Prejudice Then and Now: Juxtaposing Biblical Anti-Moabite Prejudice and the Return to Ghana Movement
Date of Award
12-2025
Document Type
Dissertation - SCU Access Only
Publisher
Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2025
Degree Name
Doctor of Sacred Theology (STD)
Director
James Nati
Abstract
This dissertation juxtaposes biblical anti-Moabite prejudice with the Return to Ghana Movement. Anti-Moabite prejudices align with three foundational models of prejudice: Gordon Allport’s description of categorizing processes, Christian Smith’s observation of the inbuilt capacity to construct and believe narratives and imbue them with moral assumptions, and Peter Berger’s cultural dialectic, which holds that what we create acts back to shape us. Prejudiced narratives in Gen. 19:30-38, Num. 25:1-18, and Num. 20-24, Deut. 2:26-29, Judg. 11:12-28 acted back to create the Israelite legal relationship that excludes the Moabites from Israelite care and assembly (Deut. 23:1-8). This partly explains the prevalent war animosity between the Israelites and the Moabites. Ezra 9-10 and Neh. 13 further demonstrate that new anti-Moabite prejudices, portraying the Moabites as impure foreigners with racial undertones, build upon these prior prejudices. Aided by religious, social, political, and rhetorical power, prejudice acted back in Ezra-Nehemiah to inflict the social harm of forced separation upon the Moabites. At the same time, the Hebrew Bible resists and offers strategies for combating prejudice. The instances of noncompliance in Ezra-Nehemiah suggest that defiance serves as a strategy to combat prejudice. The book of Ruth also employs three narrative strategies, which I refer to as explicit Moabite references, a positive portrayal of Moabites, and a pro-Moabite polemic, to combat prejudice. Allport’s insights for combating prejudice elucidate how Ruth’s strategies educate for insight and understanding, challenge systemic conditions that perpetuate prejudice, and serve as an implicit law against prejudice. Moreover, analyzing prejudice against the Ghanaian Returnees on analogy to anti-Moabite prejudice shows that the Returnees’ experiences echo anti-Moabite prejudice. The Returnees’ challenges ii become a counter-voice to dismissive attitudes around biblical narratives of anti-Moabite separations. In the end, the biblical conversation about anti-Moabite attitudes in postexilic texts is illuminated by the socio-political concept of prejudice, offering a template for understanding the prejudiced experiences of African Americans returning to Ghana. Conversely, the contemporary context of the Returnees informs our reading of biblical prejudice.
Recommended Citation
Kwadzo Kuwornu, Frank Stephen, "Prejudice Then and Now: Juxtaposing Biblical Anti-Moabite Prejudice and the Return to Ghana Movement" (2025). Jesuit School of Theology Dissertations. 156.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst_dissertations/156
