Police violence is surging across our country. The state has been captured by Christian nationalists, and its agencies and officials continue to invoke the Bible to justify these predations. We need an analysis that can guide our confrontations with its power.
So join Dr. Janet Dewart Bell, Rev. Jordan T. Jones, and Manolo de Los Santos at The People’s Forum for a conversation about the Bible and policing based on Conor Q. Foley’s new book.
Book description:
This book traces the dynamics of biblical influence on police violence in the United States. As new escalations of state violence are inflected by an ascendent Christian nationalism, the Bible has been reasserted as a source of legitimacy and narrative force. Policing in the United States has always been intertwined with the Bible, beginning in the colonial era and transatlantic slave trade, and extending up through Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and the rise of the contemporary carceral state. The Bible was used to provide the mythic and moral context in which these histories of domination unfolded, nourishing the growth of globalized racial capitalism, (neo-)colonialism, and imperialism as the zones of war within which policing is practiced. Building upon these histories, this book draws on a range of sources, from Bibles marketed to the police, to Bible studies and devotionals written by and for police, to visual stunts, statements, and social media posts from politicians and government agencies intent on protecting and expanding policing power. This book considers the mechanics of these kinds of deployments of Scripture and unpacks the hermeneutical structure of the reading habits that underpin them. While critically examining the use of the Bible to justify police violence, this volume also presents alternative interpretive possibilities that find reparative, redemptive, and anti-carceral lines of thought in the Bible, offering a liberative and irenic counter-reading of Scripture.
Endorsements:
“The Bible and Police Violence in the US—Conor Foley’s brilliant gift to our communities and psyches—pushes beyond US/Americana bloodletting and apologetics for the expansion and militarization of US policing […it] severs the cords of racist captivity/slavery/torture and reveals the devastations of imperial and colonial policing. This text offers powerful critiques of and push back against Tower-of-Babel clutter and authoritarian discourse. To protect ourselves and communities against enslavement, torture, disappearances, and deaths, we need such courageous texts as this one: reminding us that study and resistance to confront predatory power is a challenge worthy of our lives and souls.” — Dr. Joy James, editor of Beyond Cop Cities, Confronting Counterinsurgency, and ENGAGE: Indigenous, Black, and Afro-Indigenous Futures
“Foley provides us with a deep exegesis of how scripture is mobilized by the authoritarian right to advance police power and in the process exposes the deep injustices of both Christian nationalists and the institution of policing.” — Dr. Alex S. Vitale, Author of The End of Policing
“The Bible and Police Violence in the United States is a bold, urgent, and theologically grounded call to action and exactly the book needed for this moment. At a time when the militarization of our communities is occurring as if on steroids, author, activist and pastor, Rev. Conor Foley, challenges the proliferation of state-sanctioned violence and the moral and biblical boosterism of law enforcement. This book reminds us that the God of the Bible stands with the poor, the marginalized, and the brutalized. It invites activists, organizers and all people of moral conscience to reckon with the theological roots of American violence—and to commit ourselves to a gospel that breaks chains, not bodies.” — Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Author, Pastor, theologian and anti-poverty activist
