Search for "reconstruction"

A Third Reconstruction? Rev. William Barber Lifts the Trumpet

By Peter Laarman

…ACP chapters. I recently had a conversation with Rev. Barber on the “Third Reconstruction,” the meme on the lips of many progressives around the country these days. Is “Third Reconstruction” exactly the right framing for what is needed now in view of the fact that the first two Reconstructions were fairly thoroughly crushed by white reactionaries? Good question. What we tried to lay out in the book is that this language is historically important….

The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Need for a Third Reconstruction

By Eric Foner

…ities that made the United States a fairer, freer society. As in the first Reconstruction, these changes were followed by a backlash, which is still going on today. I fully agree with Rev. Barber that today we need a third Reconstruction. It will not simply be a defensive effort to reverse the retrograde policies—in North Carolina and elsewhere—that inspired the Moral Mondays movement. A third Reconstruction, as he notes, must confront head-on the…

Does Biden’s Inauguration Signal a ‘Third Reconstruction’?

By John Stoehr

…results included the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Then came the Second Reconstruction during the postwar years when, again, white people and Black people came together to fulfill partially that same promise. The results included the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We are now, Barber believes, living in a time of the Third Reconstruction and have been since Obama’s election. That has been hard to see given that Trump’s ele…

The Fusion Friendships of Rev. Barber’s Third Reconstruction

By Daniel José Camacho

…can’t understand the United States apart from the South or apart from the Reconstruction(s). As someone whose roots are newer to the U.S. and whose roots go deeper south to the Caribbean part of Colombia, I’m aware that Rev. Barber raises problems and alternative possibilities that go to the roots of this country, roots that the North is entangled in no matter how much the Northern consciousness scapegoats the South. Rev. Barber considers the mom…

How a Fringe Theocratic Movement Helped Shape the Religious Right As We Know It

By Sarah Posner

…o want to distance themselves and point out that not all homeschoolers are Reconstructionists. That is certainly true. However, Christian Reconstructionists have been crucial to the character of the home schooling movement. The Reconstructionist role began with Rushdoony’s early work in securing a legal right for parents to choose how to educate their children as a matter of religious freedom—that has become relative autonomy for home schooling pa…

The Return of Christian Terrorism

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…udied their writings extensively and possessed a shelf of books written by Reconstruction authors. The convicted anti-abortion killer Paul Hill cited Reconstruction theologians in his own writings and once studied with a founder of the movement, Greg Bahnsen, at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. Leaders of the Reconstruction movement trace their ideas, which they sometimes called “theonomy,” to Cornelius Van Til, a twentieth-c…

Naming White Supremacy’s Fears in A Third Reconstruction

By Serene Jones

…r some time now. He has given a series of talks here at Union on the Third Reconstruction, and he’s working with Union to expand the scope of his work beyond his Southern base. I can say about Rev. Barber that he has this remarkable combination of deep theological knowledge, a sharpness of intellect when it comes to history, and this very practical politics. He always has very specific things to say about the kind of policy changes we need to be p…

White Supremacy Erases Its Violence: The Predictable Blaming of Antifa

By Stephen Young

…ong Southern whites coordinated with false myths of a tyrannically corrupt Reconstruction to justify the orgy of violence that ended Reconstruction and disenfranchised Blacks all over again. During the Civil Rights Movement, the national media sometimes picked up on lynchings, the murder or beating of Civil Rights workers, and the bombing of Black churches. According to White Supremacist leaders, it was never the fault of White Supremacists in the…

The Theology Behind Alabama Official’s Demand to Flout SCOTUS

By Sarah Posner

…University Press, Rebuilding God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction. Rooted in Calvinist theology, Christian Reconstruction teaches that society’s only legitimate “authority” is granted by God, to different “spheres,” such as church, family, or the government. In this theocratic view, the government is considered legitimate only if it follows biblical law, and has a limited function–as Johnson argues, “punishing the wicked an…

Challenging Plantation Capitalism: Rev. Barber’s Holy Cause

By Tefere Gebre

…ore political power in 1868 than they did in 1968.” He urges us to see the Reconstruction period and the great 20th century civil rights era as times when a different kind of America came close to being born. And he acknowledges the bitter truth that, in different ways, the bad guys ultimately prevailed both times in the South—that “the monied elites of plantation capitalism” came out on top—both in the late 19th century and again in the late 20th…