“Beside the rivers of Miami, we sat and wept at the memory of our people. There by the palm trees we hung our conga drums, for there Christian nationalists asked us for songs, white supremacists demanded songs of joy; they said ‘Sing us one of your Mambo.’  How can we sing our rumba in a pagan land? If I forget you, mi gente, may my right hand wither. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you” (Ps. 137). 

Latines don’t–and never will–belong, even when we attempt assimilation. We are a people in exile, even those born within U.S. borders. Some are here by conquest (Mexico and Puerto Rico), others as consequences of gunboat diplomacy (Central America and the Caribbean), following what has been stolen from us. 

We are separated from the land which witnessed our birth or our predecessors’ birth, from which we draw our identity; realizing that when our bodies are finally laid to rest, no matter how many generations we lived in this country, it will still be as foreigners interred in alien soil.  

Our labor and natural resources are coveted and exploited, even as our bodies are rejected and constructed as a dangerous threat. Walls are built that are porous enough for our labor to seep through, but too solid for our bodies to traverse.  

Historian Martin Marty claimed the U.S. is a secular society where religious institutions have a secure, but boxed-in space. Faith, as many conservative eurochristians advocate, is perceived as a private affair. Christ as “personal” Savior.

Such faith facilitates the goal of civil religion, which is to make an idol out of the society it reflects and supports. God and country become fused and confused in the eurochristian’s mind as they sing,” God bless the U.S.A.!”

To be a good Christian means being a good citizen and vice versa. 

Visit most churches and you can see this phenomenon play out. Standing proudly by the altar is the U.S. flag, signifying liberty, freedom and the American dream for eurochristians. But for those of us sitting by the river unable to sing our songs because we can’t breathe under the shadow of that flag, we see it for what it is–a symbol of imperialism, gunboat diplomacy, support of ruthless puppet dictators, and the American nightmare.

Altars are adulterated when the sign of empire is placed beside it. Blasphemy is bending one’s knees to both Caesar and Christ.  

Nationalist flags in the sanctuary foster idolatry. Refusing to merge religion with the empire led to early Christians’ conviction of atheism, punishable by being thrown to the lions in the grand Roman arenas of old. What we need today is this type of atheism, one that refuses to justify the nation through religious rhetoric. 

During the 1960s, many were concerned about the “God is dead” movement. The focus should not have been on whether God exists, but rather: Who is this God whose existence we affirm or deny? Frankly, some gods are better off dead.  

The god of January 6th, the god of settler colonialists, the god of neoconservatives and neoliberals, the god of flimflammers selling $60 bibles, the god of white nationalists that protects the borders against “aliens”–all these gods are better off dead. And let the dead bury the dead!  

Let us instead seek the God who abhors all nation-states because they cause divisions and wars. Let us seek the God who defends the alien among us and not the borders! 

Let’s search for the God who can relate to the undocumented because Jesús, too, was a refugee in Egypt due to the violent political repression of Herod the Great, placed in power by the hegemony of the north.  

Dead gods entice us to conform to the norms of a civil religion, to advocate for eurochristian nationalism rather than obedience to the God who commands justice for all, specifically the “least” among us.

While blasphemous to have any nation’s flag by the altar, Christians nonetheless have political responsibilities. They are neither called to be hermits nor are they called to be warriors for Christ protecting whiteness through eurochristian nationalism. Instead, they are to be active witnesses against the satanic trinity of economic, political and social disenfranchisement. 

Latines–and other minoritized communities–who are victimized by this oppressive trinity–rendering us unable to sing our songs–cannot be part of the dominant culture that worships the god that is silent before economic, political and social injustices. Assimilating to Eurochristianity makes us complicit with our own oppression.