Honest Patriots : Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds

In Honest Patriots, renowned public theologian and ethicist Donald W. Shriver, Jr. argues that we must acknowledge and repent of the morally negative events in our nation's past. The failure to do so skews the relations of many Americans to one another, breeds ongoing hostility, and damages the health of our society. Yet our civic identity today largely rests on denials, forgetfulness, and inattention to the memories of neighbors whose ancestors suffered great injustices at the hands of some dominant majority. Shriver contends that repentance for these injustices must find a place in our political culture. Such repentance must be carefully and deliberately cultivated through the accurate teaching of history, by means of public symbols that embody both positive and negative memory, and through public leadership to this end. Religious people and religious organizations have an important role to play in this process. Historically, the Christian tradition has concentrated on the personal dimensions of forgiveness and repentance to the near-total neglect of their collective aspects. Recently, however, the idea of collective moral responsibility has gained new and public visibility. Official apologies for past collective injustice have multiplied, along with calls for reparations. Shriver looks in detail at the examples of Germany and South Africa, and their pioneering efforts to foster and express collective repentance. He then turns to the historic wrongs perpetrated against African Americans and Native Americans and to recent efforts by American citizens and governmental bodies to seek public justice by remembering public injustice. The call for collective repentance presents many challenges: What can it mean to morally master a past whose victims are dead and whose sufferings cannot be alleviated? What are the measures that lend substance to language and action expressing repentance? What symbolic and tangible acts produce credible turns away from past wrongs? What are the dynamics-psychological, social, and political-whereby we can safely consign an evil to the past? How can public life witness to corporate crimes of the past in such a way that descendents of victims can be confident that they will never be repeated? In his provocative answers to these questions Shriver creates a compelling new vision of the collective repentance and apology that must precede real progress in relations between the races in this country.

Donald Shriver argues that recognition of morally negative events in American history is essential to the health of our society. The failure to acknowledge and repent of these events skews the relations of many Americans to one another and breeds ongoing hostility. To obscure the suffering of anyone's ancestors, says Shriver, is to be blind to the continuing impact of that suffering upon the descendants. Yet our civic identity largely rests on denials, forgetfulness, and inattention to the memories of neighbors whose ancestors suffered great injustices at the hands of some dominant majority. Shriver contends that repentance for these injustices must find a place in our political culture. It must be carefully cultivated through the accurate teaching of history, public symbols that embody both positive and negative memory, and public leadership to this end. Religious people and religious organizations have an important role to play in this process. In the past, the Christian tradition has so concentrated on the personal dimensions of forgiveness and repentance that their collective aspects have been severely neglected. More recently, however, the idea of collective moral responsibility has come into public prominence. Official apologies for past collective injustice have multiplied, as have calls for reparations. Focusing on the wrongs suffered by African Americans and Native Americans, Shriver examines the challenges associated with the call for collective repentance: What can it mean to morally master a past whose victims are dead and whose sufferings cannot be alleviated? What are the measures that lend substance to language and action expressing repentance? What symbolic and tangible acts produce credible turns away from past wrongs? What are the dynamics-psychological, social, and political-whereby we can safely consign an evil to the past? How can public life witness to corporate crimes of the past in such a way that descendents of victims can be confident that they will never be repeated? In answering these questions Shriver creates a compelling vision of the collective repentance and apology that must precede real progress in relations between the races in this country.

## Abstract The book records attempts in three countries — Germany, South Africa, and the United States — to educate patriots who are neither loveless critics nor uncritical lovers of their nation, but rather loving critics. How does a national public learn to acknowledge the “dark side” of their country’s history? In the post-1945 years, Germans slowly but surely came to pay public attention to the evils of the Nazi era. In an astonishing accumulation of memorials, museums, films, anniversaries, and high school history books, the country has put its future generations on notice: “Never again”. Post-apartheid South Africa has seen comparable developments, especially in its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, new Constitution, memorials, and radically revised school text books. The United States, with a culture more focused on the future than the past, is undergoing a similar but slower public process. Two great crimes mark its national past: slavery and the fate of the people called Indians. The US is beginning to confront these collective crimes with new realism in new laws, museums, films, memorials, and history books. A political culture grows in its capacity for justice by remembering injustice. For a people not to remember the misdeeds of their past is to risk repeating them. Public memory requires concrete public signs, rituals, memorials, and education. This book seeks to record the attempts of these three countries to give public expression to justice by remembering injustice. Contents......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1. Germany Remembers......Page 28 2. South Africa: In the Wake of Remembered Evil......Page 76 3. Old Unpaid Debt: To African Americans......Page 140 4. Unreflected Absences: Native Americans......Page 228 5. Being Human While Being American: Agenda for the American Future......Page 284 Notes......Page 308 Bibliography......Page 354 B......Page 360 D......Page 361 H......Page 362 K......Page 363 M......Page 364 P......Page 365 R......Page 366 T......Page 367 W......Page 368 Z......Page 369 Photo gallery......Page 220 Argues that recognition of morally negative events in American history is essential to the health of the society. Focusing on the wrongs suffered by African Americans and Native Americans, this work examines the challenges associated with the call for collective repentance.