White Redeemers used Christian theology to justify reversing Reconstruction with violence

Evidence

During this period, known as Redemption, starting in the 1870s, white men embraced a completely different religious rationale to methodically erase the gains of Reconstruction. The white “Redeemers” who overturned Reconstruction claimed they were driven by divine right to bring God’s order back to the South. According to the historian Daniel Stowell, Redeemers imagined that, like Jesus, they could “redeem” the South with blood sacrifice and rescue their states from the captivity of Northern and African American political power. In the words of Carole Emberton in her book Beyond Redemption: “Disparate movements and agendas simultaneously sought redemption from violence and also through violence.” Black families and communities throughout the South, as well as many white people who supported them, were terrorized by waves of ferocious brutality that started almost as soon as the Civil War ended. Frequently, these attacks targeted Black churches. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1037

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s treatment of how elites rebrand their own violence as virtue — and the reader’s broader interest in how origin narratives get weaponized. — connects to: Theology justified slavery and genocide by marking whiteness as Christian — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 145; Parallel civic and church catechisms fused white supremacy onto Christian formation. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 364; White churches transmit white supremacy because their theology never reformed — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 547 (+7 more)
• QUESTION: The word ‘redeem’ itself is doing double rhetorical work — worth examining how religious vocabulary gets repurposed for political violence here.