Transcript: "Are Race and Religion Intertwined in American History?" with Paul Harvey.
Religion has often influenced how Americans understand and see race. And race has often influenced how Americans understand and see religion.
For our purposes today, we will define race as any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry. For example, the twenty-twenty Census race categories are White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Hawaiian Native or Pacific Islander, or some other race.
As we all observe and participate in the national reckoning with racism after the death of George Floyd on May twenty-fifth of this year, a fuller and more accurate understanding of how race and religion have been intertwined in the United States history will be of use.
Paul Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado - Colorado Springs where he researches, writes, and teaches in the field of American history from the sixteenth century to the present. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1992.
Dr. Harvey is the author of many books including Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography; The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in American History; and Freedom's Coming: Religious Cultures and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era.
We are very happy to have Paul here to help us understand a particular part of American religious history, the intersections of religion and race, by discussing his new book "Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History" published in 2017.
Also, as with each episode in our podcast series, Religion in the American Experience, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and, thus, be better equipped as citizens to ensure that the American experiment in self-government endures. As Abraham Lincoln said, "We cannot escape history."
Thank you Paul for being with us.
Paul: Thank you. Very glad to be here.
Chris: You start your book by saying that race and religion are co-constituting categories. Can you tell us just briefly what you mean by that? And why it is important to our discussion?
Paul: Yeah. So what I was trying to do in that part of the book was take a, uh, uh-- that is an academic language co-constituting categories which does not maybe mean anything to a more general audience. But what it means is that, um, race has been fundamental to how religion has come to be defined that American history to the very definition of religion itself. And religion has come to also be something that has defined racial categories over time. So they in-- in effect they both define each other.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. Paul, in your chapter about race and colonial American religion, you state that as European colonizers tried to bring others into the Christian fold, they faced questions of how an Indian or a Negro could also be a Christian person. And given-- and I am quoting here, "And given that raced bodies claimed Christian privileges – [and I will insert here "such as freedom"] - Euro-Americans puzzled over how to convert but deploy it on behalf of racial hierarchy." Can you give an example or two of how this played out?
Paul: Yeah. So the big question in the seventeenth century was the question of that historically you were not supposed to enslave people of your own religion. And so if an African-American, for example, became a Christian, as sometimes happened in the seventeenth century - usually Anglican Christians, in fact then how could you possibly keep them enslaved?
So some of the first laws, uh, written in the sixteen-sixties, sixteen-seventies addressed precisely this issue by saying essentially just because one converts to the faith does not mean that one has-- one changes once status in the in the social world. And that they keep, they actually keep rewriting that law and keep sort of updating it, because, it remains I think-- the-- I think they have to do that, because it remains a problem; it remains a dilemma in their own mind that they cannot quite figure out how to deal with.
And so the law becomes more strict and more-- it becomes longer and more explicit over time until in the-- in the-- in the 1720S it is a much lengthier version of the same law which basically says, "Neither you nor your children, albeit you have become or will become Christian, will ever change your status in-- in the social world." They try to make that as-- as clear as possible.
And one of the reasons they do so is because the, slave owners do not want to introduce slaves to the Christian faith. And, therefore, Christian missionaries - Anglican missionaries, mostly - um, have to, uh, find a way to persuade slaveholders that Christianity will not lead to freedom. The problem is slaveholders are - in this era, at least - are never really fully persuaded of that. I think that is why the-- they have the profusion of these laws that-- that they kept trying to persuade slaveholders. But slaveholders were largely resistant to having missionaries come on their plantations and that-- and that kind of thing. And I think it is because they still had-- implicitly is they still had this older view that, Christianity was tied to freedom, therefore, a slave Christian was just a contradiction in terms .
Chris: You write in your book that as a result of these laws, I am quoting here, "Christianity and enslavement were theoretically compatible."
Paul: Yeah. Exactly a summary of what I just said. Yeah. But they-- they had to be made compatible over time. It was not something that came naturally in the seventeenth century world.
Chris: Right. Also, in that same area of the book, you write this sentence, and I am quoting here, "Race trumped religion as the most important category in an ordered society." Why did you say that? That is a powerful statement.
Paul: Yeah. precisely, because the Racial category into which-- which someone had been put became the most important category that defined their lives rather than the religious category that they either had or that they could opt for so that, African-- the category African was a more important category in terms of defining your status than the category Christian or Muslim or whatever other religion you would want to put in there.
So the first-- the first category that defines your life principally is the-- the racialized category, African and African-American.
Chris: Right. So Paul, regarding Native Americans now, you quote one of their prophets as saying, "The great spirit did not mean that the White people and the red people should live near each other," which sounds familiar to this statement also in your book from an anti-immigration advocate during the influx of Chinese in the late nineteenth century in the western United States, "It is the economy of providence that man shall exist in nationalities and that they shall be divided by the antipathies of race." What did all this mean?
Paul: Yeah. So those are two quotes that sound alike, but actually are-- come from very different context, because one comes from a Native American prophet. So what is happening in the eighteenth century is, Indian peoples, Native American peoples who had conceptualized themselves as all different-- all different groups of people, tribalized peoples, for example are coming to use terms like “Red men”-- the Red Men, the Indian, the singular terms like that. In other words, they-- they begin to adopt the racialized categories that were imposed upon them, as part of the necessity, part of the need to defend their communities against the colonizing, orders of their day.
And so a statement like that is part of the kind of Indian self-defense that emerges in the eighteenth century, an Indian self-defense that ironically used the racialized categories invented by Europeans in the first place.
The second quote from the later-- when was that - later nineteenth century, I suppose-- I do not remember--when that was. It is quote that comes from those in positions of power, uh, who were attempting to define who can be an American.
So for the question of that-- that day was can a Chinese person, a person of Chinese descent racially be an American citizen? Is a Chinese person racially capable of comprehending American liberty, for example?
One of the anti-- there is many anti-immigration arguments. But one of the anti-immigration ar-- arguments is they are racially incapable of understanding, freedom, liberty, Christianity, et cetera. Of course, there were Chinese Christians at the time who were pointing out that they were perfectly capable of understanding Christianity, because that was their religion, in fact.
But that was one of the principal, um, tsk, themes of-- of anti-immigration polemics from the li-- from the later nineteen century. But that quote is coming from those who have the ability to define, uh, the power relations of that society. The quote from the Native American prophet is coming from the other side: those who were being displaced, those who were - the colonial subjects of the Europeans.
Chris: And then you quote Frederick Douglass, saying this, um, "Revivals in religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand-in-hand together. The church and the slave prison stand next to each other. The groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotions of his religious master while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit. The pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity." What effect did such rhetoric have in the United States?
Paul: That is one of, uh, Douglass', uh, classic, uh, passages pointing out the hypocrisy of slave-holding Christianity; he was-- he was a master at doing that.
And it is interesting. The effect is it helps to galvanize abolitionism, uh, because the-- the abolitionists adopt exactly that rhetoric that comes from Douglass, because he is so-- he is so good at-- at mocking and i-- imitating in a mocking style, for example, a pro-slavery sermon. He does that sometimes and will deliver a pro-slavery sermon in a style that clearly is mocking it at the same time. It is a paro-- self- parody of that sermon.
So that-- that is a-- that quote comes from the context in which he is doing that. And that helps to galvanize abolitionism. But ironically, also helps to galvanize pro-slavery, because the pro-slavery forces recognize the power of that critique. And they have to figure out how to respond to it.
So if you think of the big picture kind of as the18th century as the, uh, the-- the pro-slavery argument is the so called “necessary evil” argument. We were sort of left with this institution. And there is not much we can do about it except hope it goes away, kind of a Thomas Jeffersonian, uh, view, but when you read sermons from the eighteen-thirties, forties, fifties, basically after the eighteen-thirties, they increasingly adopt a-- a pro-slavery stance which makes slavery not only compatible to but instrumental to the spread of-- the spread of Christianity. And part of that comes from a response to exactly the fact that they were being mocked for their hypocrisy. And they know that they have to respond to that. And they do respond to it with some very powerful sermons of their own.
Chris: Paul, I’m going to move into your chapter about religious ways of knowing race before the Civil War. Um, the first couple of chapters were more introductory. In this chapter you explained that Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion led to a strengthening of how Christianity would be woven into the ideology of the masterclass. Can you help us understand how that was done?
Paul: Yeah. So Nat Turner was a Baptist Minister, and a slave in Southampton County Virginia. Very very interesting life story. Very controversial life story, because we-- we know very little about him. And most of what we know comes from the, uh, confessions of Nat Turner which were collected by a lawyer named Thomas Gray. And there is a great controversy among historians about how much we can trust that particular document, because some people think Thomas Gray embellished, parts of Nat Turner's story to help-- to make a more spectacular story, because Thomas Gray basically wanted to make money out of selling this book. That was his motive for doing it.
However, I tend to think it is reasonably reliable. That is my personal position. And so, Nat Turner is someone who takes the apocalyptic passages of the Bible as symbolic of how he should act in this world and to rise up in revolt against slavery basically by slaughtering Whites in his-- in his county.
White seeing that-- this is that, exactly at the moment that the abolitionist movement is being born in 1831. So 1831 is a hugely important year of American history in terms of how slavery comes to be viewed. And it is also usually important here, because you really-- maybe a few years before 1831and the 1820s but certainly after 1831, you see the full rise and development of the pro-slavery theology that I spoke of before, uh, most famously enunciated by James Henley Thornwell, a Presbyterian Minister in 1850.
And he gives a famous sermon in 1850, ironically, a sermon in which he was consecrating a chapel that Whites had built for Black Presbyterian parishioners. Uh, and there were-- there were so many Black Pre-- Presbyterian parishioners in this particular church that they-- they needed a separate place to meet, cos they could not fit all in the segregated balcony.
So he-- he comes to give this, and he says, uh, "One, I am not ashamed to call the Negro my brother. I am not ashamed to call the Negro my brother." He disavows a racist, justification for slavery. But then he goes on to give a kind of what we would think of as a-- a nineteenth century conservative argument based-- that comes out of European thought really which is that, uh, slavery and other forms of social order are necessary to prevent anarchy. And it may be that slavery has evils in it. But, it is our job to restrain those evils. But there are much greater evils in the abolition of slavery.
The New York Catholic, priest, John Hughes, the Archbishop John Hughes in New York, he basically makes the same argument. And so he ends up saying, "Slavery is evil as many institutions-- human institutions are, because humans have sinned in them. And they create evil institutions."
But the one thing that is more evil than slavery is abolitionism, because abolitionism leads to anarchy. It leads to the complete dissolution of all social order. And it leads to kind of the worst of all possible worlds.
And so slavery may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it is the best world that we can hope for given the situation that we were handed, uh, as an inheritance of-- from the 17th and 18th century. And we may hope that this world will become a better and freer world for everyone at some indeterminate point in the future. But for now, this is the best world that we can hope for.
So it is getting woven in in that-- in that particular pro-slavery, uh, way in which, God creates a social order that resembles a family. The slaveholder is kind of like the father. And, the rest of the family fall into place. And each person in the family has their place in the social order. The slaves are like children who are cared for by the father, but who also have to obey the father.
So that is the model that God has provided for us in the social world-- in the religious world but also in the social world.
Chris: Fascinating. Can you tell us, Paul, how slaves saw Jesus? And how it differed from how non-slaves “saw” Jesus"?
Paul: So slaves adopt, not all, but many slaves adopt Christianity in the nineteenth century, uh sometimes, at the behest of, uh, White ministers, oftentimes, at the behest of their own ministers. And they begin to have their own visions of Jesus. And what is interesting is they often refer to Jesus of a White man, uh, and as a-- a small particularly a small White man who is kind of like a small friend to them.
Tsk, so, uh, I have authored a previous book called The Color of Christ with speculates about-- uh, co-authored, as you said, uh-- previous book called The Color of Christ which speculates about what is the meaning of a White image of Jesus in the mind of slaves? And my conclusion there, our conclusion rather, was that there was no other choice but to conceptualize Jesus as a White man, because that was the predominant, prevailing image in the nineteenth century. That was the image that was being massed produced and-- by steam printing presses.
And so they conceived of him that way, uh, because that is how he is handed down to them. But that does not mean that they conceived-- so Jesus is White. But Jesus is not a White man in the sense of the White man like their master. He is the White man who is their friend. We would now say almost like a White ally, I think, is the-- the contemporary, uh, version of that-- of that-- of that same kind of language. Uh, and they perceived him as their ally in overcoming the struggles and toil and strife of the world of slavery they have to live through.
Chris: How did that differ from how the White man saw Jesus?
Paul: Yeah. So Whites obviously had this, an evangelical conception of Jesus. And Jesus-- and so it is like half of it is the same, because Jesus is their comforter and their friend as well. So Jesus is the comforter and friend of the slaveholder as well as the slave. Uh, but Jesus as a-- as it comes-- as he comes to be institutionalized in the church is also representative of the social order, I think, in a way that he-- it was simply not the case, uh, with slaves, because Jesus was the way to conceptualize a different social order for slaves as opposed to the defender of the social order.
Chris: You also write, Paul, that school books envision Hindus and Buddhists as Oriental others, different not just in terms of religion but also different racially from Caucasian Christians. What were the implications of this?
Paul: The implications-- there is many different implications. Some of those implications become more evident in the later nineteenth century with, uh, Chinese Exclusion Acts and anti-immigration laws and that kind of thing. But for the antebellum sort of mid-19th century which is where that particular quote comes from, you have this interesting phenomenon that New England intellectuals have become, uh, fascinated by so called "Oriental" religions. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, was, Henry David Thoreau, et cetera, the-- these kinds of people.
So they are kind of inventing, the field of what we would now call comparative religion. Uh, but in inventing it, as it comes to be passed down in school books and other things, they-- it comes to be passed down as sort of like religions that are interesting by people who are racially other than us, uh, and who cannot conceive of the world that we live in, because they have different-- both racial categories of their mind and religious categories of their mind.
So the popularization of these ideas of Emerson, et al, end up, uh, perpetuating the racialization of other peoples.
Chris: We are talking with Paul Harvey about his book, Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, published in 2017. Mr. Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado Colorado Springs where he researches rights and teaches in the field of American history from the 16th century to the present.
Paul, presenting White and Black religious thought after the Civil War, you share these observations, "If God had sanctioned White caretaking of Negroes in bondage as the divine plan for Southern Christian civilization, then what was God's will in a world without slavery?" And, "African-Americans understood that Black freedom and Black Christianity were just at the moment of their true rebirth at the end of the Civil War. They perceived that their constricted bounds of habitation for Black Americans was about to expand. And they trusted their God was the author of that revolution."
Did the country at large understand this? And where did this divergence of opinion lead America during Reconstruction?
Paul: No. The country at large did not understand that. Uh, some people did. Some Whites did. Uh, uh, nearly all Blacks did. Uh, the-- the country at large did not.
So what I am referring to there is, first of all, the dilemma for White Southerners is when you have the entire-- when your entire intellectual universe is constructed with this pro-slavery ideology and God has a certain will, uh, to preserve slavery in order to spread in order to help Christianity diffuse itself and so forth. When-- when your entire mental world is constructed on that and then slavery suddenly violently disappears, then, uh, what really is the will of God? They have to figure that out. It is-- it is a great theological dilemma for many people, many White Southerners at the--- at the end of the Civil War.
Uh, it is not a dilemma for Blacks owners, because they had much more of a theology that God would provide them liberation in God's time. And they, in fact, saw that happen. So they saw the Civil War, in effect, as a fulfillment of prophecy.
Uh, but they faced the challenge of creating-- the challenge and the opportunity both of creating, uh, independent religious institutions. So what happens in, uh, southern churches after the Civil War is Whites, uh, insist that Black should remain a part of the church in exactly the way that they had been before, that is, a segregated part of church-- of White churches: sitting in balconies, not being in positions of power, and so forth. Because they-- they think Blacks are not civilized and Christianized enough to run their own institutions.
Blacks obviously, want no part of that. And by, uh, in very great numbers, uh, separate out and formed their own independent churches sometimes with the cooperation of Whites, more often, with either the resistance or simply the, tsk, um, uh, the resistance of Whites or simply Whites, uh, acknowledging that they have left and having wanting nothing more to do with them, uh, and feeling in a-- and ironically feeling betrayed by the people that they thought were their loyal slaves. Then they have come to discover that they were never loyal slaves. In their own minds, that was always a kind of act that they had to play in the-- in the antebellum south.
Uh, so that-- but that is-- that is a part of-- of Black, free Black men of color and free Black women of color in the antebellum era had created a theology that-- that had prepared this moment that the Civil War created. And-- and so Black churches stepped into that role, played their social roles, played their political roles, played all the multi various roles that Black churches did, because there were not other Black institutions to-- to fill all of those different kinds of roles at that time.
Chris: Paul, can you tell us the background, in effect, of Reverend HN Turner's declarations in the late 19th century that in America White is God and Black is the devil and God is a Negro?
Paul: Yeah. So that is-- that comes from a speech he gave in the 1890s to the-- to a-- a group of Black Baptists. Uh, Henry McNeal Turner was a Methodist. Interestingly, Turner was a free man of color before the Civil War. He was never a slave. Uh, he becomes a Methodist Minister in the eighteen-fifties, the Union Army Chaplain during the Civil War, and a State Rep-- a State Senator in Georgia after the Civil War for a couple of years.
He was basically kicked out of the State Senate, in a sort of coup that White Democrats, um, tsk, enact against Black Republicans in Georgia. That was just part of the process of redemption-- political, so called redemption, after the Civil War.
And he becomes increasingly embittered and disillusioned by American society in the 1880s and 1890s. And one of the sources of that bitter disillusionment was that he perceived clearly the connection of the White image of Jesus with the divinization of Whiteness as a property that people have and, therefore, the demonization of Blackness.
So he says, "All people have the capacity to envision God in their own image." Obviously, White people have done that. Black people have the same right to envision God in their own image. And so that is what I am going to do when I say, "God is a Negro." He does not mean that as a literal phrase. He means that God metaphorically identifies with the struggle of Black people. He is basically making exactly-- exactly the same argument that Black theologians of the 1960s and forward - James Cone, et cetera - make. Uh, but he is making it in the 1890s. So I think of him really as the Father of-- of Black Theology in the nineteenth century.
Chris: During this time, after the Civil War, the United States, especially in the southern states or entirely in the-- in the southern states, experienced lynchings. And in your book, you call them acts of purification where clergymen pronounced benedictions as men crucified and set afire Black bodies. So there is a lot of religious language in those discussions.
Tell me more about that, or tell us more about that, please.
Paul: Yeah. So this is obviously one of the most horrific episodes of American history, the lynching of Black people about five thousand or so from the 1880s to the 1950s. Uh, we do not have an exact figure. But that is a-- that is a sort of a round-- approximate round figure, probably, more that are not known about but, um, tsk, e-- enough that it is one of the great scandals of American history. It is also one of the great scandals of American religious history that, um, many White churches either-- the-- the typical response simply would be not to acknowledge that at all, simply to turn your back and sort of pretend like it did not exist.
A less common but very powerful response was to either justify it or to, in some particular occasions - that is what I am referring to there - to participate in it.
So for example, there is a very famous-- I will just give you one story that illuminates the complexities of this. There is a very famous lynching of a Black man in Waco, Texas in the 1910s. And there is actually a Baptist Minister there, James Dawson, who was there and watches it, White Baptist Minister, and he is, um, he is horrified by it actually. Uh, but he also says, "What could I, a single individual, possibly do about this?"
And this is an event in which several thousand people set the Black man on fire. And the use of fire is an obvious image of purification. So there has been a lot of theological scholarship about the meaning of this. And one argument that has come out of the theological scholarship is the right of, the evangelical right of purification of sin comes to be invested on the body of the Black men and Black women, mostly Black men, who are kind of the representative of societal sins and, therefore, must be sacrificed in expiation of our own sins. So the Black body becomes the vehicle of-- of societal expiation in this theology.
Chris: Now, Paul, regarding Native Americans in the early twentieth century, the American Missionary Association's Charles Shelton said, "The Indian must go down. Extermination or annihilation is the only possible solution of the question. You can send to the Indian the rifle and exterminate him in that way. Or we can send to the Indian the gospel of Christ its great power of civilization and through its influence, exterminate the savage that save the man."
Chris: Tell us about this and what it represents.
Paul: Yeah. So that-- that is referring to the famous, uh, slogan from the nineteenth century, "Kill the Indian; save the man." Kill the Indian; save the man. And the idea was that the same process-- and-- and by the way, these are, these are many times ex-abolitionists and people who are very involved with Black civil rights. And they-- they have an idea that-- that, uh, they are going to help Blacks rise in American civilization.
And what happens is they, uh-- and they-- they do many heroic things in-- in the process of doing that, create Black colleges and universities, for example, uh, oftentimes against, uh, the attacks of the clan. Many of these are the same people who are involved in, tsk, the creation of this idea - kill the Indian; save the man - the creation of Indian boarding schools which really had the same basic idea as Black, schools of the time.
The idea was to take, uncivilized, uneducated people. Civilize them, train them in the ways of American civilization so that they could then rise up an American civilization. And over a period of several generations, let us say, become, equal partners to Whites and American civilization.
So the great irony of this, in my opinion, is it had a kind of, it had a kind of idealistic, uh, motive. But it has an utterly disastrous end that we all know about in how Indian boarding schools actually functioned in which Native children were beaten so that they would not speak their native language, for example, and all kinds of stories that, that come out of these, uh, come out of these institutions.
But the, the more pluralistic idea that emerges later in the twentieth century is simply not present, largely not present, in the-- in the later nineteenth century. And there-- there was only one path to civilization. Uh, and so it comes to be applied to Indians, by many of the same people who are applying it to African-Americans with idealistic motives but with disastrous ends.
Chris: Thank you, Paul. In your chapter about race, religion, and immigration, you relate that the early twentieth century increase in Russian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants caused "the relationship of Jews to Whiteness to be more in question". Why is this significant?
Paul: It is significant, because there had been a long period of Jewish immigration in American history, German Jews, mostly. Uh, and these are the people who, for example, create Reform Judaism in Cincinnati in the, uh, in the later nineteenth century, for example.
Uh, in the later nineteenth, twentieth century, you have, uh, this whole period of immigration from Poland, Eastern Europe, uh, uh, Russian Jews, and so forth. And they are really-- they are perceived as racially different, uh, in a way that German Jews were not.
Uh, and there is a lot of reasons for that. One is they are more likely to speak, uh, languages unfamiliar to Americans, Yiddish in particular. For another, they are very much crowded into, uh, tenements in New York and places like that. Uh, and they-- they come to be seen as a foreign people and unassimilable people by some Americans see them that way, uh, in a way that-- that German Jews were not. Also, I would say this is because of the-- they were coming in such large numbers, much larger numbers than-- than German Jews had ever come in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Um, so they, uh, are thought of as a-- a racialized people. And that is-- that is not characteristic of how Jews had been thought of in American history. That is something that is a relatively new thing in the later nineteenth century, I believe.
Chris: Thank you. Tell us about the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, its purpose, and what it meant.
Paul: Yeah. So the world, uh, across Chicago 1893 had the great world's fair. This-- this amazing spectacular event in Chicago in 1893. All kinds of things, uh, things-- things happened there, uh, one of which was the World's Parliament of Religions.
And the idea actually came from Liberal Protestants, and they wanted to bring everyone, all different representatives of different religious groups, together from all over the world. And their goal, the Liberal Protestant goal, was actually to show that all world religions had something to contribute, some moral message to contribute. And that Liberal Protestantism was kind of at the summit, because it combined all the great messages of all the other liberal religions.
Uh, they would not have said it that explicitly, but their implicit goal was-- was that. But what happens is, tsk, uh, you see many Americans for the first time being introduced to, Hinduism, to Buddhism, in a way that they had never heard before by people who are not consenting necessarily to this Liberal Protestant project. Some of these people go on to have rather famous careers as kind of purveyors of eastern, religious with wisdom.
Uh, tsk, the practices of yoga and things like that begin to take off from the World's Parliament of Religions. It is a kind of central moment in terms of how people are going to come to think of-- of pluralism in American religion.
Chris: Also in this, uh, same time period, you talk about the former Southern Baptist Minister, Thomas Dixon "Transforming the suffering savior of the lost cause into a herald of American power." Paul, can you tell us about how religion wove itself into the Ku Klux Klan and what it meant for twentieth century America?
Paul: Yeah. So, lost cause refers to the idea common in the late 19th century south that, um, tsk, the --the cause of the self was holy and that the Southerners had lost that cause, because God was testing and purifying them for some greater purpose in the-- in the future. That is a very common idea many White Southerners had at the time.
Thomas Dixon comes from a family of Baptist Ministers in North Carolina, uh, but he is also very interested in theater. He is a Shakespearean theater actor, and he does all kinds of other things.
In the early twentieth century, he writes a couple of famous novels; The Clansman was one in which the clan played the role of saving American civilization from the "brutalities of Negro savages", around all that stuff.
So these novels are important partly because they are very popular as novels, but then they become the-- the screenplay as it were for the famous film, Birth of a Nation, in 1915 that many people are familiar with which basically retells the story of the Civil War as White Southerners understood it.
And, again, the plan-- the clan in the film plays the heroic role of saving, uh, women from being raped and saving American civilization as it were from being raped. Women in the film were kind of a symbol for American civilization as a whole which is being raped by Negro savages.
And the film comes out. And the Ku Klux Klan, second-- so called second Ku Klux Klan began, not coincidentally, at exactly the same moment, because the film is a kind of inspiration for the clan. And, of course, the clan famously becomes very, very huge in the 1920s, uh, with many millions of members not primarily in the South. Actually, Indiana was the center of the clan at that time. And the clan becomes a purveyor of, uh, certainly racism, of course, but principally of anti-Catholicism and anti-Judaism more than anything else.
Um, so all of those things from-- so Dixon plays a-- a key role in the recreation and reformation of the clan in the early twentieth century, uh, through the 1920s and, uh, you know has a, tsk, has a sort of a demonic role in American history for that reason.
Chris: During the 1906 Azusa Street Revivals in Los Angeles, one participant wrote, "I, being southern-born, thought it a miracle that I could sit in a service by a colored saint of God and worship, or eat at a great camp table and forget I was eating beside a colored saint. But in spirit and truth, God was worshiped in love and harmony. " What did these arrivals-- what did-- I am sorry. What are these Azusa Street Revivals? And what did they do for religion and race in America?
Paul: Yeah. So the Azusa Street Revivals are kind of one of the-- one of the founding moments of what we now call Pentecostalism which is to say Pentecostalism is the idea that after salvation and baptism, there was a kind of baptism of the Holy Spirit which allows the recipient of the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues, uh, and to become a purely, holy person.
One of the-- and there is much scholarly controversy about who exactly founded Pentecostalism. But certainly, one of its founders - I think the principal one in my opinion - was William Seymour, an African-American, uh, former Baptist Minister from Louisiana, who goes to some, tsk, uh, holiness meetings. Holiness is kind of like the predecessor to Pentecostalism in Houston. Uh, he is actually required to sit it by himself in a segregated part of the room.
And he ends up in Los Angeles, uh, rents a former horse stable, uh, and next to a African Methodist Episcopal Church, and begins the series of revivals which miraculously catch the attention of the local papers. Those stories in the local papers are picked up by international papers, and, pretty soon, you have people coming from all over the world including some White Southerners to receive this so called baptism of the Holy Spirit at the hands literally of William Seymour.
So the White-- I cannot remember the name of the person who wrote that. But it is a White Southerner who was remarking that he could not have conceived of an interracial, physical interaction, religious and physical interaction at the same time, outside of this context, because it was so foreign to the way White Southerners thought of race relations.
But it speaks to how Pentecostalism, in its early days, had, a kind of religious power to overcome racial barriers. Pentecostalism, after a generation, quickly segregates itself just like all other things in American society are segregated. But in this kind of originary moment, there are, uh, particular moments of racial interaction that are rather remarkable to contemplate.
Chris: Paul, now, moving into religion and civil rights, can you tell us how Black churches had been criticized? And then what role some played in the Civil Rights Movement going forward?
Paul: Yeah. So there is a great-- there is a-- a lot of literature written by African-American intellectuals in the middle of the twentieth century would say basically this "The church is the largest institution in the Black community." And, as W.E.B. Du Bois writes in the 1930s, I think it was, "What has the church done on behalf of social progress? The flat answer is nothing, if not, less than nothing." And Du Bois was one of these critics that you just, refer to there. And he is talking about the church has all this potential power that is going unused.
Now, I think that is a somewhat of an unfair criticism, because when you look at what churches were actually doing, there is actually a lot going on. It is just not very publicly visible. But Du Bois and others thought that the church could do a lot more.
Lo and behold, in 1950s and 60s, of course, you have the grand representative of the Black church, Martin Luther King, rise up. But he rises up from a, uh-- he-- he grows up in the 1930s and 40s where his father was a minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. His father was protesting, for example, the fact that there were no Black high schools for any Black students in Atlanta. And he forces the city government to build the Booker T. Washington High School where Martin Luther King, Jr. went to high school, went to junior high, rather.
So there is-- there is a kind of history of activism which then becomes public in the 50s and 60s. Uh, but in the era before the fifties and sixties, there-- there is the idea that the Black church has a kind of social-- potential social power that is unrealized.
Chris: rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer, summed up her life's work with this statement, which you have in your book, "We cannot separate Christ from freedom and freedom from Christ." Can you tell us about her and what this meant?
Paul: Yes. Fannie Lou Hamer was a poor African-American, uh, sharecropper in, um, tsk, Mississippi, uh, growing up in the 40s, 50s, and 60s who goes to a civil rights meeting. And I believe it is 1962, if I remember correctly, uh, at that time that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has come to Mississippi to organize people.
And she kind of catches the-- the message of-- of the young, uh, people who are leading SNCC. And she becomes very much involved with SNCC, tries to register to vote. Uh, she is arrested, uh, undergoes basically torture in Mississippi jails, is really beaten quite brutally, is physically damaged for life as a result of that, but emerges.
And she enters the national stage, because she goes to the Democratic Convention in 1964. And there is a controversy about who is going to represent Mississippi at the Democratic Convention. And, of course, White Mississippians want no Black people. Black people from Mississippi want to be fairly represented as part of the delegation. And eventually, the compromise comes that-- that there will be two seats for Black delegates from Mississippi.
And-- Fannie Lou Hamer famously says, "We did not come all this way for no two seats," Uh, because the-- the compromise to her is an unacceptable, loss of what the Civil Rights Movement had stood for. And then she, -- actually, Lyndon Johnson is watching this. And he cuts off the -- the TV, cos he does not want the-- the nation to watch Fannie Lou Hamer.
But Fannie Lou Hamer, uh, has a great voice begins to sing This Little Light of Mine which is a song that is, uh, sort of associated with her now. And she ends up being basically the symbol of what the Civil Rights Movement represents in the State of Mississippi. She is kind of like the-- the representative of that from the ordinary class or folk that the Civil Rights Movement organized.
Chris: Thank you. Could you paint for us a religious portrait of Cesar Chavez and what he did?
Paul: Yeah. So Cesar Chavez was something of a figure parallel to Martin Luther King in the sixties. Uh, Caesar Chavez--except from the world of Catholicism.
Cesar Chavez, uh, grows up as a Mexican-American Catholic in the 40s and 50s. In the 50s begins-- and-- and especially in the sixties begins to organize, um, tsk, farm workers, predominantly Mexican-American, uh, farm workers but some Filipinos as well in the California fields in the 1960s. And he does so using a Catholic religious imagery very similar to how Martin Luther King uses Protestant religious imagery.
But in Chavez's case, he is not-- he is different than King, because Chavez is not a great orator in and of himself. King was a great orator, and Chavez was not. But Chavez is a person who has mastered this-- the symbology of suffering that comes from Catholicism.
So one of Chavez's means of portraying the goals of the farm workers' union is to engage in public fast and to engage in the public suffering of a fast which for him represents the public suffering of Jesus on the cross. And he wants to make that point clear.
So he does that more through his actions, I think, than his words per se. But he becomes the symbol of farm workers' struggles as a result of that.
Chris: Thank you. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights organizer and Mennonite Minister, Vince Harding, wrote this in his “Black Power in the American Christ”: "Perhaps, God is writing on the wall saying that we Christians, Black and White, must choose between death with the American Christ and life with the suffering servant of God." What did he mean? And what effect did this have?
Paul: Yeah. So he is talking about how Christianity had been so enmeshed with White supremacy through most of American history that the only choice now was whether to try to extricate the message of Christianity from White supremacy. And if it was not ex-- if it could not be extricated, uh, then the message simply could not, uh-- then-- then it was essentially a dead, form. It would not have any meaning whatsoever.
Chris: And did this have an effect in the country?
Paul: Yeah. So Vincent Harding was an associate's of King and was someone who was important in the development of Black theology in the nineteen-sixties. And he is a kind of representative that of the-- the idea-- King had this idea, too, that-- that Christianity was-- was-- at the end of the day, Christianity was salvageable, was, uh, was-- you were able to extricate Christianity from White supremacy, because Christianity has an essence that does not have to be, does not have to be covered in White supremacy.
Of course, many critics of Christianity is 60s Malcolm X, et cetera, said, otherwise, that it was so enmeshed in White supremacy that it could not be extricated, and Harding and others had a different idea and were important in-- in propagating kind of idea of a new Christianity in American history.
Chris: Towards the end of your book, you quote a scholar saying that in 21st America, race and religion are increasingly decoupling. What went into that statement? And what are its implications for us?
Paul: Yeah. Um, I used to think that more than I think that now, honestly, uh, but just because of what we have seen over the last year. Uh, but I was-- I was referring there to the fact that, churches in America are more likely-- much more likely to, uh, be of diverse membership now than it would have been the case in the past. And we do not think of the White church as a thing as we would have in an earlier generation.
And, for example, twenty percent of churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention are African-American churches. They often have multiple affiliations. They may be affiliated with a Black denomination. But they also affiliate with this denomination, Southern Baptists, who historically came out of the slaveholding South. So that-- that is what he means by the-- the-- by the decoupling.
Uh, I think recent books, really just in the past year, such as Jemar Tisby's The Color of Compromise, have challenged the notion that that there really has been this decoupling. Yeah, There has been a decoupling institutionally, but there is not been a decoupling ideologically effectively is what he says.
Chris: Paul, that leads us into this closing question. You mentioned in your book, the book Divided by Faith, published in 2001 by two religious sociologists and its treatment of what you call or what they call heart change and systemic institutional change. Can you elaborate on these and how understanding them might help us 2020?
Paul: Yeah. So, uh, the evangelical emphasis has always been on the individual that the transformation of the individual through salvation by Christ is the key to transforming society.
Critics of that view have always held, kind of the social gospel critics and so forth - and Martin Luther King had the same idea - held that the transformation of society is necessary also in the transformation of individuals. And the two really cannot be, uh, separated out in the traditional way.
So what Emerson and Smith say in Divided by Faith is, um, there are many White evangelicals who-- who clearly want to overcome the racist history of American evangelicalism. But they conceived of doing so through individual relations. And the problem with that is individual relations do not address the structural causes, the structural impediments that American racism historically has imposed.
Uh, this is a realization, I believe, that Martin Luther King was really coming to later in his life. And he really presses this point in the last three years of his life, 1965 and 1968.
Contemporary, uh, critics have picked up this point and have said that the phrase we now use is “structural racism” which is a sort of the collective structural racism embedded in the very institutions of American history have to be addressed. And you cannot simply address it at the level of better individual race relations. As important as those might be, as laudable as those projects might be, they do not address this kind of structural problems.
So, Black evangelicals tend to see the structural racism that are embedded in American history White evangelicals do not. And that is-- that is basic problem that American Christianity faces. That is the argument of Emerson and Smith, and one that I think still holds a lot of weight.
Chris: Thank you, Paul. We have been talking with Paul Harvey about his book, Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, published in 2017. Mr. Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado - Colorado Springs where he researches rights and teaches in the field of American History from the sixteenth century to the present.
Thank you so much, Paul, for taking time to participate and for all your efforts in studying race and religion.
Paul: Thank you so much for this opportunity, Chris. I really appreciate it.A
For our purposes today, we will define race as any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry. For example, the twenty-twenty Census race categories are White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Hawaiian Native or Pacific Islander, or some other race.
As we all observe and participate in the national reckoning with racism after the death of George Floyd on May twenty-fifth of this year, a fuller and more accurate understanding of how race and religion have been intertwined in the United States history will be of use.
Paul Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado - Colorado Springs where he researches, writes, and teaches in the field of American history from the sixteenth century to the present. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1992.
Dr. Harvey is the author of many books including Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography; The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in American History; and Freedom's Coming: Religious Cultures and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era.
We are very happy to have Paul here to help us understand a particular part of American religious history, the intersections of religion and race, by discussing his new book "Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History" published in 2017.
Also, as with each episode in our podcast series, Religion in the American Experience, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and, thus, be better equipped as citizens to ensure that the American experiment in self-government endures. As Abraham Lincoln said, "We cannot escape history."
Thank you Paul for being with us.
Paul: Thank you. Very glad to be here.
Chris: You start your book by saying that race and religion are co-constituting categories. Can you tell us just briefly what you mean by that? And why it is important to our discussion?
Paul: Yeah. So what I was trying to do in that part of the book was take a, uh, uh-- that is an academic language co-constituting categories which does not maybe mean anything to a more general audience. But what it means is that, um, race has been fundamental to how religion has come to be defined that American history to the very definition of religion itself. And religion has come to also be something that has defined racial categories over time. So they in-- in effect they both define each other.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. Paul, in your chapter about race and colonial American religion, you state that as European colonizers tried to bring others into the Christian fold, they faced questions of how an Indian or a Negro could also be a Christian person. And given-- and I am quoting here, "And given that raced bodies claimed Christian privileges – [and I will insert here "such as freedom"] - Euro-Americans puzzled over how to convert but deploy it on behalf of racial hierarchy." Can you give an example or two of how this played out?
Paul: Yeah. So the big question in the seventeenth century was the question of that historically you were not supposed to enslave people of your own religion. And so if an African-American, for example, became a Christian, as sometimes happened in the seventeenth century - usually Anglican Christians, in fact then how could you possibly keep them enslaved?
So some of the first laws, uh, written in the sixteen-sixties, sixteen-seventies addressed precisely this issue by saying essentially just because one converts to the faith does not mean that one has-- one changes once status in the in the social world. And that they keep, they actually keep rewriting that law and keep sort of updating it, because, it remains I think-- the-- I think they have to do that, because it remains a problem; it remains a dilemma in their own mind that they cannot quite figure out how to deal with.
And so the law becomes more strict and more-- it becomes longer and more explicit over time until in the-- in the-- in the 1720S it is a much lengthier version of the same law which basically says, "Neither you nor your children, albeit you have become or will become Christian, will ever change your status in-- in the social world." They try to make that as-- as clear as possible.
And one of the reasons they do so is because the, slave owners do not want to introduce slaves to the Christian faith. And, therefore, Christian missionaries - Anglican missionaries, mostly - um, have to, uh, find a way to persuade slaveholders that Christianity will not lead to freedom. The problem is slaveholders are - in this era, at least - are never really fully persuaded of that. I think that is why the-- they have the profusion of these laws that-- that they kept trying to persuade slaveholders. But slaveholders were largely resistant to having missionaries come on their plantations and that-- and that kind of thing. And I think it is because they still had-- implicitly is they still had this older view that, Christianity was tied to freedom, therefore, a slave Christian was just a contradiction in terms .
Chris: You write in your book that as a result of these laws, I am quoting here, "Christianity and enslavement were theoretically compatible."
Paul: Yeah. Exactly a summary of what I just said. Yeah. But they-- they had to be made compatible over time. It was not something that came naturally in the seventeenth century world.
Chris: Right. Also, in that same area of the book, you write this sentence, and I am quoting here, "Race trumped religion as the most important category in an ordered society." Why did you say that? That is a powerful statement.
Paul: Yeah. precisely, because the Racial category into which-- which someone had been put became the most important category that defined their lives rather than the religious category that they either had or that they could opt for so that, African-- the category African was a more important category in terms of defining your status than the category Christian or Muslim or whatever other religion you would want to put in there.
So the first-- the first category that defines your life principally is the-- the racialized category, African and African-American.
Chris: Right. So Paul, regarding Native Americans now, you quote one of their prophets as saying, "The great spirit did not mean that the White people and the red people should live near each other," which sounds familiar to this statement also in your book from an anti-immigration advocate during the influx of Chinese in the late nineteenth century in the western United States, "It is the economy of providence that man shall exist in nationalities and that they shall be divided by the antipathies of race." What did all this mean?
Paul: Yeah. So those are two quotes that sound alike, but actually are-- come from very different context, because one comes from a Native American prophet. So what is happening in the eighteenth century is, Indian peoples, Native American peoples who had conceptualized themselves as all different-- all different groups of people, tribalized peoples, for example are coming to use terms like “Red men”-- the Red Men, the Indian, the singular terms like that. In other words, they-- they begin to adopt the racialized categories that were imposed upon them, as part of the necessity, part of the need to defend their communities against the colonizing, orders of their day.
And so a statement like that is part of the kind of Indian self-defense that emerges in the eighteenth century, an Indian self-defense that ironically used the racialized categories invented by Europeans in the first place.
The second quote from the later-- when was that - later nineteenth century, I suppose-- I do not remember--when that was. It is quote that comes from those in positions of power, uh, who were attempting to define who can be an American.
So for the question of that-- that day was can a Chinese person, a person of Chinese descent racially be an American citizen? Is a Chinese person racially capable of comprehending American liberty, for example?
One of the anti-- there is many anti-immigration arguments. But one of the anti-immigration ar-- arguments is they are racially incapable of understanding, freedom, liberty, Christianity, et cetera. Of course, there were Chinese Christians at the time who were pointing out that they were perfectly capable of understanding Christianity, because that was their religion, in fact.
But that was one of the principal, um, tsk, themes of-- of anti-immigration polemics from the li-- from the later nineteen century. But that quote is coming from those who have the ability to define, uh, the power relations of that society. The quote from the Native American prophet is coming from the other side: those who were being displaced, those who were - the colonial subjects of the Europeans.
Chris: And then you quote Frederick Douglass, saying this, um, "Revivals in religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand-in-hand together. The church and the slave prison stand next to each other. The groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotions of his religious master while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit. The pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity." What effect did such rhetoric have in the United States?
Paul: That is one of, uh, Douglass', uh, classic, uh, passages pointing out the hypocrisy of slave-holding Christianity; he was-- he was a master at doing that.
And it is interesting. The effect is it helps to galvanize abolitionism, uh, because the-- the abolitionists adopt exactly that rhetoric that comes from Douglass, because he is so-- he is so good at-- at mocking and i-- imitating in a mocking style, for example, a pro-slavery sermon. He does that sometimes and will deliver a pro-slavery sermon in a style that clearly is mocking it at the same time. It is a paro-- self- parody of that sermon.
So that-- that is a-- that quote comes from the context in which he is doing that. And that helps to galvanize abolitionism. But ironically, also helps to galvanize pro-slavery, because the pro-slavery forces recognize the power of that critique. And they have to figure out how to respond to it.
So if you think of the big picture kind of as the18th century as the, uh, the-- the pro-slavery argument is the so called “necessary evil” argument. We were sort of left with this institution. And there is not much we can do about it except hope it goes away, kind of a Thomas Jeffersonian, uh, view, but when you read sermons from the eighteen-thirties, forties, fifties, basically after the eighteen-thirties, they increasingly adopt a-- a pro-slavery stance which makes slavery not only compatible to but instrumental to the spread of-- the spread of Christianity. And part of that comes from a response to exactly the fact that they were being mocked for their hypocrisy. And they know that they have to respond to that. And they do respond to it with some very powerful sermons of their own.
Chris: Paul, I’m going to move into your chapter about religious ways of knowing race before the Civil War. Um, the first couple of chapters were more introductory. In this chapter you explained that Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion led to a strengthening of how Christianity would be woven into the ideology of the masterclass. Can you help us understand how that was done?
Paul: Yeah. So Nat Turner was a Baptist Minister, and a slave in Southampton County Virginia. Very very interesting life story. Very controversial life story, because we-- we know very little about him. And most of what we know comes from the, uh, confessions of Nat Turner which were collected by a lawyer named Thomas Gray. And there is a great controversy among historians about how much we can trust that particular document, because some people think Thomas Gray embellished, parts of Nat Turner's story to help-- to make a more spectacular story, because Thomas Gray basically wanted to make money out of selling this book. That was his motive for doing it.
However, I tend to think it is reasonably reliable. That is my personal position. And so, Nat Turner is someone who takes the apocalyptic passages of the Bible as symbolic of how he should act in this world and to rise up in revolt against slavery basically by slaughtering Whites in his-- in his county.
White seeing that-- this is that, exactly at the moment that the abolitionist movement is being born in 1831. So 1831 is a hugely important year of American history in terms of how slavery comes to be viewed. And it is also usually important here, because you really-- maybe a few years before 1831and the 1820s but certainly after 1831, you see the full rise and development of the pro-slavery theology that I spoke of before, uh, most famously enunciated by James Henley Thornwell, a Presbyterian Minister in 1850.
And he gives a famous sermon in 1850, ironically, a sermon in which he was consecrating a chapel that Whites had built for Black Presbyterian parishioners. Uh, and there were-- there were so many Black Pre-- Presbyterian parishioners in this particular church that they-- they needed a separate place to meet, cos they could not fit all in the segregated balcony.
So he-- he comes to give this, and he says, uh, "One, I am not ashamed to call the Negro my brother. I am not ashamed to call the Negro my brother." He disavows a racist, justification for slavery. But then he goes on to give a kind of what we would think of as a-- a nineteenth century conservative argument based-- that comes out of European thought really which is that, uh, slavery and other forms of social order are necessary to prevent anarchy. And it may be that slavery has evils in it. But, it is our job to restrain those evils. But there are much greater evils in the abolition of slavery.
The New York Catholic, priest, John Hughes, the Archbishop John Hughes in New York, he basically makes the same argument. And so he ends up saying, "Slavery is evil as many institutions-- human institutions are, because humans have sinned in them. And they create evil institutions."
But the one thing that is more evil than slavery is abolitionism, because abolitionism leads to anarchy. It leads to the complete dissolution of all social order. And it leads to kind of the worst of all possible worlds.
And so slavery may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it is the best world that we can hope for given the situation that we were handed, uh, as an inheritance of-- from the 17th and 18th century. And we may hope that this world will become a better and freer world for everyone at some indeterminate point in the future. But for now, this is the best world that we can hope for.
So it is getting woven in in that-- in that particular pro-slavery, uh, way in which, God creates a social order that resembles a family. The slaveholder is kind of like the father. And, the rest of the family fall into place. And each person in the family has their place in the social order. The slaves are like children who are cared for by the father, but who also have to obey the father.
So that is the model that God has provided for us in the social world-- in the religious world but also in the social world.
Chris: Fascinating. Can you tell us, Paul, how slaves saw Jesus? And how it differed from how non-slaves “saw” Jesus"?
Paul: So slaves adopt, not all, but many slaves adopt Christianity in the nineteenth century, uh sometimes, at the behest of, uh, White ministers, oftentimes, at the behest of their own ministers. And they begin to have their own visions of Jesus. And what is interesting is they often refer to Jesus of a White man, uh, and as a-- a small particularly a small White man who is kind of like a small friend to them.
Tsk, so, uh, I have authored a previous book called The Color of Christ with speculates about-- uh, co-authored, as you said, uh-- previous book called The Color of Christ which speculates about what is the meaning of a White image of Jesus in the mind of slaves? And my conclusion there, our conclusion rather, was that there was no other choice but to conceptualize Jesus as a White man, because that was the predominant, prevailing image in the nineteenth century. That was the image that was being massed produced and-- by steam printing presses.
And so they conceived of him that way, uh, because that is how he is handed down to them. But that does not mean that they conceived-- so Jesus is White. But Jesus is not a White man in the sense of the White man like their master. He is the White man who is their friend. We would now say almost like a White ally, I think, is the-- the contemporary, uh, version of that-- of that-- of that same kind of language. Uh, and they perceived him as their ally in overcoming the struggles and toil and strife of the world of slavery they have to live through.
Chris: How did that differ from how the White man saw Jesus?
Paul: Yeah. So Whites obviously had this, an evangelical conception of Jesus. And Jesus-- and so it is like half of it is the same, because Jesus is their comforter and their friend as well. So Jesus is the comforter and friend of the slaveholder as well as the slave. Uh, but Jesus as a-- as it comes-- as he comes to be institutionalized in the church is also representative of the social order, I think, in a way that he-- it was simply not the case, uh, with slaves, because Jesus was the way to conceptualize a different social order for slaves as opposed to the defender of the social order.
Chris: You also write, Paul, that school books envision Hindus and Buddhists as Oriental others, different not just in terms of religion but also different racially from Caucasian Christians. What were the implications of this?
Paul: The implications-- there is many different implications. Some of those implications become more evident in the later nineteenth century with, uh, Chinese Exclusion Acts and anti-immigration laws and that kind of thing. But for the antebellum sort of mid-19th century which is where that particular quote comes from, you have this interesting phenomenon that New England intellectuals have become, uh, fascinated by so called "Oriental" religions. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, was, Henry David Thoreau, et cetera, the-- these kinds of people.
So they are kind of inventing, the field of what we would now call comparative religion. Uh, but in inventing it, as it comes to be passed down in school books and other things, they-- it comes to be passed down as sort of like religions that are interesting by people who are racially other than us, uh, and who cannot conceive of the world that we live in, because they have different-- both racial categories of their mind and religious categories of their mind.
So the popularization of these ideas of Emerson, et al, end up, uh, perpetuating the racialization of other peoples.
Chris: We are talking with Paul Harvey about his book, Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, published in 2017. Mr. Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado Colorado Springs where he researches rights and teaches in the field of American history from the 16th century to the present.
Paul, presenting White and Black religious thought after the Civil War, you share these observations, "If God had sanctioned White caretaking of Negroes in bondage as the divine plan for Southern Christian civilization, then what was God's will in a world without slavery?" And, "African-Americans understood that Black freedom and Black Christianity were just at the moment of their true rebirth at the end of the Civil War. They perceived that their constricted bounds of habitation for Black Americans was about to expand. And they trusted their God was the author of that revolution."
Did the country at large understand this? And where did this divergence of opinion lead America during Reconstruction?
Paul: No. The country at large did not understand that. Uh, some people did. Some Whites did. Uh, uh, nearly all Blacks did. Uh, the-- the country at large did not.
So what I am referring to there is, first of all, the dilemma for White Southerners is when you have the entire-- when your entire intellectual universe is constructed with this pro-slavery ideology and God has a certain will, uh, to preserve slavery in order to spread in order to help Christianity diffuse itself and so forth. When-- when your entire mental world is constructed on that and then slavery suddenly violently disappears, then, uh, what really is the will of God? They have to figure that out. It is-- it is a great theological dilemma for many people, many White Southerners at the--- at the end of the Civil War.
Uh, it is not a dilemma for Blacks owners, because they had much more of a theology that God would provide them liberation in God's time. And they, in fact, saw that happen. So they saw the Civil War, in effect, as a fulfillment of prophecy.
Uh, but they faced the challenge of creating-- the challenge and the opportunity both of creating, uh, independent religious institutions. So what happens in, uh, southern churches after the Civil War is Whites, uh, insist that Black should remain a part of the church in exactly the way that they had been before, that is, a segregated part of church-- of White churches: sitting in balconies, not being in positions of power, and so forth. Because they-- they think Blacks are not civilized and Christianized enough to run their own institutions.
Blacks obviously, want no part of that. And by, uh, in very great numbers, uh, separate out and formed their own independent churches sometimes with the cooperation of Whites, more often, with either the resistance or simply the, tsk, um, uh, the resistance of Whites or simply Whites, uh, acknowledging that they have left and having wanting nothing more to do with them, uh, and feeling in a-- and ironically feeling betrayed by the people that they thought were their loyal slaves. Then they have come to discover that they were never loyal slaves. In their own minds, that was always a kind of act that they had to play in the-- in the antebellum south.
Uh, so that-- but that is-- that is a part of-- of Black, free Black men of color and free Black women of color in the antebellum era had created a theology that-- that had prepared this moment that the Civil War created. And-- and so Black churches stepped into that role, played their social roles, played their political roles, played all the multi various roles that Black churches did, because there were not other Black institutions to-- to fill all of those different kinds of roles at that time.
Chris: Paul, can you tell us the background, in effect, of Reverend HN Turner's declarations in the late 19th century that in America White is God and Black is the devil and God is a Negro?
Paul: Yeah. So that is-- that comes from a speech he gave in the 1890s to the-- to a-- a group of Black Baptists. Uh, Henry McNeal Turner was a Methodist. Interestingly, Turner was a free man of color before the Civil War. He was never a slave. Uh, he becomes a Methodist Minister in the eighteen-fifties, the Union Army Chaplain during the Civil War, and a State Rep-- a State Senator in Georgia after the Civil War for a couple of years.
He was basically kicked out of the State Senate, in a sort of coup that White Democrats, um, tsk, enact against Black Republicans in Georgia. That was just part of the process of redemption-- political, so called redemption, after the Civil War.
And he becomes increasingly embittered and disillusioned by American society in the 1880s and 1890s. And one of the sources of that bitter disillusionment was that he perceived clearly the connection of the White image of Jesus with the divinization of Whiteness as a property that people have and, therefore, the demonization of Blackness.
So he says, "All people have the capacity to envision God in their own image." Obviously, White people have done that. Black people have the same right to envision God in their own image. And so that is what I am going to do when I say, "God is a Negro." He does not mean that as a literal phrase. He means that God metaphorically identifies with the struggle of Black people. He is basically making exactly-- exactly the same argument that Black theologians of the 1960s and forward - James Cone, et cetera - make. Uh, but he is making it in the 1890s. So I think of him really as the Father of-- of Black Theology in the nineteenth century.
Chris: During this time, after the Civil War, the United States, especially in the southern states or entirely in the-- in the southern states, experienced lynchings. And in your book, you call them acts of purification where clergymen pronounced benedictions as men crucified and set afire Black bodies. So there is a lot of religious language in those discussions.
Tell me more about that, or tell us more about that, please.
Paul: Yeah. So this is obviously one of the most horrific episodes of American history, the lynching of Black people about five thousand or so from the 1880s to the 1950s. Uh, we do not have an exact figure. But that is a-- that is a sort of a round-- approximate round figure, probably, more that are not known about but, um, tsk, e-- enough that it is one of the great scandals of American history. It is also one of the great scandals of American religious history that, um, many White churches either-- the-- the typical response simply would be not to acknowledge that at all, simply to turn your back and sort of pretend like it did not exist.
A less common but very powerful response was to either justify it or to, in some particular occasions - that is what I am referring to there - to participate in it.
So for example, there is a very famous-- I will just give you one story that illuminates the complexities of this. There is a very famous lynching of a Black man in Waco, Texas in the 1910s. And there is actually a Baptist Minister there, James Dawson, who was there and watches it, White Baptist Minister, and he is, um, he is horrified by it actually. Uh, but he also says, "What could I, a single individual, possibly do about this?"
And this is an event in which several thousand people set the Black man on fire. And the use of fire is an obvious image of purification. So there has been a lot of theological scholarship about the meaning of this. And one argument that has come out of the theological scholarship is the right of, the evangelical right of purification of sin comes to be invested on the body of the Black men and Black women, mostly Black men, who are kind of the representative of societal sins and, therefore, must be sacrificed in expiation of our own sins. So the Black body becomes the vehicle of-- of societal expiation in this theology.
Chris: Now, Paul, regarding Native Americans in the early twentieth century, the American Missionary Association's Charles Shelton said, "The Indian must go down. Extermination or annihilation is the only possible solution of the question. You can send to the Indian the rifle and exterminate him in that way. Or we can send to the Indian the gospel of Christ its great power of civilization and through its influence, exterminate the savage that save the man."
Chris: Tell us about this and what it represents.
Paul: Yeah. So that-- that is referring to the famous, uh, slogan from the nineteenth century, "Kill the Indian; save the man." Kill the Indian; save the man. And the idea was that the same process-- and-- and by the way, these are, these are many times ex-abolitionists and people who are very involved with Black civil rights. And they-- they have an idea that-- that, uh, they are going to help Blacks rise in American civilization.
And what happens is they, uh-- and they-- they do many heroic things in-- in the process of doing that, create Black colleges and universities, for example, uh, oftentimes against, uh, the attacks of the clan. Many of these are the same people who are involved in, tsk, the creation of this idea - kill the Indian; save the man - the creation of Indian boarding schools which really had the same basic idea as Black, schools of the time.
The idea was to take, uncivilized, uneducated people. Civilize them, train them in the ways of American civilization so that they could then rise up an American civilization. And over a period of several generations, let us say, become, equal partners to Whites and American civilization.
So the great irony of this, in my opinion, is it had a kind of, it had a kind of idealistic, uh, motive. But it has an utterly disastrous end that we all know about in how Indian boarding schools actually functioned in which Native children were beaten so that they would not speak their native language, for example, and all kinds of stories that, that come out of these, uh, come out of these institutions.
But the, the more pluralistic idea that emerges later in the twentieth century is simply not present, largely not present, in the-- in the later nineteenth century. And there-- there was only one path to civilization. Uh, and so it comes to be applied to Indians, by many of the same people who are applying it to African-Americans with idealistic motives but with disastrous ends.
Chris: Thank you, Paul. In your chapter about race, religion, and immigration, you relate that the early twentieth century increase in Russian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants caused "the relationship of Jews to Whiteness to be more in question". Why is this significant?
Paul: It is significant, because there had been a long period of Jewish immigration in American history, German Jews, mostly. Uh, and these are the people who, for example, create Reform Judaism in Cincinnati in the, uh, in the later nineteenth century, for example.
Uh, in the later nineteenth, twentieth century, you have, uh, this whole period of immigration from Poland, Eastern Europe, uh, uh, Russian Jews, and so forth. And they are really-- they are perceived as racially different, uh, in a way that German Jews were not.
Uh, and there is a lot of reasons for that. One is they are more likely to speak, uh, languages unfamiliar to Americans, Yiddish in particular. For another, they are very much crowded into, uh, tenements in New York and places like that. Uh, and they-- they come to be seen as a foreign people and unassimilable people by some Americans see them that way, uh, in a way that-- that German Jews were not. Also, I would say this is because of the-- they were coming in such large numbers, much larger numbers than-- than German Jews had ever come in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Um, so they, uh, are thought of as a-- a racialized people. And that is-- that is not characteristic of how Jews had been thought of in American history. That is something that is a relatively new thing in the later nineteenth century, I believe.
Chris: Thank you. Tell us about the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, its purpose, and what it meant.
Paul: Yeah. So the world, uh, across Chicago 1893 had the great world's fair. This-- this amazing spectacular event in Chicago in 1893. All kinds of things, uh, things-- things happened there, uh, one of which was the World's Parliament of Religions.
And the idea actually came from Liberal Protestants, and they wanted to bring everyone, all different representatives of different religious groups, together from all over the world. And their goal, the Liberal Protestant goal, was actually to show that all world religions had something to contribute, some moral message to contribute. And that Liberal Protestantism was kind of at the summit, because it combined all the great messages of all the other liberal religions.
Uh, they would not have said it that explicitly, but their implicit goal was-- was that. But what happens is, tsk, uh, you see many Americans for the first time being introduced to, Hinduism, to Buddhism, in a way that they had never heard before by people who are not consenting necessarily to this Liberal Protestant project. Some of these people go on to have rather famous careers as kind of purveyors of eastern, religious with wisdom.
Uh, tsk, the practices of yoga and things like that begin to take off from the World's Parliament of Religions. It is a kind of central moment in terms of how people are going to come to think of-- of pluralism in American religion.
Chris: Also in this, uh, same time period, you talk about the former Southern Baptist Minister, Thomas Dixon "Transforming the suffering savior of the lost cause into a herald of American power." Paul, can you tell us about how religion wove itself into the Ku Klux Klan and what it meant for twentieth century America?
Paul: Yeah. So, lost cause refers to the idea common in the late 19th century south that, um, tsk, the --the cause of the self was holy and that the Southerners had lost that cause, because God was testing and purifying them for some greater purpose in the-- in the future. That is a very common idea many White Southerners had at the time.
Thomas Dixon comes from a family of Baptist Ministers in North Carolina, uh, but he is also very interested in theater. He is a Shakespearean theater actor, and he does all kinds of other things.
In the early twentieth century, he writes a couple of famous novels; The Clansman was one in which the clan played the role of saving American civilization from the "brutalities of Negro savages", around all that stuff.
So these novels are important partly because they are very popular as novels, but then they become the-- the screenplay as it were for the famous film, Birth of a Nation, in 1915 that many people are familiar with which basically retells the story of the Civil War as White Southerners understood it.
And, again, the plan-- the clan in the film plays the heroic role of saving, uh, women from being raped and saving American civilization as it were from being raped. Women in the film were kind of a symbol for American civilization as a whole which is being raped by Negro savages.
And the film comes out. And the Ku Klux Klan, second-- so called second Ku Klux Klan began, not coincidentally, at exactly the same moment, because the film is a kind of inspiration for the clan. And, of course, the clan famously becomes very, very huge in the 1920s, uh, with many millions of members not primarily in the South. Actually, Indiana was the center of the clan at that time. And the clan becomes a purveyor of, uh, certainly racism, of course, but principally of anti-Catholicism and anti-Judaism more than anything else.
Um, so all of those things from-- so Dixon plays a-- a key role in the recreation and reformation of the clan in the early twentieth century, uh, through the 1920s and, uh, you know has a, tsk, has a sort of a demonic role in American history for that reason.
Chris: During the 1906 Azusa Street Revivals in Los Angeles, one participant wrote, "I, being southern-born, thought it a miracle that I could sit in a service by a colored saint of God and worship, or eat at a great camp table and forget I was eating beside a colored saint. But in spirit and truth, God was worshiped in love and harmony. " What did these arrivals-- what did-- I am sorry. What are these Azusa Street Revivals? And what did they do for religion and race in America?
Paul: Yeah. So the Azusa Street Revivals are kind of one of the-- one of the founding moments of what we now call Pentecostalism which is to say Pentecostalism is the idea that after salvation and baptism, there was a kind of baptism of the Holy Spirit which allows the recipient of the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues, uh, and to become a purely, holy person.
One of the-- and there is much scholarly controversy about who exactly founded Pentecostalism. But certainly, one of its founders - I think the principal one in my opinion - was William Seymour, an African-American, uh, former Baptist Minister from Louisiana, who goes to some, tsk, uh, holiness meetings. Holiness is kind of like the predecessor to Pentecostalism in Houston. Uh, he is actually required to sit it by himself in a segregated part of the room.
And he ends up in Los Angeles, uh, rents a former horse stable, uh, and next to a African Methodist Episcopal Church, and begins the series of revivals which miraculously catch the attention of the local papers. Those stories in the local papers are picked up by international papers, and, pretty soon, you have people coming from all over the world including some White Southerners to receive this so called baptism of the Holy Spirit at the hands literally of William Seymour.
So the White-- I cannot remember the name of the person who wrote that. But it is a White Southerner who was remarking that he could not have conceived of an interracial, physical interaction, religious and physical interaction at the same time, outside of this context, because it was so foreign to the way White Southerners thought of race relations.
But it speaks to how Pentecostalism, in its early days, had, a kind of religious power to overcome racial barriers. Pentecostalism, after a generation, quickly segregates itself just like all other things in American society are segregated. But in this kind of originary moment, there are, uh, particular moments of racial interaction that are rather remarkable to contemplate.
Chris: Paul, now, moving into religion and civil rights, can you tell us how Black churches had been criticized? And then what role some played in the Civil Rights Movement going forward?
Paul: Yeah. So there is a great-- there is a-- a lot of literature written by African-American intellectuals in the middle of the twentieth century would say basically this "The church is the largest institution in the Black community." And, as W.E.B. Du Bois writes in the 1930s, I think it was, "What has the church done on behalf of social progress? The flat answer is nothing, if not, less than nothing." And Du Bois was one of these critics that you just, refer to there. And he is talking about the church has all this potential power that is going unused.
Now, I think that is a somewhat of an unfair criticism, because when you look at what churches were actually doing, there is actually a lot going on. It is just not very publicly visible. But Du Bois and others thought that the church could do a lot more.
Lo and behold, in 1950s and 60s, of course, you have the grand representative of the Black church, Martin Luther King, rise up. But he rises up from a, uh-- he-- he grows up in the 1930s and 40s where his father was a minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. His father was protesting, for example, the fact that there were no Black high schools for any Black students in Atlanta. And he forces the city government to build the Booker T. Washington High School where Martin Luther King, Jr. went to high school, went to junior high, rather.
So there is-- there is a kind of history of activism which then becomes public in the 50s and 60s. Uh, but in the era before the fifties and sixties, there-- there is the idea that the Black church has a kind of social-- potential social power that is unrealized.
Chris: rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer, summed up her life's work with this statement, which you have in your book, "We cannot separate Christ from freedom and freedom from Christ." Can you tell us about her and what this meant?
Paul: Yes. Fannie Lou Hamer was a poor African-American, uh, sharecropper in, um, tsk, Mississippi, uh, growing up in the 40s, 50s, and 60s who goes to a civil rights meeting. And I believe it is 1962, if I remember correctly, uh, at that time that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has come to Mississippi to organize people.
And she kind of catches the-- the message of-- of the young, uh, people who are leading SNCC. And she becomes very much involved with SNCC, tries to register to vote. Uh, she is arrested, uh, undergoes basically torture in Mississippi jails, is really beaten quite brutally, is physically damaged for life as a result of that, but emerges.
And she enters the national stage, because she goes to the Democratic Convention in 1964. And there is a controversy about who is going to represent Mississippi at the Democratic Convention. And, of course, White Mississippians want no Black people. Black people from Mississippi want to be fairly represented as part of the delegation. And eventually, the compromise comes that-- that there will be two seats for Black delegates from Mississippi.
And-- Fannie Lou Hamer famously says, "We did not come all this way for no two seats," Uh, because the-- the compromise to her is an unacceptable, loss of what the Civil Rights Movement had stood for. And then she, -- actually, Lyndon Johnson is watching this. And he cuts off the -- the TV, cos he does not want the-- the nation to watch Fannie Lou Hamer.
But Fannie Lou Hamer, uh, has a great voice begins to sing This Little Light of Mine which is a song that is, uh, sort of associated with her now. And she ends up being basically the symbol of what the Civil Rights Movement represents in the State of Mississippi. She is kind of like the-- the representative of that from the ordinary class or folk that the Civil Rights Movement organized.
Chris: Thank you. Could you paint for us a religious portrait of Cesar Chavez and what he did?
Paul: Yeah. So Cesar Chavez was something of a figure parallel to Martin Luther King in the sixties. Uh, Caesar Chavez--except from the world of Catholicism.
Cesar Chavez, uh, grows up as a Mexican-American Catholic in the 40s and 50s. In the 50s begins-- and-- and especially in the sixties begins to organize, um, tsk, farm workers, predominantly Mexican-American, uh, farm workers but some Filipinos as well in the California fields in the 1960s. And he does so using a Catholic religious imagery very similar to how Martin Luther King uses Protestant religious imagery.
But in Chavez's case, he is not-- he is different than King, because Chavez is not a great orator in and of himself. King was a great orator, and Chavez was not. But Chavez is a person who has mastered this-- the symbology of suffering that comes from Catholicism.
So one of Chavez's means of portraying the goals of the farm workers' union is to engage in public fast and to engage in the public suffering of a fast which for him represents the public suffering of Jesus on the cross. And he wants to make that point clear.
So he does that more through his actions, I think, than his words per se. But he becomes the symbol of farm workers' struggles as a result of that.
Chris: Thank you. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights organizer and Mennonite Minister, Vince Harding, wrote this in his “Black Power in the American Christ”: "Perhaps, God is writing on the wall saying that we Christians, Black and White, must choose between death with the American Christ and life with the suffering servant of God." What did he mean? And what effect did this have?
Paul: Yeah. So he is talking about how Christianity had been so enmeshed with White supremacy through most of American history that the only choice now was whether to try to extricate the message of Christianity from White supremacy. And if it was not ex-- if it could not be extricated, uh, then the message simply could not, uh-- then-- then it was essentially a dead, form. It would not have any meaning whatsoever.
Chris: And did this have an effect in the country?
Paul: Yeah. So Vincent Harding was an associate's of King and was someone who was important in the development of Black theology in the nineteen-sixties. And he is a kind of representative that of the-- the idea-- King had this idea, too, that-- that Christianity was-- was-- at the end of the day, Christianity was salvageable, was, uh, was-- you were able to extricate Christianity from White supremacy, because Christianity has an essence that does not have to be, does not have to be covered in White supremacy.
Of course, many critics of Christianity is 60s Malcolm X, et cetera, said, otherwise, that it was so enmeshed in White supremacy that it could not be extricated, and Harding and others had a different idea and were important in-- in propagating kind of idea of a new Christianity in American history.
Chris: Towards the end of your book, you quote a scholar saying that in 21st America, race and religion are increasingly decoupling. What went into that statement? And what are its implications for us?
Paul: Yeah. Um, I used to think that more than I think that now, honestly, uh, but just because of what we have seen over the last year. Uh, but I was-- I was referring there to the fact that, churches in America are more likely-- much more likely to, uh, be of diverse membership now than it would have been the case in the past. And we do not think of the White church as a thing as we would have in an earlier generation.
And, for example, twenty percent of churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention are African-American churches. They often have multiple affiliations. They may be affiliated with a Black denomination. But they also affiliate with this denomination, Southern Baptists, who historically came out of the slaveholding South. So that-- that is what he means by the-- the-- by the decoupling.
Uh, I think recent books, really just in the past year, such as Jemar Tisby's The Color of Compromise, have challenged the notion that that there really has been this decoupling. Yeah, There has been a decoupling institutionally, but there is not been a decoupling ideologically effectively is what he says.
Chris: Paul, that leads us into this closing question. You mentioned in your book, the book Divided by Faith, published in 2001 by two religious sociologists and its treatment of what you call or what they call heart change and systemic institutional change. Can you elaborate on these and how understanding them might help us 2020?
Paul: Yeah. So, uh, the evangelical emphasis has always been on the individual that the transformation of the individual through salvation by Christ is the key to transforming society.
Critics of that view have always held, kind of the social gospel critics and so forth - and Martin Luther King had the same idea - held that the transformation of society is necessary also in the transformation of individuals. And the two really cannot be, uh, separated out in the traditional way.
So what Emerson and Smith say in Divided by Faith is, um, there are many White evangelicals who-- who clearly want to overcome the racist history of American evangelicalism. But they conceived of doing so through individual relations. And the problem with that is individual relations do not address the structural causes, the structural impediments that American racism historically has imposed.
Uh, this is a realization, I believe, that Martin Luther King was really coming to later in his life. And he really presses this point in the last three years of his life, 1965 and 1968.
Contemporary, uh, critics have picked up this point and have said that the phrase we now use is “structural racism” which is a sort of the collective structural racism embedded in the very institutions of American history have to be addressed. And you cannot simply address it at the level of better individual race relations. As important as those might be, as laudable as those projects might be, they do not address this kind of structural problems.
So, Black evangelicals tend to see the structural racism that are embedded in American history White evangelicals do not. And that is-- that is basic problem that American Christianity faces. That is the argument of Emerson and Smith, and one that I think still holds a lot of weight.
Chris: Thank you, Paul. We have been talking with Paul Harvey about his book, Bounds of their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, published in 2017. Mr. Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado - Colorado Springs where he researches rights and teaches in the field of American History from the sixteenth century to the present.
Thank you so much, Paul, for taking time to participate and for all your efforts in studying race and religion.
Paul: Thank you so much for this opportunity, Chris. I really appreciate it.A
