Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its MisdeedsIn Honest Patriots, renowned public theologian and ethicist Donald W. Shriver, Jr. argues that we must acknowledge and repent of the morally negative events in our nation's past. The failure to do so skews the relations of many Americans to one another, breeds ongoing hostility, and damages the health of our society. Yet our civic identity today largely rests on denials, forgetfulness, and inattention to the memories of neighbors whose ancestors suffered great injustices at the hands of some dominant majority. Shriver contends that repentance for these injustices must find a place in our political culture. Such repentance must be carefully and deliberately cultivated through the accurate teaching of history, by means of public symbols that embody both positive and negative memory, and through public leadership to this end. Religious people and religious organizations have an important role to play in this process. Historically, the Christian tradition has concentrated on the personal dimensions of forgiveness and repentance to the near-total neglect of their collective aspects. Recently, however, the idea of collective moral responsibility has gained new and public visibility. Official apologies for past collective injustice have multiplied, along with calls for reparations. Shriver looks in detail at the examples of Germany and South Africa, and their pioneering efforts to foster and express collective repentance. He then turns to the historic wrongs perpetrated against African Americans and Native Americans and to recent efforts by American citizens and governmental bodies to seek public justice by remembering public injustice. The call for collective repentance presents many challenges: What can it mean to morally master a past whose victims are dead and whose sufferings cannot be alleviated? What are the measures that lend substance to language and action expressing repentance? What symbolic and tangible acts produce credible turns away from past wrongs? What are the dynamics-psychological, social, and political-whereby we can safely consign an evil to the past? How can public life witness to corporate crimes of the past in such a way that descendents of victims can be confident that they will never be repeated? In his provocative answers to these questions Shriver creates a compelling new vision of the collective repentance and apology that must precede real progress in relations between the races in this country. |
From inside the book
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Page iv
... United States. 4. United States—Moral conditions—20th century. 5. Reparation—United States. 6. Restitution—UnitedStates. 7. Reconciliation. 8. Victims of crime—United States. 9. United States—Politics and government— Moral States ...
... United States. 4. United States—Moral conditions—20th century. 5. Reparation—United States. 6. Restitution—UnitedStates. 7. Reconciliation. 8. Victims of crime—United States. 9. United States—Politics and government— Moral States ...
Page vii
... United States. Helps from colleagues in all three countries are too numerous to mention in toto, but some deserve special gratitude. Chapter 1, on Germany, has its origin in the luxury of four months given me by the new American Academy ...
... United States. Helps from colleagues in all three countries are too numerous to mention in toto, but some deserve special gratitude. Chapter 1, on Germany, has its origin in the luxury of four months given me by the new American Academy ...
Page viii
... United States in chapters 3 and 4, I mean to suggest that Germany and South Africa have some lessons to teach us in how and why my country needs to work harder on acknowledging pasts of which we have no reason to be proud. Without long ...
... United States in chapters 3 and 4, I mean to suggest that Germany and South Africa have some lessons to teach us in how and why my country needs to work harder on acknowledging pasts of which we have no reason to be proud. Without long ...
Page 3
... a great flood of agreement seemed to sweep across the United States under the summation “everything has changed.” In that exaggeration hid a grain of truth: all of our past is subject to reunderstanding in light Introduction.
... a great flood of agreement seemed to sweep across the United States under the summation “everything has changed.” In that exaggeration hid a grain of truth: all of our past is subject to reunderstanding in light Introduction.
Page 4
... United States rebuked these two theologians, and most of their supporters shook their heads in disagreement, too. America has its faults, most said in response to this moralism, but the first real moral truth has to be that the murder ...
... United States rebuked these two theologians, and most of their supporters shook their heads in disagreement, too. America has its faults, most said in response to this moralism, but the first real moral truth has to be that the murder ...
Contents
3 | |
15 | |
In the Wake of Remembered Evil | 63 |
To African Americans | 127 |
Photo gallery | 207 |
Native Americans | 207 |
Agenda for the American Future | 263 |
Notes | 287 |
Bibliography | 333 |
Index | 339 |
Other editions - View all
Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds Donald W. Shriver Limited preview - 2005 |
Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds Donald W. Shriver Jr. Limited preview - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
African Americans Afrikaner Alex Boraine American history apartheid Berlin Boraine camp Cape Town Cayugas celebration century church citizens civil rights claim Columbia County Commission contemporary culture death debate Desmond Tutu District Six English event evil F. W. De Klerk forget former future German groups high school history historians history books Holocaust hope human Ibid Indians injustice Jewish Jews justice Lakota land leaders living Mandela memory million Mohicans monument moral murder museum Native Americans Nazi neighbors never Niebuhr official Oklahoma one’s past political Powhatan prison question quoted racism recent Reconciliation remember reparations residents responsibility Richmond riot Robben Island Rosewood settlers side slavery slaves society South African southern Steglitz story suffering survivors teachers thousand tion Todd-Curti truth Tulsa Tulsa Race Riot United victims Virginia visitors York young