Uncommon Faithfulness: The Black Catholic

Uncommon Faithfulness: The Black Catholic Experience. Edited by M. Shawn Copeland

LaReine-Marie Mosely, and Albert J. Raboteau. Orbis, 2009

The book Uncommon Faithfulness is a collection of essays about a religious demographic that has often gone unnoticed: Black Catholics in America. Christianity, of course, has been controversial in the Black community, as some non-Christian African-Americans have called Christianity the religion of the oppressor. The essays in the book examine how by using this imposed religion, Black Catholics have attempted to craft the Catholic religious discourse into doctrine of liberation.

The first section of the book on "History" is not explicitly Catholic in focus, and instead chronicles the complex interplay between race and religion in American civic life. For example, according to Alberta Raboteau's essay "Relating Race and Religion," four ideological strains within African-American religiosity are articulated: redeeming the religion of the master, erasing the importance of color in religious discourse, identifying racial origins in a positive manner, and addressing the needs of the community. As early as the 1770s, slaves were protesting that the institution violated the dictates of Christian community (Raboteau 11). Theologian Katrina M. Sanders points out in her essay that African-American Catholics were, despite their smaller numbers, vociferous advocates for civil rights. Many Black Christians found a way of reconciling being African, Christian, and American, through their political struggles (Sanders 97).

The second section, entitled "Theological and Ethical Reflection," is more specifically focused on the Catholic experience of African-Americans. This is where the book's title Uncommon Faithfulness is thrown into sharpest relief, given that it is often assumed that an African-American Christian will come from the Protestant evangelical tradition. The authors of this section attempt to offer a radically reconfigured view of this notion. For example, feminine-centered theology that is so central to the African-American tradition is also central to Catholicism. Essayist Diana Hayes links Womanism, Catholicism, and 'God-talk' all as critical building-blocks of African-American theology. Despised slave women in the Bible also strove to find dignity as mothers and worshippers. Black Catholic women, post-Vatican II have entered theological academies and finally now have the platform to articulate their own, unique vision in line with the tradition of the Church. Womanist theology turns subjects into "doers" of theology, and demand theology is no longer done 'to' women (Hayes 131).

Part Three of the book focuses on "Pastoral Concerns," and the practical needs of spiritual leaders in ministering to an African-American congregation. In the essay "African Catholics in the United States: Gifts and challenges," Paulinus I. Odozor frankly addresses such issues as the need for better communication between the laity and the clergy, the economic challenges of the African-American community, and the need to create a stronger family structure for African-Americans (Odozor 2000). The essay "Pan-Africanism: An emerging context for understanding the Black Catholic experience" allows Clarence Williams throw an even wider perspective upon the international Black Catholic community, and the common need for political and economic liberation.