Father Bryan Massingale, James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham University, will present the annual Howard Thurman Lecture on Thursday, November 7, sponsored this year by Candler’s Black Church Studies program, Catholic Studies program, and the Aquinas Center of Theology. The lecture, “The Catholic Church and the Struggle Against White Nationalism: Missing in Action?”, will take place from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in Room 252 of Candler’s Rita Anne Rollins Building. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Register here.
Massingale’s lecture will examine the response of the Catholic Church—both the predominantly white leaders and its African American membership—to the threat that white nationalism poses to American democracy, and explore the relevance and adequacy of Catholic witness in the face of white nationalist ideology and practice.
A leader in the field of theological ethics, Massingale is a past convener of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium and a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. In addition to his faculty position at Fordham, he is the senior ethics fellow in the university’s Center for Ethics Education. He is the author of Racial Justice and the Catholic Church(Orbis Books, 2010) and multiple journal and online articles. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Society of Christian Ethics and the editorial board of Theological Studies, one of the premier Catholic journals of theology.
Known as a scholar-activist and authority on issues of social and racial justice, Massingale has received numerous awards for his contributions to justice advocacy, along with four honorary doctorate degrees. His current research projects explore the contribution of black religious radicalism to Catholic theology, the notion of “cultural sin” and its challenge to Catholic theological ethics, and the intersections of race and sexuality in social life and Catholicism.
Register for the lecture here.
Cover image: Patrick Verel, Fordham University