Honest Patriots

Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-0-19-515153-4
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 722 g

In 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. events in American history is essential to the health of our 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. events skews the relations of many Americans to one another 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. anyone's ancestors, says Shriver, is to be blind to the 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.

Zielgruppe

Students and scholars of race relations in America, American religion, and American history

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shriver, Donald W. Jr.

Shriver, Donald W.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Angewandte Ethik & Soziale Verantwortung
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Volks- und Völkerkundliche Museen
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie

Über Autor(innen)

Donald W. Shriver, Jr. is President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Applied Christianity, Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary. He is the author of An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics (OUP, 1995).