What would a systematic theology of racism look like from the U.S. Church?

8 mins read
M. Shawn Copeland, professor emerita of systematic theology at Boston College. Courtesy photo

Listening to classic Negro spirituals, which she describes as the “old and rich repository of African American religious faith that is culturally expressed,” M. Shawn Copeland points out that the songs never refer to or mention vengeance or punishment.

“Still, we must weigh and consider our actions, weigh and account for the history that we have inherited and its consequences,” said Copeland, professor emerita of systematic theology at Boston College.

In an interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Copeland, the first Black theologian to serve as president of the Catholic Theological Society, spoke about the nation’s failures to address the structural consequences of slavery’s lingering legacy of discrimination and segregation.

“We cannot forget that white racist supremacy has been long entrenched in this nation and has damaged us all,” said Copeland, who referenced the 19th-century laws that curtailed the immigration of Chinese and other people from East Asia, the Anglicization of immigrants’ names at Ellis Island, the mistreatment of ethnic and religious minorities, and the internment of 120,000 Japanese-American citizens during World War II.

Amid protests in the streets this year, and with November being Black Catholic History Month, Copeland reflected on how the Catholic Church in the United States has often been complicit in the nation’s institutionalized racism. She offered her thoughts for how the clergy and laity can begin to reckon with the past and pave a new way forward.

Our Sunday Visitor: It’s been more than five months since George Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests. Do you think we are in the midst of a national reckoning with racism?

M. Shawn Copeland: Yes, I do. Reckoning, perhaps, is an appropriate word to use.

As a nation, we are being measured by this moment. History is measuring us; we are measuring ourselves. We are in the balance. We must pause, reflect and ask ourselves and each other, “What needs to be done? What must each of us do? What must I do so that each and every citizen, each and every person within the boundary of the United States, is met with respect and dignity due to our creaturely equality as human beings, due to those God-given unalienable rights of life and liberty?”

Our Sunday Visitor: In a recent interview, you described our nation being in a societal Dark Night of the Soul. What do you mean by that?

Copeland: Consider that in the first eight months of 2020, according to a CBS News Report, police have killed 164 black people. Consider the high death rate of African Americans, Latino Americans and Indigenous people from COVID-19. Consider that 545 children of Hispanic descent have been separated from their parents in the attempt at immigration, and it is unlikely that many of these children will ever be reunited with their parents again. Recall the mass murder of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Recall the mass murder of 23 Latinos at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. Recall the murders of James Byrd Jr., Matthew Shepherd, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Sandra Bland. Recall the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd.

In suggesting that as a nation we are experiencing a kind of “societal dark night,” I am drawing on and borrowing from the work of Carmelite theologian Sister Constance FitzGerald. Sister Constance proposes that these contemporary experiences suggest an occurrence of what in the Christian spiritual tradition is known as “dark night” or what, in the social domain is “impasse.” In spite of our critical scientific acumen, technological expertise, intellectual and cultural sophistication, these murders — such casual disregard for human life — leaves us powerless and frustrated, resentful and angry, confused and disoriented. We are stuck. We are unable to go forward, dare not go backward. We repeat the same negative actions over and over.

Our Sunday Visitor: Why has the Church in the United States struggled historically with racism?

Copeland: Papal bulls or declarations from 1435 to 1890 condemned the slave trade, forbidding Catholic clerics or laypersons to defend, publish or teach, in public or in private, anything that supported the trade. But nothing was said about slavery as an institutional practice. Papal teaching appealed to and encouraged the ideal, but Catholics living in the United States, particularly in the South, cooperated with slavery and slaveholding. Laity, clerics and religious orders owned and sold slaves. In the last several years, Jesuits have been conspicuous in acknowledging their role in slaveholding in Maryland and at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

During the period of enslavement in the United States, the hierarchy compromised on slavery, calling it a political or social question, not a moral one. And, with conspicuous exception, the hierarchy failed to challenge the culture and system that legitimated, sustained and benefited from slavery. None of the provincial councils conducted by the bishops of the American Catholic Church between 1829 and 1849 directly addressed the moral and social evil of slavery. This legacy lingers and cripples us as a church.

Our Sunday Visitor: In a recent podcast interview, you described the need for a more systemic, sustained teaching/theology of racism. What would that entail?

Copeland: At the archdiocesan and diocesan levels, several bishops have written statements that reach out to incidents in their regional area. For instance, among others, the late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, former Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso have all addressed racism in their regions. Bishop Edward K. Braxton, the former ordinary of Belleville, Illinois, has written several pieces on racism.

At the national level, episcopal statements against discrimination and racism form a well-intentioned but uneven collection. Too often, these letters are ahistorical and fail to clarify for an anxious community the roots of the problem, and are detached from the cultural and social context under analysis. With all due respect: Who is the “us” in the [1979 USCCB] pastoral letter, “Brothers and Sisters to Us”? In [the 2018 USCCB pastoral letter] “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love”; who is to open wide their hearts?

Our Sunday Visitor: How would you construct a more systematic theology of anti-racism?

Copeland: If the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops were to ask me to draft a pastoral letter on racism for their use, like Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti, No. 56, I would begin with the parable of the Good Samaritan, the “stranger on the road.” I would probe the meaning of that parable, first, in the religio-cultural context in which Jesus tells it. Then, try to discern its meaning for us today. That parable not only discloses anxiety in accepting human-embodied difference, but uncovers our fear for our own safety, our own loss of reputation or social standing. We ask, “What will happen to me if I stop to help this stranger?” Rather, we ought to ask, with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “What will happen to this stranger, this neighbor, if I do not stop?” This is a call to action-oriented solidarity, to change.

I would build on the notion of racism as a moral evil and a sin as taught in “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” but stress that racism is not merely about rogue individuals who act viciously toward others. Racism forms part of the fabric of our social structures because it is embedded in our consciousness, in our thinking, in our action. We accept the norms and rewards of white racist supremacy without question. I would introduce and critique the notion of white privilege or white dominance, pointing out that we Catholics, in trying to gain acceptance in the United States, have traded Christianity for race; we have become white, and we cling to that racial status. We have not been concerned about what is happening to the “stranger on the road.” We have not been concerned to imitate God’s way of acting with compassion.

Then, I would review briefly the founding of the nation, trace the ways in which anti-black, anti-Indigenous, anti-Mexican and racist policies, customs, attitudes, biases and behaviors have formed us to prefer, to choose, to privilege whiteness. This preference and choice, allegiance and privilege, even if involuntary, has harmed us as American Catholics and has harmed American Catholicism. I would uncover the way Americanization has wounded us all — early on pitting European cultural-ethnic groups against one another, sanctioning our mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and Mexicans in the Southwest, immigrants, refugees and so on.

Finally, I would invite the bishops to be an example for us all — to recognize, confess and apologize for the historic failures of our Church; to take responsibility for the failure to evangelize the formerly enslaved people; for the attempts of clerics and religious who injured Indigenous children by erasing their language and culture; for obstructing the work of the Spirit in the lives of Indigenous, Mexican American and African American men who sought priesthood and vowed religious life; for silence before laws and customs that supported segregation, discrimination and harassment in the struggle for equality and justice; for the failure to provide thorough instruction in the sociology of racism and the psychology of racial dynamics during the formative periods of the priesthood and consecrated life; for the failure to help white Catholics grow in intellectual and moral conversion in love of neighbor.

Our Sunday Visitor: What is your response to white Catholics who say they are not responsible or guilty for the racist acts of their ancestors?

Copeland: It is important to distinguish between guilt and responsibility. Guilt may be ascribed to those who historically engaged in or were complicit in racism or acts of racial-ethnic, cultural and religious oppression, violence and injustice, such as the slave trade, slaveholding, cross-burnings and lynchings. We incur guilt when we actively engage in or comply with acts of racial-ethnic, cultural and religious oppression, violence and injustice.

Nonetheless, we all share responsibility for our present situation that has been constructed in the past through individual and collective acts of racial-ethnic, cultural and religious oppression, violence and injustice in our history. This is our duty of moral reparation and action for justice.

Because racism is rooted in misjudgment, we must address its cognitive dimension. Because racism implicates affect and emotion, we must address its affective dimension. And because racism incites negative action, we must address its moral dimension.

Our Sunday Visitor: What would you urge the bishops to do?

Copeland: I would urge the bishops to make a long-term commitment, perhaps begin with a five- or 10-year plan that could be revised, changed, adapted, even extended. Such a commitment would aim to cultivate patterns of behavior or habits that reflect the Gospel’s command to love God and neighbor.

In the words of Pope St. John Paul II in Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, No. 16, we “appeal to the consciences of all, so that each may shoulder his or her responsibility seriously and courageously in order to change” the conditions that keep racism alive and mutating in our nation and in our Church.

To some, this way of going about a pastoral letter might sound overly sociological; perhaps [the bishops] offered such comments about the pastoral letters “On the Challenge of Peace” (1983) and “On Economic Justice For All” (1986). The bishop-writers or their committees or drafters explained in full detail the issues and problems of the moment and offered enduring lessons to sustain our Catholic Christian commitment to God’s reign of love and justice. Then, they drew out the theological implications, urged Catholics to read and study and discuss these letters, and to change our thinking and our habits or practices of living accordingly.

Taking history and racial hurt as starting points for a pastoral letter on racism makes clear and concrete the grievous sin that racism is, the grave moral evil that racism is. This starting point also makes clear that the sin and moral evil of racism, of white racist supremacy, not only harms those against whom hate is directed, but deforms and wounds those who harbor such sentiments and who act out this moral and social evil.

The letter should state unflinchingly that this sin and moral evil is aimed against human beings whom some have decided to [see as] “other,” even though these children, women, and men are made in the image and likeness of God. We are all our brothers and sisters to one another. Acts of racism wound and deform the Body of Christ. They divide the members of that body from one another.

Brian Fraga is a contributing editor for Our Sunday Visitor.

Brian Fraga

Brian Fraga writes from Massachusetts.