| Popis: |
The influence of the Bible in the shaping of American empire is rooted in the colonial era but is most clearly in evidence in the nineteenth century. In the spirit of postcolonial frameworks, this chapter seeks to lay bare some of the ways in which scriptural discourse undergirded the religious, political, and cultural power of Anglo-American settlers that legitimated the land dispossession of Native Americans and enslavement of African Americans. The first part of the chapter contrasts some alternative epistemologies about mapping land by colonial settlers, Native Americans, and Mormons. The second half of the chapter evaluates the racialized interpretations of the myth of Ham that supported the southern plantation “slaveocracy” and some alternative scriptural interpretations offered by African Americans in their aspirations for liberation from slavery and equal treatment in society. |
