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America’s Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics
America's Unholy Ghosts examines the DNA of the ideologies that shape our nation, ideologies that are as American as apple pie but that too often justify and perpetuate racist ideas and racial inequalities. MLK challenged us to investigate the "ideational roots of race hate" and Ghosts does just that by examining a philosophical "trinity"--Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith--whose works collectively helped to institutionalize, imagine, and ingrain racist ideologies into the hearts and minds of the American people.
As time passed, America's racial imagination evolved to form people incapable of recognizing their addiction to racist ideas. Thus, Ghosts comes to a close with the brilliant faith and politics of Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to write the conscience of the Prophetic Black Church onto American hearts, minds, and laws. If our nation's racist instincts still haunt our land, so too do our hopes and desires for a faith and politics marked by mercy, justice, and equity--and there is no better guide to that land than the Prophetic Black Church and the one who saw such a land from the mountaintop.
"In his sharp debut, Goza, former pastor at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, Tex., writes with passion about the racist and classist roots of America's political and religious institutions. Grounding his work in the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith, Goza convincingly argues that America's Founding Fathers deliberately designed a racist and inequitable society. In his estimation, America's founders, basing their thinking on the ideas of Locke, structured government around protecting property rights rather than promoting the common good…. Goza's ability to sharply discern and clearly explain ideas underlying American thinking will open important conversations about the nature of equality."
--Publishers Weekly starred review
"An impressive analysis of the some of the religious and secular thinkers who inspired America's addiction to racist ideas--an addiction that continues to destroy America. America's Unholy Ghosts is for anyone daring to be anti-racist, daring to end racial inequity."
--Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
"This is a major and thoughtful contribution to the anti-racism movement."
--Gerald Horne, activist and author of The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s and The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
"Joel Goza could not have perceived how racism was and is imagined, institutionalized, and ingrained in U.S. American life had he not experienced the black church. America's Unholy Ghosts is a probing, spirited, edgy, ethical reflection on how both things happened, perceiving a baleful national legacy through the lens of black church faith and struggle."
--Gary Dorrien, Columbia University & Union Theological Seminary's Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics and author of Breaking White Supremacy and The New Abolition
Joel Edward Goza is a writer, minister, and advocate working from Houston's Fifth Ward. When not working, Joel spends his time pestering his wife Sarah, daughter Naomi, and son Samuel Roger as they enjoy their life together. Connect with Joel's work by visiting joeledwardgoza.com.
As time passed, America's racial imagination evolved to form people incapable of recognizing their addiction to racist ideas. Thus, Ghosts comes to a close with the brilliant faith and politics of Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to write the conscience of the Prophetic Black Church onto American hearts, minds, and laws. If our nation's racist instincts still haunt our land, so too do our hopes and desires for a faith and politics marked by mercy, justice, and equity--and there is no better guide to that land than the Prophetic Black Church and the one who saw such a land from the mountaintop.
"In his sharp debut, Goza, former pastor at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, Tex., writes with passion about the racist and classist roots of America's political and religious institutions. Grounding his work in the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith, Goza convincingly argues that America's Founding Fathers deliberately designed a racist and inequitable society. In his estimation, America's founders, basing their thinking on the ideas of Locke, structured government around protecting property rights rather than promoting the common good…. Goza's ability to sharply discern and clearly explain ideas underlying American thinking will open important conversations about the nature of equality."
--Publishers Weekly starred review
"An impressive analysis of the some of the religious and secular thinkers who inspired America's addiction to racist ideas--an addiction that continues to destroy America. America's Unholy Ghosts is for anyone daring to be anti-racist, daring to end racial inequity."
--Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
"This is a major and thoughtful contribution to the anti-racism movement."
--Gerald Horne, activist and author of The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s and The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
"Joel Goza could not have perceived how racism was and is imagined, institutionalized, and ingrained in U.S. American life had he not experienced the black church. America's Unholy Ghosts is a probing, spirited, edgy, ethical reflection on how both things happened, perceiving a baleful national legacy through the lens of black church faith and struggle."
--Gary Dorrien, Columbia University & Union Theological Seminary's Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics and author of Breaking White Supremacy and The New Abolition
Joel Edward Goza is a writer, minister, and advocate working from Houston's Fifth Ward. When not working, Joel spends his time pestering his wife Sarah, daughter Naomi, and son Samuel Roger as they enjoy their life together. Connect with Joel's work by visiting joeledwardgoza.com.
291 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 5, 2019
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May 21, 2020
Since President Trump took office, an absorbent amount of literature sprouted up to explain the problem with white folk. Joel Goza, in his first book America's Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics is another book that aims to illustrate how critical Enlightenment thinkers, cultivated an ideology rife with self-preservation, materialism, and indifference over two-hundred years to produce the environment of oppression and demoralization of black and brown people in the United States emanating from the church and politics in the white community. The solution to combat the distorted views of this rocky foundation is the philosophy embraced by Goza's "prophetic black church," illuminated by Dr. Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement.
Beginning with Thomas Hobbes, Goza describes Hobbes's life and motivations to show how he arrives at his conclusion: man needs a ruler to protect them from themselves. However,
Goza interweaves the lives of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith together through witty anecdotes and critical analysis of each of their primary philosophies. Notably, he reframes each of their arguments in the context of the current political structure and function of American society.
Instead of Hobbes's Leviathan centering around a ruler to curtail the desires of "brutish" men, Goza shows how Hobbes's vision breeds a culture of governmental hoarding for its preservation without any regard for its constituents. Consequently, the government drafts rules to protect the ruling elite's interests and is not concerned with the "common good" of society.
Furthermore, Goza argues that John Locke's view paved the way for separating morality and economics because the buyer determines the price of a man's work. Locke's ideology allowed whites to exists in a pseudo-Christian world while depriving blacks of their essential needs based on their perceived worth, which was nothing.
Lastly, he shows how Adam Smith's hands-off approach to the economy created an indifferent character within American culture and gave whites the right to ignore the degradation of blacks in the hopes of time remedying the situation.
In Goza's opinion, the culmination of the three men's ideas generated a soulless, group of Christians caught up in the ritual of religion and not the selfless martyrdom type of Christianity modeled by Dr. MLK a representative of the "prophetic black church." Although blacks were cast down and locked out of American society, they loved unconditionally.
Consequently, Goza's argument is concise and makes a logical connection between the past and the present. However, Goza's link to the black church is similar to Rousseau's image of the "noble savage." He spent some time in the black church and walked away with a perfect view of black culture. It makes the problems within the community simple and reversible with money and help. He does not consider those who may choose their paths and lifestyles other than what he brings to the table: Westernized ideals of success. Perhaps the black community is not interested in his way of life.
Overall, the book gets three stars for his creativity and storytelling. It is worth the read because you walk away with novel anecdotal information about Hobbes, Locke, and Smith. However, it ends abruptly and seems to force a connection between black problems and white beliefs by glossing over cultural issues within the black community. Also, he sees King as a product of the black church when he was an anomaly. After reading, it is evident he tries to connect to the black experience, but he fails to examine black culpability.
Beginning with Thomas Hobbes, Goza describes Hobbes's life and motivations to show how he arrives at his conclusion: man needs a ruler to protect them from themselves. However,
Goza interweaves the lives of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith together through witty anecdotes and critical analysis of each of their primary philosophies. Notably, he reframes each of their arguments in the context of the current political structure and function of American society.
Instead of Hobbes's Leviathan centering around a ruler to curtail the desires of "brutish" men, Goza shows how Hobbes's vision breeds a culture of governmental hoarding for its preservation without any regard for its constituents. Consequently, the government drafts rules to protect the ruling elite's interests and is not concerned with the "common good" of society.
Furthermore, Goza argues that John Locke's view paved the way for separating morality and economics because the buyer determines the price of a man's work. Locke's ideology allowed whites to exists in a pseudo-Christian world while depriving blacks of their essential needs based on their perceived worth, which was nothing.
Lastly, he shows how Adam Smith's hands-off approach to the economy created an indifferent character within American culture and gave whites the right to ignore the degradation of blacks in the hopes of time remedying the situation.
In Goza's opinion, the culmination of the three men's ideas generated a soulless, group of Christians caught up in the ritual of religion and not the selfless martyrdom type of Christianity modeled by Dr. MLK a representative of the "prophetic black church." Although blacks were cast down and locked out of American society, they loved unconditionally.
Consequently, Goza's argument is concise and makes a logical connection between the past and the present. However, Goza's link to the black church is similar to Rousseau's image of the "noble savage." He spent some time in the black church and walked away with a perfect view of black culture. It makes the problems within the community simple and reversible with money and help. He does not consider those who may choose their paths and lifestyles other than what he brings to the table: Westernized ideals of success. Perhaps the black community is not interested in his way of life.
Overall, the book gets three stars for his creativity and storytelling. It is worth the read because you walk away with novel anecdotal information about Hobbes, Locke, and Smith. However, it ends abruptly and seems to force a connection between black problems and white beliefs by glossing over cultural issues within the black community. Also, he sees King as a product of the black church when he was an anomaly. After reading, it is evident he tries to connect to the black experience, but he fails to examine black culpability.
April 25, 2023
I read this in 2020, having received an ARC which at that time was no longer "advance" but a couple years old, it seemed — and I wrote a review which wasn't published, so finally in 2023 I've published the review online: Books Are Our Superpower (unpaywalled 'friend link' on Medium)
December 28, 2020
Goza takes us back to foundational thinkers of Western Civilization and specifically those who are the roots from which the American experiment begins: Thomas Hobbes; John Locke and Adam Smith. Specifically, Goza wants to know what they said about slavery and what they say about the Bible. Smith is a little different from Locke and Hobbes, but the older thinkers essentially use reason to reduce the Bible to formula and a means of control/order.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Most people know the quote “the life of man is nasty, brutish and short.” This is from Leviathan where he takes such a dark view of human beings and the chaos they generate that he argues for a totalitarian tyranny to keep us from endless war. One of the instruments this tyrant finds useful is religion - “that feare of things invisible.” Goza also says that Hobbes, an Enlightenment thinker, turned to reason as the way forward, for individuals to basically handle ordering society like one would solve a geometry problem. However, like religion before, this new religion of reason falls into the same trap of having these flights of reason with a mind trapped looking into the mirror … looking at the rich white man staring back, probably wearing a powdered wig. “White wealthy elites started to embody the ‘is-ness’ of rational humanity.’ Truly and tragically, there was “monstrous savagery that the aristocratic style masked.”
The other problem is that this turn to make everything mathematical rationality creates what Goza calls a reduction of “economics to a moral-free math. He then quotes from Between the World And Me by Ta-nehisi Coates, the book is addressed to his son, “You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” Hobbes also begins writing the rulebook for slavery stating that “The master of the servant, is master of all he hath [the servant] and may exact the use [whether] his goods, labour, and his children… the master, if he [servant] refuse, [can] kill him or cast him into bonds…”
Goza also explains that it is with Hobbes you start to see the reduced religion, religion as a tool, religion as a formula for control. Hobbes writes “All that is NECESSARY to Salvation is contained in two Vertues, Faith in Christ, and Obedience to Laws.” Goza comments “Hobbe’s formula was nothing less than prophetic for an American Christianity that eventually trimmed Scripture’s vision of salvation down to John 3:16 (‘that anyone who believes in him shalt be saved’) and Christian political responsibility down to Romans 13 (‘Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities’).
Hobbe's also lays out how the tyrant (remember a tyrant is the best leader because the people, the Leviathan, are so in need of control) can keep power by using the tool of fear. “Anxiety produces the need for security, and the need for security inspires the embrace of tyranny.”
John Locke (1632-1704) lays the groundwork for Jefferson's Declaration of Independenc. He writes: “Society of men [exists] only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing of their own civil interests … life, liberty … and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses.” He continues theorizing that “not only is property why we begin society, but ‘the chief end of civil society … is the preservation of property.” So you see, Locke removes himself from Hobbes dark need for a tyrant an replaces it with many little tyrants, the wealthy and aristocrats who primarily need government for protection of their stuff. Goza comments that what the aristocratic want is “a Leviathan to serve them … a small government with a big military.”
Goza also argues that Locke “sells his system through the rhetoric of equality … requiring making the aristocracy look like meritocracy.” Goza talks briefly about inheritance and the way that “wealth becomes more removed from labor with each and every passing generation.” I like to say that in our system capital follows capital. Of course there is prudence and wise bets, etc. but in general, if you want to have lots of money and rapidly increase it, best to start with lots of money in our system. Being a hard-working chef in the back will never catch up with the restaurant owner who likes to bring his friends around all hours of the day.
Goza says it goes further than observation, because remember this is a sell, got to make one thing look like another so we will all keep buying it. “Despite the veneer of the Protestant work ethic, Locke’s scheme places labor and wealth on disparate train tracks … the rich create a rhetoric that demonizes the entitlement of the poor without realizing the irony that it is not the poor that are haunted by issues of entitlement but the wealthy.”
The other things Goza points out is that Locke set the stage for reducing Christianity and the Bible to formulas. We saw that in Hobbes, but Locke takes it further. Remember Jefferson’s chopped up New Testament? This is the precursor. He writes a treatise called The Reasonableness of Christianity and another A Letter Concerning Toleration where he says “The only business of the Church is the salvation of souls; and it no way concerns the commonwealth, or any member of it.” Yep, here is separation of church and state, laid out for Jefferson and others to enshrine in their own thoughts and letters.
Goza doesn’t get into the discussion around pluralism and the good arguments for separation of church and state because he is after what Locke and his followers are doing to Chrisitanity. He says in this move, Locke is trading the prophetic tradition or what the epistle James says is “true religion”, that is “visit the orphan and widow in their affliction” for “its opposite--sentimentality.” Goza has a chart on Prophetic vs. Modern religion. Prophetic has true religion meeting government at property but judging and even acting against the government or in spite of the government to help defend the afflicted. Modern religion has true religion equals things of heaven, property is not a meeting point, but a dividing line and below is the government which is for “the preservation of property.”
Lockes trick, according to Goza, is to convince people that the bible is a-political before it is investigated, to “train Christians not to see the political ramifications of Scripture.” And its perfect, because stripping it down to piety and purity it “harmonizes with the moral calculus of the aristocratic elite. No room for social justices left.”
And then there was slavery. Locke also wrote about slavery. So if you orient your entire philosophy around property, then who do you think goes to the bottom of your list? Women, yes. Children, well depends on if they had wealthy parents, if they did, then they would one day be wealthy and so would need all kind of soft things and freedom and education. But, poor kids? “Children of the poor above ‘the age of three’ were to be gathered into workhouses and, like their parents, they were to be ‘soundly whipped’ if their enthusiasm for work failed to meet the expectations of the overseers. ‘By this means the mother will be eased of a great part of her trouble in looking after and providing for them a home, and so be at the more liberty to work.”
And even beneath this treatment was that of slaves. "Slaves, who being captives taken in a just war [see how he throws justice into his argument for slavery?], are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute domination and arbitrary power of their masters. … These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and with it their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.” Then he even has the audacity to write “having by his own fault [referring to the slaves] forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death; he [the master] may delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and does him no injury by it.”
Adam Smith (1723-1790) is famous as the “Father of Capitalism” but in his time he was a philosopher, specifically a moral philosopher. His two most famous writings were The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments. His chapter and thought is interesting because he offers severe critique to Hobbes and Locke as well as our current popular view of capitalism.
According to Goza, Adam Smith ”believed that the philosophical fantasies of Hobbes and Locke threatened to bring back the dark ages by recreating the broken political and economic systems that worked for the wealthiest folk and stuck it to the rest of us.” Smith saw his Wealth of Nations as a “very violent attack … upon the whole commercial system.” (this is quoted from one of Smith’s letters). Smith disagreed with building society around self-interest (Hobbes) or property (Locke) but “bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection.”
Against Locke’s view directly, from Wealth of Nations “Civil government so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” And in another place “All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
Smith divides working society up into the landowners who live by rent, the laborers who live by wages and the makers/employers who live by profit. The latter can be shorthanded with Merchant Class. Smith warns to watch out for them .. “The proposal of any new law … which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution… It comes from an order of men … who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
Adam Smith also taught against slavery. Goza summarizes his argument “In a slave society, rather than wealth promoting industry, wealth leads to the purchase of more slaves. As slavery expands, slaves begin displacing the working poor throughout the economy. If slavery is first and foremost a war against slaves, it is secondarily an act of war against the working poor …”
Goza concludes the book by explaining that to have proper perspective of Martin Luther King, Jr. we really need to see him alongside Einstein and Copernicus, people who lead us in a complete paradigm shift. He quotes King: “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Most people know the quote “the life of man is nasty, brutish and short.” This is from Leviathan where he takes such a dark view of human beings and the chaos they generate that he argues for a totalitarian tyranny to keep us from endless war. One of the instruments this tyrant finds useful is religion - “that feare of things invisible.” Goza also says that Hobbes, an Enlightenment thinker, turned to reason as the way forward, for individuals to basically handle ordering society like one would solve a geometry problem. However, like religion before, this new religion of reason falls into the same trap of having these flights of reason with a mind trapped looking into the mirror … looking at the rich white man staring back, probably wearing a powdered wig. “White wealthy elites started to embody the ‘is-ness’ of rational humanity.’ Truly and tragically, there was “monstrous savagery that the aristocratic style masked.”
The other problem is that this turn to make everything mathematical rationality creates what Goza calls a reduction of “economics to a moral-free math. He then quotes from Between the World And Me by Ta-nehisi Coates, the book is addressed to his son, “You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” Hobbes also begins writing the rulebook for slavery stating that “The master of the servant, is master of all he hath [the servant] and may exact the use [whether] his goods, labour, and his children… the master, if he [servant] refuse, [can] kill him or cast him into bonds…”
Goza also explains that it is with Hobbes you start to see the reduced religion, religion as a tool, religion as a formula for control. Hobbes writes “All that is NECESSARY to Salvation is contained in two Vertues, Faith in Christ, and Obedience to Laws.” Goza comments “Hobbe’s formula was nothing less than prophetic for an American Christianity that eventually trimmed Scripture’s vision of salvation down to John 3:16 (‘that anyone who believes in him shalt be saved’) and Christian political responsibility down to Romans 13 (‘Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities’).
Hobbe's also lays out how the tyrant (remember a tyrant is the best leader because the people, the Leviathan, are so in need of control) can keep power by using the tool of fear. “Anxiety produces the need for security, and the need for security inspires the embrace of tyranny.”
John Locke (1632-1704) lays the groundwork for Jefferson's Declaration of Independenc. He writes: “Society of men [exists] only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing of their own civil interests … life, liberty … and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses.” He continues theorizing that “not only is property why we begin society, but ‘the chief end of civil society … is the preservation of property.” So you see, Locke removes himself from Hobbes dark need for a tyrant an replaces it with many little tyrants, the wealthy and aristocrats who primarily need government for protection of their stuff. Goza comments that what the aristocratic want is “a Leviathan to serve them … a small government with a big military.”
Goza also argues that Locke “sells his system through the rhetoric of equality … requiring making the aristocracy look like meritocracy.” Goza talks briefly about inheritance and the way that “wealth becomes more removed from labor with each and every passing generation.” I like to say that in our system capital follows capital. Of course there is prudence and wise bets, etc. but in general, if you want to have lots of money and rapidly increase it, best to start with lots of money in our system. Being a hard-working chef in the back will never catch up with the restaurant owner who likes to bring his friends around all hours of the day.
Goza says it goes further than observation, because remember this is a sell, got to make one thing look like another so we will all keep buying it. “Despite the veneer of the Protestant work ethic, Locke’s scheme places labor and wealth on disparate train tracks … the rich create a rhetoric that demonizes the entitlement of the poor without realizing the irony that it is not the poor that are haunted by issues of entitlement but the wealthy.”
The other things Goza points out is that Locke set the stage for reducing Christianity and the Bible to formulas. We saw that in Hobbes, but Locke takes it further. Remember Jefferson’s chopped up New Testament? This is the precursor. He writes a treatise called The Reasonableness of Christianity and another A Letter Concerning Toleration where he says “The only business of the Church is the salvation of souls; and it no way concerns the commonwealth, or any member of it.” Yep, here is separation of church and state, laid out for Jefferson and others to enshrine in their own thoughts and letters.
Goza doesn’t get into the discussion around pluralism and the good arguments for separation of church and state because he is after what Locke and his followers are doing to Chrisitanity. He says in this move, Locke is trading the prophetic tradition or what the epistle James says is “true religion”, that is “visit the orphan and widow in their affliction” for “its opposite--sentimentality.” Goza has a chart on Prophetic vs. Modern religion. Prophetic has true religion meeting government at property but judging and even acting against the government or in spite of the government to help defend the afflicted. Modern religion has true religion equals things of heaven, property is not a meeting point, but a dividing line and below is the government which is for “the preservation of property.”
Lockes trick, according to Goza, is to convince people that the bible is a-political before it is investigated, to “train Christians not to see the political ramifications of Scripture.” And its perfect, because stripping it down to piety and purity it “harmonizes with the moral calculus of the aristocratic elite. No room for social justices left.”
And then there was slavery. Locke also wrote about slavery. So if you orient your entire philosophy around property, then who do you think goes to the bottom of your list? Women, yes. Children, well depends on if they had wealthy parents, if they did, then they would one day be wealthy and so would need all kind of soft things and freedom and education. But, poor kids? “Children of the poor above ‘the age of three’ were to be gathered into workhouses and, like their parents, they were to be ‘soundly whipped’ if their enthusiasm for work failed to meet the expectations of the overseers. ‘By this means the mother will be eased of a great part of her trouble in looking after and providing for them a home, and so be at the more liberty to work.”
And even beneath this treatment was that of slaves. "Slaves, who being captives taken in a just war [see how he throws justice into his argument for slavery?], are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute domination and arbitrary power of their masters. … These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and with it their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.” Then he even has the audacity to write “having by his own fault [referring to the slaves] forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death; he [the master] may delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and does him no injury by it.”
Adam Smith (1723-1790) is famous as the “Father of Capitalism” but in his time he was a philosopher, specifically a moral philosopher. His two most famous writings were The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments. His chapter and thought is interesting because he offers severe critique to Hobbes and Locke as well as our current popular view of capitalism.
According to Goza, Adam Smith ”believed that the philosophical fantasies of Hobbes and Locke threatened to bring back the dark ages by recreating the broken political and economic systems that worked for the wealthiest folk and stuck it to the rest of us.” Smith saw his Wealth of Nations as a “very violent attack … upon the whole commercial system.” (this is quoted from one of Smith’s letters). Smith disagreed with building society around self-interest (Hobbes) or property (Locke) but “bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection.”
Against Locke’s view directly, from Wealth of Nations “Civil government so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” And in another place “All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
Smith divides working society up into the landowners who live by rent, the laborers who live by wages and the makers/employers who live by profit. The latter can be shorthanded with Merchant Class. Smith warns to watch out for them .. “The proposal of any new law … which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution… It comes from an order of men … who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
Adam Smith also taught against slavery. Goza summarizes his argument “In a slave society, rather than wealth promoting industry, wealth leads to the purchase of more slaves. As slavery expands, slaves begin displacing the working poor throughout the economy. If slavery is first and foremost a war against slaves, it is secondarily an act of war against the working poor …”
Goza concludes the book by explaining that to have proper perspective of Martin Luther King, Jr. we really need to see him alongside Einstein and Copernicus, people who lead us in a complete paradigm shift. He quotes King: “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”
October 20, 2021
America's Unholy Ghosts examines the DNA of the ideologies that shape our nation, ideologies that are as American as apple pie but that too often justify and perpetuate racist ideas and racial inequalities. MLK challenged us to investigate the "ideational roots of race hate" and Ghosts does just that by examining a philosophical "trinity"-
A hard read
A hard read
June 11, 2021
I have real mixed thoughts on this book. Goza makes a few good points, but for the most part, the book functions as an apologetic for Evangelical Christianity. Goza's main argument is that Enlightenment thinkers, Hobbes, Locke, and Smith (but especially Hobbes) are at fault for the White Evangelical Christian racist viewpoints. They have been duped. Their theology has nothing to do with it. Wishing to maintain hold on power has nothing to do with it. They are really "virtually" innocent victims to the evil enlightenment folk.
There are a lot of errors in his analysis. One, Smith was not a Stoic. Locke was a rather devoted Christian. See Craig Martin's Masking Hegemony about how Locke's philosophy is based upon his Christian theological understanding. Goza's reading of these Enlightenment philosophers is rather superficial and biased. Goza has an agenda. He is correct to say that they exhibit racism. Enlightenment philosophers certainly did so. Read Kant's works on anthropology! Hume and Voltaire are also guilty as charged. The problem with Goza's argument is that Christian writers are as equally guilty. Read Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and others. Read Rebecca Anne Goetz's Baptism in Early Virginia about how Christianity created race.
Goza's book offers a few interesting observations on three philosophers, but it falsely defends Evangelical Christianity from charges that it is responsible for its own sins of racism.
There are a lot of errors in his analysis. One, Smith was not a Stoic. Locke was a rather devoted Christian. See Craig Martin's Masking Hegemony about how Locke's philosophy is based upon his Christian theological understanding. Goza's reading of these Enlightenment philosophers is rather superficial and biased. Goza has an agenda. He is correct to say that they exhibit racism. Enlightenment philosophers certainly did so. Read Kant's works on anthropology! Hume and Voltaire are also guilty as charged. The problem with Goza's argument is that Christian writers are as equally guilty. Read Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and others. Read Rebecca Anne Goetz's Baptism in Early Virginia about how Christianity created race.
Goza's book offers a few interesting observations on three philosophers, but it falsely defends Evangelical Christianity from charges that it is responsible for its own sins of racism.
June 15, 2019
The South is a far cry from my bubble of the Bay Area. Or maybe I was lucky to be raised with the family and friends I did? Still so much work to do, both personally and as a nation, to be open to learning and loving.
May 9, 2025
Awesome
This is a thought-provoking read. To some who may not understand why black people are the way they are, this book will give you some good insight into that life.
This is a thought-provoking read. To some who may not understand why black people are the way they are, this book will give you some good insight into that life.
January 11, 2021
This book is a powerful tool in your fight against racism! This is sharp stuff, and scathing, yet always practical. I found it profoundly helpful to have laid out before me how deeply race and racism are intertwined into the DNA of America. He unmasks the "unholy Trinity" of Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, along with their 3 political lies and 3 religious lies. This book is prophetic and poetic, but it has a refreshing preacher's cadence.
Don't be turned off by the heavy topic or because it's primarily about philosophical giants, it's surprisingly accessible. He kept me engaged to the end with images like this: From the white wigs of the founding Fathers to the red MAGA hats of Trump, racism is everywhere.
But the main reason this is so accessible (and such a strong anti-racist tool), is because of how personal this is. Goza has a lot at stake in talking about his own whiteness and privilege. And when he talked about his, I felt comfortable in talking about my own whiteness and racism. It's his narrative of moving into the inner city of Houston and seeing there how the Unholy Trinity continues to bring devastation that gives this book a 5 star rating.
Only someone like Joel Goza could have written this book. But it stands along some of the great books on race today, like Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" or Drew Hart's look at the church "Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism."
Bottom line: we're sick, and we all know it. Goza charts a path toward a revolutionary paradigm shift to exorcise America's Unholy Ghosts. It's not an easy path, but at least we're not alone.
This is definitely worth your $$$, and worth putting on the top of your reading pile, not the bottom.
Don't be turned off by the heavy topic or because it's primarily about philosophical giants, it's surprisingly accessible. He kept me engaged to the end with images like this: From the white wigs of the founding Fathers to the red MAGA hats of Trump, racism is everywhere.
But the main reason this is so accessible (and such a strong anti-racist tool), is because of how personal this is. Goza has a lot at stake in talking about his own whiteness and privilege. And when he talked about his, I felt comfortable in talking about my own whiteness and racism. It's his narrative of moving into the inner city of Houston and seeing there how the Unholy Trinity continues to bring devastation that gives this book a 5 star rating.
Only someone like Joel Goza could have written this book. But it stands along some of the great books on race today, like Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" or Drew Hart's look at the church "Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism."
Bottom line: we're sick, and we all know it. Goza charts a path toward a revolutionary paradigm shift to exorcise America's Unholy Ghosts. It's not an easy path, but at least we're not alone.
This is definitely worth your $$$, and worth putting on the top of your reading pile, not the bottom.
May 12, 2019
Powerful and Timely
This except from the book itself my be the highest recommendation that I can give it...
“For a long time the term patriotism seemed so broken and abused, so tied to a hardhearted nationalism, that it was difficult for me to employ. After studying the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for our nation in times of domestic war, I began seeing that if patriotism is to love your neighbors and enemies within your community, your city, and your nation, and if there is no greater act of love than the readiness to lay down your life for others, then I should pray to mature into that kind of patriotism. So if we use the term patriotism, perhaps we can use it to communicate our commitment to making our nation more worthy of our children by committing to a way of life that measures every citizen as God’s beloved child.”
Joel Edward Goza
This except from the book itself my be the highest recommendation that I can give it...
“For a long time the term patriotism seemed so broken and abused, so tied to a hardhearted nationalism, that it was difficult for me to employ. After studying the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for our nation in times of domestic war, I began seeing that if patriotism is to love your neighbors and enemies within your community, your city, and your nation, and if there is no greater act of love than the readiness to lay down your life for others, then I should pray to mature into that kind of patriotism. So if we use the term patriotism, perhaps we can use it to communicate our commitment to making our nation more worthy of our children by committing to a way of life that measures every citizen as God’s beloved child.”
Joel Edward Goza
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