A provocative examination of how religious practices of forgetting drive white Christian nationalism.
 
The dual traumas of colonialism and slavery are still felt by Native Americans and African Americans as victims of ongoing violence toward people of color today. In The Feeling of Forgetting, John Corrigan calls attention to the trauma experienced by white Americans as perpetrators of this violence. By tracing memory’s role in American Christianity, Corrigan shows how contemporary white Christian nationalism is motivated by a widespread effort to forget the role race plays in American society. White trauma, Corrigan argues, courses through American culture like an underground river that sometimes bursts forth into brutality, terrorism, and insurrection. Tracing the river to its source is a necessary first step toward healing.
 

John Corrigan is the Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor of Religion and professor of history at Florida State University. He is the author of numerous books, including Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Introduction: Bad Memories
Chapter 1: Colonial Legacies
Chapter 2: Trauma
Chapter 3: Emotion
Chapter 4: Forgetting and Remembering
Chapter 5: Anxiety, Erasure, and Affect
Chapter 6: Race, Religion, and Nation
Conclusion: The Feeling of Forgetting
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index