While I’m encouraged to see more white clergy naming the sin of white supremacy, I just want to point out to the church that speaking out against mass shootings is a really low #$%!! bar.
Trace the sin and the language of white supremacy back further; it is in the criminalization of black and brown people, in the incarceration and deportation of black and brown bodies, in excuses made for vigilante executions and lynchings through “stand your ground” laws, in the leaders we elect and the dog-whistles they use, in functional apartheid through redlining and gentrification, in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, in white apathy over disproportionately dismal health and economic statistics for black and brown people, in our collective shrug whenever we think or say, “that’s just the way things are.”
White supremacy is simply the formal doctrine of the folk religion of whiteness. It’s the church you automatically join when you are born white (or passing) in this country. You may not attend regularly, but you have been tithing to it and enjoying its blessings your whole life.
Mass shootings, like lynchings, are a white sacrament: the visual representation of our invisible policies. It’s the sacrifice our religion requires. It is what our inaction looks like when it becomes action.
So yes, preachers, please condemn white supremacy for the heresy and idolatry that it is. And please go ALL the way in.
Dave Barnhart 