If any of the 150 or so gathered in Dominican University’s Rosary Chapel last Thursday evening were expecting Oak Park resident Larycia Hawkins to tell stories about how wearing a hijab got her in trouble with Wheaton University, they were disappointed.
In fact, at the beginning of the Q & A period, people were told not to even ask about that conflict. Instead, Dr. Hawkins, who has her Ph.D. in political science, spoke on Race and Parish Matters, The Politics of Black Catholic parishes.
Hawkins, who is African American and not a Roman Catholic, began by saying that her research on black Catholics in Chicago was on the one hand “methodology neutral,” and that she approached her research “empty handed,” i.e. trying to avoid viewing what she saw and heard through any theoretical lens.
On the other, she came to the research and her talk at Dominican with four strong “motivations,” as she called them. One is the knowledge that the present black President of the United States cut his organizing teeth on the South Side, largely in black Catholic parishes, and that research on black churches has largely been confined to black Protestant churches. A second motivator was to dispel “the rumor that we are living in a post-racial society.”
Thirdly, some writers have started talking about “the black church” being dead, a dramatic way of saying that in the 1960s, the black church was at the center of the black community. It provided leaders, energy and moral authority to the Civil Rights Movement. Now those institutions are losing members to Evangelical churches and preachers of the so-called “prosperity gospel.”
Her fourth motivation for studying black Catholics is her perspective as a political scientist that sacred space is also political space.
“Pastors,” she declared, “have significant political authority. They decide what will be addressed and what will be ignored. They create the standards by which parishioners make decisions. They emphasize either social justice or individual morality, which influences whether congregants vote for one candidate or another. Congregants internalize what they say, which affects how they evaluate the world around them. That’s power.”
Two of the black parishes on which she based her research are St. Sabina, 1210 W. 78th Place, and St. Agatha on the West Side, both of which have white pastors, Fr. Michael Pfleger and Fr. Larry Dowling. She responds to critics of that decision by saying that what matters is not the color of the pastors’ skin but their ability to see reality through the eyes of oppressed and marginalized people. In other words, they practice liberation theology.
“The way these two priests do their work,” she said, “they embody black politics. Black liberation theology is lived out in their parishes.”
Working as a political scientist who is interested in the intersection of religion, politics and race, she was asking questions like, “What is the political role of the parish priest?” and “How does the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church differ from the more horizontal structure of the Protestant church” and “How can a person be both a believing Christian and a thinking a person?”
That last question was personal. Hawkins knows how to do social science, but to her surprise she found in Catholic social teaching an articulation of the relationship of faith to politics that she has heard “nowhere else.” Citing the encyclical Rerum Novarum in particular, which Pope Leo XIII promulgated in 1891, she said that Catholic social teaching “changed my life.”
In an online article, the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council stated that in the encyclical, “Pope Leo emphasizes that wages must be sufficient for the worker’s basic needs. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”
The audience in Rosary Chapel did not hear stories about her resignation from Wheaton College, which was precipitated by her decision to wear a hijab in solidarity with Muslims. Instead, they heard a talk that was partly a scholarly lecture from a podium, partly a homily from a pulpit, and partly an advocacy speech from a soapbox.
Fr. Pfleger, Fr. Dowling and Adrienne Alexander, a policy and legislative specialist for AFSCME Council 31, were sitting at a table waiting to respond to Hawkins’ talk. The professor looked at and addressed Fr. Pfleger and Fr. Dowling: “Jesus said the last will be first and the first last. I see you embodying that. I’ve been to your churches several times. You are not about power politics per se but remaking power and in so doing remaking politics in the image of the Eucharist to the glory of God.”
Perhaps that statement gave those in the audience who were looking for an explanation of why she had worn the hijab at Wheaton the answer they had come to hear.
When asked during the Q & A session to evaluate where she lives from the point of view of her talk, she replied that she was attracted to Oak Park because it is an intentionally diverse community that has tried to maintain a balance, but some people she knows say that in Oak Park it is the black and the white against the poor, i.e. many people of color who live there are upper middle class and she is not sure that they are able to view things from the perspective of the oppressed. She said that can be seen in residents’ reactions to what is happening in the schools.
But that’s another subject for another time.
