American Exceptionablism strand · DSP Prague · Jahrgangsstufe 11–12
American Christianity has been repeatedly available as technology — for producing compliance, justifying conquest, sanctifying racial hierarchy, and reproducing political power — while claiming to serve God.
The strand does not announce this conclusion. It builds the conditions in which the conclusion becomes unavoidable. Students are never told what to think. They are placed in a role, given primary sources, and asked one question at a time. The pattern assembles itself.
The target is not Christianity. The target is the sanctification of hierarchy — the repeated use of sacred authority to make domination feel natural, necessary, or divinely ordained. White supremacy is one recurring form that hierarchy takes in the American story. It is not the only one.
| # | Title | Date | Role | Hidden discovery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | Suitable Passages | London, 1807 | Editor | Religion can be edited to produce compliance |
| II | Two Documents | United States, 1830–1839 | Historian | When God wants something, the people who speak for God want the same thing |
| III | A Ceremony | Chapel Hill, NC, 1913 | Attendee | A losing side can reconstruct defeat as sacred narrative — and that narrative outlasts the cause |
| IV | A Revival | New York City, 1917–2016 | Genealogist | The Jesus described looks like the America being defended |
| V | The Present Tense | United States, 2019–2023 | Witness | This is the same pattern. It has been running continuously. It is not finished. |
| Coda | Exodus | 1807– | — | The editors removed Exodus. The thing they removed kept reappearing. |
- Editing — deciding which parts of sacred authority the powerless are permitted to access
- Justification — invoking divine will to sanction political and territorial claims
- Memorialisation — reconstructing defeat or injustice as sacred narrative
- Reproduction — replicating the same figure, argument, or identity across generations
- Continuation — the persistence of patterns despite — and sometimes through — attempts to eliminate them
- Select Parts of the Holy Bible, for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands (The Slave Bible), 1807. Still in print. Three known copies survive; one held at Fisk University, Nashville.
- Biblical passages used: Genesis 1, Exodus 1–15, Exodus 19–20, Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 23:15–16, Psalms, Jeremiah, Galatians 3:28, Ephesians 6:5, Revelation.
- John L. O'Sullivan, "The Great Nation of Futurity," The United States Democratic Review, 1839. Verbatim.
- John L. O'Sullivan, "Annexation," The United States Democratic Review, 1845. (Named "manifest destiny.")
- Memorial of the Cherokee Nation to the United States Congress, December 1829 / January 1830. Published in the Cherokee Phoenix. Verbatim.
- Trail of Tears: 1838–39. Approximately 60,000 forcibly removed. Approximately 4,000 deaths.
- Julian Carr, dedication address for Silent Sam, University of North Carolina, June 2, 1913. Full text. Verbatim.
- Richard Furman, "Exposition of the Views of the Baptists Relative to the Coloured Population of the United States," 1822. Verbatim excerpt.
- Southern Baptist Convention: founded 1845 (to defend slaveholders' right to serve as missionaries); formal apology 1995.
- Silent Sam pulled down by protesters, UNC, 2018. The university had declined to remove it.
- Billy Sunday, New York City revival sermon, 1917. Verbatim.
- Tony Evans, Promise Keepers national conference, Boulder, Colorado, 1993. Verbatim.
- Promise Keepers official statement of purpose, 1990s. Verbatim.
- Donald Trump, campaign rally excerpts, 2016–2020. Exit poll: 81% of white evangelical voters, 2016.
- Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright, 2020. Essential background reading.
- Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership. The Heritage Foundation, 2023. Chapter 14 (HHS). Verbatim.
- Seven Mountain Mandate. Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson. Core framework of the New Apostolic Reformation, from 2007. Verbatim.
- United States v. Warren, District of Arizona, 2019. Scott Warren acquitted after two trials. No More Deaths continues operating.
- Southern Baptist Convention resolution and constitutional amendment on pastoral role, 2023. Verbatim.
- Cherokee Nation petition, 1829–30; Worcester v. Georgia, 1832; Indian Removal Act, 1830; Trail of Tears, 1838–39. Cherokee Nation: approximately 450,000 citizens today.
- Frederick Douglass: escaped enslavement 1838; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845; died 1895.
- Harriet Tubman: escaped 1849; nineteen return trips; Combahee River Raid, 1863; lived until 1913.
- Fisk University: opened January 1866. Holds one of three known copies of the Slave Bible.
- Buffalo Soldiers: 9th and 10th Cavalry, established 1866; desegregation under Executive Order 9981, 1948.
- Alcatraz occupation: Indians of All Tribes, November 1969 – June 1971. Indian Self-Determination Act, 1975.
- Stonewall Inn, June 28, 1969. Led by Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera. First Pride marches, 1970.
- Sanctuary Movement: John Fife, Southside Presbyterian Church, Tucson, 1982. Eleven indictments, 1985. Continues.
- Musical tradition: work songs, spirituals, blues, gospel, jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power," 1989.
- Never announce the strand's argument. The instruments do this work. If students ask "what is this about?", redirect to the evidence in front of them.
- The strand works through accumulation. Instruments I–V each reveal a different mechanism. Exodus asks whether the mechanisms succeeded. Do not skip instruments or rearrange the sequence.
- The final screen of each instrument is the beginning of the discussion, not the end of the lesson. Build time after each instrument for students to talk before moving on.
- Students will be surprised by Exodus 21:16 (the anti-kidnapping statute) and Deuteronomy 23:15–16 (the escaped slave statute). These are often the passages students most want to retain — and most want to know why they were cut.
- The Fisk connection (one of three surviving copies held at a university founded to educate formerly enslaved people) typically lands without commentary. Name it and stop.
- Watch for students who retain Ephesians 6:5. They will need to account for that choice.
- O'Sullivan's claim that American annals "describe no scenes of horrid carnage" was written in 1839 — the year the Trail of Tears concluded. Place that date on the board. Say nothing else.
- Some students will argue that both documents can be true. Sustain that argument. It is not wrong. The instrument's question is not whether both can be true but why they reach opposite conclusions from the same God.
- Stage 1 will produce answers like bravery, loyalty, sacrifice, duty. Write them on the board. Leave them there.
- When Stage 2 arrives ("Anglo Saxon race... Praise God"), point to the board. Ask: are these the same words?
- The horse-whipping passage (Stage 3) should be read in silence. Do not contextualise it before students read it. The phrase "the pleasing duty" is the instrument's argument. Students will find it.
- The crowd applauded. That line is doing the work. Return to it.
- Students will find it difficult to identify the "most different" excerpt. That difficulty is the point. Name it explicitly when the reveal lands.
- The dates — 1917, 1993, 1996, 2016 — should be visible in the room. The span is one hundred years. Ask students what else happened in those hundred years, and whether it changed the figure being described.
- Background reading: Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, especially chapters on Billy Sunday, Cold War evangelicalism, Promise Keepers, and Trump.
- Stage 1 should be done individually and in silence. The response to "Where have you seen this before?" is the most important piece of writing students do in the strand. Give it time.
- Document III (the border case) is the one students are most likely to discuss at length. Let them. The legal asymmetry — prosecution for leaving water, no prosecution for armed patrols — is the Slave Bible's editorial logic running in 2019. Students who have done Instrument I will feel this. Students who haven't said it yet may need the connection named.
- Stage 2 should be done in pairs before whole-class discussion.
- Do not frame Exodus as a "positive" counterpart to the previous five instruments. It is not. The Cherokee petition failed. Alcatraz failed. The sanctuary movement is unresolved. The Buffalo Soldiers case is explicitly contradictory. State this before students begin.
- "What happened next?" is not asking for success. It is asking for continuation. There is a difference.
- The final list should be displayed large. Give students time with it. Then ask: what would you add?
- The tradwife movement (women on social media arguing for the revocation of female suffrage, framed in submission theology) is valuable discussion material but does not belong in the instrument. Use it when a student says "but nobody is forcing anyone." Ask: how did that position get into their feed? Who benefits from its circulation? What does it cost them to hold it?
This strand was built for Deutsche Schule Prag. The following notes apply specifically to that context.
On Israel and Jewish history: The strand does not address antisemitism directly. If students draw connections to European antisemitism, those connections are historically legitimate and should not be shut down. The strand's argument — that sacred authority has been repeatedly used to sanctify hierarchy — applies across multiple traditions and contexts. Do not close that conversation.
On the Lost Cause in a German context: Students from German-speaking countries will have studied their own experience of national mythologising, memorialisation of defeat, and institutional reconstruction after atrocity. The Lost Cause instrument invites implicit comparison. That comparison is productive. It does not need to be made explicit by the teacher.
On Christian nationalism: DSP students from Austrian and German backgrounds may have family connections to Catholic or Protestant traditions that are distant from American evangelical culture. Frame Instrument IV and V as examining a specifically American institutional formation, not Christianity in general.
The strongest discussion question for the whole strand is not about any individual instrument. It is:
If this pattern has been running for two centuries, what would it take to stop it?
That question has no clean answer. Students who have done the strand will have the tools to argue about it seriously. That is the point.
| File | URL |
|---|---|
| Hub | justinsteinmetz.github.io/GodAndMammon/ |
| Instrument I | justinsteinmetz.github.io/suitable-passages/ |
| Instrument II | justinsteinmetz.github.io/manifest-destiny/ |
| Instrument III | justinsteinmetz.github.io/the-lost-cause/ |
| Instrument IV | justinsteinmetz.github.io/muscular-christianity/ |
| Instrument V | justinsteinmetz.github.io/the-present-tense/ |
| Coda | justinsteinmetz.github.io/exodus/ |
- Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne. Liveright, 2020.
- Gorski, Philip S. and Samuel L. Perry. The Flag and the Cross. Oxford University Press, 2022.
- Whitehead, Andrew L. and Samuel L. Perry. Taking America Back for God. Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Hicks, Dan. The Brutish Museums. Pluto Press, 2020. (For connection to UK strand.)
- Douglass, Frederick. "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 1852. Full text freely available.
Built June 2026 · DSP Prague · j.steinmetz@dsp.cz