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Fugitive Saints: Catholicism and the Politics of Slavery
How should the Catholic church remember the sins of its saints? This question proves particularly urgent in the case of those saints who were canonized due to their relation to black slavery. Today, many of their racial virtues seem like racial vices. This book proposes black fugitivity, as both a historical practice and an interpretive principle, to be a strategy by which the church can build new hagiographical habits. Rather than searching inside itself for racial heroes, the church should learn to celebrate those black fugitives who sought refuge outside of it.
204 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 25, 2017
Katie Grimes' Fugitive Saints: Catholicism and the Politics of Slavery is full of smart theological moves. As she deconstructs the hagiography of such classic "anti-slavery" saints as Peter Claver and Martin de Porres, she instructs us to look away from the traditional iconographical claims made by the official church about its saints, and to look instead at the testimony of those who saw/see these lives from below, the testimony of those immediately affected, often in deleterious ways, by the saints during their lifetimes. The picture we see when we make this move is quite different from the one we see when we confine ourselves to the institutional (and very self-serving) gaze.
I like particularly Grimes' insistence that "[l]ike all moral agents, the church becomes what it does: we discern the church's identity by tracking its actions in history" (p. xxi). The church is not precisely what it claims to be. It's not precisely what it proclaims itself to be. It's what it does.
This is rich, fruitful ecclesiology, which does not allow the church to close the gap between the painful memories of who it has been — of who it has shown itself to be through its actions — and its present proclamation about itself, unless or until the church faces the disparity between its self-proclamation and its actions over the course of history, including its actions in the present. And so: "The church holds the past captive so as to avoid confessing itself as a master" (p. 159).
This is a powerful, shattering (and very true) insight with application not merely to the church's complicity in systemic racism and antiblackness supremacy. It has powerful application to the church's treatment of the Jewish people, the LGBTQ community, women, the indigenous peoples of the world, and the poor in general, as well.
I like particularly Grimes' insistence that "[l]ike all moral agents, the church becomes what it does: we discern the church's identity by tracking its actions in history" (p. xxi). The church is not precisely what it claims to be. It's not precisely what it proclaims itself to be. It's what it does.
This is rich, fruitful ecclesiology, which does not allow the church to close the gap between the painful memories of who it has been — of who it has shown itself to be through its actions — and its present proclamation about itself, unless or until the church faces the disparity between its self-proclamation and its actions over the course of history, including its actions in the present. And so: "The church holds the past captive so as to avoid confessing itself as a master" (p. 159).
This is a powerful, shattering (and very true) insight with application not merely to the church's complicity in systemic racism and antiblackness supremacy. It has powerful application to the church's treatment of the Jewish people, the LGBTQ community, women, the indigenous peoples of the world, and the poor in general, as well.
November 5, 2021
Mind officially blown. As a Cradle Catholic who has since left religion behind, I never thought to question hagiography, but wow. Author Katie Walker Grimes shines a light on Catholicism’s complicity in systemic racism and its attempt to rewrite its own history through the veneration of “anti-slavery saints” like Peter Claver and Martin de Porres. She points out the hypocrisy of holding these men up as heroes of racial justice, while they were really just helping to maintain the racial status quo. They might have "served" enslaved Africans, but they wholly supported the cruel, dehumanizing and morally corrupt institution of slavery.
“But in truth neither man deemed Africanized slavery to be evil; nor apparently has the church: it has not considered opposition to black slavery either a sign of holiness or a requirement for it. Even worse, both Claver and Porres appeared extraordinarily holy to their earliest advocates not because they challenged or destabilized the regnant racial order but precisely for the ways they held it together. Rather than protecting black slaves from slavery as his champions claim, Claver instead helped to incorporate them into it. And rather than using Christian humility in order to subvert the racial order, Porres enacted a racially [divided] version of it.”
“But in truth neither man deemed Africanized slavery to be evil; nor apparently has the church: it has not considered opposition to black slavery either a sign of holiness or a requirement for it. Even worse, both Claver and Porres appeared extraordinarily holy to their earliest advocates not because they challenged or destabilized the regnant racial order but precisely for the ways they held it together. Rather than protecting black slaves from slavery as his champions claim, Claver instead helped to incorporate them into it. And rather than using Christian humility in order to subvert the racial order, Porres enacted a racially [divided] version of it.”
June 20, 2022
I didn't know anything about St. Peter Claver, so this was certainly a powerful dive into his story. Stories like this, ones that acknowledge the Catholic church's complicated, controversial and dark history, are so important for moving forward, and I'm glad I got the chance to read it. The tone is very academic and sometimes I had to read sentences over and over to make sure I understood meaning and context.
January 3, 2018
excellent
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews