Honest Patriots : Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds: 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 ix
... societies to face and to repent of certain evils in their past. The evils iden- tified here are rugged. They need ... society to learn to acknowledge and turn away from those evils in firm, insti- tutionalized forms of the collective ...
... societies to face and to repent of certain evils in their past. The evils iden- tified here are rugged. They need ... society to learn to acknowledge and turn away from those evils in firm, insti- tutionalized forms of the collective ...
Page 8
... society were easy to read in 1952, especially in the matter of relations beween white and black Americans. Strangely enough, this matter does not often enter the text of this 1952 Niebuhr book. Occasionally in other writings he does ...
... society were easy to read in 1952, especially in the matter of relations beween white and black Americans. Strangely enough, this matter does not often enter the text of this 1952 Niebuhr book. Occasionally in other writings he does ...
Page 10
... societies in the Upper South than in the North. About these few years, [it] is not too much to say that this was a society unafraid of facing its own evils. The movement reached a brilliant climax in the free and full debates over ...
... societies in the Upper South than in the North. About these few years, [it] is not too much to say that this was a society unafraid of facing its own evils. The movement reached a brilliant climax in the free and full debates over ...
Page 11
... society remaining in the whole south. . .. Opponents changed their opinions or held their tongues.12 Americans have often spoken superficially of their society as one “unafraid of facing its own evils.” That pride is compatible with an ...
... society remaining in the whole south. . .. Opponents changed their opinions or held their tongues.12 Americans have often spoken superficially of their society as one “unafraid of facing its own evils.” That pride is compatible with an ...
Page 12
... society that believed only selectively in “ liberty and justice for all . ” But more : In their combination of endurance of suffering at the hands of American white - dominated institutions with determination to become full members of ...
... society that believed only selectively in “ liberty and justice for all . ” But more : In their combination of endurance of suffering at the hands of American white - dominated institutions with determination to become full members of ...
Contents
3 | |
15 | |
In the Wake of Remembered Evil | 63 |
To African Americans | 127 |
Photo gallery | 206 |
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 |
Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds Donald W. Shriver Jr. Limited preview - 2008 |
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 lives Mandela memory million Mohicans monument moral murder museum Native Americans Nazi neighbors never Niebuhr official Oklahoma 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 University victims Virginia visitors York young