Full 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, a cosmological blueprint, and a narrative force. Policing in the U.S. 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, the 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 intent on protecting and expanding policing power. The 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, the 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.
Contents
Editors' Preface Preface Introduction 1. The Origins of Carceral Modernity: Genealogies of the Bible and Police Violence 2. Strength for the Street: "Back the Blue" Bibles, Chaplaincy, and the Spirituality of Law Enforcement 3. Holy Dogs and the Devil's Wolves: Reviewing Violence in Police Bible Studies and Devotionals 4. Reading Like a Cop: Pro-Police Biblical Hermeneutics and the Question of Violence 5. Is God an Abolitionist?: Toward an Irenic Biblical Theology of Policing Conclusion: The Bible and the End of Police Violence Index
