saviorism

saviorism

English

Alternative forms

• saviourism

Etymology

savior +‎ -ism

Noun

saviorism (uncountable)

1. Belief in a savior.
   • 2014, Joseph Isaac Abrahams, Terra Incognita: A Psychoanalyst Explores the Human Soul, page 154:

     On a universal plane, man's belief in his prospective immortality through saviorism has been breached by a theory of knowledge where he cannot accept saviorism; so he becomes responsible for himself […]

2. (sociology) A worldview according to which some people are saviors and others need to be saved by them.
   • 2016, Heather Ashley Hayes, Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography in the Age of the Terror Wars

     I show how white men attempted to save brown women from brown men in colonial India. […] Spivak notes the efforts to build discourses of saviorism in thinking about Muslim women and Muslim men.

Related terms

• white saviorism