In the wake of reckoning: Morality and agency among BIPOC clergy post-2020

• In Event: 50806 - The Role of Culture, Institutions, and Power in Moral Action

Abstract

The 2020 killing of George P. Floyd in Minneapolis, USA, sparked a global mobilization against systemic racism, prompting responses and statements of support from a range of social institutions, including sports franchises, corporations, and houses of worship. While thousands of white-led congregations took the unprecedented step of publicly expressing support for the Black Lives Matter and committed to following through with promises to address their complicity in systems of racial inequality, this moment revealed an equally notable dynamic: tepid and restrained expressions of support from religious congregations led by racial minorities. Given the historic role immigrant and minority congregations have played in supporting social movements for civil rights and immigrant justice, this important development reveals new dynamics related to the moral power of religion in contemporary American race relations (Barnes 2005; Pattillo 1998; Morris 1984). The present study draws on novel qualitative data with clergy in 8 regional sites across the United States to examine the role of religion, race, and morality in shaping how congregations responded to the outcry against police brutality and anti-Black racism in 2020, as well as detail the moral dilemmas clergy encountered in a period of pronounced uncertainty and precarity. The study provides insight into the role of meso-level social groups in shaping social solidarity, thereby contributing to timely debates regarding the role morality of institutional life.

Author

• Daniel Cueto-Villalobos, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities