That Christian piety and oppression could so easily coexist should be horrifying. It can happen, though, because the Jesus being referred to in America rarely had any resemblance to the subversive life embodied in the gospel narratives of Scripture. Rather than creating a new order, the American god has too often been the sustainer of this old order, white supremacy and all. The god passed down from generation to generation in dominant culture legitimized our racialized hierarchy. People have assumed that white American “old-time religion” was synonymous with the kind of religion that God
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