America’s Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics

America's Unholy Ghosts examines the DNA of the ideologies that shape our nation, ideologies that are as American as apple pie but that too often justify and perpetuate racist ideas and racial inequalities. MLK challenged us to investigate the "ideational roots of race hate" and Ghosts does just that by examining a philosophical "trinity"--Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith--whose works collectively helped to institutionalize, imagine, and ingrain racist ideologies into the hearts and minds of the American people. As time passed, America's racial imagination evolved to form people incapable of recognizing their addiction to racist ideas. Thus, Ghosts comes to a close with the brilliant faith and politics of Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to write the conscience of the Prophetic Black Church onto American hearts, minds, and laws. If our nation's racist instincts still haunt our land, so too do our hopes and desires for a faith and politics marked by mercy, justice, and equity--and there is no better guide to that land than the Prophetic Black Church and the one who saw such a land from the mountaintop. "In his sharp debut, Goza, former pastor at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, Tex., writes with passion about the racist and classist roots of America's political and religious institutions. Grounding his work in the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith, Goza convincingly argues that America's Founding Fathers deliberately designed a racist and inequitable society. In his estimation, America's founders, basing their thinking on the ideas of Locke, structured government around protecting property rights rather than promoting the common good…. Goza's ability to sharply discern and clearly explain ideas underlying American thinking will open important conversations about the nature of equality." --Publishers Weekly starred review "An impressive analysis of the some of the religious and secular thinkers who inspired America's addiction to racist ideas--an addiction that continues to destroy America. America's Unholy Ghosts is for anyone daring to be anti-racist, daring to end racial inequity." --Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America "This is a major and thoughtful contribution to the anti-racism movement." --Gerald Horne, activist and author of The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s and The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America "Joel Goza could not have perceived how racism was and is imagined, institutionalized, and ingrained in U.S. American life had he not experienced the black church. America's Unholy Ghosts is a probing, spirited, edgy, ethical reflection on how both things happened, perceiving a baleful national legacy through the lens of black church faith and struggle." --Gary Dorrien, Columbia University & Union Theological Seminary's Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics and author of Breaking White Supremacy and The New Abolition Joel Edward Goza is a writer, minister, and advocate working from Houston's Fifth Ward. When not working, Joel spends his time pestering his wife Sarah, daughter Naomi, and son Samuel Roger as they enjoy their life together. Connect with Joel's work by visiting joeledwardgoza.com. Read more