Book Talk - White Property, Black Trespass: on the Religion of Criminalization and the Religion of Abolition with Andrew Krinks, Christophe Ringer and Rev. Jason Lydon

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Most popular critical accounts of mass criminalization interpret police and prisons as purely social or political phenomena. While such accounts have been indispensable in moving millions into collective action and resistance, the carceral state remains as pervasive as ever. White Property, Black Trespass argues that understanding why we have police and prisons, and building a world of safety and abundance beyond them, requires that we acknowledge the inherently religious function that criminalization fulfills for a colonial and racial capitalist order that puts its faith in cops and cages to save it from the existential threat of disorder that its own structural violence creates. The story of criminalization, Krinks shows, begins with the eurochristian aspiration to become God at the expense of all others—an aspiration that gives rise to the pseudo-sacred powers of whiteness and property, and, by extension, the police power that exists to serve and protect them. Tracing the historical continuity and religiosity of the color line, the property line, and the thin blue line, Krinks reveals police power as the pseudo-divine power to exile nonwhite and dispossessed trespassers to carceral hell. At once incisive and expansive, this groundbreaking work deepens understanding of racial capitalism and mass criminalization by illuminating the religious mythologies that animate them. It concludes with thoughts on what might be entailed in a religion rooted in rejection of the religious idolatry of mass criminalization—a religion of abolition. Andrew Krinks is an independent scholar, educator, and movement builder based in Nashville, Tennessee. Professor Christophe Ringer’s research interests include theological and social ethics, African American religion, public theology, religion and social sciences, religion and politics, critical theory and African American religion, and cultural studies. He is particularly interested in African American religion as a site for understanding the relationship of self, society and the sacred as it concerns human flourishing. Ringer’s research currently focuses on the religious and cultural meanings that sustain and rationalize mass incarceration and other forms of social death in American public life. Rev. Jason Lydon joined Second Unitarian in August 2019, bringing with him a rich blend of experience in both parish ministry and secular prisoner solidarity organizing. He began his ministerial career at the Community Church of Boston, where he served from 2005 to 2012. Following this, he assumed the role of National Director at Black and Pink, a grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex while supporting the immediate needs of LGBTQ/HIV+ prisoners on a national scale. Rev. Lydon subsequently served as a senior advisor to the Vaid Group for 18 months before taking on the role of sabbatical minister at First Unitarian in Chicago.