If we build on Marx's perception, in his essay "On the Jewish Question," that the supposedly secular State in Christian society is deeply Christian, we can begin to understand what Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz has dubbed "Christianism." In her essay, "Jews in the U.S.: The Rising Cost of Whiteness" (in Names We Call Home: Essays on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson & Sangeeta Tyagi [New York & London: Routledge, 1996]), Kaye/Kantrowitz says "In the U.S., Christian, like white, is an unmarked category in need of marking. Christianness, a majority, dominant culture, is not only about religious practice and belief, any more than Jewishness is. As racism names the system that normalizes, honors and rewards whiteness, we need a word for what normalizes, honors and rewards Christianity," an invisible, taken-for-granted system of domination that affects Muslims and other non-Christians as well as Jews (and, one might add, atheists and other secular people regardless of origin).
Via Ignoblus.
Also of note: Gorelick is anti-Zionist Jewish socialist writer. Honestly, I find that welcome: I'm not a fan of anti-Zionism, but if you're going to swing it, it has to take more seriously what Gorelick calls "Christianism" in the Western schema than do most anti-Zionist writers (Jewish or not).
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