Khyati Joshi makes a timely and important contribution in this volume. In the highly polarized current US context marked by the violent resurgence of White Christian nationalism, she offers an incisive, historically grounded analysis of the ways in which interwoven social constructions of White supremacy and Christian privilege shaped European systems of colonization. The formation of the United States as a nation-state emerged from those well- established cultural patterns and practices of linking belief in White racial superiority with Christian identity, lending justification to enslavement of Black people and the subjugation of Indigenous peoples in the name of Manifest Destiny (70ff). She argues compellingly that Christian normativity combines with White racial normativity to define the cultural, institutional, and structural manifestations of what it means to be “American,” thereby excluding all deemed non-normative as “foreign” (22). The civil religion of American patriotism masks Christian normativity and can reinforce nationalist and ethnocentric ideologies (24).
Methodologically, she models her constructive suggestions for dismantling institutional and structural manifestations of White Christian privilege by attending to intersectionality and clearly identifying her own social and religious locations as an immigrant Indian American Hindu professor of education and woman of color, and by inviting others—students, popular and academic audiences, colleagues, and readers—to do so as well.
One minor area to consider by way of improvement for a future edition of the text would be more careful copy editing at a couple points. In one section about former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue, for example, there is a confusing toggle between usage of “Purdue” and “Perdue” (21–22), and in another Paulo Freire's first name is misspelled (205, 268).
Much more significant than these minor points, though, is Joshi's fine contribution to urgently needed academic engagement at the nexus of White supremacy and Christian privilege. This text offers an insightful complement to resources like Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, as well as the work of Freire, bell hooks, and Bryan Stevenson. Any educator who has attempted to address White supremacy in the classroom will find her honest and constructive account of the painful and liberating process of conscientization a valuable resource. Offering specific examples of such teaching moments, Joshi provides a great service to the educational community by outlining specific, concrete guidelines for setting the necessary boundaries for discussion that are both safe and consciousness-raising (cf. 205 ff).
Those pondering the current virulent power of White Christian nationalism in the United States may find Joshi's work a helpful companion text in conversation with the recent volume, The Flag and the Cross, by sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry. In theological education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, Joshi's text could be used to consider the implications of integralism within the Catholic ecclesial community and broader society, offering a refreshing and potentially restorative “social justice approach” that invites all interlocutors into a process of examining their own starting points, assumptions, language, paradigms, and unnamed privilege by posing questions for group discernment, such as “Is that [practice or custom] an American tradition, or is it Christian?” (199). In seeking to build “a more equitable society where all are able to worship, pray, and live freely” (213) through a positive and additive rather than a dominative and exclusive—or even a generically inclusive—approach to religion (223), Joshi's work can be correlated with the foundational principles of the Catholic social tradition, including the essential value of participation of each and every person in shaping the common good.
