Overview

Today, the images of Catholic priests and nuns marching in 1960s civil rights protests are iconic. Their cassocks and habits clothed the movement in sacred garments. But by the time of those protests Catholic Civil Rights activism already had a long history, one in which the religious leadership of the Church played, at best, a supporting role. Instead, it was laypeople, first African Americans and then, as they found white partners, black and white Catholics working together, who shaped the movement- regular people who, in self-consciously Catholic ways, devoted their time, energy, and prayers to what they called ""interracial justice,"" a vision of economic, social, religious, and civil equality. Karen J. Johnson tells the story of Catholic interracial activism from the bottom up through the lives of a group of women and men in Chicago who struggled with one another, their Church, and their city to try to live their Catholic faith in a new, and what they thought was more complete and true, way. Black activists found a handful of white laypeople, some of whom later became priests, who believed in their vision of a universal church in the segregated city. Together, they began to fight for interracial justice, all while knitted together in sometimes-contentious friendship as members of the Mystical Body of Christ. In the end, not only had Catholic activists lived out their faith as active participants in the long civil rights movement and learned how to cooperate, and indeed love, across racial lines, but they had changed the practice of Catholicism. They broke down the hierarchy that placed priests above the laity and crossed the parish boundaries that defined urban Catholicism. Chicago was a vital laboratory in what became a national story. One in Christ traces the development of Catholic interracial activism, revealing the ways religion and race combined both to enforce racial hierarchies and to tear them down, and demonstrating that we cannot understand race and civil rights in the North without accounting for religion.

Full Product Details

9780190618971

Table of Contents

Reviews

A tour de force. One in Christ takes us into the streets and parishes of Catholic Chicago, richly exploring the much understudied work of the laityparticularly womenin shaping, defining, and acting for interracial unity and justice. In a delightfully engaging text, Johnson draws us into the messiness of human interaction for change and resistance during the long civil rights movement of the 1930s to the 1960s. Her findings and interpretations have deep meaning for our current times. A must read for anyone wanting to understand civil rights and racial change. * Michael O. Emerson, author of Divided by Faith, United by Faith, and Transcending Racial Barriers * Karen J. Johnson has made a remarkable contribution to scholarship on interracial civil rights activism in the Northern United States. One in Christ is balanced in its attention to clergy and laity, and innovative in its intersectional placement of religion, race, gender, sexuality, class, and place at the heart of its analysis. Rigorous and passionate in its research and presentation, One in Christ will be appreciated as a cornerstone achievement in the history of the Catholic interracial justice movement. * Omar M. McRoberts, author of Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood * Karen J. Johnson's One in Christ has it all: white versus black and white with black; Catholic versus Protestant and Catholic with Protestant; Catholic versus Catholic and Catholic with Catholic. Widely researched, analyzed with precision, and focused on the magical messiness of everyday life, this book is necessary reading for anyone interested in race, religion, and justice in the past and present. * Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America *

Author Information

Karen Johnson is Associate Professor of History at Wheaton College in Illinois. She studies the intersection of religion and race in American history, teaches classes on the civil rights movement, race, and urban and suburban history, and works with future history teachers.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available