In the Name of God: How the Word Became the World
A series on how scripture became power.
Image: woman prays near the Dome of the Rock shrine at Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in the Old City of Jerusalem on 20 February 2026 (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP). Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-closure-al-aqsa-mosque-act-war
In the winter of 1829, a sheet of paper crossed the Atlantic—creased, translated, recopied—bearing the words of an earlier century. It had been issued in Rome, in the voice of a church that claimed universality, but here, in the hands of men who had never seen Rome, it read differently. It read as permission. Ink became boundary. A line drawn in theology became a line cut into forests, into rivers, into the lives of people who had lived on that land long before the document arrived. What followed would later be called progress, expansion, destiny. But the language that made it possible—the quiet transformation of doctrine into possession—was already there, waiting to be used. It is this transformation, this movement from sacred decree to lived dispossession, that gives What God Hath Wrought its meaning: from papal bull to the Trail of Tears, the distance is not as far as it appears.
Years later, far to the south, another text lay open—its pages worn thin from handling. A preacher stood before a congregation and read aloud a passage he had been taught to read one way. Behind him, in the quiet of the room, others followed the same words with their own eyes, their own memory. The language was the same. The meaning was not. Where he spoke of order, they heard deliverance. Where he insisted on obedience, they held onto something older than his voice—something that moved beneath the text, waiting. In that space, narrow but enduring, scripture did two kinds of work at once. It justified bondage even as it carried the possibility of its undoing. The story of Ham’s Children lives in that tension—how scripture was made to serve slavery, and how the enslaved, reading otherwise, refused to let that meaning stand unchallenged.
And on a ridge of limestone hills, where the soil holds heat long after the sun has dropped, men move between trees that have outlived empires. Their hands know the work without instruction: the pruning in winter, the waiting through spring, the harvest when the branches are struck and the olives fall onto canvas spread beneath them. Above the groves, another road cuts across the hillside, newer, straighter, imposed. It does not follow the curve of the land. It follows a different kind of claim. The trees remain. The work continues. But the story told about the land has changed, and with it, the terms by which it is held. In The Lords of the Land, Israel in Canaan is not only a place, but a question—about return and residence, about memory and mandate, about who has the authority to name the land and be believed.
The distance between these scenes is measured in centuries, in oceans, in the slow movement of institutions that do not often announce themselves as they advance. But the gestures repeat. A document arrives and names a world. A text is read and fixed into meaning—or resisted. A landscape is worked, remembered, and then described again by others, in another language, for another purpose. What changes are the settings. What remains is the work the stories are asked to do.
Series Intellectual Map
What God Hath Wrought: From Papal Bull to the Trail of Tears
Primary sources
Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823). Source: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep021/usrep021543/usrep021543.pdf
“Inter Caetera,” in Frances Gardiner Davenport, ed., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917.
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/inter-caetera-by-pope-alexander-vi-may-4-1493/
Marshall, John. The Papers of John Marshall. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. https://archive.org/details/papersofjohnmars0000mars/page/n8/mode/1up
United States. Indian Removal Act, 4 Stat. 411 (1830). https://www.loc.gov/resource/llsalvol.llsal_004/?sp=459
United States. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) 1 (1831). https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep030/usrep030001/usrep030001.pdf
United States. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832). https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep031/usrep031515/usrep031515.pdf
Secondary sources
Banner, Stuart. How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. https://archive.org/details/onevastwintercou00call/page/n3/mode/1up
Hurt, R. Douglas. The Indian Frontier, 1763–1846. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987.
Miller, Robert J., Jacinta Ruru, Larissa Behrendt, and Tracey Lindberg. Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Perduew, Theda, and Michael D. Green. The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears. New York: Viking, 2007.
Robertson, Lindsay G. Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Saunt, Claudio. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. New York: W. W. Norton, 2020.
Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Watson, Blake A. Buying America from the Indians: Johnson v. McIntosh and the History of Native Land Rights. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012.
Williams Jr., Robert A. The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Ham’s Children ; How Scripture Was Made to Serve Slavery—and How the Enslaved Read It Otherwise
Primary sources
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845.
https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855.
https://archive.org/details/mybondagemyfree00doug/page/n8/mode/1up
Furman, Richard, “Exposition of the Views of the Baptists Relative to the Coloured Population of the United States in Communication to the Governor of South Carolina,” Charleston, 1823. Reprinted in Rogers, James A. Richard Furman: Life and Legacy. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985. 274-286. December 24, 1822
https://macmillan.yale.edu/glc/exposition-views-baptists-relative-coloured-population
Helper, Hinton Rowan, and others, eds. The Impending Crisis of the South. New York: Burdick Brothers, 1857.
https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/helper/helper.html
Jones, Charles Colcock. The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States. Savannah, GA: Thomas Purse, 1842.
https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/jones/jones.html
Thornwell, James Henley. The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell. 4 vols. Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1871–1873.
https://archive.org/details/collectedwriting04thor/page/n6/mode/1up
Truth, Sojourner. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Boston: Printed for the Author, 1875.
https://archive.org/details/collectedwriting04thor/page/n6/mode/1up
Secondary sources
Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
https://archive.org/details/slavecommunitypl0000blas/page/n8/mode/1up
Daly, John Patrick. When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004.
Faust, Drew Gilpin. The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
https://archive.org/details/ideologyofslaver0000uns
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Eugene D. Genovese. The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
https://archive.org/details/mindofmasterclas0000foxg
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon, 1974.
https://archive.org/details/rolljordanrollwo0000geno_i2q9/page/n6/mode/1up
Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. New York: Knopf 1997.
https://archive.org/details/southerncrossbeg0000heyr
Irons, Charles F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
https://archive.org/details/bwb_P8-BON-912
Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Noll, Mark A. God and Race in American Politics: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. https://archive.org/details/godraceinamerica0000noll
Noll, Mark A. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
https://archive.org/details/civilwarastheolo0000noll/page/n6/mode/1up
Putnam, Mary Burnham. The Baptists and Slavery, 1840–1845. Ann Arbor, MI: G. Wahr, 1913.
https://ia801705.us.archive.org/4/items/baptistsslavery102putn/baptistsslavery102putn.pdf
Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. Updated ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Tise, Larry E. Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
https://archive.org/details/proslaveryhistor0000tise
The Lords of the Land: Israel in Canaan
Primary sources
Balfour, Arthur. “Letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild.” November 2, 1917. British Library. London.
https://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/search/?searchQuery=balfour+declaration&utm_source=chatgpt.com
Herzl, Theodor. “Der Judenstaat. Leipzig and Vienna: M. Breitenstein’s Verlags-Buchhandlung,” 1896. https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH990010757810205171/NLI
United Nations General Assembly. “Resolution 181 (II): Future Government of Palestine,” November 29, 1947. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/210008?ln=en&v=pdf
“United Nations Security Council. Resolution 242,” November 22, 1967. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/90717?v=pdf
“United Nations Security Council. Resolution 338,” October 22, 1973. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/93466?ln=en&v=pdf
Murphy, Maureen Clare. “Olive Harvest in Palestine – Photos and Video.” The Electronic Intifada. October 31, 2014. Photographs by “Zalameh” (@BDS4Justice). https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/olive-harvest-palestine-photos-and-video
Secondary sources
Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York: Basic Books, 1981.
https://archive.org/details/makingofmodernzi0000avin/page/n1/mode/1up
Gelvin, James L. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
https://archive.org/details/israelpalestinec0000gelv_k1z6
Gorenberg, Gershom. The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977. New York: Times Books, 2006.
https://archive.org/details/bwb_W7-DDE-862/page/n8/mode/1up
Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020.
https://archive.org/details/2-10-khalidi
Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
Kimmerling, Baruch, and Joel S. Migdal. Palestinians: The Making of a People. New York: Free Press, 1993.
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780029173213/page/n1/mode/1up
Lustick, Ian S. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988.
https://archive.org/details/forlandlordjewis0000lust
Masalha, Nur. Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
https://archive.org/details/expulsionofpales00masa
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001. New York: Vintage, 2001.
https://archive.org/details/righteousvictims0000morr/page/n8/mode/1up
Penslar, Derek J. Zionism: An Emotional State. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2023.
Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
https://archive.org/details/landlabororigins0000shaf
Segev, Tom. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000.
https://archive.org/details/onepalestinecomp00sege/page/n1/mode/1up
Tamari, Salim. Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso, 2007.
https://archive.org/details/hollowlandisrael00weiz/page/n2/mode/1up