Plantations and Death Camp : Religion, Ideology, and Human Dignity

by Mitchell, Beverly

• ISBN13: 9780800663308
• ISBN10: 0800663306
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-04
• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Pub

Summary

Historical theologian Beverly Mitchell probes some of the most egregious assaults on humans in the modern era to divine not only the root of racial and ethnic oppressions but also the unassailable heart of human dignity revealed in that suffering. Mitchell's work looks at the parallel oppressions that were visited upon African Americans in the slave era and upon Jews in the Nazi era. Mitchell finds a deeper commonality is the underlying religious and ideological justifications for their oppressions and the underlying, dynamic theological features of each.

Author Biography

Beverly Mitchell is Professor of Historical Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C.A member of the American Baptist Church, she holds her doctorate from Boston College/ANTS. Her teaching and writing are in the areas of systematic theology, history of Christianity, and human rights.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Dignity in the Shadow Side of Human Experience	p. 1
Set Apart as Pariahs	p. 5
Wrenching Familial Separations	p. 8
The Humiliation of Deprivations	p. 11
The Particularity of Women's Suffering	p. 16
The Brutality of Oppressors	p. 18
The Agony of Nightmarish Transports	p. 20
The Shame of One's Own Filth	p. 26
Outrage at Degradation	p. 29
Bearing Witness: A Sign of Human Dignity	p. 32
A Common Humanity	p. 36
Human Dignity: The Glory of Humanity	p. 39
The Human Being before God	p. 40
Human Dignity Defined	p. 43
The Human Face and Dignity	p. 47
The Sin of Defacement	p. 50
Anti-Semitism and Black Antipathy: Early Patterns of Dehumanization	p. 55
Anti-Semitism before the Enlightenment	p. 56
Black Antipathy and Slavery before the Enlightenment	p. 60
Patterns of Dehumanization	p. 64
Racism and Anti-Semitism in Modernity	p. 67
The Age of Reason	p. 69
Humanity Comes of Age	p. 71
The Autonomous Human	p. 72
A Fatal Paradox of Modernity	p. 73
White Supremacy and Anti-Semitism as Forms of Racism	p. 80
Communal Defacement as a Blight on Modernity	p. 83
White Supremacy and Racial Anti-Semitism: Ideologies of Death	p. 85
Racialism: A Rival "Faith"	p. 94
The Plight of African Americans and the Ideology of White Supremacy	p. 99
Jews of Europe and the Ideology of German Anti-Semitism, 1933-1945	p. 103
Human Dignity and Defacement as Theo-Political Realities	p. 109
Notes	p. 117
Bibliography	p. 139
Index	p. 145
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