When Monuments Became Idols

The image is burned into my memory, the embers of their tiki torches burning their way through my brain. I was already an advocate for racial justice, enraged by the inequality in the United States enforced by the law, by police, and by my neighbors. Something changed for me on that day, though, when a clash of ideologies took place in Charlottesville.

This was no longer just a fight for racial justice – this was a battle being waged against a religion that worshipped the Confederacy, marked by idols in the form of monuments. This was no longer just an ideological war; it was a theological one.

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Lines of angry white men gathered, garbed in the smug looks of their ancestors and white supremacist fueled rage. They bore tiki torches reminiscent of torches carried in the past by others on their way to another monument: a cross set to burn. It was a worship ceremony like so many others, filled with chanting and the ecstasy of being around so many like-minded individuals. These individuals gathered for the expressed purpose of uniting various right-wing groups under a common thread of white supremacy and against the removal of Confederate statues.

Those tiki torch bearing men were there to defend one specific monument of Robert E. Lee, but they were also defending every other monument erected in honor of the Confederacy. Statues depicting men from the past who fought for the subjugation and enslavement of black people were, in their eyes, worthy of our respect and adoration. In other words, they were fighting in defense of their idols, marching in a cultic celebration of slavery and racism.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, idolatry is an “immoderate attachment or devotion to something”. To be clear, the defending of Confederate statues is idolatry. These statues, in their most menial sense, are symbols celebrating slavery and the legal subjugation of those not considered ‘white’. They are idols of white supremacy, and those who seek to protect them are guilty of idolatry.

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The Scriptures are filled with messages that loudly proclaim idolatry as evil. Idols turn our attention away from God, the subject of our worship, and point our attention elsewhere. Anything that becomes an object of our worship and adoration other than God is an idol. Idols do not strictly have to be a material object. Instead, they could be an ideology or any other immaterial object.

White supremacy is, in no uncertain terms, an idolatrous ideology that is explicitly anti-Christ. Christ is found on the margins of society, where the meek and the powerless gather, and Christ is also found in the process of their liberation. White supremacy is a power structure that seeks to uplift whiteness and oppress everything, and everyone, else.

If white supremacy is an idolatrous ideology, and Confederate statues are idols, then the only reasonable conclusion we can come to is follow the saints who have come before us and tear down these idols.

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White supremacy is far from extinct in the United States and in the wider global society. It is a dangerous and deadly ideology that has woven its way throughout Christianity. For many, the two are indistinguishable.

Those of us who identify as Christians cannot, and should not, ignore the pervasiveness of white supremacy in our churches, in our neighborhoods, and in our homes. We have betrayed the trust of people of color in general, and black folks in particular. Advocating for the removal of Confederate statues falls far short of the reparations owed to the black community, but it’s a good place to start. The veneration of white terrorists is antithetical to the crucified God.

We have a lot of work to do, but the Church cannot be neutral on this topic. Neither can you.