Towards a ritual to die for: how America's religion cost its soul

Abstract

BACKGROUND: It is unconstitutional for the government of the United States to uphold a religion as its national church. Yet, this is exactly what America is doing through policy that essentially oppresses and disenfranchise its black citizens to this day. This thesis is for the purposes of disclosing America’s national religion as white supremacy, a religion animated largely through ritual practice as faith and practical mimesis as liturgy, practiced only by white people, abetted by the government. The effects of this grand liturgy will be explored thereafter, consequent of black people not being treated as full citizens. Subsequently, I will propose a theological response to what is a theological and religious issue, with the hope that the woeful religion of white supremacy that has been at the core of American governmental policy will finally be meliorated. DISCUSSION: Why religion? Why that seemingly stilted terminology to describe an ideology of superiority? Surely there must be other ways of describing the phenomenon of white supremacy, ways that do not seem to insist on the sensationalist. Yet, this is no sensationalist appeal or alarmist demagoguery, this description is rooted in the tangible facticity of white supremacy in America. White supremacy in America is a highly systematized, ritualized program of being, filled with dedication and devotion that is only reminiscent of a faith-based tradition—instituted by greed, routinized by policy, emboldened by quietly radicalized adherents. It is not aberrant as many suppose, the activity of some lone actors, who are abstracted from the realities of a trenchant past that motivates the action of the present. Rather, it is an ecology of the prescription of whiteness as economical and sociological power and infrastructural discrimination that has strengthened and encouraged many to live into its promises of exceptionalism, and that has obfuscated, alienated, and isolated many by their millions for no other reason than that they were and are of a different skin color. This is the religion of white supremacy. This is Towards a Ritual to Die For.