White Supremacy From the Death Bed
By: Reese Washington Jr.
Tags: Faith and Life, Death And Dying, Christianity, White Supremacy, Religion

I remember the first time I had to minister to a dying member of the Sons of the Confederacy. It was not the first time that I dealt with the issue of race on the death bed, but it was the first time in which it was difficult for me to reconcile my service as a hospice chaplain with the Christian mission that I serve. I felt his discomfort as soon as I walked in the room. He did not feel my discomfort when I came to his house draped in a Confederate Flag. When people ask for a chaplain in their last moments, there is usually little thought as to who will answer the call to be at their side. Most times they are just happy that someone will show up during the months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds that they have left. In this man’s case, it was clear that he had no expectation that the preacher sent to him would be wearing my skin.

Our time started in a familiar fashion as it always does when someone realizes their twilight is near. Over the course of my visits, we ended up establishing an uncomfortable but honest relationship around his life, beliefs, and desire to have a relationship with Christ. During our last conversation there was a pregnant pause. These pauses happen often with those who are in the process of transitioning. In these moments I do my best to let people rest in their thoughts; everyone deserves those moments when their end is near. Unprompted, the man looked over at me and said, “Chaplain I generally don’t fool with Black People, but Pastor Washington you are one of the only ones I generally like. It is sad and shameful that I prejudged you and didn’t think of you like I should have. I look forward to seeing you in Heaven if the Lord would have me.”

What should have felt like a powerful moment in my ministry, was poisoned by a dark thought that I was never trained to address. He liked me, which is well enough. My job requires me to be at least likable. Yet, what if I was not good at my job or just had a bad day talking to a man who attested to having disdain for me and people who look like me?

After thinking this over for a minute as he waited for a response, I looked him dead in the eye, and hedged. I began to tell him all the things that I learned as a Pentecostal and now Baptist minister and did my best to give him the peace he was seeking as he made his transition. Not once did I truly answer his unstated question.

White Supremacy — a Demonic Foundation

Being raised in the Evangelical Pentecostal tradition, identifying and casting out demons is integral to my understanding of the faith. It is in this tradition that I have seen demons identified in all things secular and even scientific. Whether it is the perils of Disney, Hip Hop, or even COVID-19, I learned the ability to see demonic causes and outcomes in some of the most basic interactions within the world of man. Yet, at no time in my education, as a lay person and now as a minister, has demonic intent ever been subscribed to White Supremacy. Whether it be in secular society or in the church, regardless of how it reveals itself through its many manifestations, White Supremacy has never been cast in a demonic light. There has been no schooling, formal or informal in which I have been trained to call out or cast out this spirit. A spirit which has a verified history of not just destroying the bodies and minds of those who have been diminished by its malignancy, but also eats away at the souls of those who subscribe to its sacrilegious intent. Yes, there are and always have been denominations, theologians and religious leaders who have sought to call out the heresy in this historic belief system. And yes, there are also those who have been working hard to identify and isolate its historic corrupting influence on the Christian Faith. Yet, as a faith leader who has been raised in the Evangelical and Pentecostal home of Christ, I have never been taught how to cast out the demonic influence of supremacy in our faith nor on the death beds of the Christians whom I have been called to minister.

Why is it important to frame white supremacy as demonic?

Oddly enough, it is not because of the spiritual and physical degradation it causes the “least of these.” No, the beatitudes show us that the trials of degradation bring the meek closer to the inheritance of God’s kingdom. More specifically, those who are forced to beg Christians and their institutions to be seen in God’s image will always be invited to enter into the light through the collective outcomes of their struggle.

No, I am forced to worry about those who claim the mantle of Christ, legitimizing their claim through the inheritance of skin color. I worry for those that cast a shadow on the Christian collective and challenge the capstones of our faith by claiming Christ, while denying the certitude of equal rights under God’s covenant for all humanity. Finally, I am forced to worry for those who I have personally prayed over in hospice whose troubled conscience has forced them to wrestle with the heinous sins they committed against others who share my skin. Sins that have created shame. A shame that is only revealed in the twilight of a life. A life that in its last moments finally begins to understand the true evil that has colored their vision and tainted their faith. It is during these honest moments in which this shame can no longer be embraced or explained away through the abdication of Christian accountability. Ultimately, there comes a time when “good” Christian folk can no longer abdicate responsibility by using phrases such as “that’s just how it used to be,” or “we should just leave well enough alone.” I know first hand how these incantations give the devil joy but will never give peace to a weary soul.

It is these demonic incantations that scare me the most. People have employed these phrases through history to explain away and wash away heinous crimes against others and ultimately against God. It scares me because I know that when they are spoken aloud or spoken in men’s hearts, folks have resolved themselves to embrace an unholy deal with demons that facilitate spiritual damnation in the name of validation and privilege. Hence, the question must be asked on its face, “How is it possible to claim the validity of your faith in God’s name, when white supremacy in all its forms speaks solely to the Devil’s promise of worldly power?”

You see, the claim of supremacy is worse than hate; it is built on the concept that you don’t have to hate someone to believe that you are better than them. It is predicated on the belief that you are better than them regardless of the fruit of your actions. Actions that invariably lead to having the need to prove your supremacy; not by granting the same rights and expectations that you have for yourself and those who share your skin, but by showing others why they don’t deserve those rights unless you bestow those rights unto them. Hatred is the most likely outcome when those who are oppressed by your ways ask for more than you were ever willing to give. Hatred is cemented when the validity of their requests undermines the supremacy that you claim and the unholy construct that has now formed the basis of how you live.

While hatred and the desire to remain supreme can fuel many fires, these fires always dissipate during the dusk of imminent death. I have personally witnessed people who seek to die on the right side of Christ, as they finally realize that they were never willing to live on the right side of Christ. Hatred and supremacy have never allowed them peace in their final moments. Every time I bear witness to this fact, I am puzzled by the embrace of this poison until I am forced to remember that some the most lethal poisons start off tasting sweet. It is on these death beds that I have to contend with the outcomes of the other opiate crisis that has decimated our country; the drug of supremacy feels just that good. No matter how many times we have been shown how poisonous unequal outcomes are for a society, the quick fix of feeling superior and being above worldly degradation numbs the cost of truly demonic ways.

Providing opportunities for soul repair during the last moment of earthly lives has been a critical part of my training as a hospice chaplain. The “plan of salvation” is a construct that allows non-converted sinners to have access to our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. For those who have accepted Christ but have embraced demonic ways I am lost to what I am supposed to do. You see, there is nothing incongruent about a nonbeliever holding on to beliefs that are antithetical to the Christian faith. Yet, incongruence is its own reward for those who have been given both the truth and light yet reject its fundamental premise: that all of God’s children (sinners) are born equal.

The ideology of White supremacy is heresy: before, now, and forever after. There are no “many sides” to the story. Heresy is not practiced by the uninitiated, but by those who have been given God’s light through the acknowledgment in Christ and the Word and then summarily reject it for worldly gain. When Christian folk commit themselves to heretical beliefs to validate their power over the powerless, who am I to absolve them of their commitment? God called me to minister to those at death’s door. Was I called to beg Christian folk to remember their better natures when they use their dying breaths to debate me as to why people who share my skin deserve to be treated equally in the eyes God and the law? If one commits themselves to heresy in word and through a lifetime of action, I must ask what is the outcome for the soul? As a hospice chaplain it is not my job to opine, but as a minister of the faith it is the question at the end of every dying day.

Is White Supremacy demonic?

Yes, White Supremacy is demonic in all its forms. It always has been, and forever will be consecrated on the blood of those who bear its unholy witness. There is nothing innocent or benign about it. And when fellow Christians revel in it, they do so in honor of the demonic spirits that promote discord and disharmony against those who are also made in God’s image and within themselves.

Some folks would assume that I write this statement as a warning for those who find themselves afflicted and enthralled by white supremacy. My writing comes from no such place. I began this writing because of my own personal journey and the difficulty that I face as a hospice chaplain who has been called to serve those who continue to struggle to humanize me in their dying moments and who succeeded in dehumanizing those who look like me over the course of their lives as Christians. To say the experience has been both soul sucking and soul fulfilling underwhelms the roller coaster of emotions I feel every time I put on my collar and walk into the homes, hospitals, and churches where I am ordained to give comfort, prayers, eulogies, and opportunities for salvation to those who have been hostile to my equal existence.

No, I do not write this as a warning but as an observation of the conditions that impact other ministers who also find themselves struggling to continue to show up for those who say they love Christ but disdain some of his people. I write this from my heart as I struggle to find the solace in my uneasy forgiveness of those who can easily find demonic possession in sex, drugs, and Rock and Roll but do not see how the devil claims them when they idolize white supremacy over those who have also been created in the image of God.