White Supremacy and The American Patriot’s Bible

About a year ago, I was in a book club where we read discussed White Jesus: The Architecture of Racism in Religion and Education. During our conversations, we learned about The American Patriot’s Bible, edited by Dr. Richard G. Lee. The Patriot’s Bible, as the subtitle says, shows “The Word of God and the Shaping of America,” clearly marrying the United States to a divine project ordained by God to succeed and exist. Before even opening the book, we know that the Patriot’s Bible serves to foster and promote Christian Nationalism, “an ideology,” as Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead define it, “that idealizes a fusion of Christianity with American civic belonging and participation.”

Someone in our book club, a religion professor, ordered the book to see what it contains and to use examples from it in courses. In his office one day, I pulled it down from the shelf and started looking through it. This is no commentary on scriptures. Rather, there are entries that highlight historical figures’ faith and historical events in the United States, connecting them all with God and the Bible. It contains selections from George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr, alongside prayers from Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and more. It is white supremacist ideology, coded as color blind Christian belief in the equality of all. I haven’t looked at…