Professor of Religious Studies Rebecca Todd Peters publishes chapter analyzing white anger in the recent presidential election.
Rebecca Todd Peters, professor of Religious Studies and feminist social ethicist, has had a chapter published in a recent collection of essays titled “Religion in the Age of Obama.”
In the chapter titled “The Mystification of Capitalism and the Misdirection of White Anger,” Peters argues that the obsession with capitalism has blinded many Americans to the ways in which neoliberal capitalism has created an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Because this mystification disallows people from blaming capitalism for their economic and social woes, disaffected white Americans have looked around for other scapegoats. Peters argues that Trump’s appeal was largely a result of these circumstances.
The volume was edited by Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, associate professor of African-American religious history at Vanderbilt University and Anthony B. Pinn, professor of religious studies at Rice University and includes a wide-ranging set of chapters focused on examining the role of religion in the public sphere in the contemporary United States.