As the news shows us every day, contemporary American culture and politics are rife with people who demonize their enemies by projecting their own failings and flaws onto them. But this is no recent development. Rather, as John Corrigan argues here, itâs an expression of a trauma endemic to Americaâs history, particularly involving our long domestic record of religious conflict and violence. Religious Intolerance, America, and the World spans from Christian colonistsâ intolerance of Native Americans and the role of religion in the new republicâs foreign-policy crises to Cold War witch hunts and the persecution complexes that entangle Christians and Muslims today. Corrigan reveals how US churches and institutions have continuously campaigned against intolerance overseas even as theyâve abetted or performed it at home. This selective condemnation of intolerance, he shows, created a legacy of foreign policy interventions promoting religious freedom and human rights that was not reflected within Americaâs own borders. This timely, captivating book forces America to confront its claims of exceptionalism based on religious libertyâand perhaps begin to break the grotesque cycle of projection and oppression.
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