The title of America’s first woman bishop was claimed in 1918 by Bishop Alma White, leader of the Pillar of Fire Church, noted for her feminism, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, for her alliance with the Ku Klux Klan, and for her nativism.
I was puzzled by the word. After all, Native Americans are what we used to call Indians. Native American is not a new piece of terminology. Sir Fulke Greville in his Life of Sir Philip Sidney, published in 1628, inveighed against the Spaniard as a race for suppressing ‘the poor native Americans’ with heavy impositions.
But these American Indians, no matter how heavily suppressed, hardly seemed the sort of native that Bishop White would have championed. Nor had I heard that Donald Trump was a big fan of Native Americans.
Things became no clearer last year when President Obama spoke out against people like Mr Trump denigrating immigrants.
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