The Pain of Being Your Own Worst Enemy - Juan Floyd-Thomas

The Pain of Being Your Own Worst Enemy: Race, Religion, and the Spiritual Crisis of White Supremacy in Contemporary America
In the 1990s, a neo-Nazi skinhead named Leo Felton was involved in a failed domestic terrorist plot intended to provoke a “racial holy war.” The police investigation and subsequent arrest of Felton revealed a surprising and uniquely painful personal story that exposes the complicated and perplexing relationship of race, racism, and religion in contemporary America. In the wake of the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, VA and its terrible aftermath, Felton’s story enables us to examine how the vicious brand of white supremacy espoused by the growing coalition of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and far right extremists known as the “alt-Right” poses a pervasive and potentially destructive spiritual crisis threatening both the church and society. By examining how the trauma and suffering produced by white supremacy ravages both white and non-white people alike, this presentation offers insights into developing the resistance and resiliency necessary to disrupt and ultimately dismantle white supremacy in our time.
Juan Floyd-Thomas is Associate Professor of African American Religious History at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion. He is author of Origins of Black Humanism (2008) and Liberating Black Church History (2014) as well as co-author of Black Church Studies: An Introduction (2007) and Altars Where We Worship (2016).