Why We Can't Wait: Racism and the Church (The College Theology Society, 68, Band 68) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1626985197 ISBN 13: 9781626985193

Verlag: Orbis Books (USA), 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Annual Volume #68 of the College Theology Society will be on the theme of racism and the church, incorporating approximately fifteen essays drawn from presentations given at the spring 2022 conference at the University of Detroit-Mercy in Detroit, Michigan. The most prominent essays will come from the plenary speakers: Emilie Townes (Vanderbilt Divinity School); Simon Mary Aihiokhai (University of Portland); Karen Enriquez (Loyola Marymount University); Karen Teel (University of San Diego); Shawnee Daniels-Sykes (Mount Mary University); Cecilia Moore (University of Dayton); Melissa Pagán (Mount Saint Mary’s University); Antonio Eduardo Alonso (Emory University); and Kim Harris (Loyola Marymount University).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Catherine Punsalan-Manlimos is assistant to the president for mission integration at the University of Detroit-Mercy. She was an associate professor in the theology and religious studies department at Seattle University for 15 years. She was the inaugural director of the Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture and held the Malcolm and Mari Stamper Endowed Chair in Catholic Intellectual and Cultural Traditions. In addition, she directed the Catholic Studies Program in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier is associate professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. She specializes in Asian/Asian American theology, comparative theology, feminist theology, Hindu-Christian studies, and interreligious dialogue.

Elisabeth T. Vasko is associate professor of theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA and author of Beyond Apathy: A Theology for Bystanders (Fortress 2015). As a scholar and an educator, she is passionate about empowering people of faith to work for social change. Prior to working in higher education, she served as a youth and young adult minister in Chicago.

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College Theology Society

Annual Volume 68

2022

RELIGION / Christian Living / Social Issues

RELIGION / Christian Theology / General

RELIGION / Essays

Cover design: Mia Stanford

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ISBN 978-1-62698-519-3

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“Why We Can’t Wait”:1

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

On January 16, 1963, eight White Christian and Jewish clergy penned “An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense.” The open letter, printed in the Birmingham News, challenged White segregationists and affirmed seven principles, including “every human being is created in the image of God and thus due just respect.”2 Four months later, they changed their minds.3

In April 1963, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined Birmingham’s local campaign, organized by Fred Shuttlesworth, to address segregation in the city. The SCLC chose Birmingham as opposed to larger cities in the South like Atlanta, partly due to the reactionary nature of its leadership: Bull Connor. On April 3, 1963, civil rights leaders launched a campaign to shut down the city during the Easter holiday with marches, sit-ins, and protests. The residents of Birmingham responded by participating in full measure.4 One week later, the local government was granted a state court injunction against the protests, making participation illegal. White clergy issued a second open letter, urging King and the SCLC to halt the demonstrations, calling them “unwise and untimely.”5

Despite the injunction, on April 12, 1963, King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy decided to participate in the demonstrations and were arrested. On May 2, 1963, more than one thousand Black students attempted to march down the street. Hundreds were arrested. The next day, the city commissioner Bull Connor directed the police and fire departments to use force to stop the demonstrations. Images of children being beaten by police, blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, and bitten by police dogs were broadcast across the nation.6 While in solitary confinement in the Birmingham jail, King addressed the nation:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”7

Justice is not an abstract reality to be debated in academic circles. Justice is freedom from oppression actualized in human history. In the six decades since, King’s words remain pertinent: too many are living in a world where “justice is denied.”

We continue to live in a fractured and racially segregated America. Black and Brown children bear the brunt of criminalization in the United States today. Black girls are body slammed in the school cafeteria (Jasmine Darwin, 2017) and arrested for having temper tantrums in kindergarten (Kaia Roelle, 2019). Black and Brown people of all genders are killed by the police: Eric Garner (2014), Michael Brown Jr. (2014), Ahmaud Arbery (2020), Breonna Taylor (2020), Dominique Fells (2020), and George Floyd (2020). Migrants are detained in overcrowded and unsafe conditions at the US-Mexico border and separated from their families. Anti-Asian violence has risen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Anti-Jewish hate crimes continue to rise across the nation.

Racism persists in deeper, less obvious ways. Subtle acts of exclusion or avoidance, racial “jokes” and stereotyping, implicit racial bias, and racialized microaggressions are all acts of covert racism propping up racist structures and seeping into every facet of society, including religious life. As King stated, “The judgment of God is upon the church as never before.”8 Moreover, he expressed greater frustration over the “shallow understanding of people of good will” than the “absolute misunderstanding of people of ill will.”9

While some may have seen our theme as passé, we find it fitting for the College Theology Society (CTS) in the present moment. The year 2022 was the first time the CTS devoted an entire convention to the theme of racial justice. Given the CTS’s emphasis on education and its inception in an era of segregation in the United States, such attention is long overdue. The CTS was founded in 1954 by religious and lay women and men. Central to its mission is the training and formation of those who teach theology in Catholic institutions in the United States. While the society has focused on many social and political issues in its seventy-year history, it has yet to give sustained, systematic attention to the problem of racism in the United States. In 1954, the very same year of the CTS’s founding, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal” based on race in public schools was unconstitutional. The Court’s 1954 decision ignited waves of White resistance across the country for decades that could not be ignored. Moreover, Catholic education benefited economically from Brown v. Board, with all-time high enrollments in the 1960s.10 The reality is that any historically White institution (HWI) born in the 1950s that did not center (and has not centered) racial justice is part of the problem.

White liberal Christians continue to change their minds about the rules of belonging and engagement. Scholars of color have developed significant work that sheds greater light on the sin of racism and draws theological richness from experiences of communities of color. Yet their contributions have remained peripheral in the academy, church, and world. Theologians and scholars of religion must take on the process of self-examination and articulation of complicity in the sin of racism, as well as work in all areas of thought and practice to develop a faith defined by racial justice.

We are grateful for the CTS’s willingness to host this conference and annual volume. In particular, the CTS board allowed us to play a prominent role in shaping the liturgy and the convention during the COVID pandemic. Yet there is much more work to be done. As an HWI, the CTS must begin where it is. At the conference, the CTS started to take a few steps forward with an amendment to the constitution to include an emphasis on diversity and the creation of three Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) board positions. Yet there is still so much more that needs to be done. This work, if taken up by all in the community—not just a select few—will genuinely transform the way theology is done.

What Next?

For Those Not Ready for Healing

The convention was held during Pentecost weekend. As a part of our preparation, we invited Antonio Eduardo Alonso and Kim R. Harris to develop an online Pentecost Vigil Evening Prayer. In the planning, we spoke together about our hope that the convention theme and annual volume not be used to “check off a diversity box” or be an occasional topic for discussion without deep discernment and change.

The liturgy was a true highlight of the convention, bringing together the Spirit’s fire for truth and honoring the need for lamentation and repentance. We have included Kim Harris’s powerful homily in this volume, which calls us to do the work of racial justice. Yet we also believe it important to note Antonio Alonso’s use of Yolanda Pierce’s “Litany for Those Not Ready for Healing.” It reads in part:

Let us not rush to the language of healing,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Orbis Books (USA)
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1626985197
• ISBN 13: 9781626985193
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 227
• Herausgeber: Punsalan-manlimos Catherine, Sayuki Tiemeier Tracy, Vasko Elisabeth T.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Logos Europe; contact@logoseurope.eu; ; 9 Rue Nicolas Possin; La Rochelle; 17000; Frankreich