Spirits of Extraction: Christianity, Settler Colonialism and the Geology of Race (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781526176509)

Spirits of extraction revisits the troubling history of socially reformist, ostensibly anti-racist, Christianity and its role in the expansion of the extractive industries, British imperialism, and settler colonialism. The book explores key moments in the history of Methodism and the evangelical movement. Colonial fears, and the attempt to 'civilise savages', were crucial to the movement's foundation in eighteenth-century industrialising Bristol, England. Through the culture of the Cornish mining diaspora of the nineteenth century, Methodism enmeshed with all the complexity of race and labour-structures of the British empire. At the same time, in Anishinaabewaki/Upper Canda/Ontario, Methodist missionaries laid the foundation of abusive education and racialised ideas of redemption that both enable and sacralise the mining industry. Through these histories of our present, the book theorises the relation of religion and education to racism, modernity, biopower, extractivism, and the geology of race.

Author: Claire Blencowe
ISBN-10: 1526176505
ISBN-13: 9781526176509
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/18/2025
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover