American Prophecy : University of Minnesota Press : 9780816630752 : 0816630755 : 01 Sep 2008 : The political meaning of prophetic language in America Prophecy is the fundamental idiom of American politics-a biblical rhetoric about redeeming the crimes, suffering, and promise of a special people. Yet American prophecy and its great practitioners-from Frederick Douglass and Henry Thoreau to Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison-are rarely addressed, let alone analyzed, by political theorists. This paradox is at the heart of American Prophecy, a work in which George Shulman unpacks and critiques the political meaning of American prophetic rhetoric. In the face of religious fundamentalisms that associate prophecy and redemption with dogmatism and domination, American Prophecy finds connections between prophetic language and democratic politics, particularly racial politics. Exploring how American critics of white supremacy have repeatedly reworked biblical prophecy, S