Bishop Edward BRAXTON. The Church and the Racial Divide. Reflections of an African American Catholic Bishop. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021. Pp. 208. $26.00 pb. ISBN 978-1-62698-406-6. Reviewed by Robert MASSON, Prof. Emeritus, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI.

Bishop Braxton’s reflections on the racial divide and the Church are a significant and thought-provoking contribution to a much-needed dialogue in the Catholic Church. I say this with the caveat that Braxton is no provocateur. In a remarkably personal and revelatory Introduction, he confesses that his uneasiness with the “confrontational and in-your-face style of some proponents of Black theology” (xlii) inclined him against James Cone’s personal encouragement to become a Catholic voice for Black theology despite Black theology’s profound contribution to Braxton’s thinking about the racial divide. The bishop’s measured, pastoral, generous and understated rhetoric manifests his conviction that genuine dialogue has no chance of getting off the ground if it begins with or manifests hostility and judgement. Most emblematic of Braxton’s approach is the distinction that he makes between the racial divide and racism. In the terminology he advocates, “racial divide” denotes the differences between the experiences and the perspectives of Blacks and Euro-Americans in civil society and in the Church. The term “racial divide,” as he uses it, can include “bias, rash judgment, stereotype, and prejudice” but on his account these should not be designated as racism or racist unless they become overt acts of serious moral evil and grave sin. He insists that he is not blind to the reality of widespread systemic and institutional racism in American society and the Church. And in fairness, the fundamental thrust of his exposition, as I read it, is to awaken an understanding in fellow bishops and Catholics, who are overwhelmingly white, that would enable them to better recognize the manifestation of racism in all its guises, including systemic and institutional. But Braxton aims to prompt the awakening without admonishing his hearers, as individuals or collectively, with the grave moral evil of overt racism. He views this approach as the most apt way to bring about genuine conversion and change.

The book has nine chapters, a Preface and Introduction that are substantive, and Acknowledgments that include a crucial passage on his use of the word “racism”(191– 92). Each chapter was originally a pastoral letter or a talk and stands on its own. Since these were given over a number of years, each begins with a short section to give the reader some sense of where Braxton locates the essay within the “moving viewpoint” of his reflections on the racial divide. The Preface, “Are We Finally Woke?”, sets the context for the chapters with a description of recent instances “of a near endless litany of deaths of African-Americans who, like George Floyd, lost their lives in conflicts with white police officers or civilians” (xii) and a discussion of President Trump’s announcement that he was going to give a speech on Juneteenth day at the historic location of the Tulsa Race Massacre. A key premise of his analysis, however, is “that the majority of police officers are committed to serve all members of the community with justice and fairness” and that “law enforcement is very difficult, requiring split second decisions that can be a matter of life and death” (xv).

The Introduction, “The Journey of an African-American Bishop,” describes Braxton’s personal experience and history that shapes his understanding of the racial divide and how he approaches it. The first chapter was written as a pastoral letter in response to the death in 2014 of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson Missouri. Like many of the other chapters it concludes discussion of the racial divide with practical suggestions for how, in light of his analysis, we might better listen, learn, think, pray, and act. The second chapter was a pastoral letter aimed at helping the Catholic reader “come to a more profound understanding of the roots of the Black Lives Matter movement and the challenges this confrontational youth-centered phenomena present to the church” (36). Braxton’s analysis clearly has a white and possibly defensive audience in mind. But he ends the chapter with a “Concluding Dialogue that articulates questions raised by an anonymous acquaintance who facilitated Braxton’s conversations with members of the movement. While Braxton’s responses to the pointed questions may not satisfy his interlocutor or like-minded readers, the prominence Braxton gives the questions in the conclusion and the humility of his responses provides a way for Braxton to sympathetically articulate a viewpoint that some in his audience would find more challenging than the bishop’s own cautious analysis. This is a rhetorical strategy Braxton employs adroitly in many of the essays where he imagines his father, a black child, a young black man, or folks in a barbershop articulating more radical positions than Braxton has articulated and then modeling a responsive openness to the possibility that truth can be recognized in the challenges. Subsequent chapters focus on the historical roots of the racial divide, the Museum of African American History and Culture, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Braxton’s argument against speaking about any group in America as a minority, the challenges of evangelization in African American communities, and Father Augustus Tolton. Woven into these chapters are insightful discussions of reparations, monuments to the confederacy, and other current issues, not to mention, numerous embedded bibliographical references.

One can appreciate Bishop Braxton’s efforts to make a constructive contribution to our understanding of the racial divide and yet find his distinction between the racial divide and racism theologically and rhetorically provocative. Does his analysis understate the moral gravity, serious woundedness, and disrupting societal consequences of bias, rash judgment, stereotype, and prejudice that are not overt, conscious, and intentional, or that are not overtly, consciously, and intentionally systemic and institutional? Catholic theology emphasizes the woundedness of Original Sin that persists despite sacramental forgiveness. Reformed theology emphasizes that we are at once both sinners and saved. If, as Braxton affirms, the evil of enslaving free human beings is America’s Original Sin, does this not call for a more detailed and thicker account of the gravity and impact of America’s Original Sin’s warping influence on people of good will, their institutions, and their church? Moreover, does asking this question about the mutual implications of the Catholic teaching on Original Sin (or Reformed teaching on Sin) and the racial divide not prompt one to wonder whether Braxton’s assumption is accurate that Black theology does not speak to central questions of classical Catholic theology and methodology and vice versa (see xlii)?