Over the last four centuries, many have come to believe sinful “nature” also includes certain groups of people and have accordingly exploited them as resources, the most glaring examples being the transatlantic slave trade and the massacre or resettlement of Native Americans. Then, as this bit of ideology ransacked its way through American history, it met and merged with the work-is-holy-and-idleness-is-sin doctrine. They are natural collaborators because the belief that poverty results from sin diminishes the humanity of the impoverished in the same way the grace-nature divide diminishes
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