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Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause

Confessions of a Southern Church
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Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause is a new history of Richmond's famous St. Paul's Episcopal Church, attended by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis during the Civil War and a tourist magnet thereafter. Christopher Alan Graham's narrative-which emerged out of St. Paul's History and Reconciliation Initiative-charts the congregation's theological and secular views of race from the church's founding in 1845 to the present day, exploring the church's complicity in Lost Cause narratives and racial oppression in Richmond. Graham investigates the ways that the actions of elite white southerners who imagined themselves as benevolent-liberal, even-in their treatment of Black people through the decades obscured the actual damage to Black bodies and souls that this ostensible liberalism caused. Placing the legacy of St. Paul's self-described benevolent paternalism in dialogue with the racial and religious geography of Richmond, Graham reflects on what an authentic process of recognition and reparations might be, drawing useful lessons for America writ large.
Christopher Alan Graham is a historian and museum curator in Richmond, Va.
Graham traces the history of a single congregation . . . [but] also the story of an evolving South, as well as of white Christians' attempts to adapt to changing racial and social landscapes. -- "The Journal of Southern History" The careful historical reconstruction of a singular congregation over many generations makes this a remarkable work, with an insider's view of communal decision-making and the subtle workings of white power in the promotion of white interests . . . Graham's work reminds us that the development of white Christian supremacies did not drop from the sky but was built through the many everyday decisions of living communities in Christian institutions: just like his and just like yours. Thus, the careful research surfacing institutional memory becomes a call for reckoning in the reader's own location. Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause offers a followable road map and raises up the rewards of painstaking and collaborative archival research for those congregations willing to similarly reckon with the racism and white supremacies of American Christianity.-- "Journal of the Civil War Era" Chris Graham is doing the Lord's work and is using history in a responsible way to get it done. I've had a chance to visit St. Paul's Episcopal Church and have seen the efforts of Chris and his team as they address the congregation's strong ties to the Confederacy. Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause is not only a well-told slice of southern religious history, but it should also serve as a model for any congregation committed to confronting its racist past. I hope this book finds its way into the hands of pastors and church leaders around the country. --John Fea, Messiah University, author of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction Superbly researched, extremely well-written, passionately argued, and quite moving in places, Graham's is a historically judicious book, and a model of what local history should be. --Peter Eisenstadt, Author of Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman
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