Lillian E. Smith and Christian Nationalism Syllabus

Each year I teach a Lillian E. Smith Studies Course, and each course, while using Smith as the center or the class, is extremely different. Since the course has a small enrollment, I let the students dictate what we will focus on in the course. One semester, the students wanted to look at mass incarceration and the legal system, so we read Michelle Alexander, watched Ava DuVernay’s 13th, and did legal cases alongside Smith. In another course, we looked at white women’s responses to desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement. This semester, we will look at Lillian Smith in relation to Christian nationalism, reading authors such as Anthea Butler, Bradley Onisihi, and others alongside Smith. Below, you will find the syllabus for this course.

Course Description and Objectives:

We’ve got the American Jesus

See him on the interstate

We’ve got the American Jesus

He helped build the president’s estate.

“American Jesus” Bad Religion (1993)

Lillian E. Smith begins her essay “The White Christian and His Conscience” by highlighting the interconnectedness between what she termed the sex-sin-segregation triptych. She writes, “Ever since the first white Christian enslaved the first black man, the conscience of American…