems, leading to profound differences in how Christianity was understood and practiced.

Frederick Douglass offered one of the most powerful critiques of this theological perversion in his 1845 Narrative, where he distinguishes between "the christianity of this land" with its "revivals of religion" that leave the slave system intact, and the "Christianity of Christ" that would liberate the captives. As Douglass observes, "I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land."

Douglass didn't charge slaveholders with rejecting Christianity entirely, but rather with embracing a corrupted version that served their economic interests. The problem wasn't that slaveholders abandoned religion, but that they transformed it into something that removed its most challenging demands—a Christianity conveniently stripped of Jesus's teachings about human dignity, justice, and love.

Cotton Christianity didn't require rejecting Jesus—just redefining him to serve economic interests.

Theology and Manifest Destiny: Expanding Cotton's Empire

As cotton production depleted soil, constant territorial expansion became economically necessary. Here again, theology proved remarkably adaptable. The concept of Manifest Destiny—the belief that American expansion across the continent was divinely ordained—served cotton's economic demands by sanctifying territorial expansion and the displacement of indigenous peoples.

This theological framework drew selectively on biblical narratives of conquest while ignoring prophetic traditions of justice. The biblical command to "act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8) was overshadowed by misappropriated conquest narratives from Joshua. Jesus's teaching that "blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9) was conveniently set aside in favor of aggressive expansionism.

The Mexican-American War, fundamentally a war to expand cotton territory, was framed in theological terms as a crusade to spread "liberty" and "civilization." Protestant clergy overwhelmingly supported the war, developing theological frameworks that portrayed Catholic Mexico as spiritually inferior and thus rightfully subject to American conquest.

This war had profound consequences for Mexican citizens living in territories seized by the United States. As documented in Carrie Gibson's book El Norte, Californios and Tejanos (Mexican residents of California and Texas) faced systematic disenfranchisement during the antebellum period, when both territories negotiated statehood constitutions that stripped away their long-established property and citizenship rights. These constitutional provisions and early legal restrictions preceded and laid the groundwork for what would later evolve into full 'Juan Crow' laws and anti-Asian exclusion legislation after the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. This legal progression demonstrates how the theological justifications for expansion created enduring structures of discrimination that affected multiple racial groups over generations.

By the time the Civil War erupted, the theological justifications for slavery developed in service to cotton had become so entrenched that they fueled a war framed not merely as an economic necessity but as a spiritual crusade. Confederate leaders explicitly described secession as a defense of divine order. Confederate clergy portrayed the struggle as a holy war to preserve God's intended social hierarchy.

This dynamic extended beyond the war itself into Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. Italian immigrants in the late 19th century often faced racial violence in the South for refusing to abide by Jim Crow segregation laws. In 1891, eleven Italian Americans were lynched by a mob in New Orleans, and throughout the 1890s, a total of twenty Italians were lynched in the South as they navigated a racial status that was initially ambiguous within the Southern racial hierarchy. As Jonathan Tran documents in his work on racial capitalism, other ethnic groups like Asians and even certain European immigrants experienced similar racial categorization. This happened not just in the Jim Crow South but throughout the country, showing how the system of racial hierarchy extended beyond a simple Black-white binary.[10]

From Plantation to Platform: Modern Cotton Theologies

The theological distortions created to justify cotton exploitation didn't disappear after emancipation. Indeed, they hardened in the decades between 1880-1940, peaking in support of onerous 1924 immigration legislation and juriprudence as part of Warren Harding's America First policies. They evolved into new forms that continue to shape American religious and economic life today.

The prosperity gospel—with its emphasis on material blessing as evidence of divine favor—bears striking theological similarities to cotton Christianity's equation of economic success with divine approval. Both systems create theological frameworks that sanctify wealth accumulation while minimizing questions about how that wealth is produced. The apostle Paul warned against those who "think that godliness is a means to financial gain" (1 Timothy 6:5), yet prosperity theology often presents exactly this equation.

Contemporary defenses of extreme economic inequality often employ strikingly similar theological moves to those used by cotton evangelicals. The insistence that poverty results from moral failure rather than systemic injustice, the spiritualization of market forces as quasi-divine, the theological minimizing of Jesus's teachings about wealth—all echo patterns established during cotton's reign. The clear biblical command that "if anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?" (1 John 3:17) becomes reinterpreted through the same hermeneutical gymnastics that cotton Christianity perfected.

This pattern has evolved into what scholars like Ruth Braunstein identify as Colorblind Judeo-Christian Nationalism that absolves citizens of 'racism' by justifying disparity on the basis of non-conformity to the Anglo-Protestant ethnotradition. This framework transforms the hierarchy of human value from overtly racial categories into cultural categories, maintaining the same hierarchical structure while using different language to justify it.[15]

Krastev identifies a parallel pattern in how modern states relate to citizens: "The classical trusted state of the 1930s in America under Roosevelt was based on the idea that it responded to and took care of human needs. But today, it must take care of human desires." Similarly, both Cotton Evangelicalism and its modern descendants transform faith from challenging human desires to legitimating them—creating theological systems that validate what we already want rather than calling us to transformation.

We've moved from Plantation Capitalism to Platform Capitalism, but many of the theological justifications remain remarkably similar. Just as cotton Christianity developed frameworks to explain why some image-bearers of God could be legally classified as property, modern economic theologies explain why some workers can be classified as "independent contractors" rather than employees deserving of benefits and protections.

Quinn Slobodian documents how much of this evolved through Chinese communism's innovation: capitalism stripped of democratic accountability by the force of a powerful state that creates legal "zones" where hierarchies are legally enshrined in the name of capitalism. Dubai has become the master of this model, and the elimination of ontological equality as an ongoing American commitment has emerged as a core tenet of the Trumpian revolution, rendering Anglo-Protestants victims of other citizens, and Americans victims of the world.

The irony is that perhaps the most enduring crop from cotton's golden age wasn't fiber but theology—frameworks for baptizing exploitation in religious language that continue to bear fruit today.

Confession and Repentance: Beyond Cotton's Theology

As a descendant of Louisiana enslavers, I carry both the inheritance of cotton's theology and the responsibility to confront it. The theological frameworks that justified my ancestors' participation in a brutal system were passed down through generations, often in subtle forms that continued to shape understanding of faith, race, and economics long after emancipation.

Confronting this inheritance requires more than historical awareness. It demands theological reckoning—recognizing how economic interests shaped religious understanding and committing to the difficult work of disentangling authentic faith from its cotton-era distortions. The biblical call to "examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith" (2 Corinthians 13:5) requires us to examine not just individual belief but the theological frameworks we've inherited.

Hauerwas reminds us that "the first political task of the church is to be the church"—to embody an alternative community shaped by Jesus's teachings rather than economic expediency. This begins with confession—acknowledging how profoundly cotton reshaped American Christianity into something often unrecognizable as the faith of Jesus. As Psalm 51:6 puts it, "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts."

The theological tensions that shaped cotton Christianity continue today. The fundamental question remains: Will our theology be shaped by the crucified Christ who stands with the exploited, or will it be tailored to justify the economic arrangements that benefit us? Will we follow the Jesus who said "blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20), or will we continue to refashion him to fit our economic interests?

Cotton's gospel promised prosperity through exploitation. The authentic gospel calls us to find abundant life through self-giving love. Jesus stated the choice plainly: "No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve both God and money" (Matthew 6:24). We cannot serve both.

Key Terms

Cotton Evangelicalism: A distinct form of American Christianity that developed theological frameworks to justify and sanctify cotton production dependent on enslaved labor, characterized by selective biblical interpretation and the subordination of Jesus's ethical teachings to economic imperatives. Full entry →

Plantation Capitalism: Economic system that commodified both land and labor to maximize production of export crops like cotton, characterized by violent extraction of wealth, racial hierarchy, and theological justification of exploitation. Full entry →

Platform Capitalism: Contemporary economic system that digitally mediates labor relationships while minimizing worker protections and benefits, often employing similar theological justifications to plantation capitalism despite its technological veneer. Full entry →

Cotton Hermeneutic: Method of biblical interpretation that selectively prioritizes texts that justify economic exploitation while marginalizing passages emphasizing justice, equality, and liberation; developed to reconcile Christian theology with the cotton economy's dependence on slavery. Full entry →

Plantation Preacher: Religious authority figure who developed and propagated theological frameworks justifying slavery and plantation economics, characterized by selective biblical teaching that emphasized submission while ignoring liberation themes in scripture. Full entry →

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Notes

[1] Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 58-59.

[2] David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 410-418.

[3] Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 102-105.

[4] Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1853), 163-165.

[5] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 99-100.

[6] Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015), 328-330.

[7] Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014), 102-105.

[8] J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 157-193.

[9] Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845), 118.

[10] Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 45-67.

[11] Carrie Gibson, El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America (New York: Grove Atlantic, 2019), 245-268.

[12] Ivan Krastev, interview on "The Good Fight" podcast with Yascha Mounk, "Ivan Krastev on American Decline," January 2025.

[13] Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 187-213.

[14] Uffman, Craig, and Kevin Boyle. "How and Why We Birthed Jim Crow," and “Jim Crow: The Yankee Variant”, Conversations: Race on the Rocks. Christian Humanist Mission, 2024.

[15] Braunstein, Ruth. "The 'Right' History: Religion, Race, and Nostalgic Stories of Christian America." Religions 12, no. 2 (January 30, 2021): 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020095.

Introduction: Encounters in "Unclean" Territory

"They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him." - Mark 5:1-2

When Jesus crosses to "the other side" in Mark's Gospel, he enters territory deemed unclean by Jewish religious authorities. The Gerasene region, populated by Gentiles who raised pigs (animals considered unclean under Jewish law), represented foreign territory both geographically and spiritually. Yet Jesus deliberately enters this space, challenging assumptions about clean and unclean, insider and outsider, civilized and uncivilized.

This boundary-crossing pattern—Jesus consistently moving into spaces deemed "other" by religious authorities—embodies the participatory freedom at the heart of true Biblical Citizenship. Rather than maintaining rigid barriers, Christ demonstrates citizenship in God's kingdom through deliberate engagement across constructed boundaries. This example challenges both Dominative Christianism and our sanitized historical narratives.

European colonizers approached indigenous North America with similar conceptual boundaries—viewing native lands as "wilderness" despite their sophisticated civilizations, indigenous spirituality as "pagan" despite its deep wisdom, and native governance as "primitive" despite its complex social organization. Like the religious authorities of Jesus's day, European settlers often maintained rigid boundaries between "civilized" European society and "savage" indigenous cultures.

This chapter crosses these conceptual boundaries, examining the sophisticated indigenous civilizations that existed in North America long before European arrival. These weren't primitive societies awaiting European "civilization" but complex cultures with advanced agricultural systems, extensive trade networks, sophisticated governance structures, and rich spiritual traditions. By crossing these boundaries in our historical understanding, we develop more truthful perspective on American origins.

Advanced Civilizations Before Contact

Cahokia: America's First City

When my father was growing up just outside St. Louis in the 1940s and 50s, his teachers barely mentioned that he lived near the ruins of what had once been North America's largest city. Cahokia, which at its peak around 1200 CE housed more residents than London at that time, was dismissed as merely a collection of "Indian mounds" rather than recognized as the sophisticated metropolis archaeological evidence has since revealed.

This pattern of invisibility—grand indigenous achievements rendered unseen while European accomplishments dominate our historical gaze—mirrors the palace-manger contrast in the nativity story. Just as Herod's palace commanded attention while divine presence arrived unnoticed in a feeding trough, so too did European settlements command historical attention while sophisticated indigenous civilizations were overlooked or deliberately erased.

THEOLOGICAL INSIGHT: Just as shepherds—not palace courtiers—received the divine announcement in the nativity story, perhaps the fuller truth of American history is revealed not through imperial monuments but through the marginalized histories European settlers attempted to erase.

This Mississippi civilization constructed massive earthworks requiring sophisticated engineering knowledge and organized labor on unprecedented scale. Monk's Mound, the largest prehistoric earthen structure in the Americas, required an estimated 14 million baskets of soil carefully layered to create stable 100-foot-tall pyramid with multiple terraces and buildings on its summit. This construction demonstrated not only engineering skill but also centralized political authority capable of organizing massive labor projects.

Cahokia featured planned urban layout with central plaza, residential neighborhoods, astronomical observatories, and elaborate burial sites indicating complex social stratification. Archaeological evidence reveals sophisticated craft production, nutritional abundance, and extensive trade networks connecting Cahokia to regions from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. Far from primitive village, Cahokia represented urban civilization comparable to contemporaneous European cities.

Walking the Mounds: My Childhood Connection to Mississippian Civilization

Growing up in Baton Rouge in the 1970s, my brothers and I would regularly trek across what we called "the Indian mounds" on LSU's campus before football games at Tiger Stadium. I had no understanding then that these mounds connected to a sophisticated civilization that once dominated the Mississippi River valley. The casual way we treated these archaeological treasures—running up and down them before games, completely disconnected from their historical significance—reflected the broader cultural erasure of indigenous achievements.

Just thirty miles upriver from my childhood home, at the Poverty Point World Heritage Site, stood another testament to indigenous engineering that predated European arrival by millennia. Yet these achievements remained largely invisible in my education—much like the divine presence in a Bethlehem feeding trough remained invisible to the powerful in Jerusalem's palaces.

HISTORICAL INSIGHT: European settlers consistently misinterpreted North American landscapes as "wilderness" despite their careful management by indigenous peoples over millennia. What appeared to European eyes as untouched nature often represented deliberately cultivated environments—a "feeding trough" that nourished civilizations rendered invisible by imperial narrative.

The Mississippian civilization, centered at Cahokia but extending to my childhood hometown, featured sophisticated agricultural practices, elaborate ceremonial traditions, and extensive trade networks. Though less "visibly imperial" than European cities with their stone cathedrals and castles, these societies achieved comparable population densities, cultural sophistication, and technological innovations adapted to their environmental contexts.

Haudenosaunee: Democratic Confederation in My Finger Lakes Home

The Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy—whose names grace the beautiful lakes of my current home in upstate New York—established sophisticated democratic governance system centuries before the formation of the United States. This confederation united the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later Tuscarora nations into political alliance with representative governance, separation of powers, and balanced authority between centralized and local decision-making.

Living among these lakes named for the Haudenosaunee nations has reinforced for me how indigenous presence becomes simultaneously acknowledged and erased—the names remain while the full acknowledgment of these nations' political sophistication often vanishes. The Cayuga Lake outside my window carries indigenous naming while the Cayuga people themselves were largely driven out—cultural appropriation at geographic scale.

HISTORICAL INSIGHT: The democratic principles we celebrate as uniquely "American" innovations were practiced centuries earlier by the Haudenosaunee, whose political sophistication remains largely unacknowledged in mainstream historical narratives. This invisibility serves the imperial narrative that civilization arrived with European settlement rather than already flourishing here.

The Great Law of Peace (Gayanashagowa) that structured this confederation specified detailed governance procedures including representative councils, mechanisms for removing leaders who violated public trust, and formalized processes for deliberative decision-making. Women held significant political power, with clan mothers selecting male representatives and maintaining authority to remove leaders who failed their duties.

This democratic confederation influenced American constitutional thinking through figures like Benjamin Franklin, who explicitly referenced the Haudenosaunee model during constitutional deliberations. The confederacy's balanced distribution of authority between central government and constituent nations prefigured American federalism, while its deliberative decision-making processes established democratic principles predating European Enlightenment thought.

Hohokam: Hydraulic Engineering

The Hohokam civilization of the American Southwest developed sophisticated irrigation systems that transformed desert environments into productive agricultural landscapes. Between approximately 300 BCE and 1450 CE, they constructed hundreds of miles of precisely engineered canals that distributed water from the Salt and Gila rivers across the arid Phoenix basin.

These canals, up to 30 feet wide and 10 feet deep, required precise mathematical calculation to maintain gentle, consistent gradient that moved water efficiently across flat desert landscape. The irrigation system included headgates to control water flow, distribution canals to deliver water to field systems, and drainage systems to manage excess water—all constructed using stone tools rather than metal implements.

This hydraulic engineering transformed the Sonoran Desert into one of North America's most productive agricultural regions, supporting dense population with minimal environmental degradation. The sustainable water management practices developed by the Hohokam continue to influence southwestern water governance, with modern Phoenix canal systems often following pathways established by these indigenous engineers over a millennium ago.

Three Sisters Agriculture: Sustainable Innovation

Indigenous agricultural innovation created some of world history's most sustainable and productive farming systems. The "Three Sisters" method—planting corn, beans, and squash together in complementary arrangement—represented sophisticated agricultural science that maximized productivity while maintaining soil health.

This polyculture system created symbiotic plant relationships that enhanced overall productivity: corn provided structure for beans to climb, beans fixed nitrogen in soil that nourished corn, and squash's broad leaves suppressed weeds while minimizing water evaporation. This companion planting maintained soil fertility without artificial fertilizers, controlled pests without chemical pesticides, and preserved water resources without mechanical irrigation.

This agricultural system produced complete protein diet with complementary amino acids while requiring less labor and fewer resources than European monoculture farming. The resulting agricultural abundance supported dense, settled populations throughout eastern North America, creating landscape that European settlers often mistook for "wilderness" despite its careful cultivation by indigenous farmers.

Governance and Diplomacy

Complex Political Systems

Indigenous North America featured diverse political systems ranging from relatively egalitarian band societies to hierarchical chiefdoms to complex confederacies with sophisticated governance structures. These political systems developed in response to specific environmental contexts, population densities, and historical circumstances rather than representing uniform "primitive" condition.

Like the imperial palace versus the Bethlehem feeding trough, European governance systems prioritized architectural visibility and centralized power, while indigenous systems often emphasized relationship networks and dispersed authority—differences that European observers consistently misinterpreted as signs of indigenous inferiority rather than alternative governance approaches.

The Southeast featured hierarchical chiefdoms with clear social stratification, monumental architecture, and centralized authority over multiple communities. The Pacific Northwest developed distinctive political systems based on complex gift-giving ceremonies (potlatch) that redistributed wealth while confirming social status. The Great Plains established military societies and inter-tribal councils that managed resources and adjudicated conflicts across vast territories.

These diverse governance systems demonstrated sophisticated political thought responding to specific challenges and opportunities rather than uniform "tribal" organization. Anthropological and archaeological evidence reveals political systems adapting to changing circumstances through constitutional innovation, inter-group diplomacy, and governance experimentation—processes parallel to those occurring in contemporaneous European societies.

Treaty Diplomacy and International Relations

Indigenous nations developed sophisticated diplomatic practices for managing relationships between distinct political communities. These diplomatic traditions included formal protocols for establishing peace, mediating conflicts, regulating trade, and forming alliances that constituted genuine international relations system rather than primitive inter-tribal connections.

Wampum belts served as diplomatic records, with intricate bead patterns recording treaty provisions and alliance terms—functioning similarly to written treaties in European diplomatic tradition. Council meetings followed elaborate protocols ensuring fair representation, thorough deliberation, and mutually beneficial outcomes. Gift exchanges symbolized reciprocal obligations rather than mere present-giving, establishing binding commitments between sovereign entities.

European colonizers initially engaged with this indigenous diplomatic system, recognizing native political communities as sovereign entities through formal treaty-making. The Two Row Wampum treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch settlers symbolized this relationship, with parallel purple lines representing two vessels traveling the same river without interfering with each other—a sophisticated diplomatic concept of mutual recognition between distinct sovereign entities.

Women's Political Power

Many indigenous nations accorded women significant political authority and influence, establishing gender relations that differed markedly from contemporaneous European societies. While specific arrangements varied widely across different indigenous cultures, many featured greater female political participation than found in European governance systems of the same period.

Among the Haudenosaunee, clan mothers selected male representatives to the confederacy council and maintained authority to remove leaders who violated public trust—creating check on male authority absent from European governance. Among many Algonquian peoples, women controlled agricultural production and distribution, giving them significant economic authority that translated into political influence.

These indigenous gender arrangements often shocked European observers accustomed to more patriarchal social structures. European colonial records frequently note with disapproval the "excessive" freedom and authority of indigenous women, revealing how indigenous gender relations challenged European assumptions about "natural" gender hierarchy.

Timeline: Invisible America

Cultural and Intellectual Achievements

Mathematical and Astronomical Knowledge

Indigenous cultures developed sophisticated mathematical and astronomical knowledge systems that enabled everything from architectural precision to agricultural planning to celestial navigation. These knowledge systems, while using different methodologies than European mathematics, demonstrated comparable intellectual sophistication and practical application.

Maya mathematical system (which influenced nations throughout North America through trade networks) included concept of zero centuries before its introduction to Europe, along with place-value notation that enabled complex calculations. Indigenous astronomers throughout North America tracked celestial movements with remarkable precision, creating calendars that coordinated agricultural, ceremonial, and social activities with astronomical cycles.

Physical structures throughout North America incorporated this astronomical knowledge, with buildings and monuments aligned to track solstices, equinoxes, and other celestial events. The Ancestral Puebloan complex at Chaco Canyon functioned partly as astronomical observatory, with structures precisely aligned to mark significant celestial events—demonstrating both mathematical precision and long-term astronomical observation.

Sophisticated Material Technologies

Indigenous cultures developed sophisticated technologies adapted to specific environmental contexts and cultural needs. These technologies represented not primitive approximations of European technologies but distinct innovations optimized for particular contexts—often achieving greater efficiency and sustainability than European alternatives.

Metallurgical traditions in the Great Lakes region created complex copper artifacts without smelting, using sophisticated cold-hammering techniques to create tools, jewelry, and ceremonial objects. Arctic peoples developed insulated housing and sophisticated layered clothing that outperformed European equivalents in extreme conditions—technologies so effective that modern Arctic equipment still incorporates their principles.

Agricultural technologies demonstrated particular sophistication, with tools and techniques carefully adapted to specific crops and environmental conditions. The integrated "Three Sisters" cultivation method represented agricultural science that maintained soil fertility while maximizing nutritional yield—a sustainable system that outperformed European monoculture in both environmental impact and nutritional efficiency.

Literary and Oral Traditions

Indigenous cultures maintained sophisticated literary traditions transmitted through oral rather than written means. These traditions preserved historical knowledge, cultural wisdom, and spiritual insight through carefully structured narrative forms maintained with remarkable fidelity across generations.

Contrary to European assumptions about the unreliability of oral transmission, indigenous cultures developed mnemonic techniques and institutional structures that ensured accurate preservation of knowledge. Specialized knowledge-keepers underwent rigorous training in memorization techniques, with community verification processes providing quality control similar to peer review in written traditions.

These oral traditions preserved not just stories but complex knowledge systems—medicinal properties of hundreds of plants, astronomical observations covering centuries, geographical knowledge spanning vast territories, and historical records of events centuries past. The intellectual sophistication of these traditions rivaled contemporaneous written traditions while maintaining distinctive epistemological approaches centered on relationship rather than abstraction.

Environmental Management and Ecological Knowledge

Managed Landscapes vs. "Wilderness"

European settlers consistently misinterpreted North American landscapes as "wilderness" despite their careful management by indigenous peoples over millennia. What appeared to European eyes as untouched nature often represented deliberately cultivated environments managed through sophisticated ecological knowledge and intentional intervention.

Eastern forests that impressed colonists with their park-like appearance—open understory beneath massive trees—resulted from indigenous burning practices that prevented underbrush accumulation while maintaining mature tree canopy. Prairie ecosystems that supported vast bison herds resulted from deliberate burning regimes that prevented forest encroachment while enhancing grass growth that attracted game animals.

These managed landscapes demonstrated not absence of human influence but different philosophy of environmental relationship—working with natural processes rather than imposing artificial order. Indigenous environmental management created productive landscapes that maintained biodiversity while meeting human needs—achievements that modern ecological restoration often attempts to recreate.

Sustainable Resource Management

Indigenous cultures developed sophisticated resource management systems that maintained environmental health while meeting human needs—achievements particularly relevant as contemporary society confronts environmental degradation resulting from industrial exploitation.

Fishery management systems in the Pacific Northwest maintained salmon abundance through harvest regulations, habitat protection, and ritual practices that embedded ecological knowledge in cultural context. Forest management in eastern North America involved selective harvesting, controlled burning, and cultivation of useful species that enhanced rather than degraded forest ecosystems.

Wildlife management included hunting restrictions that prevented overharvesting, habitat enhancement that supported game populations, and cultural practices that embedded sustainable use within spiritual frameworks emphasizing reciprocal relationship rather than mere extraction. These management systems maintained abundant resources for millennia—until disrupted by European colonization that introduced extractive rather than sustainable resource utilization.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Science

Indigenous environmental knowledge represented not primitive superstition but sophisticated science developed through centuries of careful observation, experimental testing, and practical application. This traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) integrated empirical observation with cultural frameworks that emphasized relationship and reciprocity rather than domination and extraction.

Indigenous botanists identified medicinal properties of thousands of plant species, developing pharmacopoeia that treated everything from pain management to infection control to chronic disease. Indigenous ecologists understood complex relationships between different species, managing ecosystems to enhance beneficial interactions while minimizing harmful ones. Indigenous climatologists tracked weather patterns across decades, developing agricultural calendars adapted to specific regional conditions.

This ecological knowledge continues to inform contemporary environmental science, with indigenous land management practices increasingly recognized as effective conservation strategies and indigenous pharmacological knowledge contributing to modern medicine. The scientific validity of TEK demonstrates the intellectual sophistication of indigenous knowledge systems despite their different methodological approaches than Western science.

Personal Reflection: Imagining the Mississippian Matriarchy

In my late thirties, having left naval service and corporate life, I began research for what became a deeply flawed novel set in Mississippian civilization. This creative effort—my attempt to imagine the matriarchal society that archaeological evidence suggested once flourished along the river valleys of my childhood—led me to visit with members of the United Houma Nation in southern Louisiana.

What began as research became a profound boundary-crossing experience, as I encountered not historical artifacts but living communities with continuing traditions and contemporary challenges. The Houma elders I met spoke not about vanished ancestors but about ongoing struggles for federal recognition, land rights threatened by coastal erosion, and cultural traditions maintained despite centuries of marginalization.

A PERSONAL NOTE: "My encounters with the Houma Nation revealed my own spiritual blindness—like the religious authorities who couldn't see God in their midst, I had learned to overlook indigenous presence and contributions despite growing up on land shaped by their civilization. This recognition requires not just historical correction but spiritual transformation.”

My embarrassingly bad novel attempt (thankfully never published) revealed my own ignorance and presumptions—an outsider imagining a culture from archaeological fragments rather than engaging with its living descendants. Yet this boundary-crossing effort, however flawed, began a process of recognizing indigenous communities not as historical curiosities but as continuing peoples with legitimate claims to both historical acknowledgment and contemporary rights.

The divine revelation came not through my academic research but through relationship with living people—much like Jesus consistently encountered divine truth through marginalized communities rather than religious authorities. This pattern of revelation through the overlooked rather than the powerful stands as theological challenge to how we construct our historical narratives.

Implications for Contemporary Debates

Sovereignty and Self-Determination

Understanding indigenous nations as sophisticated civilizations rather than primitive tribes fundamentally changes the framework for contemporary debates about sovereignty and self-determination. If indigenous peoples represented advanced civilizations with legitimate governance systems, territorial claims, and international relations, then their claims to continuing sovereignty rest not on special pleading but on same foundations as any other nation's sovereignty claims.

This historical understanding challenges frameworks that treat indigenous sovereignty as privilege granted by benevolent government rather than inherent right predating United States formation. The sophisticated governance systems that managed North American territories for millennia before European arrival established legitimate sovereignty claims that colonial displacement did not legitimately extinguish.

This perspective doesn't resolve contemporary debates about specific sovereignty implementation but provides essential historical context. Indigenous claims to self-governance and territorial rights emerge not from special treatment but from same principles of political legitimacy that undergird all governmental authority, including that of the United States itself.

Biblical Citizenship Beyond Imperial Borders

Jesus's consistent boundary-crossing in Mark's Gospel provides theological framework for reimagining American citizenship beyond imperial narratives. If citizenship in God's kingdom requires crossing human-constructed boundaries to recognize shared humanity, then American citizenship similarly requires transcending historical narratives that erase indigenous achievements while celebrating European "civilization."

This Biblical Citizenship demands rejecting both Binary Apocalypticism that divides humanity into civilized/savage categories and Disordered Nationalism that privileges European heritage while marginalizing indigenous contributions. Following Jesus's example means recognizing American history as encounter between civilizations rather than European cultivation of wilderness.

This reimagined citizenship doesn't diminish European-derived traditions but places them alongside indigenous contributions within fuller understanding of American origins. A citizenship grounded in participatory freedom acknowledges both indigenous achievements and European contributions while refusing narratives that justify domination of one by the other.

Conclusion: Reclaiming American Origins

Recognizing that America was "already here" before European arrival fundamentally transforms our understanding of American origins. Rather than beginning with European settlement of empty wilderness, American history emerges as story of encounter between sophisticated civilizations with distinctive technologies, governance systems, and cultural traditions.

This recognition doesn't require either demonizing European settlers or idealizing indigenous societies, but rather truthful acknowledgment that North America hosted complex civilizations long before becoming "America." This truthful remembering acknowledges both the genuine achievements of indigenous civilizations and the real disruptions caused by European colonization without reducing either to simplistic narrative.

Jesus's encounter with the Gerasene demoniac in "unclean" territory reminds us that crossing conceptual boundaries often reveals humanity where we've been taught to see only otherness. Similarly, crossing the boundaries established by traditional American narratives reveals sophisticated civilizations where we've been taught to see only primitive tribes. This boundary-crossing leads toward more truthful understanding not just of America's past but of its continuing identity as multicultural society formed through ongoing encounter rather than simple extension of single cultural tradition.

Key Terms

Boundary-Crossing: The theological practice of deliberately moving across established social, religious, or cultural divisions, following Jesus's example of engaging beyond accepted boundaries.

Binary Apocalypticism: The theological mutation that creates rigid good/evil, us/them distinctions that divide the world into opposing camps.

Tribal Epistemology: Knowledge systems based on group identity rather than shared truth-seeking, creating closed information systems that reject outside evidence.

Disordered Nationalism: Theological mutation that elevates national identity above theological identity, creating idolatrous attachment to national narratives over religious commitments.

Biblical Citizenship: Framework for political engagement grounded in theological commitment rather than national identity, recognizing Christians as "aliens and exiles" whose primary loyalty transcends national boundaries.

Related Content

* Untold America: Beyond the Mayflower →

* Dominative Christianism: Biblical Citizenship →

* Common Life Politics: Country → (Coming Soon)

* Sermon: Mark 5:1-20 (The Gerasene Demoniac) →(Coming Soon)

Notes

[1] Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Knopf, 2005).[2] Barbara Alice Mann, Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas (New York: Peter Lang, 2000).[3] M. Kat Anderson, Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).[4] Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 2000).

The issue of racism has become a real hot potato and political football this year, and Dr. Douglas Campbell returns from the last episode to help us break through the fog of the bipartisan rhetoric that we are currently experiencing so that we can begin to better understand the belief systems that perpetuate our struggles to ensure equal justice and equal opportunity for all citizens. In the last episode of the podcast, we began to talk about something that both sides of the argument say that there is much too little of – that being freedom. We talked about what it is and what it is not, and, along the way, came across an interconnected question – what is justice, and what is not justice? Dr. Campbell continues to touch upon and explore these questions from a Biblical perspective.

As a reminder, Dr. Campbell is a professor at Duke Divinity School where he has become, since 2003, one of the most respected and innovative New Testament scholars in the world. He specializes in the history and theology of the Apostle Paul, having published five incredibly influential books that have changed the way we Christians understand Paul's writings and large portions of the New Testament itself, and he also directs Duke's Prison Studies program. His latest book is titled Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love, a truly interesting and helpful book that I can't recommend highly enough!

He continues to discuss freedom and what he calls in Pauline Dogmatics quasi-freedom, or phony freedom that often masks itself as actual freedom. He also touches upon freedom in relationships such as marriage, what it means to regard someone as a neighbor and how to do so even if that person is very different from us, and why Christians should be more inclusive and accepting of differences. He also offers some insight regarding what next steps we as Americans should take to move closer toward achieving our country, a topic touched upon in the last episode, and he points toward grounds for hope.

Dr. Campbell has taught us so about freedom, love, and justice and what they mean and don't mean from a Biblical perspective, and he has given us a great Biblical account of these values. In our next episode, we are going to pivot to build on this discussion of love, justice, and freedom but will be applying these values to a discussion of our criminal justice processes. Returning guest Dr. Derek Woodard-Lehman will discuss what he has learned about this topic from teaching a course about it from a Christian ethics perspective. I hope that you'll join us, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!

Show Notes:

[3:53] – Dr. Campbell helps us understand how some people misunderstand what real freedom is.

[6:02] – Dr. Campbell gives an example of freedom in relationships.

[8:52] – Dr. Campbell discusses the freedom of obedience.

[10:04] – We receive an example of freedom around the world in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and being asked to wear masks.

[12:02] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Campbell return the conversation toward marriage in connection to Biblical freedom.

[15:02] – Dr. Uffman offers some summarizing insight on Dr. Campbell's discussion of freedom thus far.

[17:18] – Dr. Uffman shifts the conversation toward Dr. Campbell's discussion of structures in his book, Pauline Dogmatics.

[19:09] – Dr. Campbell reveals how he would respond to someone saying that they should have the freedom to choose who their neighbor is.

[21:40] – We learn how to regard people who are different from us as neighbors as Dr. Campbell encourages us to stop seeing people under categories but rather networks.

[24:45] – Dr. Campbell reflects on the Civil Rights Movement and how it was driven by deep friendships.

[26:05] – Dr. Campbell comments on how the military understands forming bonds over shared struggle.

[28:13] – Differences, Dr. Campbell asserts, create possibilities for new things to be learned.

[31:22] – Dr. Uffman directs the conversation toward the hierarchies of human value and Othering and what Dr. Campbell says about these topics in Pauline Dogmatics.

[32:16] – Dr. Campbell offers more insight regarding how God is at work in all of humanity.

[35:12] – We hear Dr. Campbell make an analogy between substance abusers and sinners.

[38:12] – Far too many people think that their problem is other people rather than themselves.

[40:22] – Dr. Uffman compares our differences to playing different notes in a symphony, with God being the conductor.

[41:27] – Paul wanted to foster the diversity within the communities that he founded, who were not strictly Christians.

[43:40] – We learn what next steps Americans should take to achieve our country, explaining how to put peace into action rather than just theory.

[45:56] – Dr. Campbell points toward grounds for hope and signs that peace is possible.

Dr. Campbell’s Website

Duke Divinity School - Our Faculty: Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell – Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

• The Way of Love
• Facebook
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• Craig Uffman’s Messages Along the Way

Dr. Douglas Campbell joins us today to help us consider the proverbial elephant in the room whenever we talk about our struggles with racism. Whether you are White or non-White in America, it's something that we Americans claim that we want for ourselves and our neighbors even though if you listen to us talk about resolving our racial tensions, it's the thing that both sides seem to believe there is much too little of. What is that elephant in the room? Well, I am talking about freedom! Dr. Campbell is here to, amongst other things, discuss what freedom is and what it isn't from a Christian perspective.

Dr. Campbell is a professor at Duke Divinity School where he has become, since 2003, one of the most respected and innovative New Testament scholars in the world. He specializes in the life and history of the Apostle Paul, having published five books that have changed the way we Christians understand Paul's writings and large portions of the New Testament itself, and he also directs Duke's Prison Studies program. His latest book is titled Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love, and I highly recommend that you pick it up and read it!

He is here to discuss values that we tend to take for granted - values like love, justice, and freedom – especially within the framework of racial tensions. He believes that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to think about these values that can actually contribute to and perpetuate our racial tensions. He talks about the teachings of men like Martin Luther King and James Baldwin and how their perspectives can be tied to God's love, and he addresses what love means from a Christian standpoint and how we need to unlearn what we've been told love is and relearn what it actually means, which could very well include learning from others who are practicing it. He also talks about what happens in society when there is inequality and refers to what he calls social mobility being affected as a result.

Dr. Campbell has given us such a great Biblical account of values such as love, justice, and freedom. Join us next time as we continue this conversation, when Dr. Campbell will dig deeper into this issue and will explain terms such as quasi Christian freedom, a variant that masquerades as freedom but ultimately does more harm than good. He will also help us recognize some of the unhealthy ways that some of us sometimes think about freedom. This conversation has been so helpful, and I can't wait to have him back on to continue this talk! I hope that you'll join us, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested about the podcast!

Show Notes:

[2:41] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation with a quote from James Baldwin from Baldwin's book The Fire Next Time.

[4:17] – People like Martin Luther King and James Baldwin, as pointed out by Dr. Uffman, believed that a lack of love was what was impeding us from achieving our country.

[5:18] – Dr. Campbell explains what he means in his book Pauline Dogmatics when he argues that we need to learn how to love.

[7:40] – Former President Trump, Dr. Uffman reflects, once stated that he couldn't understand why military personnel would lay down their lives in sacrifice – a form of love that is being discussed in this podcast episode.

[9:25] – Dr. Campbell makes the argument that we sometimes play justice off against love even though being loving is being just.

[12:20] – Dr. Campbell discusses the difference between the law and justice, using the Jim Crow laws as an example of the distinction.

[15:16] – Dr. Campbell argues that the only place where we can see a perfect reflection of God's love is in Christ.

[17:32] – We learn that true justice is transformational, reconciling, and restorative.

[20:13] – Dr. Campbell makes the case that justice is doing the right thing even if that isn't congruent with the law.

[22:34] – Dr. Campbell explains how love through sacrifice relates to our struggles here in the United States.

[25:31] – Dr. Campbell believes that Christians need to help democracy strive for love.

[26:40] – We discover what Dr. Campbell means by first having to unlearn love before learning it.

[29:54] – Dr. Campbell reveals how he defines freedom according to his book Pauline Dogmatics.

[32:10] – Dr. Campbell explains his distinction between positive freedom and negative freedom.

[34:54] – People who are being harmed, Dr. Campbell shares, need to be liberated.

[37:02] – Dr. Campbell makes a connection between structure and freedom.

[40:22] – Dr. Uffman offers insight on Dr. Campbell's emphasis on structures, nodding toward the Civil Rights Movement of 1963.

[41:27] – Dr. Campbell brings his home country of New Zealand into the conversation and refers to inequality as a zero sum game.

[44:05] – It's not our laws that make us free, Dr. Uffman summarizes, because there are too many other factors that impede freedom.

Links and Resources:

Dr. Campbell’s Website

Duke Divinity School - Our Faculty: Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell – Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love

Douglas Campbell – The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul

James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time

Richard Rorty – Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

Isaiah Berlin – The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

In our last episode, Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh joined me to share his experiences as a boy growing up in South India as well as his experiences as a young priest engaging the consequences of caste serving communities of Dalits (formerly known as Untouchables), the lowest ranking on the caste system. In this episode, we will be picking up where we left off, although this time, we will shift our focus over to Bishop Singh's experience as a priest and bishop here in the United States.

As a reminder, Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh is the eighth and current bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, NY. He was born in the larger state of Tamil Nadu in South India where he served many congregations as an Anglican priest before coming to the United States. While earning his PhD in New Jersey, he served multiple parishes and became such a powerful spiritual force that the people of Rochester called him to be their bishop. He has spent decades leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he is here to help us reflect on caste and to share his experiences of wrestling with racism here in the United States.

Bishop Prince shares what it was like to move here to the United States as a man of color, where he was now a minority. He reminds us of two of the main components of caste – purity and pollution – and how those components also play a role in racism here in the United States as White is often socially regarded as pure. Bishop Prince also acknowledges his privilege as a man and discusses how he goes about remaining aware of that privilege, and he offers some incredibly inspirational and moving grounds for hope for the future – such as humanity's move toward beloved community (a term that he explains and exemplifies) and how the COVID-19 pandemic has made some of us realize how divided we were even before the virus made us quarantine and be literally divided.

Speaking with Bishop Prince was such an uplifting experience as it always is, and I thank him for coming on the podcast to help us think about caste from the perspective of someone from India who is now living as a leader here in the United States. In our next two episodes, we will pivot from our historical descriptions of the realities of our racial tensions to do a deep dive into the habitual thoughts that cause and sustain said racial tensions. New Testament scholar Dr. Douglas Campbell of Duke will be joining us to help us think about the values that we tend to take for granted – values like love, justice, and freedom. Dr. Campbell believes that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to think about these values that can actually contribute to and perpetuate our racial tensions. Join us next time to learn more, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested in the podcast about us!

Show Notes:

[4:26] – Bishop Prince reflects on what it was like moving to the United States where he was now a minority as a man of color.

[5:56] – Bishop Prince frames New Jersey as more progressive than Virginia but also more complex.

[7:43] – The South and the North, Bishop Prince argues, have the same iterations of racism that are just manifested differently.

[10:00] – Bishop Prince reminds us of how caste involves perceived purity and impurity.

[12:05] – Bishop Prince addresses his privilege as a man and how he works to become more aware of that privilege.

[14:57] – Dr. Uffman offers insight on the hierarchical worldview described by Bishop Prince.

[16:17] – We learn what it is like for Bishop Prince being a parent of boys of color in Rochester.

[18:54] – Bishop Prince reveals what benefits resulted from one of his sons finding a school that embraced how he learned.

[21:16] – Bishop Prince reflects on what he has observed and processed in Rochester regarding race.

[22:38] – We learn about the antidote to internalized racism.

[25:28] – The only hope to fight structural and internalized racism is to embrace community and break down the walls that separate us.

[26:50] – We discover what Bishop Prince means when he refers to beloved community.

[29:30] – We cannot have dreams without reparations, Bishop Prince argues.

[32:35] – It's not about being colorblind, Dr. Uffman interprets, but is rather about being color-sensitive.

[33:30] – Bishop Prince shares what pockets of the beloved community that he has observed.

Links and Resources:

Episcopal Diocese of Rochester – About the Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh

Isabel Wilkerson – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Program - Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, inc.

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

I am so happy to have Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh join me in this episode of the podcast not only because of the invaluable wisdom that he has to offer but also because he is such a dear friend. Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh is the eighth and current bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, NY. He was born in the larger state of Tamil Nadu in South India where he served many congregations as an Anglican priest before coming to the United States. While earning his PhD in New Jersey, he served multiple parishes and became such a powerful spiritual force that the people of Rochester called him to be our bishop. He joins me to share his personal experiences of wrestling with racism in both South India and here in the United States.

I met Prince ten years ago when I came to lead a parish here a year after he became the bishop. Bishop Prince has spent quite a long while leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he is here today to help us reflect on something that has been discussed several times in previous episodes of the podcast – caste. He reflects on his childhood and where he grew up, revealing that he grew up in a Christian family and that, as a young adult, he got his undergraduate degree in Zoology and his graduate degree in Public Administration.

Interestingly, Prince grew up as a boy not seeing the world through the perspective of caste. In fact, as he narrates in detail, he didn't have a great awareness of it and didn't really learn about it until later on when he encountered it for the first time. He theorizes as to why that is and admits to having been privileged because of his family's socioeconomic status and his parents having been college educated, describing his lack of awareness of the caste system as a child as a blessing but also problematic.

Prince also addresses the multifaceted nature of colonialism and how, from his perspective, it isn't all about domination and has actually had some positive impacts as well. He discusses the two components of caste and the intersectionality between caste and gender, ultimately ending here by pointing to the huge differences that he and his wife Roja Singh have helped make reality for many young girls who were otherwise victims of the caste system. In our next episode, Bishop Prince will be returning, and we will be continuing this conversation. We will follow his story to the United States and will learn how he experienced some of what we have been talking about in previous episodes of the podcast. Please join us, and be sure to tell friends who might be interested in the podcast about us!

Show Notes:

[1:09] – Dr. Uffman announces Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Singh as this episode’s guest and briefly touches upon his credentials.

[3:27] – Bishop Prince helps us visualize where he grew up.

[5:14] – We learn about Bishop Prince's educational background.

[7:38] – Bishop Prince talks about his family's economic status while he was growing up.

[8:31] – Bishop Prince describes what the weather was like where he grew up, sharing that it was very hot and humid.

[11:17] – Dr. Uffman alludes to caste and recognizes it as a tool that we can use to help understand our current racial tensions.

[12:49] – Bishop Prince reflects on his childhood and what his experience was like as a Christian boy in his state.

[14:05] – We hear Bishop Prince recount one specific encounter when he observed caste play a role via someone's behavior.

[16:12] – Bishop Prince discusses his observations of villages having two parts because of caste.

[18:08] – Bishop Prince reveals that he encountered the concept of caste the most after becoming a priest, and he explains why.

[20:06] – Bishop Prince posits theories as to why he didn't grow up with much awareness of caste division.

[22:47] – Bishop Prince discusses colonialism and how it is a multifaceted system with many layers.

[25:42] – Bishop Prince credits the missionary movement as having had positive influences within India.

[28:06] – We learn a little bit about Bishop Prince's time as an Anglican priest in India.

[31:00] – Bishop Prince describes his early engagement as a priest in South India as adventurous.

[33:51] – Bishop Prince points out the problematic nature of state-enforced prevention of people choosing their own religion.

[36:51] – We hear about the flaws within Christianity because of how caste is sometimes followed even within the Christian faith.

[38:57] – Bishop Prince addresses the intersectionality between caste and gender.

[40:45] – We learn what the term manual scavenger means.

[43:48] – Some children would drop out of school because of being treated as manual scavengers, even by teachers.

[45:23] – Dr. Uffman reflects on how the differences that Bishop Prince and his wife Roja Singh have begun to make for young girls make for grounds for hope.

Links and Resources:

Episcopal Diocese of Rochester – About the Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh

Program - Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, inc.

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

Hello, folks! In the last episode, Dr. Kurt Culbertson joined us to help us understand some jargon from his life as a landscape architect – words and terms such as vacant land, habitat, and spatial justice. He also began to help us understand how historic government policies as well as local traditions have combined to limit the habitat choices especially of non-Whites and have constrained the flow of resources to the low income neighborhoods in which they have been allowed to live.

We concluded with a brief discussion of how land use and habitat choice are great examples that denote what we mean when we use phrases such as structural racism. We therefore finally dug into defining what structural racism means with some evidence and examples that are really hard to deny. We will be picking up where we left off in this episode, digging even more deeply into some persistent racial inequities in the domain of spatial justice.

As a reminder, Dr. Kurt Culbertson is a scholar and a practitioner in the field of urban renewal where he uses his expertise as a landscape architect to help cities imagine how to design landscapes that consider environmental, social, and economic factors so that they can best optimize spatial justice in the urban renewal efforts. Dr. Culbertson is chair and C.E.O. of Design Workshop, an international design studio out of Aspen, Colorado but with offices all over the world. They are most famous for their twelve projects that were selected as performance based case studies by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. In 2016, Kurt was awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal which is the highest possible honor in his profession, and he is also the pastor of the ASLA Council of Fellows and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Kurt returns today to continue discussing inequities in the design of our communities today. Dr. Culbertson provides us with countless examples throughout history of Blacks and non-Whites being displaced and relocated out of their habitats to make room for architecture, interstates and highways, and so on – examples of egregious disturbances within the world of spatial justice. He touches upon pollution and health and safety hazards and their links to spatial justice and also offers some hope for the future, pointing toward an eminent quote from Theodore Parker as inspiration. He even offers some tips on what actions that we as average citizens can take to help equity progress and continue to arc forward.

These past two episodes with Kurt have been such a blessing because they have made it very clear what some folks mean when they refer to structural racism, a reality that we still need to wrestle with today. He has given us concrete examples as someone who is actually observing things on the ground, examples that point toward how historic policies and practices continue to shape our present. We covered so much ground, and I thank Kurt for joining us.

In our next episode, we will pivot from this practical deep dive into spatial justice in order to hear the personal experience and wisdom of Bishop Prince Singh, a man who has wrestled with racism as a person of color both in India and here in the United States. Prince spent a long time leading people to grapple with the challenges of racial reconciliation, and he will be joining us to help us reflect on phrases like caste and hierarchies of value. Until next time, thanks for tuning in, and be sure to invite your friends to listen as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

How does exposure to toxic pollution correlate with class and race? Why?

How did St. Louis realtors in the 1960s and 1970s use blockbusting to generate profits and transformed entire neighborhoods they knew had environmental time bombs from white to black in a matter of years?

How did the East Bank/West Bank vote on taxes to support flood insurance in the New Orleans metro area impact non-whites after the floods of 1980?

Why do hurricanes impact non-whites disproportionately more than whites? 

Show Notes:

[3:48] – Dr. Culbertson offers some egregious examples of disturbances in the domain of spatial justice.

[5:02] – Dr. Culbertson provides examples of population displacements and slum clearances in cities.

[8:02] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss Robert Moses and his move to intentionally design projects to exclude non-Whites and the poor.

[10:20] – Dr. Culbertson expands on how extensive the impact of the interstate highway system relocating Blacks and non-Whites has been.

[12:40] – Dr. Culbertson comments on how urban renewal legislation through the 1970s negatively impacted non-Whites.

[15:28] – Air quality and water quality affect public health which is another disturbance.

[18:25] – The projects in New Orleans leading to de facto segregation around the same time as Civil Rights legislation, Dr. Culbertson explains, was an unintended consequence.

[20:43] – Exposure to toxic pollution is correlated with class and race, and Dr. Culbertson elaborates upon that correlation.

[24:07] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss the phenomenon of flooding in cities and how it disproportionately affects non-Whites.

[26:30] – Dr. Culbertson expounds upon why natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina tend to disproportionately impact non-Whites.

[29:25] – Dr. Culbertson reflects upon management decisions made to address shrinking cities and what that portends for non-Whites.

[31:47] – Dr. Culbertson points to a parks and open space plan that he just finished in Vancouver.

[34:23] – We discover how fragmented metropolitan governance has negatively impacted our ability to deal with spatial equity.

[37:33] – Dr. Culbertson points to some locations as grounds for hope.

[40:22] – Dr. Culbertson explains why taking formerly polluted lands and converting them into open space gives him hope and offers more examples of reasons for hope.

[42:40] – We learn how we can get involved in moving equity forward.

[44:23] – Dr. Culbertson analyzes the meaning behind a famous quote by Theodore Parker.

Links and Resources:

Design Workshop - Website

Landscape Architecture Foundation - Website

ASLA Council of Fellows - Website

The Cultural Landscape Foundation – Website

Robert A. Caro - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

Environmental Protection Agency - EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool

NPR – “Theodore Parker and the 'Moral Universe'”

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

We have a real treat for you today in this episode! Joining us is Dr. Kurt Culbertson, a scholar and a practitioner in the field of urban renewal where he uses his expertise as a landscape architect to help cities imagine how to design landscapes that consider environmental, social, and economic factors so that they can best optimize something that he refers to as spatial justice (which we're going to learn more about in this episode) in the urban renewal efforts.

Dr. Culbertson is chair and C.E.O. of Design Workshop, an international design studio out of Aspen, Colorado but with offices all over the world. They are most famous for their twelve projects that were selected as performance based case studies by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. In 2016, Kurt was awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Medal which is the highest possible honor in his profession, and he is also the pastor of the ASLA Council of Fellows and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Kurt was awarded a PhD in Landscape Architecture from Edinburgh College of Art for his research that helps us in thinking about how we ought to use - as a society - our vacant lands. Kurt is here on the podcast to help us understand the inequities that we see in the design of our communities today. The Great Recession of 2008 led to Dr. Culbertson moving a bit away from commercial work and balancing a bit with public renewal projects.

The argument that structural and systemic racism is a myth is an argument that is not new; it has been being made for years, but Dr. Culbertson presents us with physical evidence of its reality – how human value has a hierarchy culturally attached to it is literally manifested in physical structures such as buildings and bridges. He touches upon various topics such as redlining and how physical evidence can be presented that proves that systemic racism and spatial injustice are still major problems even today.

We cover so much ground in terms of management decisions and the economic impact on issues of inequity. In our next episode, Dr. Culbertson will return to talk about what he refers to as disturbances and how we have actually taken actions that have made some things worse. He will share with us what approaches that have been taken that appear to be working to help mitigate this problem. Thanks for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to tune in as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

What is ‘vacant land’ and what does Dr. Culbertson denote when he speaks of spatial justice?

To what extent have non-whites been limited in the choices and range of actions for the choice of habitat?

Where did most non-whites live in our cities prior to the 1920s, and what habitat choices did they have during and after that period?

How did  government policy in the forms of SCOTUS decisions and legislative actions contributed to our current reality of ‘hollowed out cities’?

How do we see the residual impact of redlining on our communities today? 

How has the fact that the average net worth for Black is a small fraction of that for Whites historically impacted Blacks’ ability to buy homes in safer neighborhoods, provide education for children, and withstand hardships?

Show Notes:

[3:40] – Dr. Uffman opens the conversation by talking about structural racism and points to the recent massacre of Asian women in Atlanta.

[5:12] – Dr. Culbertson defines the terms vacant land and spatial justice.

[8:18] – Dr. Culbertson explains why we are concerned about vacant land.

[10:30] – Dr. Culbertson describes what he is able to influence and change in his field.

[12:35] – Dr. Culbertson provides us with a potential reason why non Whites don't have the same choices as to where to live as Whites do.

[15:11] – Cities began to implement racial zoning, which Dr. Culbertson defines and explains.

[17:16] – Dr. Uffman shifts the conversation toward management decisions made by the executive branch and refers specifically to Herbert Hoover as an example.

[19:24] – Dr. Culbertson describes what life might have been like for non Whites in cities and what habitat choices that they had following the Emancipation Proclamation.

[22:27] – Dr. Uffman provides insight about his own observations in his hometown in Baton Rouge.

[24:27] – Dr. Culbertson expounds upon mortgage lending and suburbanization, returning to the subject of Herbert Hoover.

[26:55] – The process of redlining, Dr. Culbertson details, excluded the flow of resources especially for low income neighborhoods where a lot of people of color resided.

[29:08] – Dr. Culbertson asserts that redlining caused impacts that still linger today, almost a century later.

[31:39] – Dr. Uffman and Dr. Culbertson discuss the inequities around wealth creation.

[34:23] – Dr. Culbertson touches further upon management decisions and executive decisions impacting spatial justice.

[36:25] – Dr. Culbertson reflects upon how he would respond to someone who would argue that structural racism isn't real or is no longer a problem.

Links and Resources:

Design Workshop - Website

Landscape Architecture Foundation - Website

ASLA Council of Fellows - Website

The Cultural Landscape Foundation - Website

Edward W. Soja - Seeking Spatial Justice (Volume 16) (Globalization and Community)

Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “How and Why We Birthed Jim Crow”

Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Jim Crow: The Yankee Variant”

Conversations: Race on the Rocks - “Redline Reasoning: Why We Built Segregated Cities”

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

We covered a lot of ground in beginning to understand racial inequities in the housing domain in our last episode. Mr. Salin Geevarghese joined us in that conversation, and we will be picking up where we left off in this episode, drilling down even deeper into that discussion. What are some of the obstacles that are impeding our dream of truly becoming the diverse and inclusive society that values equal opportunities for all? Tune in as we begin to answer that question.

As a reminder, Salin is a man with many hats but is probably best known for being a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama and his administration. He is currently one of the world's foremost experts in the art of bringing opposing groups together to transform racially polarized pockets of urban blight into sustainably inclusive cities and communities.

Salin's credentials make him the perfect guest to help us with our exploration of the stories that have shaped the racial landscape with which we currently wrestle, and this episode dives further into what we talked about last time about inequity within the housing domain. We discuss how getting rid of the Jim Crow Laws and implementing the 14th Amendment might have been progressive movements but did not solve all problems and certainly did not put an end to structural racism. Salin shares with us what the situation is like where he lives and how there is a shocking 15-20 year gap in life expectancy depending on what part of town you live, but he also lays down ground for hope and how even though we still have a long way to go, there are already signs of progress.

We have been so privileged to have an expert in this field come onto the podcast and help us understand so much of what many of us might not have been aware of. I hope that you will join us in our next episode when we meet another expert in a related field, Dr. Kurt Culbertson. Dr. Culbertson is a prominent landscape architect who has built some places that you would probably even recognize. We will dig deep into these issues of racial inequity from the perspective of landscaping and architecture. Thanks for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to tune in as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

To what extent have Fair Housing laws since 1968 remedied and prevented discriminatory land use and housing-related policies in the 2020s?

What about inequitable community development practices?

What about racial bias in mortgage lending and rental housing? 

What other racially biased policies and practices that have fostered pervasive negative impacts on non-whites that should concern us today?

Describe the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. How does it help us gather around a measure for weighing our success in correcting racial inequities in the housing and community development domain?

Show Notes:

[2:22] – Salin reveals why he began walking the path that he is on now and how he hopes more people will be inspired to work toward building a more inclusive nation.

[4:06] – Salin links our current discriminatory land use policies to the Jim Crow Laws and the Civil Rights Movement.

[6:52] – Dr. Uffman has a close friend who doesn't believe that structural racism exists because of the 14th Amendment having been passed.

[8:58] – Salin expounds upon the difference between law and practice within inequitable community development practices.

[9:40] – Salin explains how urban density is an indicator of structural racism.

[11:42] – You can hear people using both covert and overt language that speaks of trying to avoid living near people with less means or who look different than they do.

[14:11] – Salin explains how we are doing concerning racial bias within mortgage lending.

[15:54] – Communities need various types of housing in order to thrive.

[18:30] – Dr. Uffman and Salin discuss maps that show data supporting Salin's argument and how listeners can access them.

[21:48] – Salin provides other examples of pervasive policies and practices that have led to negative impacts on people of color.

[24:00] – Dr. Uffman gives an example of the post office serving as a bank to many who use money orders due to inequity.

[26:11] – The hierarchy of human value is something that permeates society all the time through social signals that are sent.

[28:30] – Salin worked during the Obama administration on a tool to help us build diverse and inclusive communities.

[31:18] – The Trump administration, as Salin describes, immediately delayed implementing Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and ultimately rescinded it entirely.

[34:37] – Salin shares what he is currently seeing that seems to be promising.

[36:27] – It is important that we do something about the inequity of neighborhoods while also allowing people who don't want to move to stay where they are, and Salin details why that is.

[38:20] – Salin moves the conversation toward more concrete examples rather than abstract examples.

[40:38] – Salin reflects on the current state of the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore.

[44:05] – There is grounds for hope, and we can be a part of the solution. There are already signs of progress.

[47:03] – Salin encourages listeners to be open and willing to understand that society's sense of hierarchy of human value is prevalent everywhere.

Links and Resources:

Raj Chetty

Opportunity Insights

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com

Returning to the conversation is Mr. Salin Geevarghese, whom you may remember having been a guest on the very first episode of the podcast. Salin, as a reminder, is a man with many hats but is probably best known for being a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for President Obama and his administration. He is currently one of the world's foremost experts in the art of bringing opposing groups together to transform racially polarized pockets of urban blight into inclusive cities.

Salin's credentials make him the perfect guest to help us start our exploration of the stories that have shaped the racial landscape with which we currently wrestle, and this episode particularly dives into discrimination and inequities in the world of housing and how we can begin to hopefully find solutions to such problems. Although we will talk more about the hope and the possible solutions in our next episode, Salin begins to touch upon that near the end of this episode, sharing that new coalitions pushing for progress and the celebration of diversity gives him hope.

Salin gives us such a great introduction into the racial inequities that persist even today in the domain of housing. I hope that you will join us in our next episode as we continue this conversation, drilling more deeply into the challenges that have been brought about by our history of discriminatory policies. We will also begin to talk more deeply about hope and promising solutions. Thank you for listening, and be sure to invite your friends to listen in as well!

Questions for Clergy and Other Group Leaders

As we seek to create diverse, inclusive communities in which all have a sense of belonging, what would success look like?

Why are distressed neighborhoods so hard to turn around?

What kind of progress can we celebrate in healing housing inequities since the 1960s civil rights legislation?

How does bias remain a factor in where we live in such a way that, even in the 2020s, it determines the life chances of whites and non-whites differently? 

Show Notes:

[4:18] – Salin begins by giving us an update on some of the challenges that still need to be confronted today when it comes to inequities in housing.

[7:16] – Salin comments on what goals that we should set and what success would look like, starting with physical transformation.

[8:55] – The second stage of success is the ability for new neighborhoods to attract and hold on to diverse residents.

[10:57] – Salin explains what the last stage of success is – addressing the unfinished business that we still actually have and questioning who is benefitting from what we are seeing.

[12:40] – We learn why it tends to be so difficult to reverse the situation for distressed neighborhoods.

[15:54] – Craig and Salin discuss hierarchies of human value and how Salin defines it.

[18:44] – Salin discusses what progress that we can celebrate that we have seen over the last several decades.

[20:22] – We have seen a rise in wealth in the United States, but the problem is that the wealth is concentrated.

[21:48] – Salin confidently asserts that implicit bias definitely plays a role in the problem of racially disparate housing.

[23:21] – Salin assures Dr. Uffman that implicit bias still plays a role a century after the 1920s and gives concrete examples.

[25:54] – Segregation continues to persist today, and the country is, in fact, resegregating.

[27:58] – Dr. Raj Chetty, the youngest professor to receive tenure at Harvard, has given us hard data that both sides of politics can agree on.

[30:17] – Where you grow up has a major impact on what opportunities that you have throughout life.

[31:53] – Salin encourages listeners to look at Dr. Chetty's research on Opportunity Insights.

[34:16] – Salin talks about his hope that we will see progress and change in our lifetimes due to progress that has already been made and unfinished business that we have yet to do.

[37:08] – Hope is very necessary right now because solidarity is constantly under attack.

Links and Resources:

Raj Chetty

Opportunity Insights

Connect with Dr. Craig Uffman:

SubStack: https://www.commonlifepolitics.com

Threads: @craiguffman

Facebook: @craiguffman

Get full access to Common Life Politics at www.commonlifepolitics.com