Finished reading: Race: Challenge to Religion by Mathew H. Ahmann 📚

I got dinner with a friend the other month to talk about comic books - he and I both have an affinity for Ta-Nehisi Coates' volumes of Black Panther and Captain America. During our conversation about the core of national identity and what constructive patriotism looks like (standard comic book conversation), we decided to do some more reading together on how to answer those questions.

This book was the first part of that project - and was a hard book to find. My friend saw it referenced in a book called Black Religion and Black Radicalism, which he read based based on a reference in a book called The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Race: Challenge to Religion is a compilation of transcriptions from essays delivered at the 1963 National Conference on Religion and Race. That conference was a meeting of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders, held in commemoration of the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Martin Luther King Jr. is among the speakers/authors.

There were a few things that struck me about this book. The first is how connected these authors felt to the founding of America, and to the conflict and decisions of the civil war. To me, those events seem like ancient history, but these priests, pastors and rabbis talk about them as if they are recent historical events. It helps inform their work as part of a larger project, of which much progress has been made, instead of starting from the narrow view of today’s current injustices (without discounting the pain of those injustices).

Another thing that struck me was how proud the speakers are to be American! My experience in America is that the very religious as well as those on the political Left have a tendency to denounce national allegiance, or at least not include as part of their in their core identity (this is very distinct from people in America who are a little bit religious, who tend to have national allegiance at the center of who they are). But these progressive religious leaders talk with zeal about love of America and wanting to guide her towards moral virtue and a well-treated citizenry. I found that inspiring.

Lastly, I was struck by how the Black Church sees history as something still being written. I think in my White Catholicism (which also has a heavy dose of Evangelicalism), we treat the bible and our faith as the study of something that has been finished. The books of the bible are all written; the saints are all dead and buried. But these speakers intertwine the journey of the church, the nation, and the people - as a political and moral liberation that is still unfolding.

This obscure book would make an interesting read for those interested in how American Christianity (and to a lesser extent Judaism) see themselves in relation to the larger culture of the nation. While I don’t necessarily think it qualifies as a page turner for everyone, it was thought provoking, and my reflections on this book have helped me see racial justice as an important element of my faith.