"Amos was calling out and grieving ancient Israelite exceptionalism, but his words speak powerfully to other forms of exceptionalism more familiar to us. Woe! to those who are at ease in America, who feel secure in gated communities, who stretch out on their couches, eating lamb and veal, drinking fine wine … Woe! to those who are at ease in the world today, who feel secure in prosperous countries, lounging in big cars and jets, drinking pricey bottled waters … who put far away the day of calamity." - Timothy Beal ; When Time Is Short (p. 107)
"The rather inchoate but pervasive appeal to chosenness in the public rhetoric of the United States has within it an unexpressed but powerful element of white chosenness, so that the theme of “chosenness” can also be a place-holder for racism. There is no doubt that American chosenness derives especially from European antecedents, so that the “real Americans” who are chosen are those with European rootage. Much of the rhetoric of US chosenness is also marked by a hostility to “foreigners” (nonwhites) who, it is said, diminish chosenness, and by “Christian” rhetoric of “taking back our country” from the foreigners and restoring it to proper order and management. Much of the great triumphal language of the church easily imagined white missionaries carrying the gospel to benighted nonwhites." - Walter Brueggemann ; Choosing Against Chosen-ness, Tenacious Solidarity: Biblical Provocations on Race, Religion, Climate, and the Economy (p. 124-125)
"Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the LORD.Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?" - Amos ; Amos 9:7
"White supremacy is about safeguarding the illusion of America's sense of exceptionalism: in other words, protecting white space. It does not matter whether or not white people recognize themselves as racist. What matters is that this country's very identity is inextricably connected to an Anglo-Saxon exceptionalist myth that must be protected at all cost." - Kelly Brown Douglas ; The Black Christ (pp. 17-18)