Dr. James Benton admits his journey to the Catholic faith “might seem like a long story” and “not surprising for someone hanging out around Jesuits for the last 16 years or so,” but he says his decision to enter the Church at the Easter Vigil “really accelerated in the last 15 months.”

Benton directs the Race and Economic Empowerment Project of the Kalmanovitz Initiative at Georgetown University. The initiative deals with labor issues and the dignity of work and putting Catholic social teaching into practice.

He said his job is to join the initiative “with the ongoing effort by local faith groups, activists, and organized labor to address the significant inequality that exists in D.C.”

“From the affordable housing crisis to gentrification and an uneven job market, inequality threatens to displace many more thousands of poorer residents, most of whom are Black, Brown, and Asian ­– creating a city of greater extremes across the board,” Benton said. “We are working with others to find solutions that can address inequality.”

Benton has had a long association with Georgetown University. He earned master’s degrees in history and liberal studies there as well as a doctorate in U.S. history. He then worked for several years in the Office of the President at Georgetown, assisting university officials and the Society of Jesus in their reconciliation efforts with descendants of enslaved people sold by the Jesuits.

In 1838, Jesuits in Maryland sold 272 enslaved people to plantations in Louisiana, and the proceeds of the sale helped to pay off Georgetown University’s debts. The Georgetown Memory Project has identified about 10,000 descendants of those enslaved persons.

As part of the reconciliation effort, the Maryland Province of Jesuits established The Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation, a charitable effort that the university says will “take a leading role in addressing the legacies of enslavement in the United States and its impact on families and communities today.”

“In my work with the descendants of the enslaved held by the Jesuits, what was interesting to me was there was a group of descendants who had already done the research into this history, and some seemed to be okay with this knowledge, and others had a real crisis of faith, and others were stunned,” Benton said. “I saw how people dealt with this new information and the determination of the Jesuits to move toward reconciliation.”

Benton said he was impressed with the “transformative model” of the descendants of the enslaved, Georgetown officials and the Jesuits “coming together in a way we have not seen before.”

“If they could sit down and take an honest look and move forward, then there is no reason other groups could not. That gave me hope,” Benton said.

James Benton directs the Race and Economic Empowerment Project at Georgetown University.  (Georgetown University photo)

Benton said that when the pandemic hit, “suddenly there was a lot of free time, and I became aware of how fortunate I was to have good health. And, as part of a larger plan to take better care of myself and exercise, I wanted to be better versed in the Catholic social teaching around my work.”

During the past year’s quarantine, he said he realized that “the pandemic made you take stock of what’s important in your life and to recognize the importance of small things – how a kind gesture to someone might have a ripple effect you might never see, and how a bad gesture might have an effect you might not see.”

As part of the year of introspection, he said, “I have been forced to think about what is important to me. It’s not about what degree you hold or what job you have, but what you do to make the lives of people around you better.”

It was then that Benton “started praying again because I had questions as to what should I be doing.”

Although not yet a Catholic, he attended morning Mass at St. Philip Church near his home in Falls Church, Virginia, and Sunday Mass at St. Ann Church in Washington, D.C.

“I was going to Mass as a personal experience and as a way to connect with others,” he said. “When the pandemic hit and everyone was shut in, I tuned in online and discovered more about the Mass, and when the churches opened, I started going back to Mass.”

He began volunteering at St. Ann, joined a study group and entered the Church this past Easter.

“I’ve gotten to know the members of the congregation and the group of ushers I work with has become really tight in the past few months,” he said. “It opened up a whole new community for me. We’ve developed a shared sense of purpose during this crisis.”

Originally from western North Carolina, Benton grew up attending a United Methodist church started by his family in the 1860s when several free people in his family donated a portion of their land for the construction of the church.

He was a journalist who worked for several news outlets prior to coming to Washington, D.C. to work for “Congressional Quarterly.” In 2002 he left journalism to do some nonprofit work and then went on to graduate school at Georgetown University. 

Benton’s book, “Fraying Fabric: How Trade Policy and Industrial Decline Changed America” will be published next year by the University of Illinois Press. He said it will examine “how trade policy effectively lost us the manufacturing sector in this country.”

“In learning more about Catholicism and my own personal faith, I’ve met some very friendly folks along the way who have been supportive and made this time of transition pretty amazing,” he said. “There are more people than I can reasonably mention, but this journey was made possible by a lot of folks, a lot of friends, a lot of people I met along the way …  they helped me find the answers I was looking for or think about the answers. I appreciate them, and I appreciate their presence in my life.”

“This has been such a meaningful journey, and I am looking forward to what happens now,” he said.