Note: Robert P. Jones has spoken at UUCSR on two recent occasions. Until 2023, Robert Jones was CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), an American nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization that conducts public opinion polls on a variety of topics, specializing in the quantitative and qualitative study of political issues as they relate to religious values. PRRI is a UUCSR Veatch Program grantee.
Excerpted below. You may read the full review here.
In this illuminating and erudite study, historian and religious studies scholar Jones (White Too Long) contends that the origins of American racism can be traced back to 1493, the year when, in response to Columbus’s voyage to the “New World,” the Catholic Church set out the Doctrine of Discovery, which asserted that Christian European culture was innately superior, and therefore Europeans had the right to settle and rule over other lands and their inhabitants. This edict, Jones argues, formed the legal basis for both Indigenous dispossession and African enslavement….
Arresting and deeply researched, this unique account brings to the fore the deep-rooted sense of “divine entitlement, of European chosenness” that has shaped so much of American history. It’s a rigorous and forceful feat of scholarship.
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future is now available for pre-order wherever books are sold. It will be available in hardcover, ebook, and audio book on September 5th.