The founding lie began as a theological justification for enslaving recognized humans.

Evidence

The people who settled the country had a fatal flaw. They could recognize a man when they saw one. They knew he wasn’t…anything else but a man; but since they were Christian, and since they had already decided that they came here to establish a free country, the only way to justify the role this chattel was playing in one’s life was to say that he was not a man. For if he wasn’t, then no crime had been committed. That lie is the basis of our present trouble. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 88

Categorization

• DEFINE: Baldwin’s own etymology of the lie — its origin in the need to deny the enslaved man’s humanity to avoid calling it a crime.
• DEEPTHINKING: Baldwin’s logic is a tight mechanism: Christianity + a commitment to founding a ‘free country’ creates the unbearable contradiction that only denial-of-humanity can resolve — this inversion of a Christian moral ledger is paradigm-shifting.
• XREF: connects to: Claims of a Christian founding are strategically deployed to privilege present-day values — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 203