Race, Religion, and the Echoes of Status Insecurity in US Foreign Policy

Abstract

This paper examines the racial and religious historical influences on US ontological insecurity in a time of perceived hegemonic decline. It explores the role of particular Protestant theologies from the time of slavery up through the present, and how views on white superiority shaped such thought even after abolition, through Reconstruction, and especially animating the rise of the US as a world power in the 20th Century.