Accidental Gods: On Race, Empire, and Men Unwittingly Turned Divine (Uk) (Only Copy)

Book Title: Accidental Gods (Uk) (Only Copy)
ISBN: 9781783785018
By Author(s):ANNA SUBIN
By Publisher:GRANTA
Format:HC

A provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age

Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god has haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie, acclaimed as the Living God in Jamaica, to Britains Prince Philip, who became the unlikely center of a new religion on a South Pacific island, men made divinealways menhave appeared on every continent. And because these deifications always emerge at moments of turbulencecivil wars, imperial conquest, revolutionsthey have much to teach us.

In a revelatory history spanning five centuries, a cast of surprising deities helps to shed light on the thorny questions of how our modern concept of religion was invented; why religion and politics are perpetually entangled in our supposedly secular age; and how the power to call someone divine has been used and abused by both oppressors and the oppressed. From nationalist uprisings in India to Nigerien spirit possession cults, Anna Della Subin explores how deification has been a means of defiance for colonized peoples. Conversely, we see how Columbus, Corts, and other white explorers amplified stories of their godhood to justify their dominion over native peoples, setting into motion the currents of racism and exclusion that have plagued the New World ever since they touched its shores.