The ongoing national discussion about systemic racism holds both challenges and opportunities for people of faith of all racial backgrounds, according to a Washington archdiocesan priest and a Georgetown University law professor, who are both African Americans, and both working to help people understand the issues.
Father Patrick Smith, pastor of St. Augustine Parish in Washington, and Anthony Cook, professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, each pointed to the need to understand unvarnished history as the starting point for people of faith to begin to help root out and move beyond systemic racism.
Following the April 20 conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murder charges in the death of George Floyd last May, Father Smith and Cook were asked to discuss how people of faith and church leaders could help the nation’s reckoning with race-based inequality. They spoke to the Catholic Standard in separate phone interviews.
Cook, author of The Least of These: Race, Law and Religion in American Culture, advocated for small faith groups to start by learning about “the longstanding tradition of the faith-based community of being complicit with some of the most horrific racism” in American history. That includes slavery, the Jim Crow laws that followed abolition of slavery and ongoing “entrenched, intractable poverty,” he said.
People of faith certainly played roles in ending slavery, segregation and in working to end poverty and other injustices, he noted. But there also is a legacy of complicity to be faced, he said. Church leaders too often have looked the other way or enabled race-based bias to be built into the way churches and society function, Cook said.
For example, he said, “churches developed a theology that’s more about individual salvation to get into heaven, without attention to what is needed to bring the kingdom of God to Earth.”
Cook noted that Jesus came to the world as a poor man and chose to spend his life among those who were shunned and downtrodden. He even turned down temptations to become powerful.
“Jesus decided at every stage of development to be with the marginalized, the outcast,” Cook said. “He chose to be with the ‘least of these,’” and preached about how difficult it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
“A Christian witness would be to truly walk in the steps of Christ, which is so different from what we see in some churches today,” Cook continued. “We as a church have done a very poor job of conforming to his witness and lifestyle. Instead we have conformed to the status quo that pursues money, status and power.”
Father Smith is pastor of the oldest Black Catholic parish in Washington, which was founded in 1858 by free men and women of color, including some who had been emancipated from slavery. He said people should learn history that includes how the Catholic Church has played a role in perpetuating inequality. The priest pointed out that often the Church’s attempts to address systemic racism have come in the form of institutional statements that, as theologian Father Bryan Massingale has said, seem calculated not to make White people uncomfortable.
Father Smith cited the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which observed that in the early days of Christianity, the faith “was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”
“We have many statements, many documents, but what are we doing to educate people on the history?” Father Smith asked. “How do we become a thermostat, not a thermometer” that simply reflects society’s trends?
He noted that for the first time in his 30-plus years as a priest, he was invited in January to address a Theological College seminary audience in Washington on the topic of race. Father Smith is a renowned speaker, preacher, revival leader and retreat presenter. While he had addressed seminarians on other topics over the years, racism had never previously been the subject, he said.
Father Smith said the appointment of Cardinal Wilton Gregory as the first African American to head the Archdiocese of Washington in 2019 was a huge breakthrough for an archdiocese that has long had a significant Black Catholic presence.
He recalled thinking: “here’s someone who knows our story.” Father Smith said he’s seen changes toward addressing systemic racism since then-Archbishop Gregory came to Washington. For example, he applauded the appointment of a priest chaplain, Father Robert Boxie, to Howard University last summer. “We had asked for years, but it wasn’t seen as a priority,” he said.
In August 2020 at a Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral marking the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, then-Archbishop Gregory announced that the Archdiocese of Washington was launching an initiative called “Made in God’s Image: Pray and Work to End the Sin of Racism” that includes a wide range of pastoral activities and outreach, prayer, listening sessions, faith formation opportunities and social justice work.
Father Smith said people of faith who want to address systemic racism should first consider the history of how racism has played out within the Church. For instance, he noted that although the Archdiocese of Washington was ahead of the Supreme Court in desegregating Catholic schools in the early 1950s, its more recent legacy has included closing more than a dozen Catholic schools that primarily served Black communities. Father Smith said that from his perspective, there wasn’t enough collaboration with those schools’ communities.
In his own family’s history in Washington, his parents were not allowed to attend Catholic schools. By the time he and his siblings were born, Catholic schools had been desegregated and his parents made sure their children attended them. Now he laments the closure of so many Catholic schools that served Black families and wonders what effect that will have on vocations.
“I wonder sometimes, ‘who’s following me?’” he said. “...When it comes to spreading the faith, Catholic schools are one of the most important tools.”
Father Smith sees the history of segregation in churches and Catholic schools as a strategic choice, made by Church leaders in keeping with then-contemporary thinking in society. “The Church was initially strategically denied to the Black community,” he said, and that must be understood for today’s people to be able to try to make things better.
“Ignorance is not bliss,” he said, adding that throughout the American church, bishops, clergy, seminary rectors and key church staff members haven’t made an effort to understand the history of slavery and its ongoing repercussions.
As to where to start honest conversations about racism, Cook said he’s part of plans for two new centers being created at Georgetown that will address racial equity from the lenses of faith and opportunity. One goal is to design a set of materials that can be used by “people in the pews” or small working groups to consider what White privilege means and the role of religion in perpetuating it, he said.
“Change has to be rooted in deconstructing the roots of how people treat each other,” Cook said.
See related stories:
