Theology generally doesn't have the language to understand the role of police in the United States today, so theologians turn to anodyne language about racism and hatred instead of engaging the basic violence of the entire structure.

The foundation of America is a lie, but it's not just a lie. It's a lie that makes it impossible for many to see the truth. We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal isn't an ideal towards which America can and does strive.

It is a lie so powerful that it's real function is mainly perceived by those targeted by it, and not even always then, since the lie is kept in place by other practices *including some seeking to oppose the lie itself.*

When we talk about the fundamental equality of all human beings in the eyes of God, we are telling the lie, not opposing it, in actuality, because it serves the impression of an equality that stands against the actually real, which is inequality.

Learning to talk and think like that is learning to be American, and unfortunately it is also part of learning to be Christian. This is why Christian tools, without much reshaping, will never dismantle America.

Theologians think we learned from liberation theology how states can become enemies of the gospel and of the least among these, those for whom Jesus came. But in America, training in Christianity and training in empire are the same thing.

They are both about not just letting the ideal supercede the real, but about the way the ideal makes the real impossible to see.

Many theologians think there's a relation between police, safety, and public order because the police generally aren't in our neighborhoods very often, and when they are, it's not to police us.

Only those who don't have regular contact with police, or whose only contact is calling them (thereby legitimizing their social role) are deceived about what police are for: the brutal, tireless maintenance of racial capitalism.

If we understood that the function of police is the action of police, then we would know that they're not there to protect us (even those of us who for racial and class reasons might be inclined to mistake this).

Police terrorize, immiserate, hoard and distribute violence at whim and impulse, and - from a distance - protect the illusion of law and order so that we will call minor acts of property destruction looting, and Wall Street and billionaires "capitalism" or "the economy."

That way, minor acts of property destruction are acts committed by actors, and global practices of extraction and immiseration are the unfortunate side effects of the way things are on a scale so vast that we can hardly imagine how to stop them.

But we can start by defunding the police and, crucially, *refusing them any legitimate role.* Don't call the cops, ever. Don't ever use a cop to solve a problem. Don't ever let anyone in your presence talk about calling the cops without discussing how and why you'd never do that.

There is always another way, and the other way is always better.

Christianity will have nothing useful to say to America until it can learn that lesson and in so doing, separate itself from Amerikkka.

The cops are not a solution to a culture of violence and mass murder. They are that culture in its purest and most distilled form. A Christianity that wants to have anything to say to this moment must learn that or be silent./fin