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"A panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theology. Since the earliest days of Christianity, theologians expressed pervasive anxiety about Jews as equal members of society and, with European expansion in the early modern period, that anxiety extended to people of color. This troubling legacy still haunts us today. Christian Supremacy demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism, and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world's violent white supremacy movements. In a powerful historical narrative spanning nearly two millennia, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as 'children born in slavery,' and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World. Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution"
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Magda Teter is professor of history and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of
Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth, which won a National Jewish Book Award;
Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation; and
Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland.
Zusammenfassung
A panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theology
Since the earliest days of Christianity, theologians expressed pervasive anxiety about Jews as equal members of society, and, with European expansion in the early modern period, that anxiety extended to people of color. This troubling legacy still haunts us today. Christian Supremacy demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world’s violent white supremacy movements.
In a powerful historical narrative spanning nearly two millennia, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as “children born to slavery,” and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World.
Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution.
Zusatztext
"Christian Supremacy is more than a deep history of European racism and the role of Christianity in perpetuating violence. It is an evocative call for Christians to closely examine our unconscious habits, our iconography, and the identities we proclaim. It is an invocation to recognize and remove the decay of centuries of hate before it once again becomes ‘a deadly social force.’"---Kathryn Julian, Christian Century
